The AI will not attack first, just stand in formation until provoked first.

**werogatda** · 11-08-2010, 12:40

Hi guys, I've been playing as France for a while now.

One thing I noticed in M2TW is, sometimes during battles, the AI army will just stand wherever, and do not advance / attack unless provoked first.

This is really annoying especially during siege battles (when AI attacks me). They wanna attack my settlement so siege battle starts, but as soon as battle starts they abandon all their siege equipment and fall back, where my archers cannot reach, and wait in their formation. It forces me to come out of my defences and attack them first.

It's especially annoying when fighting the Timurids. We all know that forcing the timurids into a siege battle is one of the most important tactics when fighting the timurids, but if they wouldnt even attack my walls first, how can I take advantage of the defending position?

Normally what happens is the timurids fall back and wait, and as soon as I come out of the gate with my artillery in an attempt to provoke them, their elephant artillery with their ridiculously long range shoot at my artillery.

When I bring out all my army to attack the timurid army, I usually get caned because the timurids are near invincible at an open field battle. and their elephant artillery weakens my formation when I charge up to them.

is this a bug? or just dumb AI?

When I played as Easy Battle Difficulty, this did not happen I think. I cant remember now cause its been ages since I played as easy, now I always play as Very Hard setting.

Maybe it's this Very Hard setting that makes the AI do this (wait until provoked) in order to make it harder for me? It does make it very harder to defeat waiting enemies.

cheers guys

**A Nerd** · 11-08-2010, 16:53

I have noticed that sometimes if the AI has siege artillary, it will pause for some time before it uses them. Spends alot of ammo on the walls before advancing. Also, I always turn the battle speed up to maximum while he does this to move the time along, just in case the pause will end soon. I hope this answers at least some of your question! I usually play normal difficulty. I wouldn't assume very hard to be any different, but I could be wrong.

**ytghazal** · 11-09-2010, 00:13

Agree with A Nerd but also be sure to move all troops off the wall, because you wont be able to move troops off damaged parts of the wall at the speed of the shelling at speed 6x. Also be sure to slow down to speed 1x or pause so that you can arrange your troops to protect the breaches. third use this as an oppurtunity to use your siege (through the breaches) As for them leaving their siege equipment this usually only happens if 1) you start the siege battle by sallying forth 2) you send some troops during a siege battle to attack the battalion holding the siege engines (for catapults and the such they pick them back up but ladders, rams and towers they ignore) Oh while they are bombarding i like to destroy their siege towers than concentrate on their rams, ladders cant be destroyed an honestly the troops come up so slowly that ifyou have a good battallion (or slightly lower grade than attacking battallion) of two handeds your fine. ive had spear militia hold off chivalric Knights(dismounted) granted i bombarded them with arrows so there were only 82/150 but still.

**Nelson** · 11-09-2010, 16:34

Welcome to the Org, werogatda.

Do your defenses include canon towers? The AI doesn’t like cannon towers one bit. I’ve noticed that if you sortie from canon tower defenses the AI will pull back out of range even if this means that its siege equipment gets plastered (It can replace it easily anyway). At this point you must carefully bait the AI into approaching your guns. This is time consuming and requires lots of micromanagement.

The gun towers are terrifically powerful. Without plenty of good long range artillery any besieger should starve out the defenders rather than risk the casualties the guns will cause. Of course, this presupposes that the defenders have enough troops to activate enough towers…

**werogatda** · 11-10-2010, 12:31

I think this is the case actually, I 'sallied forth'. So are you saying it wouldnt happen if I waited until the offending army provoked the siege battle?

I'll try waiting for the offending army to provoke the battle first.

**werogatda** · 11-10-2010, 12:34

Originally Posted by Nelson

Welcome to the Org, werogatda.

At this point you must carefully bait the AI into approaching your guns…

hmm how do you do this? and also I think it still happens even when I dont have defence towers.

thanks guys for replying.

**Nelson** · 11-10-2010, 16:45

I can’t guarantee that the AI won’t starve you out if you wait for an assault. In a case where your defenders can last 8 turns, your forces will be badly depleted after 5 or 6 turns in any event. Better to sell those men more dearly with a sortie.

Exactly how the sortie plays out depends upon many factors. Your numbers, the AI’s numbers, troop type and quality, etc. I’ll assume that you have an inferior force since otherwise you could just march out and send the enemy packing.

This determines what the goal of the sortie will be. You want to whittle down the AI’s force while conserving your own. The greatest asset you have are the wall defenses. Even basic towers are dangerous. To get the AI in range, approach it with a cavalry unit, preferably a fast one but any will do. As soon as the AI decides to attack this unit, flee back to the gate with it. You don’t really want to have a melee. Your towers will fire when the range is right. Sometimes, if your retreat is too early, the AI attackers will break off their pursuit. It will take a bit of “playing chicken” to get the knack of this. Repeat this tactic until your forces are exhausted. Then end the fight. You will continue to hold the place even if the game reports that the sortie failed. It’s important to keep enough units alive to man as much of the walls as possible should an assault be forthcoming. One single soldier can activate a tower or 2.

If you have no cavalry then luring the AI to the walls will be trickier. Any unit can do it but obviously infantry will have a much harder time getting back to the gate before the AI reaches them. Also be aware that once an engagement commences the AI will stay on your people up to AND THROUGH THE GATE! This could become a major crisis if you can’t repel the AI promptly. It pays to have a force at the gate ready to reject an attack. A large missile force with the AI complicates this tactic because your bait unit can get shot up. Bottom line, nothing is a sure thing. But I have successfully lured the Mongol and Timurid AI into range and seen them cut to pieces. At times this has worked so well that I eventually made a general assault and broke the siege. More often, though, my besieged forces just don’t match up well enough to expect any heroic outcome from one sally.

I’ve seen assaults by the AI happen as soon as it has rams and such. Other times, it sits. I believe that generally the AI will assault when it has overwhelming superiority. This doesn’t necessarily mean simple numbers. The power ratio is probably computed the same as you see before a field battle. When defending a city or castle with one wall, I contest the walls and breaches stoutly until or unless I think I am bound to be overcome. At that point I leave a forlorn hope to cover a retreat to the town center by the entire garrison for a bloody last stand.

Ultimately, the only real way to save a badly outnumbered garrison is to relieve it with an outside force.