A Big Rave and a Small Rant...

[wasaaabi]

Saw some very intelligent behavior from the AI last night that was worth repeating. Playing H/H, I was holding Helsinki - a backwater outpost to my Danish empire, garrisoned by a depleted huscarl unit, a squadron of scouts and a unit of peasants.

Suddenly the Russians show up with a smallish stack and beseige me. I've got reinforecements on the way, a palisade to hide behind, so I don't get too concerned.

Next turn, the Russians assault. When the battle opens I'm facing two catapult units, 2 trebuchets, and three russian infantry units. While I cower behind my walls, the AI methodically:

• Punches a hole in the wall with the catapults,

• one by one, destroys all arrow towers in range of the hole,

• then uses the trebuchets to launch dead cows into the settlement,

• then begins the assault with the infantry, supported by trebuchet fireballs.

I held out pretty well until a fireball made a tiki torch out of my commander, then all was lost. Pretty impressive tactics from General Athlon!

Oh and the rant? There's a tiny lake just south of Novgorod, no more than one square big. It must be a very nice lake, because the Russians have built a boat there.

Just when the AI does something to make you go "Oooo!", it turns around and makes you go "Awwww..."

[lars573]

I've had a hiccup where my Scottish cog fleet beached it self in Calai. I had to disband the entire fleet. Which sucked.

[KARTLOS]

i have only had very foolish experiences with the ai when they seige.
for example i was besieged by 4 full stack mongol armies in antioch. they had trebuchets and rocket launchers.
they punched a couple of holes in the wall and edestroyed a tower. but then instead of rushing in and killing me the meandered around in the range of my archers, i was able to kil loads of them until the battle timed out and i won.

[GrandInquisitor]

I've had many similar experiences with methodical AI siege tactics. It's much more adept at picking out weaknesses in settlements and exploiting them. Actually, AI use of siege gear has made my battles with it very difficult -- it's gotten very good at using catapults in open field battles. Cost me against Danish armies.

[unknown_user]

I've had some good battles recently - I was sieging a rebel castle, pulling my archers ahead to fire off a few volleys while the rams moved into place. Suddenly, the doors flew open and cavalry charged out in a futile attempt to stop the seige. (this wasn't a sally battle, but a seige battle) If they hadn't done that, it was obvious they were going to be steamrolled. Granted, once I recovered from the shock of their initial charge, they were still steamrolled...but it was impressive nonetheless.

[shifty157]

One of the seige bugs ive noticed that hasnt been really mentioned is that every now and then the AI will completely abandon perfectly good seige equipment after going through all the trouble to take it up to the walls.

The last time this happened the AI abandoned its seige tower which it had gone through all the trouble to wheel right up next to my gate. It then sent all its units to try and get up a single set of ladders (its only other peice of seige equipment) at which point the seige pathfinding bug was induced and the game slowed to a crawl. Had the AI actually used the tower it could have easily overwhelmed my meagre defense.

Otherwise i as well have found the AI to be generally capable of handling seiges. Unlike in RTW, it can now intercept and effectively counter my sallies which surprised me at first.

[troymclure]

New battlefield AI specifically sieges gets a thumbs up from me. There is still some stupid behaviour and the odd bug (the single ladder frame rate one is a showstopper) but when the AI gets it right in can be really surprisingly good.

Case in point, playing as Turkey and got attacked by the mongols, first they attack one city with a full size stack. They bring trechebuts but prefer to assault my walls with towers/ladders, my force of mostly militia were still strong enough to better the mongol foot troops. After that his cavalry were forced to withdraw.
I walked away from the fight feeling much better about facing the mongol hordes and slightly critical of the AI.
Next turn the Mongols try again, now i'm not sure what was so different, whether they "learned" or it was a better general or whatever but next time they attacked they bought forward their trechebuts and systematically levelled my city. All the towers along the front side and three walls got taken down. This cost me alot of defenders before i realised what was happeening, oh and the mongols rocket launchers aren't too shabby either. So anyway now that the AI had reduced my walls and defenses he assembled his cavalry split it into three groups and sent them through the new "doorways" he put into my formerly pristine walls. Needless to say my garison was quickly crushed.

[darsalon]

The last time this happened the AI abandoned its seige tower which it had gone through all the trouble to wheel right up next to my gate. It then sent all its units to try and get up a single set of ladders (its only other peice of seige equipment) at which point the seige pathfinding bug was induced and the game slowed to a crawl. Had the AI actually used the tower it could have easily overwhelmed my meagre defense.

I've had one battle where the ai used it's siege equipment. However I think I can see how the ai worked. In this particular fight it broke down my gates which caused the spare units available to concentrate on them and not put any reinforcements to it's siege towers or ladders. This allowed me to run people down the siege towers, having defeated the occupants, and put the ai in a rather nasty sandwich in the gates. Was excellent fun even though my troops were battered by the end of it. Therefore if it sees a gap in your walls then it will concentrate it's spare resources there to the detriment of other potential ones.

Do get the feeling that the ai is getting there in this game although it does still do some very obvious mistakes. Hopefully the patch will at least do something to rectify it.

[Quillan]

I've seen some rather impressive campaign map AI at times, though also some stupidities. In my Byzantium game, the Mongols arrived in the Sarkel region, though closer to Bulgar. They proceeded to conquer almost all of Russia. I hold Iasi, and have a large army parked on both bridges near the city. I had a diplomat establish relations with them, and even paid them a lump sum plus 500 per turn tribute for a dozen years to raise disposition with them. When the Mongols decided to attack me, they didn't do it piecemeal. They hit each bridge with two full stacks, moving one next to the bridge and attacking with the other. I won both battles (primarily because I had prepared for it by building a lot of heavy infantry for those armies and assassinating all the good generals the Mongols had in the area), but they were tough. I barely won one of those battles, and had to do some very rapid shuffling of infantry around to bring that army up to decent strength in case they tried again. However, it appears they decided the bridges near Iasi are too tough for them to crack, and have proceeded to move off to the west.

[chunkynut]

I've had a similar experience to the destroying all towers and punching holes in the walls, think I was saved from the dead cows due to my mortars taking out the trebuchets.

The only thing about siege equipment i've seen to be an issue is once my ballista towers had destroyed one ram, the other 2 were left alone. However their artillery still had time to knock 2 breaches in my walls before my mortars took them out, I've found the necessity to sally before their reinforcements arrive.

[Kommodus]

Ignorant question: What is the effect of dead cows fired into a settlement?

I've actually been quite pleased with my experiences in siege battles so far. In my Venetian campaign, the AI has only just started using catapults, and they've done a fine job of protecting their siege equipment and blowing holes in my walls. I've yet to lose a siege battle (on offense or defense), but that's due more to the numbers and tenacity of my troops than to faulty AI moves.