AI Battle Formation Mods

**madmatg** · 09-27-2007, 07:21

ah, well, sadness...i'll just have to deal with some random easy AI's til the next release

thanks for the info

**Lysander13** · 09-27-2007, 18:19

Actually i have to extend my apologies to an earlier poster in this thread who mentioned he encountered an idle reinforcing army from time to time using Sinuhet's AI as well. I went on to say i went back and tested it out several times and never encountered that problem. What i failed to remember was that i have an altered EDU file that i use with Sinuhet's formations so our end results in terms of effectiveness are gonna be a little different...

My bad...

Darth Formations can generally be used "universally" by any mod because of his width forcing. Sinuhet's have to be more custom fitted sort of speak....at least in my opinion anyway.

**Dram** · 10-04-2007, 12:00

thanks for this mod.

i just want to say that contrary to some of the opinions i have heard about darth mod, it DOES improve the way that the enemy deploys its troops. to me its not even about the formations- i dont care how the AI sets itself up at the start, its entirely pointless because the AI will not remain in that formation anyway. the reason why darth mod is better than the default formations is because the AI attacks more intelligently. It sticks its troops together properly, flanks, and just generally behaves in a much less stupid manner. thats not to say that its great, considering how poor the RTW AI is in general, theres only so much that can be improved, but this does GENUINELY make the AI behave in a much less stupid manner compared to the default EB formation settings and it was only after I installed this I started to get some decent battles out of the enemy.

I really think this component needs to be considered about this mod rather than whether the formations are realistic or not.

**Lysander13** · 10-04-2007, 23:37

Originally Posted by Dram

thanks for this mod.

Your quite welcome friend.

I just wanted to mention real quick on the topic of some who've mentioned in this thread experiencing and "idle" reinforcing army while using Sinuhet's AI:

This had me really curious as i've never experienced this using Sinuhet's AI. Mind you, i'm not doubting this occured; it's just genuinely something i haven't seen yet for some weird reason. I've seen it playing Vanilla RTW, i also saw it while toying around with Darth's Formations while omitting his width forcing ( and changing other things as well ) while playing with huge units ( never seen it however in regular Darth with his width forcing left in place as well as leaving alone the offsets he set up ), and i've also seen it with the regular EB AI. I always just chalked it up to the mysteries of the hardcoded AI; except in the case when i was toying around with Darth's where i knew the changes i made were directly responsible. But again for some strange reason...never seen it happen using Sinuhet's. At first i thought maybe i wasn't seeing this happen because i was using an edited EDU file where i had changed the width and depth of the units to see how they responded using Sinuhet's AI. So i put back the original EB EDU; thinking maybe the culprit perhaps was some of the width and depth of the units and maybe leaking out of the "AI template" sort of speak and maybe that was causing the reinforcing army to stay "idle". Well...no this appears to be a case where i was seriously out-thinking myself. As i didn't experience it with the original EB EDU either.

So i decided to ask around a little bit and see what other's who use Sinuhet's AI in different mods had to say....I was pretty much told the same thing more or less..This is apparantly something that happens at random no matter the AI. It can be limited to a good extent by getting the "offsets" in the formation right, however still occurs on occasion but if modded wrong it can really screw it up and the reinforcing army will be "idle" all the time. In case one does not want to just take my word on this and needs a second voice sort of speak...I"ll qoute here on this thread and i hope he won't mind; Aradan one of the developers of the excellent mod FATW:The New Shadow. Qouted from The Complete EDU-Discussion thread in the modding question forum here at the org; where i asked him if any FATW players reported instances of an idle reinforcing army using Sinuhet's AI.

Originally posted by Aradan

I don't think any have, but I have seen it happening some times. But i have seen it hapenning with vanilla and Darth too. I have restricted it a bit by changing some offsets, but I don't think there's a way to solve it completely, due to the way the formations are coded - and the lack of a descrimination between normal and reinforcing armies.

So there it is....it would seem...The mysteries and aggravating instances of the hard-coded AI prevail once again.

**Dooz** · 10-09-2007, 09:30

Wow, great job Lysander. Y'see, EB not only has the best mod team, it also has the best mini-modder community. With mods like this, the AI balancing mod by redmeth and Mlp071, and all the other great ones, it just keeps things going in a better direction.

I'm actually just about to start up an EB campaign, something I haven't done since 0.8x was released all those many months ago, and all because of these great mods and reading campaign reports and AAR's. Ooo, I'm all primed for some EB lovin'.

Ok this is getting weird. I'll just be over here installing.....

Thanks once again Lysander, can't wait to play with the formations pumping on all cylinders.

**Lysander13** · 10-11-2007, 17:35

Thank you for the kind words Wonderland. Stay tuned as i will be updating this download very soon to include a few changes that i feel improve the effectiveness of the formations as well as adding a few extra goodies..