Challenge for all modders out there

[lt1956]

Well they may open up AI in the expansion you never know?

Lt

[The_Mark]

Problem is writing the script which anticipates moves
Like countering outflankation

Not a problem. The script has just to check whether player's units threathen to outflank AI's troops, and then move reserve units to counter it.

I don't know how flexible the script engine is, but I think it could be done, although with the commands listed by blitz576 it could be a little tricky. Tricky, but possible.

Well they may open up AI in the expansion you never know?

I hope so. [wishful thinking]Or they might make it so that we wouldn't have to fix the AI.[/wishful thinking]

[The Stranger]

yeah i think it can be done, but maybe only in single battles like the historical ones

[Myrddraal]

Yes, it couldn't be done for general battles I don't think, unless you made it horendously complicated and made it run by a how to.

Even then, I don't think you can label units with a how to script, which would be neccessary...

[The_Mark]

Well, obviously, for general battles it would have to be horrendously complicated, given the number of troop types (but possible, mind you, in this respect). Dunno about how the how to scripts work, but it's still a script and should (sp) behave like any other script, and label_unit is still a command called through a script, as far as I know.

;label_unit ALLIANCE ARMY UNIT



label_unit 0 0 0 PLAYER_Hannibal
label_unit 0 0 1 PLAYER_poeni
label_unit 0 0 2 PLAYER_peltast1
label_unit 0 0 3 PLAYER_peltast2
label_unit 0 0 4 PLAYER_poeni3
label_unit 0 0 5 PLAYER_cavalry
label_unit 0 0 6 PLAYER_elephant
label_unit 0 0 7 PLAYER_cat_elephant
label_unit 0 0 8 PLAYER_numidian_cav
label_unit 0 0 9 PLAYER_barb_infantry
label_unit 0 0 10 PLAYER_sacred_band_cav
label_unit 0 0 11 PLAYER_med_cav
label_unit 0 0 12 PLAYER_barb_infantry2
label_unit 0 0 13 PLAYER_barb_cavalry
label_unit 0 0 14 PLAYER_poeni2
label_unit 0 0 15 PLAYER_cretan_archers

label_unit takes parametres as alliance army unit. It doesn't care if it's a how to script or a script used to get the elephants to breakdance, right?

Correct me if I'm wrong.

And the goal here is to make a some sort of dynamic AI to a custom battle, not for a campaign battle. Let's first concentrate on making the AI, after that we'll worry about getting it to work in campaign.

[Red Harvest]

I doubt you can do this from external scripts. CA used the scripts in historical battles to get units to do things they would not do otherwise. I remember some discussions about how the velites were scripted to run away at Trebbia after they expended half their missiles or something like that (since they had been engaged since early morning and were spent.)

You really need some thing that works faster, and from within the core AI. It is set up to do the pattern recognition in some form...so if you script it you are going to have conflicting layers.

But I don't want to discourage anyone from trying. You could try a few simple cases to start out: such as trying to get some 1vs1 match ups to behave properly. For instance, ranged units vs. infantry or cav: get the ranged unit to stop at max range and begin firing, rather than marching up to close range only to be over run.

[The_Mark]

You really need some thing that works faster, and from within the core AI. It is set up to do the pattern recognition in some form...so if you script it you are going to have conflicting layers.

There is a command that enables/disables AI for a unit, that would prevent having any conflicts between the script and AI.

But yes, something faster would be better, especially concerning the pattern recognition. The ideal would be to use the hard-coded system to do that, but some solution can be jury-rigged, no doubt. Although probably it wouldn't be pretty.