'About infantry vs Cav.' - toughts about recent dev input - UPDATED with poll

[nGabor]

Recently petmonster_tw shared some info about AI development decisions in terms of infantry vs cavalry.

About infantry vs Cav. We are still trying to find the right balance. We did have -at one- point unbreakable wall of spears and quickly decided to make the infantry act more foolish. Otherwise Cav vs Inf is not fun at all. In real life no Cav formation charges directly to the infantry. They did get into charge numerous times just to turn back at the last moment. It was a battle of nerves. The infantry "died" many times before finally that last cav charge is real this time. (The cav charge becomes real when the cav commander decides the inf formation has lost its nerve and about to break.) since we cannot simulate this in the game it is somewhat OK to make inf act a bit goofy.

A few community member indecated it is a big deal and deservs its topic so here you are, with my toughts about it:

For the first read the idea of dumbing the AI and make it 'goofy' sounded very disappointing to me. To be honest I tought it was a lazy solution to the problem. But as petmonster_tw stated "...we cannot simulate this in the game...". I think this means they "cannot simulate this" in an efficient way - without too much valuable resources spent on it. So they needed a workaround.
And further thinkingmaking the AI 'goofy' is not necessarily a bad thing if done in the right way. Actually it could work very well. Altough if they mess it up, it will destroy the field battles.

I think the right way could be something like this:
- Every unit, be it infantry, cavalry, archers or horsearchers (or custom, so any) should have a basic discipline value
- Higher the level of the unit, higher the discipline.
- AI fighting in formation should have a boost of discipline depending on the composition and size of given formation
- This method would result in high discipline boost for large elite formations (formed from top level units), low or zero boost for formations of low level units and medium for mixed formations, etc...
- The calculated discipline value (basic+boost) would determine the 'goofiness' of the individual AI in a given formation.

As a reslult - for example in case of frontal charge of cav. vs inf. - even a small formation of elite cavalry unit could crush through a large group of fresh recruits, but an solid group of top tier pikeman could withstand multiple frontal charges.
And of course it means that not only infantry but also cavalry would get goofed! ... and of course every other type of units. Of course cavalry units are all somewhat elite so their goofing would be much more gentle.
An other aspect: if you mix recruits with veterans, they will fight better as veterans would encourage (boost) them and have a better chance to survive and become veteran themselves.

Although if the 'goofing' effect just generally applies to each unit (unit level, formation size doesn't matter), it could deaden or even break the gameplay of field battles, as tactical consideration would go out of window and every charge would result in somewhat the same mess. Or even worse, the bannerlord equivalent of Swadian Knights would destroy everything, so the winning way would be raising an army of heavy cavalry again.

I hope TW will sort it out. From what I saw int the recent videos they will have some tough time to perfect the fighting/battle AI, so in Taleworlds we trust! Keep it up!

 

[JustinTime49]

I think that is a cool way of looking at it. I am just curious to see how AI vs AI handle each other with the different factions and cultures. How will a Khuzait army(which should field a very large number of cavalry) act and respond accordingly to a sturgian army advancing in a tight formation with arguably the strongest inf in the game. I think they still need to work on formations in general, especially after viewing the recent gameplay on thursday.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvkZ4RaYSE8
At around 22:10 you can really see a flaw in either the tactical AI or formation AI. You can tell they are in shield wall, because it was explained that a shield wall formation will move like a turtle, however instead of sticking together you can see A LOT of stragglers literally walking to the frontline because they are still holding a formation. Should this happen and you charge your cavalry, formation or no formation... well as you can see there is no formation and the infantry will be run down as cav momentum won't slow by hitting multiple enemies because they are so spread apart.

 

[LeChat]

...
For the first read the idea of dumbing the AI and make it 'goofy' sounded very disappointing to me. To be honest I tought it was a lazy solution to the problem.
...

You know, if you make the best possible AI in a game, no human can win. The game becomes unplayable. It is mandatory to find the right level for the AI. So lowering it is not a lazy solution.

 

[JustinTime49]

...
For the first read the idea of dumbing the AI and make it 'goofy' sounded very disappointing to me. To be honest I tought it was a lazy solution to the problem.
...

You know, if you make the best possible AI in a game, no human can win. The game becomes unplayable. It is mandatory to find the right level for the AI. So lowering it is not a lazy solution.

He wasn't referring to AI vs player combat gameplay, he was talking about balancing issues and a potential fix with cav vs inf which is a valid argument shared throughout the community.

 

[hruza]

Thanks for sharing. Good to hear that they know that it's not how cavalry charges worked and they at last tinkering with it. I still think it's problem of the AI and how many resources are dedicated to it compared to other aspects of the game.

I also hope they will leave enough AI workings exposed for this aspect of the AI to be modable.

 

[nGabor]

One thing which maybe I should mention becouse it is varey important but is a logical consequence of my solution (as the discipline thing would apply to any units):
not only infantry but also cavalry would get goofed! ... and of course every other type of units. Altough cavalry units are all somewhat elite so their goofing would be much more gentle.

(I will add this to the original post)

 

[FBohler]

I agree with the OP and I'm afraid this is true:

Or even worse, the bannerlord equivalent of Swadian Knights would destroy everything, so the winning way would be raising an army of heavy cavalry again.

 

[HUMMAN]

If they implemented it to the game successfully, just having huscarls and some other elite troops to do formation would be cool. A color in the game.

 

[SturgiaStrong]

Cav seems OP judging by recent videos. First of all it seems much faster than in warband and second you can drop infantry on his back without any accelaration at all. Like couple steps of horse and infantryman is lying down

 

[nGabor]

I just added an other effect of the discipline 'system' I forgot to mention:
"An other aspect: if you mix recruits with veterans, they will fight better as veterans would encourage (boost) them and have a better chance to survive and become veteran themselves."

 

[Fortnight]

The discipline system seems like yet another variable to keep track of and lower the framerate. Not that it's not a good solution, mind you, but given how unoptimised the game has been shown to be recently (beta, and hell, there's FPS drops in the official video by TW given last devblog), it's probably best to cut down on complexity rather than add.

I wouldn't have a problem with keeping the game as it was before TW 'fixed' it, IE having spear walls absolutely decimate frontal charges. This would nerf (stupid) cavalry, something that has been needed for far too long in SP anyway.

Maybe force two-handing spears for it to work proper, to make said spear walls themselves be absolutely decimated by archers (tightly packed+no shields+not moving), for some nice rock paper scissors action.

Maybe we should start another poll, about REALLY STRONG SPEAR WALLS AND WEAK FRONTAL CAV CHARGES vs SILLY INF AI AND STEAMROLLER CAV, see how many people vote for what (I have an idea though).

 

[Shemaforash]

I think polls are a flavor, since a lot of people don't actually post a comment when most has already been said. So I'll just say I totally agree with you Fortnight

 

[nGabor]

Here you are, I added the vote 

 

[Shemaforash]

To be honest, that cracked me up because it was in all caps

But I fully agree and don't appreciate the approach to the issue by pet monster. You could legitimately siege and take over the entire map with just a load of cavalry in warband. I preferred the brainy bots execution (holy **** infantry spears actually do something useful) but I always hated the overhead spear animation, which we have in bannerlord too btw.

Bots should be able to ready their spears against stupid cavalry charges forcing you, as the cavalry, to strategically take apart that line and NOT stupid charge. Makes sense right?
Goofy footmen... sounds like the balancing issue has crossed over to multiplayer as well

 

[Hanz]

Seeing how useless spears were in Warband was dissapointing. I do want us to brace spears and at least stop the 1st inital clash of  cav as the 2nd one can run over the spearmen (A sort of cooldown like the couched lance, but for infantry/spearmen)

 

[vonbalt]

Seeing how useless spears were in Warband was dissapointing. I do want us to brace spears and at least stop the 1st inital clash of  cav as the 2nd one can run over the spearmen (A sort of cooldown like the couched lance, but for infantry/spearmen)

That's actually a pretty good tradeoff if the devs don't want to make impassable spearwalls

Spear infantry auto bracing their spears while in formation with a few seconds cooldown when they hit something allowing the cavalry a window to charge it down.

Of course i would prefer impassable spearwalls that would mow down cavalry if they were dumb enought to frontly charge it but i would take anything to not have the dumb infantry who don't know how to use spears like in warband..

 

[urugamer5]

i think solution is goofy infantry spear with bonus damage against horse (as age of empires 2), and i mean a great bonus that any hit on horse he is dead. To counter that, lance and spears will break at first hit on horse or secound...
Cavalry still going to be OP but at least perhaps u will not be able to aford a direct cavalry charge as in warband. 

 

[John the Roleplayer]

Shouldn't the poll be a little less biased? It's hardly conducive to an honest discussion on the subject.

 

[Fortnight]

Hey, the poll titles were said as a joke initially.

Then again, how exactly would you phrase it without it sounding biased? The correct answer is so comically obvious 

 

[nGabor]

Sorry, I couldnt resist

By the way you mentioned adding an other 'discipline' variable would use up too many resources (frame rate drops) but I dont think this should be the case. This is not something you should keep track at every frame. I think this whole computing should be done during the initialization of the battle. Maybe if they want to be extremly precise, they should refresh it every few minutes and from what I expreinced from arma3 modding (not much to be honest), it should have no sensible effect on framerates even on big numbers. Also as I know bannerlord and even warband has some kind of individual morale system so I suspect more frequent updates could possibly be made without frame drops. (but of course I may be wrong)