Cheap AI Exploit with Artillery

[Dogfish]

It seems about half the time in battles, if I target the AI with my artillery, the AI will begin to march towards me. Left to it's own devices, it ends up with a melee charge. However, when I hit backspace to cancel the artillery fire order, the AI turns around. It does so by turning it's entire formation around, thus for a few moments the AI's troops are just running from one side of the formation to the other. If I then click fire again, it will turn around again to face me. This causes all the troops to run to the other side of the formation again. This can be repeated ad nauseum, keeping the AI within arty range yet outside of musket range, until all the troops are routed.

I have had battles where I have lost 5-10 troops while killing 800-900, all due to my artillery (Even though that brings up another potential bug where it showed all of my units having some kills, whereas I can guarantee only my artillery ever fired a shot, excepting one line unit that squared up against a rear cavalry action against my general).

It seems the AI is reacting to my orders, instead of the position and vector of my troops. When I hit backspace the AI INSTANTLY turns around, like I gave THEM the order.

Obviously this works best with better and/or more artillery, otherwise it can take a while. I recommend Organ Guns if you have access to them. Best artillery in the game.

Has anybody else noticed this?

I play H/H

[Marquis of Roland]

Happened to me too, but only 2 or 3 times. It only happened to me when I outnumbered the AI by a large margin and the AI had only infantry. It doesn't happen all the time even under those circumstances though, so I don't know what triggers the behavior.

[antisocialmunky]

Yeah, they do that. They also psychically know that your cursor is over them and will run away.

Artillery should probably just commit the AI to an attack and not let them go back to a previous state. The same sort of running around caused missile units to die horribly in MIITW and RTW.

In Shogun, they either did a missile duel with you or charged you. Not the in between crap you see in post MTW stuff.