SP - General Change AI behavior when leveling up infantry.

[Sir Frederic]

Something I've noticed recently is the AI's tendency to only level up infantry troops into "heavy troops". Something that becomes dangerous when you go to a battle and it turns out that your allies appear in battle with an infantry of 100 men without shields.

The AI should give much more preference to creating shielded infantry.

 

[Blood Gryphon]

Something I've noticed recently is the AI's tendency to only level up infantry troops into "heavy troops". Something that becomes dangerous when you go to a battle and it turns out that your allies appear in battle with an infantry of 100 men without shields.

The AI should give much more preference to creating shielded infantry.

This is actually due to a change they made in 1.8.0 to have the AI specialize on a troop type. You can see below that in 1.8 there are sturgian lords who specialize in shield troops, heavy troops, and archers so its not just limited to heavy troops. Good chance you just ran into a few lords whose specialization were heavy troops.

So they don't say party templates here, just preferred troops types when upgrading. Comparing party compositions from 1.7.0 to 1.8.0 there seems to be parties focusing on a specific troop type now.

1.7.0 - You'll notice there is typically a relatively even number of woodsmen and warriors. Also there aren't any parties with like 40+ of a single troop type.

Spoiler: 1

Spoiler: 2

Spoiler: 3

Spoiler: 4

1.8.0 - pretty clear specializations going on

Spoiler: 5

Spoiler: 6

Spoiler: 7

Spoiler: 8

 

[Sir Frederic]

Good chance you just ran into a few lords whose specialization were heavy troops.

Yes, I ran into Rhagaea trying to make a defensive circle against a line of archers with 100 menavlions.

I also have a wife and a companion who decided to have the same idea, hordes of men without shields, battles not self-resolved end with them losing half their infantry. They're upping his medicine skill madly.

In short, now you must control which army you join, because you can end up stuck in one unable to do anything in a battle with numerical disadvantage. Yesterday I had to restart a battle 2 times because we lost due to not having troops with shields, the infantry was dedicated to advancing and retreating against 100 enemy archers of a good level.

 

[Sir Frederic]

it's as if they get together in his office every day to think about how to design the game to be as unplayable as possible.

 

[Blood Gryphon]

Yes, I ran into Rhagaea trying to make a defensive circle against a line of archers with 100 menavlions.

Yeah sadly the circle formation is considered a high level tactic even though it is the worst of all tactics, so ironically you'll see lords with high tactics using the worst one and getting themselves killed. The circle formation just needs to be deleted from the game or made to be the lowest tier tactic so that only ****ty lords use it and not the ones who are actually suppose to be a good as battlefield commanders. @Duh_TaleWorlds i know you guys claimed to have fixed it but honestly its still trash and just a suicide tactic. I dont think anyone would be sad to see it go other than the free win it gives when an enemy does it. If you guys wont get rid of it at least make it a low skill tactic instead of a high skill one.

In short, now you must control which army you join, because you can end up stuck in one unable to do anything in a battle with numerical disadvantage. Yesterday I had to restart a battle 2 times because we lost due to not having troops with shields, the infantry was dedicated to advancing and retreating against 100 enemy archers of a good level.

See this is what im curious about now. @SadShogun are armies being formed with specialization in mind? My guess is they don't but they really should. Until the AI can create sensible armies, specialization will just feel bad and make the AI seem dumb. I really like troop specialization but if we cant get AI armies to create balanced armies then we should go back to balanced parties.

Also another idea, we should be able to select the specialization of our clan parties. This would go a long way in making a player feel like a clan leader.

 

[Sir Frederic]

we should go back to balanced parties

At least, when it comes to infantry, the nobleman who has preference for it should consider a ratio of 75 to 25. When you give the shield wall order, the heavy infantry always lags behind the shield soldiers, which would be a logical behavior.

If you wish to have many archers, or many cavalry, that's fine. A challenge and a bit of diversity for the player. But armies unable to attack and defend themselves is absurd.

The other solution, also logical, is that the heavy infantry also have a shield, that they operate it when they are in a defensive order and switch to their 2-handed weapon when they have an offensive order.

Personally, I would love to have a horde of Menavlions capable of reaching the enemy and causing chaos by giving the order to attack.

 

[SadShogun]

See this is what im curious about now. @SadShogun are armies being formed with specialization in mind? My guess is they don't but they really should. Until the AI can create sensible armies, specialization will just feel bad and make the AI seem dumb. I really like troop specialization but if we cant get AI armies to create balanced armies then we should go back to balanced parties.

Armies currently do not consider the party specializations when forming their ranks. However each party should have small amounts of misc. troops to smooth this out. Specialization does not make very visible difference when we apply a 75 specialized to 25 randomized composition.
What can be an improvement is to distribute the specializations more evenly across the kingdoms.
Also the specializations for some heroes will be more generic (instead of one or two troops, it will go to a certain troop type(cavalry, ranged, etc) instead.

 

[Sir Frederic]

Armies currently do not consider the party specializations when forming their ranks. However each party should have small amounts of misc. troops to smooth this out. Specialization does not make very visible difference when we apply a 75 specialized to 25 randomized composition.
What can be an improvement is to distribute the specializations more evenly across the kingdoms.
Also the specializations for some heroes will be more generic (instead of one or two troops, it will go to a certain troop type(cavalry, ranged, etc) instead.

The problem is that there are nobles specialized in heavy infantry who behave as if they used troops with shields. The AI does not seem to reason the situation.

Yesterday I was looking at heavy troops on the game wiki. they all have a free slot for a shield, equipping them with a small shield wouldn't hurt, considering heavy troops don't use hyper armor to take that much damage.

 

[Blood Gryphon]

What can be an improvement is to distribute the specializations more evenly across the kingdoms.
Also the specializations for some heroes will be more generic (instead of one or two troops, it will go to a certain troop type(cavalry, ranged, etc) instead.

This would help out a ton and likely help out situations like Sir Frederic ran into at least as far as composition.

The problem is that there are nobles specialized in heavy infantry who behave as if they used troops with shields. The AI does not seem to reason the situation.

Yesterday I was looking at heavy troops on the game wiki. they all have a free slot for a shield, equipping them with a small shield wouldn't hurt, considering heavy troops don't use hyper armor to take that much damage.

So unfortunately this is where Sadshogun can't do much as he isnt in charge of the battle AI, thats another department. Maybe he could inform them of the issue tho.