They keep running away?!?!

[ayqazi]

Hi,

How do I stop that BLOODY AI running away whenever I approach it with an army? It's always the same... I approach it, it sees me, and runs away! I mean, I want to have a bit of fun by fighting well-out-of-balance battles (in my favour of course :-) and that bloody AI keeps spoiling it for me.

Even in custom battles, where for example I want to experiment with 4 musketeer units against a heavy cavalry unit (I'm trying to learn to use musketeers, I find them useless so far) I want the enemy to charge me so I can shoot it to pieces. But when I start the battle, the AI scampers off! Idiot!

Please note, I'm not talking about when the enemies lose morale and run off (which can be fixed by unselecting the 'morale' option in the game options menu), I'm talking about when the whole army decides to backtrack from me while I approach it and escape from me as soon as I get near it.

Its getting VERY annoying now. Stupid AI idiots - LET ME HAVE FUN!

How can I change this behaviour?

[Shambles]

Try playing it on a harder dificulty setting,

They dont runaway for me, But i always Play My games on The Hardest seting.
I dont wish to waste my money buy buying a game then compleating it on Easiest in a matter of hours.

or Give them some honor if its a custom battle,

and Dont out-number them By some Crazy amount. Like 2 guys to 1 of theres or worse.

[Togakure]

All good advice.

Actually I think an Hcav unit heading for the hills when faced with four musket units is a pretty smart group of cav dudes ... assuming the musket commander isn't a complete dorf.

Most of the things that affect morale are listed in Froggie's guides, I think (see the Guides subforum). The factors for MTW pretty much cover those for STW. There are some differences, but they're not that significant.

If you turn morale off then I would think units would fight to the death, but I always play with morale on, so I don't know.

[ayqazi]

As I said on the original post, I don't want to "play fair". I just want to experiment with the capacities of the weapons, as such I want the cav to charge me so I can wipe them out or get wiped out myself. I need some way of reprogramming the AI to charge me - a "hack" of sorts.

As for the comments regarding difficulty, I regard games as a sort of interactive theme park ride - nothing too streneous, just a bit of fun that lets me win eventually. And I only buy games when they are reduced to 5 pounds or so anyway, so no lost value there.

[Togakure]

I think Shambles was just offering suggestions of how to raise the morale of the AI troops so they don't run away--all of his suggestions do that (harder difficulty setting, increased honor, not outnumbering your opponent too much, etc.). Turning off morale will solve this problem in one parameter change.

As far as non-morale-related repositioning by the AI goes, I think the only thing you can do is manuever your troops in such a way that they don't have anywhere practical to go. The AI is somewhat programmed to behave in Sun Tzu fashion, so if you are familiar with those basics, predicting what they will do given a move by your troops becomes pretty easy.

If you try the scenario you mentioned with 4 hcavs instead of 1 against 4 muskets, set them to Honor 3-4 (assuming your muskies are honor 2-3), and keep them together, my guess is you should be able to charge the muskets (not head on, but from an angle) and route them rather easily. If you want to control the muskies, well, I'm not aware of any way you can force the hcavs to stay together and charge you. Maybe some of the stat/AI wizs here will see your post and comment.

[LittleGrizzly]

my understanding is that turning morale off does not actually turn it off but increases it by +12

try having just 2 muskets vs the cav or 4 muskets vs 2 cav, a bridge would be a good way to force them to come at you a paticular way.