M2, HRE Tests PBEM

[Lucjan]

A few minor issues.

1.8 should read - "A player who has not given orders and has not actively participated, without giving prior notice that they may be temporarily unavailable"

3.9 - I have issues with players being able to demote or expel other players who may be active members of the campaign, just unpopular...we've never had to do this in the WotS and I feel the inclusion of such a clause without having any prior evidence of a necessity is a bit faulty. I do support impeachment of the chancellor at 2/3 vote though.

I would prefer keeping the trial on H campaign difficulty, as I played two games with Spain for 60 turns. One on M camp and one on H camp difficulty, and the smaller size of enemy armies on M made the game too easy. Some other opinions may differ though.

I'll accept normal sized unit settings if I can't try to nudge you guys towards large.

Other than this, I see no problems, and would be happy to start as soon as everybody is ready.

[econ21]

OK, Lucjan, I'll make the changes. I'm ok with hard and large.

In terms of starting, we are waiting for Ignoramus to get the game, although I think we should press on by Friday at the latest even if he has not. His avatar can be a Count until he gets the game and you can be his "patron".

BTW - how are you getting on with the "passive AI bug"? Indeed can anyone explain it to me? One thing I have observed in my English campaign, is that often I can shoot the AI to death and it often does nothing - it advances into range and then stalls. This is even if it is supposed to be the attacker and has better melee troops. Are you finding that?

Maybe a patch will fix things, although I am sceptical, but if it is a genuine problem, I suggest that we cap the number of missiles (bow + crossbow) per army as we did in WoS. Say two maximum? Unlike the English, I don't think this would be too much of a constraint for the HRE as historically, they did not rely heavily on missiles, AFAIK.

Not sure about artillery, as we might want a siege train for a big assault. Maybe we leave them out of the cap for now. But we should not exploit artillery too much in field battles.

EDIT: It might be useful for giving orders if we use the following RTW cheat:

show_cursorstat

Then we will get (x,y) coordinates for the cursor. If you want to fine tune movement, you could tell the Chancellor to move your Duke to location (x,y).

I am guessing you access cheats by ~ or whatever it was people used to get Romeshell.

I need to try it though.

[Lucjan]

As far as the passive AI bug, I have only seen this in one battle, it was a custom battle I set up between the Polish and the French, and from what I remember of the battle, I can guess it occurred because the following sequence took place.

1 - Both sides began the battle advancing towards each other, France was supposed to be on the offensive.
2 - France lost the cavalry it had placed on its flanks to missile fire and the units began to route before they actually reached my lines, breaking France's ability to flank.
3 - We both began to pull back and reform our lines to something more suitable for the new situation.
4 - I never advanced afterwards, just shot the French to death.

From what I saw, the French suffered an early defeat that they didn't expect when I took out their cavalry and defeated their ability to flank my lines, so they pulled back and rather than going on the offensive, started playing defence, but I never actually went ahead and switched my strategy to a more offensive role, and just sat back shooting them to death.

My hypothesis, then, is that if the enemy is on the offence and suffers severe unexpected losses before they actually reach your line for melee, they will switch to a defensive role and let you make the first move. However, if all you do is sit back and shoot, the computer doesn't recognize this as something that should be prompting it to return to it's offensive stance.

Not sure if this is even remotely correct in regards to actual game mechanics, but it's all I can gather from my singular run in with this bug.

Oh, and starting Friday sounds good.

As far as unit restrictions... I played two battles to test the effects of an overkill archer/crossbowman army with a large siege train against a regular, randomized french army. I had 3 archers with 5 pavise Crossbowmen, 3 grand bombards and a trebuchet, the rest was sargeant spearmen, dismounted knights and the general. Even with 3/5ths of the army being made of armor piercing and fast firing missiles, with mass-casualty inflicting artillery, I lost both battles. The french infantry of the line had enough staying power to push through my much smaller melee line and route the missiles no problem.

So..I don't really think we need to worry about restricting large missile armies. The first drastic loss because someone thought they could win this way will make for an interesting rp situation and let the other players who thought about trying it see it's not a good idea the hard way.

[econ21]

So..I don't really think we need to worry about restricting large missile armies. The first drastic loss because someone thought they could win this way will make for an interesting rp situation and let the other players who thought about trying it see it's not a good idea the hard way.

OK, I'll take out the 2 missile rule. But missile heavy works like a charm in my English campaign on VH (I guess those longbows do their stuff, then?).

[Lucjan]

Longbows are definately beasts, but what killed me in the battles I faught were the french longbow cavalry. Even targetting an individual unit with every piece of missile fire I had only took out about 10 of their cavalry per volley because they move so darned fast (and less, about 6-8 for their chivalric knights with the armor).

[Tamur]

I have family coming into town for the week starting today, but I will make sure I have time available to start on Friday.

And Lucjan, I think that "passive-AI" sequence sounds right. The only time I have seen it is the battle *after* my Scots crushed the one full-stack army that England had. It was a battle of two of my armies versus three of theirs. One of the smaller English armies went straight at me, one tried climbing the hill I was on trying to flank. But the largest of the three hung back and let my bows butcher their spearmen.

And I just had a battle with Egypt (crusading army) in which the Egyptians were definitely not passive, so it's not a universal effect.