Slightly unexpected tactical AI moves

[PvK]

I saw a couple of slightly unexpected tactical AI behaviors in Doms II today, in a battle where my force was Iron Faith Ulm, against a Mictlan army of about 40 heavy infantry and slave spear-carriers. On reflection, they aren't all that new or unexpected, but might be interesting to read.

My force was seven experienced Black Templars and two Ulm heavy infantry, led by a Black Acolyte. One of my heavy infantry was diseased and going to die in a couple of turns anyway, so I put him by himself on my left flank, forward of the other units with Hold & Attack orders, to bait the enemy force into attacking him. On my right flank, I grouped the other units. The Templars were to wait to get blessed, with Hold & Attack Rearmost orders. The idea was they would run around the enemy troops, which would probably be headed towards the wrong flank, and go trample the commanders, probably routing their whole army. The Acolyte simply had orders to cast the Bless spell. The other heavy infantry was to guard the Acolyte.

The enemy army did as expected, and charged after the slightly-forward single diseased guy. Their slaves led the charge, getting pelted by their own slingers (moronic but expected ) and barely able to handle my one diseased pikeneer, felling him just before my cavalry arrived...

... which was the first unexpected part. Why did my cavalry, with orders to attack rearmost, go after the slaves in the front? In the past, attack rearmost has seemed to have the units actually move along the flank and go after rear units.

The Templars started wiping out the enemy army the hard way, which turned out to be easy for them (experienced blessed Templars trample ***), but then I noticed the second unexpected part: my Acolyte was charging along with them (followed by his huffing, puffing, armored bodyguard), almost keeping up with them, since they were zig-zagging to catch the enemies. I guess this has been commented on before - if a mage lacks any good spell to cast, he may actually go on the offensive, by default. I guess I need to give him "(Blessing)(Banishment)(Banishment)(Banishment)(Ban ishment)Stay Behind Troops"... hopefully that will keep him out of the fray.

PvK

[PvK]

Hmm, I just saw another unexpected one. Mictlan attacked my Ulmish province which had 20 defense and some unled-by-any-commander units in it. Two of the unled units were experienced crossbowmen. So there was a group of inexperienced defender crossbowmen, and then two other experienced crossbowmen. The odd thing is that after the first defensive volley, my two experienced crossbowmen charged ahead, leading all the melee units due to their relatively light armor, and thereby getting themselves killed. The other crossbowmen remained in their group, reloading.

This one seems like a minor bug to me.

PvK

[HJ]

Not the most experienced person to answer but I hope you don't mind...

Templars attacking the front - maybe they were attacking the rear of the army, just that the rear was fairly far ahead? I don't think that the commanders or troops on guard commander count, so once they became parallel to the rest of the army, they moved toward the center and slammed into the closest enemy there. Troops on guard commander don't seem to count toward army rout either (the army will rout even though the bodyguard squad wasn't even in contact with the enemy, and turn to fight if pursuers move close), so I guess that might be the case.

Acolyte charging forward - there has been some mention of this behavior with mages/priests before, I think in the AI thread (remember my mage who was cold when he ran into Breath of winter cloud? ). After he runs out of script, tactical AI decides what he's going to do, and that might not always be the best choice. I think that, since he had noone left to bless, he either reverted to stay behind troops, or attack. Stay behind the troops actually means that he will stay at the rear of the army, not that he'll stay put, so that's why he ran after the templars. The tactic that seems to work is once you don't want thim to cast any more spells, put him on "hold a turn" and then "stay behind troops". This will ensure that he'll stay put for a few turns, and move forward when the situation will hopfully be less perilous.

Crossbowmen - my guess is that it's also a case of tactical AI judgement. Since they were commanderless, they weren't scripted, and the AI judged that they should attack instead of fire.

[ November 09, 2003, 03:36: Message edited by: HJ ]

[Pocus]

this is a recuring problem with missiles able units, to move forward and then be caught by advancing enemy units. Thats would be rather easy to fix, but dont seems a priority, how strange it can be.

On the same trend, fire drakes often advances to attack, even when they still have all their fire breath ammo. And most of the time, they get killed in melee.

One of the problem is that group of missiles units sometime advance to be in range of their choosen target, even if some enemy units are closer. This is a legit move, as it prevents the AI to be fooled by a stray unit forward. So I think the targeting algorithm does a good job and should not be changed, when a unit group is on target none. What could be done is either a hold position or fire, so that missiles units dont move, or even better (one of my pet peeve), allow bodyguards to use their missile weapons, so you can fix indefinitively a group of missiles units, or let them advance after several rounds, by following their leader.

[ November 09, 2003, 07:57: Message edited by: Pocus ]

[Aristoteles]

Originally posted by PvK:

Their slaves led the charge, getting pelted by their own slingers (moronic but expected )

Yet another AI weakness. This is always worked very well against the AI. Hm I will update my AI weaknesses list with this.