The Alamo exploit

[Oaty]

It involves gettin assaulted and you do'nt even need phalanx units

283 vs 2478 men deployed
1772 vs 95 kills
202 vs 706 men remaining

Just a warning this will work with almost any unit and in any town where you can have an obstruction in the right place, so if you do'nt wanna know don't read on

Anyways it involves 2 vanilla hastati with no experience and no upgrades

http://home.earthlink.net/~oaty/oatyswebsite/id11.html

The real exploit involves the path finding system along with the A.I.'s aggressiveness to kill your general and there great wisdom to rush all 20 units after 2 units in the town square.

All I was trying to do was give the Gauls a pyhric victory over a clear victory the best I could.

All I did was set up my hastati in guard mode so they would not fight there way off of the town square. So first comes there general and the pilas unload. The captain routes and they unload at an approaching warband. The pilas are now exhausted. Then units were coming but because of the crowding effect each unit was trickle feedin only a few guys at a time.

The other big problem was all there units were winded before I was even touched.

Now heres new observation and it has to do with chainlinking. Because all units were targeting my general they were all considered fighting him because 1 unit was engaged and there is a chainlink effect so they all get exhausted because they are considered fighting.

Well the fifth picture should explain it all, due to the A.I.'s agressiveness to target my general and the path finding they all got crowded on the other side of the building, tricklefeeding me a few men at a time.

I'm not one for the exploits but if everyone knows about it, like the multiple sallies, then CA will fix it either in a patch or expansion. There's also so many ways to exploit the A.I. with there aggressiveness against your general, you can envelope there whole army using him as you bait but that's another story.

Anyways had to reload the game, kill a few hundred smelly and hairy barbarians and walk out the gate. Too bad I could'nt march em home for a nice little triumph.

[hoom]

And none of them came round the back?

With a decent sized assault force like that I find the AI to generally circle a good 1/4 of his troops round the sides.

[Oaty]

I don't think the A.I. recognizes the building as an obstacle, therefore they see a straight shot at the town square.

Obviously this screenshot tells you some of the problems of the pathing system.

And never once did they target my other unit leaving me free to make maneuvers. An army that is outnumbered 10 to 1 outmanuevering the enemy!

[The Stranger]

yo dude, you have killer hastati.

[Kraxis]

Interesting that you only got so few battlefield upgrades... But then again it was most likely the men in hte frontlines that both killed and got killed. Think of the potentially lost experience there.

[Red Harvest]

Part of this is "black hole pathing" around the plaza. The AI has stacking issues, but then again the combat engine doesn't penalize heavily for stacking like it should. It should be looking for a number of routes for its many units, so that they can take you in the flank. But the AI is one dimensional.

I'll make a rare defense of RTW with respect to MTW here. When the MTW AI attacked the player in siege battles it was *horrible* at it. I remember how it would destroy every single wall if possible before assaulting the main citadel. Men would be hacking away at wooden walls rather than assaulting through the existing gaps. With a small garrison of pikemen/halbardiers and the mid size castle you could hold off thousands this way. The wall defenses and keep would slowly whittle down the armies as they stood there. The AI also didn't protect its seige engines...so I usually kept a small cav contingent with a single function...destroy the siege engines immediately. That forced everything through the front gates which I often defended briefly with a unit of arbalesters out in front to mow down units.

And if memory serves, in siege defense the MTW AI would forget to put a unit inside the citadel perimeter when it had a full circumference ring wall, thereby allowing the human to win by only defeating the outer defenses.