Cannon fodder

[Oneluv]

How difficult is it to strike a balance between stopping the AI just hopelessly suiciding its' units and the AI knowing how to use units as cannon fodder.

The disadvantaged human might waste a few units, hoping for a lucky outcome; If fortune favors then the battle continues, if not: a hasty retreat.

I recently encountered a relatively lrg.stack of Doviello wolf packs. In fact, larger than I had anticipated encountering when I declared war
Khazad' trebs helped me win the day but I was left feeling like maybe I had gotten away with something. I really wished the Doviello wolves would have taken the first shot at me. Not 100% sure they could have won but letting my trebs get a free wack at them was deadly for sure.

This also occured to me while playing against Doviello and it's really just a question of aesthetics. Any chance Dvs' could be required to have units stay with it's wolf packs? Or if not stay with them give the pack a % chance to boogie? Having wolves act cohesively without their masters to direct them seems sort of strange. FWIW.

 

[Oneluv]

After not getting any response from the previous post; I decided to play out the afor mentioned scenario from the Doviello side using the exact same units via duel match and WBuilder. I had 13 wolf packs, 12 Bstmen(3str) and Lucien attack my stack of 3 trebs, 1 SoK+copper+40ax+20str and 6 axmen with the same upgrades.

The Doviello, as you might suspect, just wiped the floor with me. 5 out of the 5 times I (khazad) got smoked.

The initial odds for the Doviello wolf packs were abt 12.5% in favor, undeniably bad odds. But so what? The survival of their Civ. hinged on their ability to pull the trigger on using cannon fodder. But instead they just sat there, got whacked and were destroyed. Hmmm.

Further, the wolves with 2 mobility and in home territory sat right next to me and didn't move. I'm dragging trebs across foreign land and the strongest most mobile units the enemy can present were essentially just sacrificed. Not even placed at a safe stand-off distance, just sitting idly by right next to trebuchets. Good doggies.

All this window dressing and fiddling is fun and wonderful and full of sizzle. I just wish there was a little more steak to be had. But...

since i can't program a DVR. Good on Ya' sisyphus









the Khazad rolled to World-wide hegemony.

 

[Skyre Noktis]

The AI does *in theory* understand the idea of suiciding units to soften stacks. It's probably being too conservative and needs tweaking a bit. In BTS, you don't have things like wolves, so it's not something that would be seen as quite as big a deal, probably.