The detailed combat AI some feedback

[Iceclouds]

Just some suggestions for the detailed commbat ai

the ai do not make use of hills for its artlilery and it exposes it too mutch.

the infantry do not change to line formation in time (they move too close to the enemy line and than change to line)

the infantry should change to line outside the enemys infantry range.

units should try to avoid to stop in swamp hexes

[garoco]

what is you version?

[jimwinsor]

Artillery is actually supposed to be bad shooting down from hills in this game, with a huge FP penalty for plunging fire...so, if the AI avoids putting guns on hills, thats in reality smart battle tactics.

[Iceclouds]

i use the current beta version.

And no it is not that smart as i can place a infantry unit in front of the artillery on the hill and the artillery will still be able to fire. if you are the defeder thats a strongpoint easyly created.

At all its the combination of the errors that makes th ai weak.
Tthe infanrty marches in colum close to your lines the artilery on the hill will fire at 4-6 hexes and even at high dificult level will hit for around 1-2 k dammage in the ai infrantry unit. with luck it goes in disorder and is easy prey for any cav or own advancing infantry.

The latest changes did increase the ai but it still makes errors as advancing artillery alone with no cover or exposing singel infantry units.

It also still stops units in bad hexes as swamps.
The only thing i find it uses to its favor is the cav it mostly holds one unit in reserve.
For the other units all i can say is that the ai needs even at highlevel a great advantage i have won battles 3:1 with similar training status just as the ai ignores terrain and advances units without cover.

[Malagant]

ORIGINAL: jimwinsor

Artillery is actually supposed to be bad shooting down from hills in this game, with a huge FP penalty for plunging fire...so, if the AI avoids putting guns on hills, thats in reality smart battle tactics.

According to Ralegh's guide and my own experiences, placing the artillery a on height only reduces the number of men it kills, but does not reduce the morale lost by the target.

From Ralegh:

"Artillery do much less damage when firing from a height - grazing fire does lots more damage. However, infantry do MORE damage from up on a height. So: consider having screened artillery down at ground level if damage is more important that the flexibility of choosing its target. [Note: damage to their morale and hence most of the chance to disorder them is not affected.]"

I will almost always place artillery on a height with infantry in front. This seems to allow the artillery a longer range, as well as a much wider field of fire (from shooting over the heads of the infantry). Moreover, they are on higher ground, so will take less return fire...and are also usually in a position to be more easily screened from enemy charges.

You won't see the huge kill numbers when your artillery is on a hill, but their ability to reduce morale and disrupt enemies is just as good.

[ericbabe]

ORIGINAL: Malagant
According to Ralegh's guide and my own experiences, placing the artillery a on height only reduces the number of men it kills, but does not reduce the morale lost by the target.

The morale loss is proportional to the strength loss, so it does reduce morale loss too. The chance to cause them to disorder is lowered, but it's not quite linear with the decreased damage, so the penalty for that isn't quite as bad as the plunging fire penalty for decreased strength.

There are many parameters associated with the AI's valuation of different hexes. The value of the terrain is certainly one of them, but I've found that if I turn this parameter up too high then the AI does crazy things in order to squat on good terrain. (I think maybe taking root-mean-square over the valuation terms, rather than just averaging them may smooth these out -- something else to experiment with.)