Suicidal small friends

[remorse]

It's pretty common for the player to run into a battle between a neutral/friendly party and a common enemy, and join in.
The AI's behavior in these battles is idiotic.
They count the relative strength, see that they have the advantage, and charge all their men (F1-F3), with no regard for what the player is doing.
This forces the player to either join their moronic charge. or watch them die comically.

Here is a visual example.
I ran into 173 enemy Wimps (Phaea and Honoratus) attacking some friendly Sturgians (Svana).
Svana had 33 men left by the time I joined in.

While my men are getting into their battle lines, she of course immediately charges at the enemy with her 33 peasants.
This is lunacy.

She should either

A) Become a subcommander and let me order her around like an ally, or​

B) Cower behind my giant army.​

​

It's ridiculous to keep watching these little neutrals/friendlies kill themselves every time we try to rescue them.

 

[hruza]

They are not charging using F1-F3. And yes, AI will base their decision to attack or defend on overall balance that includes your troops. I see nothing wrong with that.

That might upset what ever smart plan you had of course, but isn't unreasonable from the AI point of view.

[EDIT:] May be giving player some time to organize his forces and get his act together before starting advance would solve the problem of AI getting ahead.

 

[Nakh]

Yes, AI behavior is very stupid in this cases, so I just let them die. AI lords will cheat new army in no time, so it is does not matter at all.


Maybe, when player have much larger army it will be right thing to do, to put small lords under player command in such cases

 

[Because]

It is frustrating though, maybe have the players ability to issue to commands to little groups like this be based on leadership/tactics or relationship with the Lord so there is some logic behind the take over.

 

[Theofilos]

Yes it is a lose-lose situation because if you try to help them you'll find yourself in the other side of the map and when next waves spawn opponent will have advandage ofc and if you wait your lies will get wickened by losing all their troops,so best thing is you do your fights and and they do their auto-calculation fights nothing inbetween unfortunately....

 

[Morbo513]

They are not charging using F1-F3. And yes, AI will base their decision to attack or defend on overall balance that includes your troops. I see nothing wrong with that.

That might upset what ever smart plan you had of course, but isn't unreasonable from the AI point of view.

[EDIT:] May be giving player some time to organize his forces and get his act together before starting advance would solve the problem of AI getting ahead.

Sure, there's nothing wrong with NPC armies acting with no sense of self-perservation - But it not only fails to sell the illusion that there's actual intelligence behind their actions; it makes no tactical or strategic sense either. Maybe in the context of a glory-seeking lord who gives no ****s about the people under his command, it might make sense, sometimes. But say it's a merchant caravan. For what sane reason would they push their escorts ahead of the force (which can be and usually is much larger and/or higher quality) that came to their aid? Why would they not either fall in under their command, or stay back?
In those edge-cases where a weaker force would reasonably charge, even despite their portion of the force being vastly outnumbered by both the player's army and that of the enemy - and the player isn't also charging - I agree that that they should wait a minute before they do so.

The combat AI is probably the weakest part of Bannerlord at the moment and I don't think it's unreasonable to want it to be better than that of Warband.

 

[hruza]

Sure, there's nothing wrong with NPC armies acting with no sense of self-perservation - But it not only fails to sell the illusion that there's actual intelligence behind their actions; it makes no tactical or strategic sense either. Maybe in the context of a glory-seeking lord who gives no ****s about the people under his command, it might make sense, sometimes. But say it's a merchant caravan. For what sane reason would they push their escorts ahead of the force (which can be and usually is much larger and/or higher quality) that came to their aid? Why would they not either fall in under their command, or stay back?

Because AI is assuming that their side is on the attack. If they would stay back, you would be complaining about **** AI that doesn't help you and gives no ****s about winning the battle.

The combat AI is probably the weakest part of Bannerlord at the moment and I don't think it's unreasonable to want it to be better than that of Warband.

AI is much better then one in the Warband. If you expect it to be as good as human brain, that's not going to happen in a complex game like this.

Now don't take me wrong, AI could be better and I would like it to be better. But give credit where credit is due. Combat AI is better then in the Warband and I am saying it as somebody who was skeptical about it been better before EA was released. I also hope that there will be some work done on the AI before release and that it will still get polished.

 

[geala]

I totally agree with the OP, frequently it's utmost stupidity of the friendly AI. If at least the attack would be coordinated and carefully made, but no, they rush to the fight as if they wanted since long to commit glorious suicide.

 

[Kentucky 『 ＨＥＩＧＵＩ 』 James]

Because AI is assuming that their side is on the attack. If they would stay back, you would be complaining about **** AI that doesn't help you and gives no ****s about winning the battle.

You're acting like these are the only two solutions. All the AI needs to do is decide that if it's too weak on its own, it should move with the rest of the army. What the AI is doing here is evaluating the army ratio across the entire battlefield without acknowledging how weak it is on its own. It's trying to win the battle without any sense of self preservation.

Nobody expects the AI to behave like a human player, but just some basic self preservation helps somewhat in making AI lords feel less like terminators with no self interest at all.

 

[paladinx333]

If the enemy force is sizable, I just let them die. They will still be grateful as long as you win the battle. The don't need to be conscious at the time of your victory.

Another behavior that is identical to warband is charging in ahead of their troops. Both friendly lords and enemy lords will do it. I have knocked out many enemy generals that decide to attack my archers solo, even though they have a large army with them. The AI should at least be smart enough to let their troops attack first.

 

[hruza]

You're acting like these are the only two solutions. All the AI needs to do is decide that if it's too weak on its own, it should move with the rest of the army.

And how can AI determine what is "rest of the army" and what it does? It's not like it can see in to your head. I very much doubt that AI is complex enough to be able to do something like that.

 

[Kentucky 『 ＨＥＩＧＵＩ 』 James]

It does that by just counting the number of troops on the battlefield and noting where they are, and doing a simple calculation to decided where it should go. I actually coded something like this for warband and it worked fine. A lot of other mods did the same. I'm not suggesting something impossible here.

 

[hruza]

It does that by just counting the number of troops on the battlefield and noting where they are, and doing a simple calculation to decided where it should go. I actually coded something like this for warband and it worked fine. A lot of other mods did the same. I'm not suggesting something impossible here.

I did not see your mod so I can't tell how it works. But counting soldiers and noting where they are doesn't accomplish much. Because they can be literally anywhere on the map. It may work if player keeps all his troops close to each other. If he sends his soldiers all over the map or new ones spawn as reinforcements then how do you determine where AI soldiers should be and what should they do?

I am not saying it's impossible to code something like that, after all you can code face recognition system or cruise missile targeting system that uses thermal camera or radar image of the target. I am just not sure you can do it simple enough for game like this and not to slow down the game.

 

[Kentucky 『 ＨＥＩＧＵＩ 』 James]

Stuff like what you're describing is not hard to code, and can be executed extremely fast. Warband vanilla already does way more complex calculations than this for its battlefield AI. What sounds complicated to describe is often really simple in code. Things like flanking and feigned retreats can be accomplished fairly straightforwardly in a game like mount and blade.

The reason why Bannerlord's AI is so bad right now is probably more to do with the structure of the company than how difficult it actually is. A modder can implement some code whenever they feel like it, meanwhile a professional coder might have to coordinate with an entire team of people before making even the smallest change.

 

[KingEroc1st]

honestly i've learned to utilize this mechanic to my advantage. whenever i'm leading an army with the sole purpose of defeating an opponent army, i would literally disband my army right before the clash and re-establish my own personal army with my party and companion parties. this way when the fight happens all the allied lords that were in my army a moment ago also join the fight, but as AI that's NOT under my control.
they'll charge in and attack the enemy while i line my archers up behind and use the allies as meat shields. they do the clashing, i do the clean up. the results is me losing a lot less if any of my own men, and winning the battles just the same. (lose more men in total but frankly i don't care, ai lords get free army anyways and they have "garrison advantage" meaning they never donate troops to your garrison but always to each other)

the alternative would have been leading the entire army consisting of allied parties. but the problem is that their army composition is different, usually not as many archers and cavs, so even though i might have 100 archers alone in my party, when i go fight the battle only 10 appear at the beginning and we have 300 infantry...

 

[Sword_of_Light]

I think it really depends on the quality of the overall unit. Looters and the like are definitely F1+F3 - even Sea Raiders behave like that, no matter the odds. But I've seen lords with quality troops use F1+F4 - I recently had a village battle where the enemy infantry closed to throwing axe range while the militia archers stayed back and rained doom down on me. Their horse didn't engage until I did.

Major battles are not just spawn and charge, either. I've seen multiple formations forming in waves, massed horse archers swarming like a school of fish around an enemy shield wall. I've seen special formations, like circling, too. There's an ebb and flow to a really big battle that just wouldnt happen without some finesse on the part of the AI.

They're still pretty stupid during sieges - but I've seen improvement. Enemies still run past each other intent on reaching waypoints, but they do seem to be better utilizing siege towers.