The Pet Peeve thread

[Didz]

I must admit that I wasn't aware of Sir Henry Percy's revolt, and I'm sure there were other similar incidents. But those are, to some extent, simulated by the game - I think we've all witnessed a captain led full stack army going brigand.

Based purely upon my knowledge of English history I would say that the vast majority of revolts in English medieval history were led by nobility. In fact the only one that spring to mind that wasn’t was the Peasant Revolt of 1381.

However, we need to make a careful distinction here between revolts triggered by a vassal lord going rogue, which as you rightly say are simulated in the game by stacks going rebel and those which are privately financed by rivals, dispossessed nobility and exiles.

England in particular had an almost unlimited supply of such nobility willing to have a go whenever they thought the opportunity for power had presented itself.

Amonst these were Owain Glyndŵr. The last Welsh Prince of Wales who led the Welsh revolt in 1401, Henry Bolingbroke later Henry IV who led a successful revolt in 1399 which overthrew Richard II and made him King.

Then of course we have all the Irish and Scottish nobles who periodically launched rebellions to reclaim their lands, Charles Edward Stuart being the most well known, along with William Wallace , and my own ancestor the Anglo-Saxon nobility who loat their lands when William dispossed them in favour of his Norman friends.

What you say is true, but I consider a city revolt to start not within a city itself, but from villages that surround it. Dissatisfied peasants band up together and march to the city/castle. So, basically, when a city revolt occurs, I would expect a siege battle. That would add to realism, because how realistic is the fact that highly trained elite army that fought it's way across half of Europe and stormed an enemy castle, suddenly finds itself driven out of it by a bunch of peasants?

Personally, I see a definitely distinction between a peasant revolt that starts in the countryside and is thus represented by the sudden appearance of an army of peasants, and a revolt in a city which is triggered by poor city management.

However, whichever way one visualises the start of the revolt the idea that it would lead to peasants besieging castles and cities is unlikely.

In every historical instance of revolts with limited military backing, and in particular the Peasant Revolt of 1381 and the Welsh Revolt of 1401, castles were taken by deception rather than overt attack. Therefore, the idea that one can rest safe in the belief that an army of peasants are going to co-operate by throwing themselves like lemmings at your castle walls cannot be justified by historical precedent.

For example: Owain Glyndŵr’s rebels succeeded in capturing ever English castle in Wales, except Harlech, without entering into a formal asault on any of them. In one instance they simply walked up to the castle claiming to be a bunch of carpenters come to do some repairs and then overpowered the gate keepers. In another they actually enrolled in the castle garrison as Longbowmen and then overpowered the English from the inside.

Likewise the Peasant Revolt not only gained access to the City of London but into the Royal Keep of the Tower of London without firing a single shot in anger, by merely persuading the guards to let them in.

I think we must therefore assume that our peasants in MTW2 are at least as ‘sneaky’ and imaginative as their historical counterparts and that a city revolt would quite literally take the entire city and its garrison with it.

[Kobal2fr]

In France there were a number of very bloody peasant revolts, especially during the Hundred Years War when living conditions were at their lowest. Check out the word "Jacquerie" on wikipedia to get an idea of the...creativity of desperate peasants. Yurk.

(BTW, the word "Jacquerie", while originally being the name given to that particular revolt, has entered the French lexicon to mean any peasant uprising against their nobles, with implications of savagery, atrocities and rabid bloodthirst. Which leads me to surmise said revolts were common enough that they'd need their own word)

[Budwise]

Yeah, I have two big ones but they aren't game stoppers.

1. I use the spacebar one time when on the campaign map to make everything move faster. Unfortunately, when I move something like a stack of troops through area A, instead of telling me its blocked by an other factions army, it makes me go on a major detour out of the way and it won't let me undo it. So in other words, I waste a minimum of two turns to get reinforcements to the front.

2. Not being able to pick the start time. I still to this day have not seen the Timorids nor the Aztecs but my recent campaign I am getting close to that. I just wish sometimes I don't have to start so early and I should also be able to type in the ending year, if I want to turtle to the year 1800, I should have the right to do so.

As a whole, even with its many flaws, this is a great game and I thank CA for it.

[JJ2335]

1. Computer AI in siege mode. When I attack, the computer moves the defenders (archers, spearmen) off the walls if I deploy far enough from them. Then the computer units run to the city square. When I advance, they rush back - too late and exhausted.

2. Computer AI defending on hilly terrain. They predictably deploying on highest ground. Defenders abandon the high ground after I rush up with my cav archers! My units all get up there and AI tries to charge back up?!

3. Musical Chairs Game for breeding governors. A long-term growth policy of low taxes and farm priority breeds poor taxmen and traders. To get good traits the governor has to be there on building completing turn. You need to maximize the taxes and moveout garrisons.

4. On VH - you vs the world, instant one turn full stack garrisons, infinite enemy navies that are always bigger than yours. Piecemeal armies. I would love defending/attacking more armies that fight in force like the Mongols.

5. Fighting half ballista armies, lol.

I still like the game but I use some house rules.

[Didz]

Computer AI in siege mode. When I attack, the computer moves the defenders (archers, spearmen) off the walls if I deploy far enough from them. Then the computer units run to the city square. When I advance, they rush back - too late and exhausted.

Its interesting that you should mention that as I felt the same way about this behaviour at first and have since come to think that its either very stupid or pretty clever depending upon what you consider to be the alternative options.

On the wall or Off the Wall
The AI seems to make an assessment of whether it is better to deploy its men on the walls or off the walls at the start of the siege. I find if my assault force has towers and ladders, it normally places units on the wall opposite the point it expects them to land. However, if I have rams or if my force is heavy with catapults and ballistae then it frequently decides to leave its men in the street behind the walls and let the wall towers do the killing. Its choice is not always perfect but it means that I rarely get an opportunity to massacre wall mounted units with my catapults unless I have first done something to lure them onto the wall.

Abandoning the Walls
The AI always abandons the walls once a breach has been made or the gates smashed. This is sound logic, in that in theory the walls are now breached and cannot be defended. As a human player I can make value judgements to sacrifice troops even after the walls have been breached but the AI does not seem to have that capability. If it did no doubt people would be moaning that the stupid AI left units defending the walls even when our cavalry was heading for their city centre.

Counter attacks
The AI seems to be programmed to perform local counter-attacks whenever feasible. So, for example I frequently find a non-wall mounted unit will rush the wall as soon as my ladders or towers begin to spill out troops onto the battlements, even if it chose not to garrison the wall at the start of the siege to reduce missile casualties. There seems to be a cut-off point to these counter attacks in that after a few failed attempts the AI stops doing them and falls back to defend the city centre. However, at this point it gets abuse for being too passive so it seems to be in a no win situation.

Likewise it will counter attack the gate or a breach as soon as your first troops try to penetrate. This can be a real pain and makes it difficult to get a bridgehead inside the walls, but can be exploited by clever players like myself who deliberately block the streets with spearmen to meet the counter-attack force and frequently outflank them with cavalry down a side street to prevent them from escaping again.

Its actually hard to decide what the AI ought to do for the best. If it always manned the walls and never launched a counter attack we would accuse it of deliberately placing it troops in harms way and being passive. However, what it currently does is equally capable of being exploited by human players who master its shortcomings.

Ideally, the AI would be as imaginative as its human opponent in handling sieges, but given the options a human is willing to attempt that would be difficult to achieve. For example, in one siege I actually chose to move all my horse archers out of the city and attack the AI’s ladder teams from the rear whilst blocking their assault with spearmen on the walls. This caught the AI unawares, but when the AI attempted exactly the same manoeuvre against me I was ready for it and merely shot its cavalry to bits with my crossbowmen making it look like a dumb move.

Personally, I think there is little that could be done to improve the AI on siege defence, its does the right things but basically gets creamed because we know its going to do them. On the other hand if it was totally unpredictable then by implication some of the options it chose would be really stupid and we would be laughing at it so what can you do?

[Ciaran]

Playing the Forth Eorlingas mod for BI, I remember another one: campaign map pathfinding. In RTW and BI, when I can see an enemy army or settlement, my troops will move around it, staying well out of its control zone. Not so M2TW. It´s always the straight road, and usually any long-distance move ends up in some enemy´s control zone. Even putting a spy in the army (to increase the line of sight) doesn´t work, whenever I want any of my armies to avoid getting stuck I have to maneuvre them manually to give any castle, city, fort or stack a wide berth. I mean, if something worked in the past, and you´re going to use basically the same code again, who in his right mind would think to change the working parts .

[rvg]

a few more...

1) Can't designate heirs!!!!????? End up killing off half of my family just to get the right guy on the throne.

2) Experience Chevrons seem to be messed up: only XP lvls 1,4 and 7 seem to add stats, the rest seem to do nothing.

3) Rome Region, Iconium Region, etc... CA, don't be lazy and name the provinces properly.

4) I used to love being able to view the city outside of a siege battle. But cheers, instead we have worthless spying/assassination movies.

5) The narrator starts a Muslim/Orthodox campaign, but you still see the same old company of western knights galoping around as visual effects.

6) The "Winning First" ancillary line. It should be renamed to "Is not an idiot on the battlefield."

[Foz]

Well there's a couple things you could do, Didz. One would be to come up with more viable options and present the AI with a weighted random choice between them. Currently, though, the AI tries to evaluate the situation and deploy its troops in the one way it deems most tenable... so the implication is that if you give it options, they are inferior. This isn't necessarily the case, as there could be better options missed by the simplification of its decision routine, but unless you make the decision code more complex to allow it to see those better options, you would be making the AI do inferior things by letting it do anything other than its current first choice. So the problem is really that to give the AI choices that will result in consistent play at the level it currently plays at, you must first come up with a way to generate choices that are better than the ones it currently makes so you can use them as options.

It's also possible, though, that including some seemingly inferior options would actually help the AI by lending less predictability to it. In that case you are basically sacrificing one in favor of the other though, so you'd need a lot of studying to figure out just how much benefit is really gained by making it so the AI's moves aren't simply predictable.

There's another question too, even if the AI decision routine is improved: should you use that to make the AI have choices, or to simply improve the one decision it will always make? Again this ties into the predictability versus viability discussion.

Of course likely the best way to improve the entire situation you mentioned is to make the AI model better at predicting and reacting to threats. In the case you mentioned, the AI fails to employ the strategy you did because it doesn't recognize it is about to be railed by your crossbows. If it could realize that, it would avoid having it happen, and hopefully implement a better strategy. Similarly, its best recourse when you correctly predict its actions is to be able to fluidly react to how you counter it. It doesn't need a better strategy nearly as much as it needs better ability to adjust its strategy during the course of battle.

[Kobal2fr]

2) Experience Chevrons seem to be messed up: only XP lvls 1,4 and 7 seem to add stats, the rest seem to do nothing.

Actually they do : they increase morale, and I believe stamina and archer precision as well. Could be wrong on the last two (empirical evidence being what it is) but I'm sure about the first.

5) The narrator starts a Muslim/Orthodox campaign, but you still see the same old company of western knights galoping around as visual effects.

Good point ! In RTW each faction (well, except for Barbarians and Greeks which all had a more generic one) had it's own movie, and it is kinda cheep that in M2 it's all the same with different voice over.

6) The "Winning First" ancillary line. It should be renamed to "Is not an idiot on the battlefield."

One could make the point that chivalry is akin to willfull stupidity

[Didz]

How exactly do you avoid getting the winning first trait?

[Rebellious Waffle]

Lead poisoning, or something like that. I start out with a smart, austere, budding bureaucrat general and two turns later he's an idiot man-child with anger management issues who lives in a pineapple under the sea.

[Rebellious Waffle]

(That's with reference to the top of the thread, not the most recent post before mine.)

[Monsieur Alphonse]

How exactly do you avoid getting the winning first trait?

1. Don't fight any battles with a general leading your army
2. Don't play the game
3. Pray

Now seriously:
1. Don't attack smaller armies
2. Don't chase routers (especially with your general)
3. Release prisoners

Sounds very boring to me

[Kraggenmor]

Lead poisoning, or something like that. I start out with a smart, austere, budding bureaucrat general and two turns later he's an idiot man-child with anger management issues who lives in a pineapple under the sea.

Thank you for that, Waffle!!

Gave me a hearty laugh this morning.

Hah! Its funny because its true.

[Monsieur Alphonse]

Why does Constantinople get hit by a storm every ten turns? Is the sea Marmara (sp) the Byzantine equivalent of the hurricane season in the Caribbean? Whenever I control Constantinople I block the land-bridges with a fleet. Every 10 turns I have to retrain my fleet because of a storm that hit Constantinople.

[Didz]

Why does Constantinople get hit by a storm every ten turns? Is the sea Marmara (sp) the Byzantine equivalent of the hurricane season in the Caribbean? Whenever I control Constantinople I block the land-bridges with a fleet. Every 10 turns I have to retrain my fleet because of a storm that hit Constantinople.

I've never noticed that in my game, you need to check your carbon emissions.

Sounds very boring to me

Sounds totally daft to me

[Rebellious Waffle]

I think you get points towards being a "fair fighter" when you tend to win either close, average or heroic victories -- give your enemy a decent chance at winning rather than crushing them beneath your heel.

Personally, I like to keep the blood flowing. These boots don't shine themselves!

[Daveybaby]

No queens!

It would be really nice to see the occasional queen pop up as faction leader (unless its in there and i've never noticed it before). Some of the most important leaders throughout history have been women, and i know its primarily a war game, but it would be really nice to see this implemented, if only for the potential change of pace it might give if you occasionally had a leader whose stats werent primarily determined by their combat prowess.

[Didz]

@Davebaby
I agree, but in doing so one would need to introduce a role in the game which differentiated between political and military characters, or at least make it less likely that female characters make good generals.

[I know thats not necessarily true IRL, and not PC, but it would be in keeping with the period. The exception being Joan of Arc perhaps]

I also think it would be nice if some role for females was found for the muslim factions. I always feel sorry for that poor girl on the muslim marriage picture, she looks like a frightened squirrel.

[Daveybaby]

[I know thats not necessarily true IRL, and not PC, but it would be in keeping with the period. The exception being Joan of Arc perhaps]

Well actually its mostly true - while there were quite a few notable warrior queens throughout history (e.g. Boudicea, Artemesia to name but two) i cant really think of any for the setting and period of M2TW - which is due to the social situation of that period rather than any 'un-PC ness'.

Of course thats not saying that medieval queens didnt lead their nations successfully in times of war, just that they didnt tend to do it in the field.

Joan of Arc wasnt a faction leader, but definitely makes the case for a female general or two in the game, even if only as a special character.

[alpaca]

You need to fight without an army and on defense if you want to get BattleChivalry. Or kill 8 units with your general (not your general's bodyguard, your general) and have some luck. Definitely don't fight battles with odds that are greater than 3:2.
Once you got it though, you can behave like a manslaughtering devil without it going back to BattleChivalry again...

As for the view city, you might want to check out this if you really miss it: https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=86226