[GEM 1.052] Possible bug with land warfare

[alagon]

Hello Thalassicus,

First of all, great mod as I enjoyed more with all the new expericen in GEM so far!! Thank you for your hard work!!

Last night, when I was playtesting with 1.052, I encountered something I don't know if it counts as a bug or just weird AI behaviour.

My scout was scouting around the southern continent, but this happened. As you saw from the picture, India and Babylon were waging war together against Songhai. And it had been many turns with current siege status-quo. (And more turns afterwards, even after I, the Roman empire in the north conquered three cities from French to the east, the siege remained like this.)

The Babylon composite bows, together with those of Indian would arrow the city to zero defence, but none of them will use melee troop to conquer it. The reason for Babylon was they were not building any melee troop at all (which like I said, could just be an AI behaviour problem, yet I did not observe in vanilla G&K).

As for India, I saw some melee troops elsewhere (only warriors, no spearman and swordman). So I make an educational guess that they stop building melee units after warriors, as I see only elephants and bows around. In addition, if you take a closer look at the elephant near Mumbai, it stacked with another composite bow unit for like forever, (which I believe it should not be happening.)

During my war with France, I gradually found I might be the only civilization in the world that uses Melee troop. I was very much frightened when I saw 6 composite bows at French city defence line in the 1st place. In one turn, under heavy French side concentrated fire, I lost 1 spearman, 1 chariot, 1 siege weapon, plus a severely wounded legion. However, once I got my legions up front, I easily dissolved the French line, and push to the end with almost no resistance.

Now, although it was 1300 AD in the screenshot, it was actually around the mid/end of classical era, and the beginning of Medieval time. So I guess the problem with AI was they only built what was the best for them at the moment (composite bow of course, but again it did not happen in vanilla G&K). Or maybe the lack of iron results this??

I don't know if it is a bug or not, but weird for sure. Anyway, hope this report will help!!

 

[Thalassicus]

Welcome to the forums alagon!

I think you forgot to attach the screenshot? I do understand what you're saying, however - the AI might not be building enough melee units. We're going to be working on this in the Armies stage of the project, this week. You can click here to follow the discussion in the AI Priorities thread.

 

[alagon]

Hey Thal!!

Ya, I forgot attach the image but I quickly edit my last post to re-attach it. Can you see it?? Just in case you don't I will do it again here.

Of course I was following the whole discussion as I always did. However I was more into both land and sea warfare, (and been waiting impatiently for quite sometimes), so I mostly read through the posts. I must say I am very much looking forward to see those weird AI behaviour of G&K got some serious tweak!!

And BTW, I am not sure about which version I was using back home (1.052 or 1.053??) because I am in the office. I will let you know once I get home!!

 

[Thalassicus]

Yes, I can see the screenshot now. The part that will probably help the AI most is when we add the Vanguard unit line this week, resourceless melee units for the AI to build in large quantities. They were rather good at using those units in the past.

 

[EmperorFool]

In my first game with GEM I found that while France built plenty of Warriors and Archers at the start, they only upgrade their Archers to Composite Bowmen despite having plenty of Iron. While I cannot confirm that they had discovered Iron Working (I made the mistake of playing on King which in VEM made the AI much weaker compared to King in Vanilla), they should at least have built Spearmen eventually. However, it seemed that they only replaced the Warriors with more Warriors, and for sure they had Bronze Working by then because they weren't that far behind.

 

[EmperorFool]

In my new game, Isabella and Catherine have besieged a city with four Chariot Archers and a Scout to bring it down to zero defense. Since it's on my border and I don't want Isabella to own it (she's got the Scout), I've entered the war to ensure that I can raze it and buy the two good tiles in my city's radius.

Invading with units that cannot take cities is nothing new in the Civilization series, but it's something that I really hope the Unofficial Patch can address once the game core is released.

I just scoped out Boudica's territory and found that she has an army consisting of 3 Composite Bowmen and 3 Chariot Archers.