The Alamo exploit

**Kraxis** · 02-19-2005, 00:51

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** · 02-19-2005, 01:18

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.

**Kraxis** · 02-19-2005, 01:56

Ahh... Had completely forgotten about the stacking penalty in STW and MTW. But now I do remeber how a single unit of MMA could hold back thousands of lesser troops at bridges or gates. FFK were even better at this. Now not even gladiators can do this, they simply get steamrollered, not from push but because every man gets 4-5 enemies on him.

In MTW I do remember the AI having lots of trouble taking castles and dropping too many walls, but not all the walls or that putting all units in the outer courtyard (well if they had only 1-2 units it could happen). At least in that department it seems better now, but that might also be because we have much better space to fight in. Previously not even the big Fortress had enough room for units to move with ease, now there is a whole range of options all the time.

**Khorak** · 02-19-2005, 02:09

....stacking penalty in MTW? Pray tell, explain.

**The Stranger** · 02-19-2005, 10:32

huh what's that garrison penalty thing

**Oaty** · 02-19-2005, 16:40

....stacking penalty in MTW? Pray tell, explain.

In MTW units stats were reducedif they were bunched together.

There is a stacking penalty but mainly applies to the A.I.

I had units when mousing over them said they were fighting me but only problem was they were all the way at the gates. So by the time those units hit the meat grinder they are exhausted. This applies to the chainlinking as stated above.

So if you line 20 units up in a column, it can even be on an open battlefield and have them all attack 1 unit in front of them they will all fatigue at the same rate due to being considered fighting because unit 1 is chainlinked with unit 20.

This method hurts the comp way more than the human as for me I usually never send more than 2 units to break through. For 1 the comp needs to lay off the rush method when it's numbers are greatly vaster at least keep the general in reserve, too often have I been assaulted and won mainly because the A.I. went into a chainroute immediately.

The other stacking penalty I've noticed is when your trying to rush through the gates. Rush five units at the same time through and it takes forever. Rush em in 1 at a time and it happens in no time. So do both the A.I. and human a favour, the A.I. refuses to babysit and I don't want to babysit my own troops. So when going through the gate allow only 1 enemy and 1 of your troops through at a time.

I think this is where the A.I. is failing, stacked units might get a movement penalty, add 20 units up and that is 1 hell of a movement penalty. That would be my guess is why so few rounded the corner for there death. Oh and wardogs have no problem rounding that corner and I'm guessing they are immune to stacking penalties.

**Kraxis** · 02-20-2005, 01:05

oaty pretty much summed it up.

But I think this way the penalty is bad in almost all cases. I can easily bunch up three units of cavalry on one poor unit of spearmen, no problem at all. So I can in fact use controlled 'bunches', while the AI struggles to use it properly. So I gain from it.
Then comes the problem of gates and corners as we have seen. Do we enter into those situations? Hardly at all. We tend to send in a few units and then flank or rest the others. So again I gain from it.

Previously there wasn't a movementpenalty (at least I don't remember it). You could force every unit through a gate fairly fast, but woe onto you if the enemy opposed you with a powerful unit such as foot knights. I think the penalty was in the range of +5 or -5 to attack (+5 to the enemy or -5 to you). That was a whole lot in MTW and STW, making for instance Naginata Samurai perfect showstoppers at bridges as they would be both the strongest defenders as well as the strongest attackers. Until they too stepped onto the bridge of course.

I found that to be a perfect solution to the problem. Stacked units simply lost many more men in battle for little gain, but they didn't rout out of hand or tire too fast. But most importantly it didn't give me an unfair advantage over the AI, as it was much harder to either predict or control (you can much easier predict and control the flow of units than you can contol a unit that is winning a fight and thus advances a bit).