First Cohorts

[Red Spot]

I've modded my game so the local faction can only recruit a legion/settlement, meaning like "Legion I" can only be recruited in Rome, Legion II in the city next door, etc etc

eventually if you leave the center of the map you can recruit legions in 4 diff. cities so I dont have to (try and) add 199*4 units to sort of balance out the "retraining unbalance" between player and AI (AI doesnt know when to pull back and retrain units when depleted)

anyway I've added the first cohorts to the mix as well, first of all freely recruitable for the AI but as they are ignorant in what they recruit (try give them 24000denari peasants and see what I mean) I've set them up so they can only be recruited in certain cities (starting capitals, bottleneck positions, etc)

now that I'm pretty much finished with most of the tweaks I've set my sights on the formations files but stumbled upon a slight problem (yeah .. up to know its all introduction to the problem ..:D)

I cant seem to properly get the first cohorts into a group of their own (like you do with say phalanx and non_phalanx_spear etc etc)
-I've tried using the unit-labels("type" and "dictionary" lables in EDU)
-I've tried using the "command" attribute from EDU
-I've made them druids, wich only works if I remove testude but looks silly
-I've made them into handlers, wich again works and no dogs show if the number is kept low enough, but the men never use their swords and melee empty-handed after the ran out of pila, if they actually attack and do not rout (eventhough their settings dont change they seem to rout much easier as handlers)

anyway everything I've tried doesnt work or I feel I'm better of just accepting that I may end up with some first cohorst in the first line

kinda posting this in a remote hope someone may have found some sort of workaround for this deployment issue(it may even work better with the first cohorts on the first line combatwise, but I just prefer the look of the first cohorst as the second line ..


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[Red Spot]

did a bit more testing/research ...

tried just giving the First Cohorts the "missile" class in EDU wich works when I than use the "skirmish infantry" tag in DF_AI, though left me with the missile tag where it would normally say "heavy infantry"

than I realised once reading about a "skirmish" tag wich had the side-effect of making the AI recruit skirmishers as if it was its regular infantry ....
looked up the EDU-guide topic wich mentioned the class, so I tried it with the same results as when giving it missile as class, the mayor diff. is that the skirmish class has its own text-entry in battle.txt so I can also alter the tag to just say "heavy infantry" as well while still allow the AI to use the unit with a bit more caution

maybe not the best of solutions but it works for me ..:)
("swimming" was an other option, though it might have caused problems with bridge-battles)


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[Makanyane]

double check with the skirmish tag that the AI doesn't actually skirmish with them....

I had that bright idea as well at one stage but found my heavy infantry was running away from enemy. Think you at least need to make sure the melee state setting switches it to skirmish off for each formation (unless RTW is different from BI)

[Red Spot]

havent tested it much, but so far they tend to keep back until their pila are depleted, than act like any other infantry

I think it may have to do with the "prec" tag in EDU as the unit does in no way give any hint it actually is a seperate class (except for textlabel in battle, but was an easy edit)

they however have no skirmish option at all nor seem to have any real skirmish behaviour, just "seems" that the AI keeps them back a bit more and use them sort of like a 2nd line unit
(In my current tests I've set 1 first cohort as 1st line unit than 3 cohorts, than 1 more as general, yet the first cohorst most of the time enter melee after the other 3 cohorst enter melee, they seem to put the accent more on trowing their pila than charging into combat at the spot
If these crude results actually have some truth and its not some random behaviour I much just make the regular cohorst skirmisher and the first cohorts the heavy infantry ...)


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[Makanyane]

ah, sounds like the Prec fixes problem, I was trying to differentiate some normal (from games point of view) swordsmen and the result was remarkably stupid as they all ran for the hills with the archers......

[Red Spot]

That was my fear as well, but as I used a custom game with similair armies for me as the AI I right away noticed that there was no "skirmish" option and nothing was said about "skirmishing" in the units info-panel

Still not 100% sure it doesnt have some sort of prefered skirmish battle routine, it at least doesnt really look like so (like I already said above it does "seem" to behave slightly diff. but only so minimal I dont even dare to say out loud it does)


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