Resolved Beta 1.5.0 - 1.4.3 - AI makes a really bad use of archers and uses shield wall too late

[Dabos37]

As you can see in this video:

1- The AI does no make a good use of archers, it just charge with archers in front and rarely fire. It is a better idea that the AI keeps archers out of the formation and let them fire from distance.
2- The AI does not block a s***, even when a lot of units have shields. Please fix this, units should still be able to block arrows effectively even if not in shieldwall formation.

(I have the feeling that the AI is so dumb currently in line formation due to give shield wall some importance and make it impactful. As long as the AI does not know how to use shield wall effectively, please improve the AI in line formation. I prefer to have an useless shieldwall instead of seeing this silly battles all the time)

 

[Dabos37]

The AI does not know how manage archers at all due to two reasons:

1- AI puts its archers in front and try to move them as fast as it moves infantry units. It is good that the AI tries to rush the player with its infantry (otherwise the infantry would get wrecked by our archers even easier), but AI archers trying to keep the cohesion with the whole army means that they rarely fire while infantry is moving forward. AI should "release/separate" achers from the army cohesion as long as they are in rage to start firing. There is not really need to keep cohesion between infantry and AI, and they could move at different speed when archers are shooting.

I think TW devs do this in order to avoid archer units being flanked and ganked by player's cavalry, but the result is much worse performance in 100% of the battles.


2- The second issue is also related to archer units trying to avoid being flanked and ganked by cavalry. Archers are in some kind of "skirmish mode" and they try to run away when cavalry is attacking them. This does not make anything good for these archers because they stop firing while keep dying because cavalry is faster and able to catch them. They should just stand and keep fighting and they would perform much better than the do currently.


Then we have the issue with AI infantry which do not block projectiles most of the times. The thing is that watching again some of my videos, it looks like the AI infantry is sometimes able to use shields pretty effectively but this just happens eventually. Check this video at 6:10 and compare with the video in the first post.



If TW would make infantry able to always use shields in this way, plus making a better use of archers, the battles would be much funnier, enjoyable and challenging. Thanks.

 

[elysebluemoon]

Forwarding this issue to the QA team for further investigation. Thanks for reporting.

 

[Dabos37]

Hi! I am checking 1.5.0 and is still not fixed , I have tested some battles against Vlandia and Empire in 1.5.0 and AI is still making a pretty bad use of archers as you can see in this video:



As you can see in the video, archers are still going forward without firing most of the time.

Concerning shield wall, the AI uses It a bit late IMO when units are too close to my archers and tons of them have died already.

Please continue working in these issues because as long as we have some few archers in my party, the battles turn in something really boring and not challenging at all.

EDIT: I am looking that archers start firing properly when the Infantry units form a shield wall. The problem is that all this happens pretty close to my archers while most of AI units has already dead. Could you please make the AI to uses the shield wall and archers before? All this should happen when AI archers are in range to shoot.

 

[Dabos37]

I have been making a lot of battles to test the new AI behavior and I think the main problem is that AI archers do not start firing until the AI infantry take the decision of making a shield wall. Once the infantry units make the shield wall formation, the AI archers stop moving forward and start firing properly. The problem with this is that the AI makes the shieldwall too late, when its units are too close to my archers more than half or its army has been already massacred. Could you please make the AI to take the decision to use shieldwall much before than it is happening now?

If the AI would take the decision to use shield wall for infantry units and start firing with archers at a greater distance, the result would be probably much better. It could be a bit worse for unshielded infantry units in the formation though but not sure.

Anyway, would be possible to give shields to recruits? mjust give them the crapiest shield available in order to make battles more enjoyable please.

 

[Dabos37]

I have to say that the current situation is better than before and the AI is now smarter, but it would be nice if the AI would be able to take decisions at a greater distance from player's archers. In the following video you can see that the AI started shooting with archers and used shield wall formation when its units were pretty close to my units and the AI had already lost 40 units:



This happens now against every army, even against Khuzait armies which before 1.5.0 performed better.Sorry for being so tiresome with this but battles are a huge part of this game where players spend most of the time. Battles need to be challenging and enjoyable.

 

[Dabos37]

Tested in 08/20/2020 hotfix and issue is still there. AI makes the shield wall too late and rush ahead with archers until the shield wall decision is taken. Please make this happens before. AI is using shieldwall when it is too late and already has lost 1/4 of army or more.



Plus cavalry performance is worse in 1.5.0. Cavalry units do not hit anyone.



It is pretty sad to see that T5 archers units >>>>>>>>>>> T7 noble cavalry units in this game.

(I know that I could make a better use of cav units but in real battles you cannot babysit cav units if you have a balanced army. Te result is always archers getting tons of kills while cav units underperforming. It is even worse now in 1.5.0 and cav units are doing worse now).

 

[Ananda_The_Destroyer]

In 1.5 today I saw enemy archers actually rush into my infantry SW with their bows out, they weren't shooting, I don't know what they were trying to do, don't know why they didn't get shot down on the way, but it happened and was then over too fast for a screencap.

I also notice they seem docile in their defensive formation. I think they may be faced direction at enemy formation and ignoring me.

 

[Dabos37]

Yeah, same happens to me about AI ignoring me and I have also seen that archers rush to melee in some battles.

I am not sure if it is possible but I think that AI archers should disjoin the AI army at some point or something else. For example, forest archers have no issues to fire effectively because they are not attached to any formation and do not try to keep cohesion. The problem is when archers are trying to keep the cohesion with infantry units and then they do a pretty bad job because they start firing pretty late.

There is a point when the AI decides to use shield wall or loose formation, and then the AI start using archers decently. Just making this decision time to happen earlier could help a lot.

 

[elysebluemoon]

I have been informed that this works as intended, and the QA team could not reproduce the other mentioned issues. Thanks for reporting!