reinforcements..any logic?

[alby]

there am am on the shore of france after getting off my ships fending off a french attack, i win convincingly but straight after they attack with another stack with reinforcements at the edge the area of influence behind them

Ok i can handle i got a good defence plan so i gallantly start moving down the 1st wave only for the other to appear behind my armies !!! hey presto my army is sandwiched arty is cut to pieces and work of previous battle totally fuked ..sigh

how the hell they supposed to get there in the 1st place i ask ya? ....they borrow my fleet and decide to land on the beach next to me while my men are sunbathing and making sand castles...

i guess this is CAs idea of smart AI at work...anyone else have similar tales

[NimitsTexan]

First stack of reinforcements automatically goes to the spot behind its opponents army. Following reinforcement armies are deployed to the opponents flanks. Unlike previous TW games, where they enter the battle field as no bearing whatsoever on their relative positions on the campaign map. This, along with the removal of the AI army control we had in Kingdoms is mind-baffling regression on this particular game syb-system. Especially as multi-stack armies are necessary, IMHO, to get a sense of some of the large battles, having them randomly deployed all oever makes little sense.

[Major Robert Dump]

I have attacked with 2 full stacks and had the AI control my other stack, I'm assuming, because the 2 armies could not be combined. Maybe this was a bug and anomoly, as its only happened once

[sassbarman]

reinforcements show up behind me all the time regardless of where they where positioned on the campaign map, sorta takes away from strategic manoeuver doesn't it. Its kinda weird seeing how this was one of the big advantages of the 3D maps over the old risk style ones. I too very much miss the AI contolled reinforcement system that kingdoms introduced, i had some very epic battles using it.

[quadalpha]

Maybe it represents the "manoeuver" part of operations. Also, I've had first stack reinforcements show on my flanks.

[Mailman653]

My first experience with reinforcements was rather dumb. I had a full army stack going up against some natives and I had a second army stack that I figured would join. Well about a quarter into the battle I get a message saying my reinforcements had arrived. So then i start seeing three or four native units rushing to face them and I figured my reinforcements could handle it.

It's not till they are a stone's throw away that I realize my reinforcements only consisted of the general unit and maybe some dragoons (with no ammo). I then rush my calvary to try to save them but it was in vain. My champion of three battles was needlessly killed because for some reason the computer figured of all the units it could send to reinforce me it sends my general and an ammo-less dragoon unit.

[A Very Super Market]

Uh.. thats how it works in all TW games. You can't have more than 20 units in a battle, the others just sit outside.

[Ardri]

Uh.. thats how it works in all TW games. You can't have more than 20 units in a battle, the others just sit outside.

In M2TW you could allow the other stack to be under AI control and thus your nation could have multiple stacks on the battlefield at once unlike in ETW where it is 20 units max. The old limit was 20 units under player control.

[NimitsTexan]

I have attacked with 2 full stacks and had the AI control my other stack, I'm assuming, because the 2 armies could not be combined. Maybe this was a bug and anomoly, as its only happened once

In ETW? You had more than 20 units fighting on the field at the same time?

In M2TW you could allow the other stack to be under AI control and thus your nation could have multiple stacks on the battlefield at once unlike in ETW where it is 20 units max. The old limit was 20 units under player control.

Really, really do not understand why they removed AI controlled Allied armies from the battlefield. That was my favorite thing of all from M2TWK

[Reddington]

I've seen the reinforcements completely bug out. I laid seige to a town until the AI sallied forth. They had a small army nearby that would come in as reinforcements. I set up a defensive line by the sea and destroyed or routed every unit they had on the battlefield and I never saw even one of their reinforcements enter the battlefield. There was just a red shape outside the battlefield the entire fight, and when their last unit was swept from the field the battle ended.

[alby]

god that is the supidest thing i ever heard, wot if i am camping a choke point like a mountain pass or a river crossing? guess i better tear up my Art of War cos it has no relevance here

if they are going to make units appear on battlefield with no relation to actual campaign map positions then wots the purpose or having such feature except for prettyness sake

lets hope they overhaul this system and also give us a system like MTW were you can bring on your reinforcements as and when they are available...so much for progress eh ^^

[ironanvil1]

I did wonder how a Hanoverian army got behind me when I was holding the only river crossing right on the neutral Danish Border. They obviously have amphibious cannons.

Given that manoeuvring to obtain superior strategic position was a large part of 18th century warfare, this is very disappointing.

[Bob the Insane]

I thought I would dig this up because of an interesting thread on the TW forums:

http://shoguntotalwar.yuku.com/topic/49227

This implies that the deployment zone is always wrong in the campaign battles. No matter wich direction you attack from (or where attacked from) you deply to the south of the battle map. Thus the reinforcements are potentially filtering in from the right directions, it is that you are simply not in the right place relative to them...

I am going to try this out on the campign map by setting up to attack from the south with reinforcements to the south of me to see if that works as expected...

On a further note, if you are besieging you appear to deploy closer to the city (in the distance) than the defending troops do when they sally.

[Sheogorath]

In my experience, enemy (and friendly) reinforcements generally arrive at the least appropriate angle of entry, for example, directly behind the enemy...one at a time.

[Feanaro]

For me, reinforcements seem to follow a consistent set of rules: they always appear in the least helpful location, at the worst possible time, with the worst possible unit at the head.

While we're complaining, I'd like to have the options to NOT bring in reinforcements. If I have a stack of beat up veterans awaiting replenishment next to a stack of healthy ones and the AI attacks the fresh stack, I have to risk losing the ragged veterans.

[Hollerbach]

How dissapointing! The biggest issue I had with STW was the crappy re-inforcement system. MTW was a huge improvement and with BI, RTW, M2TW this aspect has steadily improved. Now we go back to a system essentially as bad as the decade old STW. It makes very little sense??

[Calmarac]

How dissapointing! The biggest issue I had with STW was the crappy re-inforcement system. MTW was a huge improvement and with BI, RTW, M2TW this aspect has steadily improved. Now we go back to a system essentially as bad as the decade old STW. It makes very little sense??

It's even worse than the original STW system when enemy reinforcements are arriving in your rear and even crossing rivers to do it

Don't have the PC to run ETW yet so I'm following it's progress through forum feedback.

It appears there's an odd consistency with reinforcements always arriving on the exact opposite point to where you'd expect them. I've seen a thread asking Why does every battle start with the attacker to the south?, regardless of position on the campaign map. And someone else pointed out that the 'viewpoint' cone on the radar map is inverted, too. Maybe this is all related? Perhaps the AI 'map reading & compass' system is glitched.

CA said it would be possible to control the order in which your reinforcements would appear, presumably 'stack order'. Is this (at least) working as intended?

Edit: just noticed Bob the Insane already referenced the 'southern attacker' thread

[Bob the Insane]

After testing in my Campaign when I was able I am not sure about the attacking from the South thing. If I had to guess I would say it seems more like the Attacker and Defenders deployment zones are always mixed up which is why you get such consistancy in odd reinforcment entry locations...

At least it is so obviously acting incorrectly I hope that CA sorts it out...

It is one of the issues that can actually really impact the emjoyment of the game. I mean CTD's and odd perfromance issues come and go and can be understood in a graphically rich game on PCs.

This kind of issue is not linked to anyone's hardware and is entirely related to game (application) logic. The replication is easy, just start a campaign battle with reinforcements...

Here is a side thought, given that the battles take place outside of a settlement how would you impliment reinforcements if you had armies on opposite side of the settlement when the AI sallies out?

[Feanaro]

I just had a French army in Montreal "reinforce" a group across the river, well out of the reinforcing armies' movement range.

[NimitsTexan]

Why CA just did not copy and paste the reinforcement system from M2TWK is beyond me. That one worked, and gave you a cool way to have ten-thousand-man battles.

[Graphic]

Enemy reinforcements DO NOT ALWAYS come in behind you. I just played a game where I was attacked by 1 unit who had a full army as reinforcements. The reinforcements came in the front and to the left.

[foop]

While we're complaining, I'd like to have the options to NOT bring in reinforcements. If I have a stack of beat up veterans awaiting replenishment next to a stack of healthy ones and the AI attacks the fresh stack, I have to risk losing the ragged veterans.

Yes, yes, yes! Coupled with the seemingly random placement of reinforcements, this can be a real pain. There's nothing worse than seeing a quarter strength cavalary unit, some dispirited militia and an artillery unit with one cannon and three men appearing as reinforcements on the other side of the battlefield behind a full stack of fresh, angry enemy units.

[Strategy]

It's not till they are a stone's throw away that I realize my reinforcements only consisted of the general unit and maybe some dragoons (with no ammo). I then rush my calvary to try to save them but it was in vain. My champion of three battles was needlessly killed because for some reason the computer figured of all the units it could send to reinforce me it sends my general and an ammo-less dragoon unit.

Why would you let your general get caught? Just tell him to run away... the enemy is never going to catch him.

Anyway:
You can determine the order in which the units of a reinforcing stack enter the battle.

In the window where the battle is being presented, simply click and drag the units in the reinforcing army to rearrange the order. That will then be the order in which they will enter the battle (hint: always send the infantry or cavalry in first).

[Mister V]

The reinforcement system is completely f*cked up. I don't use it myself, but when going up against the AI, it gets ridiculous.
Once I was facing two full indian stacks and several small forces. I used the terrain to my advantage, positioning my forces on two close hills in the middle of the map (looked kinda cool actually, like a fort with line infantry instead of walls). Anyway, after they wiped out the first indian army with concentrated fire (all ranks were able to fire because of the terrain elevation) those indians started coming from all sides in small batches of two or three. After twenty minutes of them being slaughtered I still didn't have a victory. It turns out the rest hid all over the map in twos and threes. I'm sure my general had a facepalm moment after he realised the cleanup was going to take a while.

And there was another time when the whole second enemy army spawned right behind my vulnerable flank (even though on the strat map the reinforcing army was right behind the first one).

[massimorocca]

about the "always placed on the south of the map" I found a weird situation when I tried in RTI to attack Quebec after one turn of siege. The Washington army's icon was on the strategic map deployed NNW, cause this was my path by land from the last fort I conquered, forget name that between Quebec and Montreal. When the tactical battle opened I found all my units packed in a overcrowded square along the St Lawrence, with barges on the shore and a ship anchored in the river like I'd just landed. So it was exactly like the Wolfe plan( less that French was smiling at me around the crest with their guns, they read the books I fear, so no march to the Plains of Abraham!) but not like the battle must be, if there is a link between strategic and tactic maps

[hoom]

I dunno about 'to the south' but in every battle where I've attacked a town/city, the city is behind me & I'm facing out to the country ie I am where I'd expect the defender to be placed.

Makes me definitely believe the that attacker & defender are mixed up.

Edit: Has anyone tried intentionally putting reinforcements behind the enemy? If deployment zones are switched then you should get reinforcement from behind your own army then.

[quadalpha]

Idea for the future: add an "operational" phase between the strategic campaign map and the tactical battle map.