I've noticed that Skaven will attempt to save summons for better use on ranged units, which is neat, but they also try to do it on Gyrobombers, which is less useful for them. Also, I noticed them using Warp Lightning on random areas of the map, which I'm not sure is part of this mod or not but figured I'd note.

Yeah, no I figured as much.
Just looking for any hope, since the siege AI is siphoning the fun of the game for me

This mod will not change much about the siege AI as the pathfinding for the most part is empedded in the siege map itself.

So I tested this mod in a siege and the AI (attacker) reinforcements is working really weird.

My god the Siege AI in this game is so broken im shocked people aren't being more noisy about it :'D

In the post I uploaded a save file. Unmodded. You may freely test it out with this mod

@Pious Skeleton
Have you checked AI sieges? During defense and attacking? I feel AI attacking is by far the worst.

https://community.creative-assembly.com/total-war/total-war-warhammer/bugs/7056-ai-siege-attacker-idle-focusing-too-hard-on-destroying-walls?page=1

Does this mod fix AI armies from breaking during siege battles when they have reinforcements?

Okay, I wanted to retest since, outside of the previous issue of frozen units, I was mostly just using the same map for these tests so I re-ran them on the Ash Plains map and I didn't notice most of these issues again which leads me to believe those issues may be a map-specific problem. There wasn't blobbing with the army in the couple of tests I ran.

The only issues that seemed to persist where Lords/Heroes running too far ahead of their army occasionally and the cav not wanting to cycle charge or diving into melee a split second after leaving though it was not something that happened with every engagement.

Everything else felt like how the mod's AI played previously which was perfect.

@Flogi Well, if CA has taken your adjustments and put them into the default AI programming, then they felt your AI changes were better than what they were using originally. Good work!

- Besides the lack of cycle charging, AI cav did not want to counter-charge my cav when it was of an equal or greater unit quality to it (Blood Knights vs their Demigryphs or Empire Knights) but they would not flee either. They'd take a charge without reacting while moving in the direction towards something they'd presumably want to charge. They were willing to charge my cav when they were superior to it (Demigryphs vs Hexwraiths or Black Knights)

3/3

Ok, good then it looks like I narrowed it down to what caused the freeze. Maybe I can tweak from this point onwards. How did you find the AI behavoir despite the not cycle charging cav?

Thanks for the update. I just ran the same test battle 3 times in a row and I haven't encountered the unit freezing issue again at all.

Previously, when attacking the frozen units, it would normally "wake them up" almost instantly but every now and then I'd get one that was completely unresponsive even when attacked.

One other more minor thing I've been noticing is that shock cav tend to remain in melee rather until they win or lose a combat rather than cycle charging.

I have updated the mod again. Maybe that eliminates the freezing issue.

Interesting. Thanks for that. What happens if you attack those units? Do they remain frozen?

Upon further testing, the issue seems to persist. I'm also noticing it with ranged units as well.

Test footage:
https://youtu.be/OiTApyfPL7k

Also whats kind of funny: It looks like CA has taken over most of my adjustments to the main faction AI.

@flogi Alright, not a problem at all. Glad to see you're still going strong with this mod and I look forward to using it more!

@Pious Skeleton: Ok I tried adjusting some values and updated some more stuff. Could not really test it extensively yet, but fought some battles and it looked quite good.

@flogi It was melee units/characters in a battle against the Empire and then the same later against Bretonnia in my Vlad campaign.

Karl on Deathclaw took off and then hovered in place, some Halberdiers stood in place, and a unit of Empire Knights stood in place. This was after the main lines met and after a period where these units were moving or even attacking previously. After freezing up, they remained stationary for the duration of the battle.

Bretonnia was the same but I only saw it happen with multiple units of Questing Knights and Grail Knights.

@Pious Skeleton: Any special units that tend to do that?

@sarumanthecursed: No idea, its very difficult to test this mod alone without many ppl giving input.

@MartialDoctor: I did, I'll probably push what I just have at this moment. Its very difficult to test unfortunately.

Seeing issues with AI occasionally just freezing and leaving multiple units idle mid battle.

Hoe does this play with the Ai Coordinated Assault mod by incata

Hello Flogi, really enjoyed using your mod previously. Just curious if you checked into the issues that Dr. Sinclair mentioned there a few months back.

OK, thanks for reporting. I don't know yet when I get to it, but I'll try to take a look in the next couple of days.

To add an example to the previous message, i've seen low level malekith use power of darkness, but lad absolutely refused to cast chillwind, making his power of darkness casts literally just damage himself/friendly heroes for no benefit.

It definitely feels worse than i remember it, maybe some CA's changes borked a few things.
I can definitely see a difference from vanilla so it *works* but AI is... extremely strange with it's spell usage, and spams spells it has no business casting / gains little to no benefit from at the time, while ignoring most area damage spells.
Most of this is tested with AI general but i see somewhat similiar behavior with enemy AI
I've seen lords and heroes sit on top of 80+ winds of magic completely refusing to use an AoE damage spell for the entire battle just because they didn't have the spells they usually like to spam.

Should still work.

Update???

@flogi

In the patch notes for 5.3 that got put out today there is listing of battle AI changes just so you are aware :)

Hi, sieges are really ez to win cuz the AI splits when you are being attacked (you can rush the lord with half garrison and the other half defend the other 2/3 sides or the central point) or when you attack enemies with no archers or just a few (cuz you can kill at least half of the army just using cannons, catapults, and flying units. It will be more realistic if the IA attacks you, even if it's defending, when it has the number superiorityduring sieges, or if the player has too many siege units.

Interesting. Understood.

@Guvenoren: The siege AI is mainly handled by the siege maps themselves, so this mod has limited influence on the siege behavior.

In siege assaults, the AI focus far too hard on capture points. They even trying to press through my units when I attack them, not even bothering to attack. Mainly ranged enemy units.

Does this mod make the AI more likely to attack when cheesed by artillery? Because even with this mod they can be cheesed pretty hard.

(main issues are in settlement battles)

@Heclas: Yes it does have quite a big effect from time to time. For example the AI charging a lot more consequently.

Hello, so you noticed that adjusting values ​​in "battle_ai_abilities_usage_templates_to_params_tables" can have an impact on the behavior of the AI ​​in battle?

will give it a try, thanks

@Vaxar Kun: Thx for reporting. I made some adjustments and the AI is using its summons again. Not as stupidly as in vanilla I may add.

>- AI will use its summons much more carefully

for me they didnt seem to use menace below at all.

Some more minor battle ai updates from devs in hotfix 5.2.3!

I believe it's in 5.2 since then AI flyers actually started even sallying out from behind the walls during siege to attack artillery, haven't seen this since fighting vampires in warhammer 2

Yeah here:

BATTLE AI

Fixed a bug where AI-controlled armies would not attack each other when the player was reinforcing one of them in battle.

Improved the AI's use of high ground.

Adjusted AI decision making when defending during an ambush battle to increase priority of fleeing the field.

Increased the priority of vulnerable artillery pieces when the AI selects targets in battle.

O really? I only heard about the campaign changes...

Heads up, CA made some minor changes to battle ai with 5.2.1

AI is noticeably better with this mod tysm for your work

I have kinda felt that recently, using ranked armies when sieging against AI cities is brutally easy. The AI never really groups up to assail your ranged units, they send like 1 at a time and they die always.

AI really doesn't know how to siege attack or siege defend. They never really go "all in".

I am no modding expert, but the behaviour of necromancers on hell steads is pretty decent.

Not sure if that helps

Trying to completely eliminate that behaviour will probably not work, although I try to tweak it again somehow (there is no obvious modifier that can be changed though).

flying lords like the skink chief on a terradactyl fly ahead of the army and suicide bomb themselves

@flogi

Understood, thank you.