Surprising AI actions ?

[Alpha666]

I think the AI in some tactical battles in MTW/VIk/XL ( This is what i play ) is quite surprising.

Ex. 1: I had a small army which was attack by an enemy force twice the size roughly. Map was some woods and lower hills.

The enemy divided his force in 2 a) all the cav b) ranged units + swordsmen + handgunners. I was outnumbered but thought my 133men unit of chiv men at arms could handle the cav charge while the rest of my troops hide in the woods to then flank the cav while they battle my spears. I took into consideration the losses from the enemy ranged units which i wanted to ignore first to handle the cav. I forgot about the enemies swords btw. :(

Well my plan didn´t worked: The enemy cav just waited out of range and didn´t charge my spears in formation. Meanwhile the ranged units attacked from a hill which i didn´t occupy since i wanted to settle my right flank of the spears at a wood. As the cav didn´t move i swung my spears in direction of enemy ranged units also let some helberdiers and woodsmen charge them out of the woods. (Remember these should counter the cav in original plan)....

Well i quite killed some of them. But meanwhile the enemy swords (i forgot about) sneaked in the woods attacked my spears from behind. I had to set them to "engage at will" since formation was broken. Then the enemy cav charged my broken formation :( Not a bad action from the AI i would say. I lost the battle, but killed much of the swords and ranged units, but the enemy cav chopped my fleeing units to pieces :)

Conclusion: In this battle i see the only AI error in going forward to agressively with their ranged units instead of waiting on the hill and shoot my spears up more. Or maybe even this was planned by enemy to lure my units in the wood to attack them ? But if they had 1-2 more heavy melee inf units instead of too much ranged ones, i guess i wouldn´t have killed that much enemy men.


Ex. 2: Map was Flanders. One bridge in the middle - light hillier terrain on both sides. Enemy concentrated his ranged units on other side of bridge. They had only about 200-300 men more then me. My plan this time worked: I positioned 2 units of longbows on both sides of bridge carefully waiting untill they got shot at, so i pulled back a bit untill i got good shooting range without taking too much fire from enemy arbs/x-bows. Then i chose the poor men that had to go over the bridge first. Helberdiers (heavy armor) and light+fast javelin men. They got shot up quite good while crossing the bridge. But i had good mor+valor so they made their way to the enemy. This was the signal for all out attack with all other units. Longbows followed to other site. Enemy was routed quite good and i won this battle of course. The first wave had to suffer badly but still in both units some men left.

Conclusion: Quite perfect defensive setup by AI, which i might have done simmilar. Fault of AI: Army composition - too many ranged units without heavy support of units with staying power. If they had beaten back my first wave and occupied the bridge the battle would be much harder for me...even if my army was better quality.

[Innocentius]

I have a couple of battles that I remember where the AI surprised me, though in the opposite way.

First was a pretty basic example of AI stupidity: As the Burgundians (XL, late) I took Ile de France with a force much larger than the French one protecting it. They duly retreated, but sallied just the next year. As happens in Ile de France, I had a defensive bridge battle, the ideal setting. I won't go into details, but in short, the AI head on charge with most of their peak cavalry units except their king, got smashed by my Swiss halbardiers, Swiss pikemen and arbalesters. Then they just sent a force of some 600 (I counted ten units at least) of handgunners up the bridge, while their Chivalric Sergeants waited in the background (as they had came as reinfrocements). Well, handgunners ain't much of a problem. I took the opportunity, and started moving my Chiv Knights across the other bridge some distance away. Almost as soon as my knights have crossed, the French king rides onto the bridge were the battle is. I now have all the time in the world to manouver my knights, kill off the CSs from behind, trap the king on the bridge and annihalate the 600 handgunners. Result: about 150 dead for me, and some 1100 killed or captured on the French side, including the king.

Another two occured during my Bohemian campaign (XL Early, now scrapped). The Germans invaded Friesland, which was my weakest province as I had focused on producing ships rather than troops. Anyway, they out numbered me, and as Friesland goes into the plainsinland-maps, I though I was in for a tough defensive battle (I had mainly UMs).
Anyway, so the Germans move up their force, my army is standing close to the map edge with a forest protecting the rear. I move up my two units of Mounter Crossbowmen to flank the enemy. The enemy MCs, two units for them as well, ride up and a short archery duel take place. When three of their MCs are dead, and none of mine, the ride off. I can then move my MCs up to the enemy rear and start pepper their army from behind. To my surprise, they don't move. At all. They just stood there, with their army looking at mine and their MCs off somewhere else while my MCs peppered their best units (two units of FMAAs with armour +1). I thought this was boring and as it was exploiting the AI, I decided that I'd attack them once I had made maximum use of my MCs, ie. firing up all the bolts. Just when I start to move up my army to attack the attacker (which is really stupid, but it was really boring) the time runs out, and I win. 89 casualties on the enemy side, 0 on mine.

The other one took place in Friesland as well. This time I was technically the attacker, as an overwhelming German force had forced me to retreat to the castle.
Anyway, again, the setting is wooded plains. My entire army starts in a forest. I try to get my men up in position, then before I even leave the forest the entire AI cavalry, general and all, charges head on. I get my own cavalry out of the forest, while I move the rest of troops back inside. The cavalry gets into a fight with my Feudal Sergeants and FMAA, while my own cavalry rout the archers, UMs and single unit of spearmen that the AI has left unprotected.

[marcusbrutus]

In my game last week I attacked one of the pope's provinces, there was also a smallish Sicillian crusader army sitting in the province as they didn't have enough troops to attack me.

Anyway, it was a bridge battle and as I lined my troops up ready to cross the bridge I wondered why the AI was waiting so long to defend the other side.

What was happening was the Pope was marching across to the crusaders who he slaughtered! By this time all my troops were accross the bridge and ready to kill off the remaing papal army.

The worst thing is that the pope had called for the crusade in the first place.

[caravel]

They weren't allied, probably neutral, so when you made a battle there, it became a free for all for the province. As a result you've now put the Pope and the Sicilians at war with each other. Crusades just sitting in a neutral province are very vulnerable to this. I very nearly did the same in my current campaign (Almoravid/Early/Hard PoM), but the Spaniards and HRE struck an alliance the year before. I had waited for the defeated HRE crusade (to cordoba) in Castile to wear down to about 200 men, and then I had moved against the Spaniards there, expecting a free for all situation. I was surprised to see them allied, but ploughed through the HRE crusade and routed the Spaniards anyway. Next stop Leon, followed by Aragon. The Byzantine have bribed Navarra though.

[naut]

For me the AI surprises me with it's ability to never fall for my ambushes, ever! And it's persistence at being unreliable at bridge battles, one game it swarms me entirely another it is entirely incompetent (eg my English campaign were 2 Long-b, 2 Bill, 2 Chiv-K (dis), 2 Hob held a 1700 French army on a bridge and managed to win with not to painful a loss of men).

[caravel]

In the case of bridge battles, the AI, as you know, never attacks the second bridge, if it exists, allowing you an easy victory most of the time anyway, by sending a decoy holding force at the first bridge, backed up by the general (as the AI follows his position), and a faster cavalry/flanking force around to the second bridge. The answer to this exploit, not the best answer but probably the only one available, is to remove the double bridge maps. It's not as if you'd often find two bridges in that form in the real world anyway. Besides, the defender would have destroyed one, if not both, bridges in preparation.

[naut]

In the aforementioned battle of mine there was a second bridge, however to my damned bad luck I only noticed it after the battle was finished!

[marcusbrutus]

They weren't allied, probably neutral, so when you made a battle there, it became a free for all for the province. As a result you've now put the Pope and the Sicilians at war with each other.

I've never knew that, thanks Caravel.

The answer to this exploit, not the best answer but probably the only one available, is to remove the double bridge maps.

How do I remove maps?

Back to topic. On the harder difficulty settings in XL the AI can be quite difficult to beat unless I have a better army all round. Especially if the AI has a lot of cavalry - I have to keep my eyes on my army's flanks and rear all the time.

[Odin]

When I find the AI defending against a predomantely horse archer invasion force it often gives up superior ground. On more then one occassion i have used my mobile archer units to ride toward a defended hill whittle down some troops and hope to draw them into a pursuit.

The Ai will do this, but moves back eventually, yet if you continue to do this long enough the AI will eventually move its entire army from the hill to a less desirable position. On more then one occasion this has allowed me to get infantry up on one side of thier position and usually ends up with me gaining the higher ground.

Of note is, I dont play timed battles I have the timer off and I certainly dont rush. So maybe the Ai has a mechanism that caluclates the amount of time its in a position in correlation to the number of men you have vs thiers?

Dont know, but I have witnesses this enough that its noteworthy.

[Vladimir]

It's good to be the attacker. If you're defending the AI can pull off some nice flanking maneuvers and force you to respond to their actions. When attacking you still need to be careful. The game tends to use terrain wisely and it's a real pain to start off at a lower elevation.

I also like how when composing mostly "offensive" units (cavalry, good attack lightly armored troops) they go into offensive mode when defending. Cav and light infantry are horrible on the defense and can really disrupt your offense when they attack.

[macsen rufus]

The first time I ever met the Swiss in battle was when they attacked me all unexpectedly - in a bridge province. Using nothing but pikes. I was hoplessly outnumbered but they managed to get ten or more units of pikes all crammed onto the bridge at once. Halberdiers held them off, whilst arbalesters and arquebuses stood to either side and blasted hell out of them. That was the end of the Swiss. One of the AI's dumber blunders, I think

[Kavhan Isbul]

The worst I ever had was in the BKB mod, when I was playing with the Bulgarians and a huge 5 thousand something Danish army invaded Prussia, where I had a little less that 1,000 men. They marched through the whole map, only to stop just out of my arbalesters range and were pretty content to wait for time to finish and lose (whenever I tried to move my arbs within range they would start moving a few units, mainly cavalry, and when I withdrew the arbs back to my lines, they would go back too, really, really boring). My general gained the skilled defender virtue. I replaced him the next year as I needed him elsewhere, the new general massacred thousdands of Danes with few casualties, but did not gain the same virstue, so go figure.
Oh, and once in the MedMod, I was playing the Pechenegs and attacking the Poles. They had predominantly infantry army, and I just sent some Szekely to do what horse archers do best before my main striking force attacked, and the Poles sat there for a while, taking a few casualties - they had the higher ground and my HAs were not too effective, and then when my main army, only slightly larger then theirs started approaching, they simply started withdrawing. Of course, it never occured to the AI to leave a unit of retainers behind to cover their slower infantry, and I was able to massacre a few spear units (varjobbaggy in this particular mod, feudal sergeants with no armor and better charge), mostly with my szekely, and they did not even attempt to turn around to face the charge. Really, really dumb and I guess it was an exploit, but one I could have not predicted or anticipated.

[Ironside]

Of course, it never occured to the AI to leave a unit of retainers behind to cover their slower infantry, and I was able to massacre a few spear units (varjobbaggy in this particular mod, feudal sergeants with no armor and better charge), mostly with my szekely, and they did not even attempt to turn around to face the charge. Really, really dumb and I guess it was an exploit, but one I could have not predicted or anticipated.

That one is a bit wierd, the swiss did once invade burgundy out of the blue when I was Almohads. Most of my army was cav and over 50% of his was SAP:s.
After a while into the battle (were he was winning with about 1,5 to 1 in casualities), he simply walked back with his entire army over half the map, when I still had a considerble cavalry force on the field.

Still couldn't chain-rout them though, my cav didn't do much damage, even when charging in the back on those SAP:s. Point is, I'm still not certain that I would've won that battle if he stayed on the field

[naut]

Often happens in the Viking campaign (large battles really though), you'll have a battle and the first 16 units will skirmish. Then withdraw, as will all the reinforcements.

[Kavhan Isbul]

When this occured, my guess was that the AI was close to retreating in its pre-battle decision, but chose to stay as it considered its chances to win slightly better than its chances to lose. Then when I killed a few of its men and lowered their morale a bit, and marched my army in order up to it, it recalculated its chances and decided to leave the field and save its army, rather than fight a losing battle. Now I am starting to think it might just be a bug.
I have noticed another interesting phenomen and I wonder if you have noticed it too - unlike mopst factions, who tend to trickle unit after unit of reinforcements even after there is no way they can win the battle, the Egyptians tend to withdraw completely once their general is killed. Sometimes they even tend to leave their general safe behind. Of course, I am talking about situations when the AI is attacking.

[The Unknown Guy]

In my experience, most factions tend to retreat completely after the first wave fails, unless they have overwhelming numbers (like 3 to one, or 4 to one). And the egyptians are no exception. Once they made a posthumous (AKA: The general was dead) massive peasant rush. THEN it can be annoying. I like winning the battles relatively fast. I hate having to fight wave after wave of easily routed peasants (and I hate it even more if those last 1000 peasants snatch a victory)

[Innocentius]

In all, I think the Egyptians make up for many of the surprising AI moves, espceially when on the campaign map. Like for one, when I as the Turks had finally got tired of - and thus destroyed - the Armenians, they attacked Lesser Armenia with my three full stacks in it. Now the Egyptians can mostly outnumber all factions except perhaps the Byzantines, but their armies are mostly really, really bad units who don't do much harm as long as you're the defender and don't have to move around a lot (high-armour troops get cooked in the desert as we all know). Also, they have this odd habit of becoming way to over-stretched, fighting the Almohads in Northern Africa, the Byzantines right were they are and The Kievans, Novgorods and the Golden Horde up north.
Their battle behaviour is perhaps even worse since most of their unit are pretty pathetic when trying to attack an infatry-based army. Many kinds of good archers and fast horses (and camels) don't make up for the fact that most of their units lack any real impact except their Ghulam-units.

[cegorach]

I am playing campaign with Bavarians ( PMTW) and recently the Portuguese troops tried to lift a siege in Holland (new province)... with 6 men ( 1 militiaman, 2 Portuguese Sailors and 3 crossbowmen). Because I had over 650 men I annihilated them in time of few seconds.
Nice move, I had no artillery there and I had to move some cannons to prepare the assault, but the AI helped me a lot

[Odin]

In all, I think the Egyptians make up for many of the surprising AI moves, espceially when on the campaign map. Like for one, when I as the Turks had finally got tired of - and thus destroyed - the Armenians, they attacked Lesser Armenia with my three full stacks in it. Now the Egyptians can mostly outnumber all factions except perhaps the Byzantines, but their armies are mostly really, really bad units who don't do much harm as long as you're the defender and don't have to move around a lot (high-armour troops get cooked in the desert as we all know). Also, they have this odd habit of becoming way to over-stretched, fighting the Almohads in Northern Africa, the Byzantines right were they are and The Kievans, Novgorods and the Golden Horde up north.
Their battle behaviour is perhaps even worse since most of their unit are pretty pathetic when trying to attack an infatry-based army. Many kinds of good archers and fast horses (and camels) don't make up for the fact that most of their units lack any real impact except their Ghulam-units.

I agree with you, and yet I am running a Bohemian campaign right now (XL mod) and the egyptians have taken constantanople, fought the Turks to a stalemate and are starting to push the almohads back to morrocco.

This lends to your theory that the egyptians have most of the surprising AI moves.

[Empirate]

Just leave the Egyptians some time, and they'll build up enough that you'll see mostly cavalry armies (at least as the first wave). The Eggies' problem is that their lands are hopelessly underdeveloped at the start, and the AI has no real building policy. So Egypt can surprise you with a lot of cav (they have the money for it!) if the AI's random build machine happens to build some useful stuff, or it can utterly suck sending in human wave after human wave of peasants.

I vividly remember an Italian campaign I once played in which the only real enemy remaining after a while were Turks and Almohads. The Turks surprised me by stabbing right at the heart of Europe and taking over a thin stretch of land from Rum via Constantinople, the Balkans all the way up to Friesland. They also surprised me by getting lots and lots of loyalist uprisings with high quality troops.
The Almohads were mostly where they belong (but had conquered all of the Iberian), and they surprised me by fielding mainly very high-quality troops with gold- and silver-armor and weapons. It was a pain to beat them, they always inflicted high casualties due to their staying power. I came to usually concentrate six arbalester units on the general so they ran a little sooner.
Also, in one battle (full stack vs. full stack), they had put most of their units on a large hill, at the bottom of which was a small cluster of trees, really nothing big. Unbeknownst to me, these trees hid three of their most elite AUM units. But as the hill was crowded enough and I didn't count the suckers, I didn't suspect the trap, and marched my troops up towards the hilltop. As soon as my ILI passed the wood, the AUMs ran out and charged their flank, and though I had come to regard my ILI very highly, in this case they routed almost on impact. My efforts to save them were futile, as my army consisted of only ILI, Arbalesters and ChivKnights, and the Knights were on the other side of my formation (I only kept them on the right flank, coz that was where the AI's mounted stuff was). Those three units of AUM killed or drove off three units of ILI and damaged other stuff, and while I put my formation into disarray to stave off the attack, the Almohad main force ran down the hill and crashed into my disorganized formation. I had counted on my six units of Arbalesters to do some decent damage before melee started, but now they proved not only ineffective, but a liability. I lacked the melee units to fight off the suddenly offensive enemy and lost the battle, only inflicting light casualties. I also lost my general, as I'd panicked and been a little too careless about him.
This behaviour, using a good defensive position as a lure to facilitate counterattack, certainly speaks well for M:TW's AI!

[gunslinger]

In my current French campaign I chased the English army all over Western Europe. I didn't have enough troops to defend every province against their three stack army, so I pursued a strategy of leaving just enough of a garrison in each province to keep it from rebelling while I concentrated my troop numbers into a couple of armies for attacking. The English kept withdrawing from the battles until I eventually cornered them while they were beseiging my small garrison in Ile De France. Right before I moved a two stack army in to relieve the seige, the English had a civil war, and one of their three stacks went rebel. It had about 13 or 14 units in it, and it considered itself a beseiger of Ile De France defending against my counter attack. I decided to take on the larger English army first so that I could use fresh troops and reinforcements on them, and then hoped I would have enough left over to protect my flank from the rebels and mop them up later. I was quite relieved when the rebels started moving away from the English, apparently content to let me fight them first. However, I really started sweating when the rebels set up camp on a hill on MY side of the map in a position above and to the left flank of the point where all my reinforcements would be entering the battlefield peicemeal! At that point, the main body of my army was already committed to attacking the English, so there wasn't much I could do about it. Fortunately, the A.I. surprised me a second time when the rebels sat contentedly on their hill and watched my reinforcements come on one at a time and march past the whole front of their army just out of bowshot. I ended up beating both armies, but I don't think I could have done it had the A.I. not been so blindingly stupid.

[Don Corleone]

I was going to do a 'Pics and History of your Empire' as the Italians, but my life has gotten busy lately. Anyway, I invaded Naples with 3 UM's (originals, not the extra valor ones built in Tuscany), and my King. So I use 2 UMs to hold the Byz Infantry in place and charge the back side of them. Sent the 3rd unit at the general unit (the Naptha). Guess what? He turns around, and literally, runs straight into the sea. It was a hoot.

[Adrian II]

Sent the 3rd unit at the general unit (the Naptha). Guess what? He turns around, and literally, runs straight into the sea. It was a hoot.

I have never understood the big hullabaloo about Naples. Two UM and 1 RK will do the job. One UM unit keeps the Naphtas running whilst the other UM unit pins the Byzantine Infantry, preferably in a forest or fighting them downhill. The RK charge the BI in the rear and break them, then mop up the Naphtas -- if they haven't gone for a swim already...

[Don Esteban]

Just had a surprising bridge battle attacking the French in Crimea (as the crusaders) where rather than defending the bridge they charged me with their crossbow units

i didn't lead them to attack as I don't like to exploit the AI but iof they insist on being quite so stupid what can i do? Needless to say my halberds slaughtered them and my arbelasts finished off the rest as they followed across the bridge. I didn't even take advantage of the second bridge to flank wityh my cavalry. Result 1800 french dead or captured vs 150 dead crusaders.

[Caerfanan]

Well, maybe that's the AI trying to be historical.

Wondrous knights so eager to win glory that they were charging head on wherever they could: if possible climbing a muddy hill under enemy arrows, one of the best one, Crecy, 1346.

Same one in Nicopoli, against the Turkish, in 14??...

Good fighters, but, errr, how can I say that?

[Innocentius]

Same one in Nicopoli, against the Turkish, in 14??...

Nicopolis was in 1396 IIRC.

[Caerfanan]

Nicopolis was in 1396 IIRC.

Ja du är rätt!!!

I don't know why I was figuring it to be in the fifteen's century...

[Tony Furze]

Well , I ve played a few times putting everything on auto (using the slider at the top) to see how the AI works out things.

Then I ve tried : a)auto producing buildings
b) auto producing units

The latter seems more interesting, since I get to choose the buildings, and the battles that result are more frequent and more balanced during a campaign.

However, why does the AI shy away from making ships? And how does it get so big (eg as the French) without trade?

So far as the English (Early/Normal/ MTW/VI) I ve had a shipwright in both Aquitaine and Wessex and the AI has built only 1 ship which I ferry around since Im determined not to interfere with the AI build unit rule I ve set.

[Innocentius]

However, why does the AI shy away from making ships? And how does it get so big (eg as the French) without trade?

The French (and Egyptian) AI is probably the worst. Their homelands are so fertile than they can easily build up rather big stacks without upgrading anything. And they don't just do that, they recruit cheap troops (FS, MS, Handgunners etc) in huuuge quantities. When their over-sized crap armies march into the lands of other AI faction, the AI withdraws as it is outnumbered. This makes the French almost unbeatable by the AI (untill they get too big, get excommunicated and fall into civil war and mass re-emergances), but very easy to beat as the player (lots of crap troops dying at your hands give you great generals and high-valour troops).

[Deus ret.]

Well , I ve played a few times putting everything on auto (using the slider at the top) to see how the AI works out things.

This is getting even further off-topic but if you're REALLY interested in what the AI does you should start the game in play-testing mode with the -ian switch which enables you to do all kinds of funny things. e.g. press '#' while on the campaign map, this will toggle the self-run mode and bring up a message that your faction is now being controlled by the AI (interestingly, you can still queue buildings and troops, but alter none already in contruction). then press 'a' for autorun and voilà - you're completely taken out of the game. pressing space or 'a' again will let you regain control of your faction on its next turn.
this can be quite funny when you're becoming kind of bored of always starting in the same position....just auto-play for 20 turns or so and then take the challenge. of course, you can also take over just once in a while and provide your chosen faction with a little boost by queueing sensible things. the interesting thing is that you can still follow the game when your faction has been wiped out during self-run mode. clicking on your banner or the GA panel will result in a CTD but hey...it's nice!

of course, autorun also works without '#' - then the AI will only perform those actions automatically which you selected (auto-build units etc.), but not attack, move units around etc.

I observed that most games are MUCH more similar during the first 20-30 turns if everything is played out by the AI. It seems like the other factions' behaviour is influenced by your own, even if they're rather far away --- starting a war early on may well result in more conflicts on the map than if you sit still.

oh my, this is quite far away from the subject of this thread...it was intended to be just a side note!

This makes the French almost unbeatable by the AI (untill they get too big, get excommunicated and fall into civil war and mass re-emergances), but very easy to beat as the player (lots of crap troops dying at your hands give you great generals and high-valour troops).

interesting observations. this may also be the reason why the Byz were taken down by the Eggies in virtually all my vanilla MTW:VI games (a long time ago) despite having much better generals and troops, but being far inferior in numbers. when I played as the Byz I easily conquered the East during the first twenty years, slaughtering my way through uncounted stacks of peasants! removing them from the unit roster (done in most mods) may have improved that state somewhat but as you mention it's still annoying.