More Thoughts on Cross Water Invasions

[TheArsenal]

I have no idea if this is possible at all. But concerning the question of cross water invasions.

Is it possible to create a new unit - a special version of the Troop Ship (available to the AI only) which would be fully loaded with five units the moment it was built - making the ship's cargo part of the unit itself? If it were, I guess the next step would be making building these ships and sending them to foreign shores a priority for the AI.

Again, I don't have a clue if this would work.

[Proserpine]

Why?

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by Proserpine
Why?

That would help the AI to start invasions accross the water. Unfortunatly there is no way to create a transporter with cargo on board directly you have to load it with every single unit. I worked on a solution, unfortunatly I don't have the time right now (I have to write tommorow an exam and in the next two weaks there are another two). This sollution deals with moving units that are just setting on the coast into transprts. And I think this is the way to go.

-Martin

[Pedrunn]

Or board half units that are inside a city when the a ship transpoter is built.

You could also add things like.

-If city is building sea transport make 5 units go to the city.
-Only board if city has more than 6 units.
-Only board if there isnt an enemy stack in a neighbor tile
-etc...

PS: The way you thought the AI would be cheating too much and too visible to the human.

[child of Thor]

Didn't Dale's WAW mod have a fix to make units near an empty troop ship embark and head towards enemy territory, i'm sure it was in one his readme's.

[centrifuge]

Originally posted by child of Thor
Didn't Dale's WAW mod have a fix to make units near an empty troop ship embark and head towards enemy territory, i'm sure it was in one his readme's.

It's been a while since I've played WAW, but I seem to recall this as well. I seem to remember the AI constantly landing small stacks on my shores. (I'd crush them right away, but they landed none-the-less )

[Peter Triggs]

TheArsenal,

As well as what Martin said (although that's probably just a programming challenge), it seems to me that a more basic problem with your suggestion would be: when to build the transports. The conditions under which you would want to do this seem to me to be very difficult to specify.

BTW, since you seem to be the local Naval fanatic, what do you think of increasing the movement points for all Naval units? Ships seem to move awful slowly compared to land units that can get bonuses for roads, etc. My inclination is to dramatically increase Naval movement rates. Do you think this would make them more fun to use?

[Locutus]

Well, I don't know about TheArsenal, but I certainly agree ships should have higher movement points!

[TheArsenal]

I think increasing the movement points for naval units makes sense. But only for some units as opposed to all. I like the slow rate of exploration in the early game, so I probably wouldn't want to see units like the coracle or trireme with any added movement. And because of the human's greater ability to move armies across water, I would probably not increase the movement points of personnel carrying units like long ships or troop ships as that (at least the way I play) would increase my advantage. At the same time, submarines, destroyers battleships, etc. do seem particularly slow when you compare them with how far a tank can move across a railroad. So to me I guess it would make sense if the naval units after, say, the ironclad, were given increased movement.

And in some ways, I guess, the limited movement of the early naval units make up for the fact that traveling by sea is exceedingly safe in the game as compared to naval travel of the era - no pirates, no storms, no getting lost at sea, no mutinies, just the occasional enemy ship.

[HuangShang]

Yeah huh... there aren't any natral disasters in the game... or unit disband b/c of loww moral and that stuff

[Peter Triggs]

In his review of RoN's Conquer The World beta, Rohag wrote:

The other glaring problem is that the AI can't yet handle naval operations. I must say I exploited this in a couple scenarios; going into the RTS game I knew from the strategic situation that it would involve significant naval action or amphibious invasion and I could relax, relatively speaking. This certainly needs fixing.

Looks like even Jason Coleman and his big huge Big Huge programming team are having problems with this one.

[Locutus]

Well, I've seen it working well enough in other games (though oddly enough I can't seem to recall any titles right now), so it must be a Civ thing

[TheArsenal]

Originally posted by Locutus
Well, I've seen it working well enough in other games (though oddly enough I can't seem to recall any titles right now), so it must be a Civ thing

Might be. Civ III/Ptw handles it poorly as well (but it doesn't surprise me, as, IMHO, most aspects of combat in that game come up short compared to CTP II.)

[nova]

Why not build a transport unit, with all the troops already on the ship, ready to invade?
This unit could cost the sum af the units and could have a certain combination of units or use default ones, like marines.
That could help a lot the AI because you don't have to teach anything to it, or am I wrong?

Nova.

PS:forgive me for missing for so long and prepare for even longer "vacations" since I am doing my military service ( and bringing Civ3 players to the true Ctp2 Faith, doing it)

[Zaphod Beeblebrox]

another thing i really dislike is that (afaik) you can only send in the groundtroops from one ship at one time when attacking cities/stacks directly from the shore. i'd like to see combined stacks of marines (or older amphibious assault units like in cradle) from several ships assisted by helicopters, planes, whatever

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by Zaphod Beeblebrox
another thing i really dislike is that (afaik) you can only send in the groundtroops from one ship at one time when attacking cities/stacks directly from the shore. i'd like to see combined stacks of marines (or older amphibious assault units like in cradle) from several ships assisted by helicopters, planes, whatever

Group the ships and your problem should be gone.

-Martin

[The Big Mc]

I think the problem in some instances could be solved in the later two ages of the game with the development of amphibious units.

in the mod I am doing the Messiah virus (a nasty piece of programming made by me) has access to the death walker unit a kind of advanced war walker that has the ability to enslave as well as the ability it be amphibious now in sea maps the virus gets me early on because my sea cities are virtually undefended for the first few turns well I start to make an army.

[Peter Triggs]

In the thread that led up to this one, TheArsenal wrote

I am finding the AI will send out a few naval units to pillage, but will only, occasionally, land units on your soil in stacks of one or two. ...

It sounds as though getting the AI to launch amphibious assaults is very difficult (I know ZERO about modding) but is it possible to get it to produce more naval units and patrol its shores more vigilantly? The naval aspect of the game is one of my favorites.

Very difficult? I've almost given up on this (more than once). But with a bit of luck I may be on to something:

[Peter Triggs]

Six turns later and the invasion is well under way:

[Immortal Wombat]

Anything I say here will sound stupid.

[Peter Triggs]

Liverpool fell to the Chinese. Because of the way these sea tactics handlers work, only one AI player gets to use them at a time. The Chinese can now pursue the war from their Liverpool base but the Hebrews are also both at war with me and in a position to launch a cross-water invasion. (Actually, they can get at me over land but it's faster by water.) So, a few turns later it was their turn.

Known problems: Lots. It's very fragile and I have a feeling that something unexpected will happen and my global arrays will collapse like a house of cards.

[Pedrunn]

Can we see your code? Or is it a secret?

[TheArsenal]

Wow. Excellent. And frightening.
It sounds like there are quite some things to hammer out before this goes live. But wow.

[Locutus]

Well, I know of a simple thing to say that isn't stupid: how?

Did you just increase the number of naval units built? If so, when, how many, with whom, where? Did you just change the strategy files or did you also create custom SLIC code?

It looks like a MedMod game. I've had naval invasions happen before in MedMod (although less challenging than Cradle, the AI seems much more intelligent there) but only in games where I was in all areas (especially militarily) inferior to the AI. Did this play a part here?

(BTW, just for the heck of it everyone should try playing a few games at the worst of their ability from time to time: you can see amazing things from the AI that you would never see when playing at your best).

[Locutus]

Oops, forgot to refresh the page after leaving it open for a couple of hours (was watching a movie ). So you did code SLIC. Could I have a look at the code? I'd love to see what it'll take to make those arrays collapse (and how to prevent it)
Plus, if it can be coded to work for one AI, there's no reason why it can't be made to work for several (though it will no doubt be tricky)...
(And I have a whole weekend to spare - a luxury I can rarely afford these days).

[tlatoani]

I say:



Even if it's still a pre-pre-alpha, it's a huge breakthrough.

[Peter Triggs]

OK, here's the current mess. But you're not going to be able to do anything with it except read it because it builds on stuff that I've been working on for about the past two years.

[Locutus]

Having a first glance right now...

'Not able to do' as in you wouldn't want that, or as in it's so complex you'll never understand it? In the latter case, don't underestimate the power of a few billion Borg drones putting all their computational power together

[Immortal Wombat]

I'm guessing as in "requires shed-loads of other CtB SLIC code which hasn't been publicly released"

[Peter Triggs]

IW guessed right.

One of the first things I did was to develop a system that measures how 'close' one civ is to another. This can be used to affect their strategies and provides data that is also useful for tactics.