Zama - Historical Simulation - Good Joke part 2

[Petiloup]

Don't know if OP is trolling but I will take the bait.
AI is competent. The fact that it does not care about loosing generals is because they are not extremely important in this game, which is rather historically inaccurate (especially when it comes to C-in-C). The game genarelly does not factor the C4 that much although you do get the feeling of formations being unwieldy and you cannot just move them around how you want. You also loose control over the units once they clash.

TL,DR: the game is no simulation and it does not care about leaders and C4 that much which is historically inaccurate but it has enough ancient feel to it that I'm generally ok.

Quite a few good comments after reading:

- Totally right that most of the time I don't read back my post as some comments are just nasty but here those were quite civil so I take the time to reply.
- I had to google Troll as being 52 years old, it's not quite my language. Sorry about that. Now I'm not there to saw discord, just stating that I bought this hoping to play accurate/historical [enough] battles against a competent [enough]. But really far from anything as advertised as an accurate historical simulation. "Accurate simulation of Ancient battle in the last three centuries of the pre-Christian era." is therefore a false statement to boost sales.
- True enough I take pics with my camera as I didn't want to bother looking on how to do screenshots. I seldom do this so was a waste of time to look how to do it properly.
- True as well that I kept going over the 60% losses to see if at any point the rest of the troops would be routing any faster, but they were happy to stay there and be slaughtered.
- At last, I'm sure winning a battle would be much harder against an Human but I bought this game to play against an AI as advertised. That I would need to play against a human defeats my purpose of buying this game.

Now due to my old age I have read enough on Ancient Warfare to know how some battles have unfold and those are my points to state that this is no-simulation and I bought this game hoping to see one as advertised.

- Ancient battles have been lost due when the C-C was killed or decided to run away. Therefore many C-C were not in the front lines, maybe so they could see what is happening and react. Small details but I did the Battle of Bibracte playing the Gauls and routed Julius Ceasar unit with again no sweat for the rest of the troops. Just don't put those C-C there if it means nothing. Just because it's cute to have the Generals names doesn't make it a simulation when a general falls and no one cares. Now the game advertise clearly "Named generals who can influence combat and morale of units under their command." but when they are killed then it has no impact. False statement once more.
- Same battle the AI did send all it's Skirmishers [Javelin, Slingers, Archers,...] all alone to be slaughtered with the rest of the Roman army doing anything about it. 12% of the army gone [dispersed] as I did surround them unit by unit, the re-did my line nicely and went on to flank the Roman army and crush it. Competent AI? sorry but I beg to differ once more. You can try it as I tested that a few times with the same results, the AI sends 12% of it's army to the slaughter. Simply because the game plays unit by unit and not as an army. As said, you need to surround those before attacking the Light Foot so they don't evade. I know it's not accurate historically but it shows again that the AI has no idea how to handle units in the contexts of them being outflanked and retreat before hand. It just does not compute ad the AI is incompetent but this kind of game. Now maybe the Designers expect me to play by the rules so they don't bother to improve the AI and just expect me to charge Light Foot units so they can keep evading.
- Playing the battle of Pydna the Roman army was a confused mess because the AI as no clue on how to move troops in an formation flank to flank. I'll attach a pic taken by my camera... yes I know... I know. Here as well, just read about the Roman army and you'll know that discipline was just the main reason why Rome won so many battles and wars. Here I just took the Roman army piece by piece till it was crushed. Not even sweating over it.
- The second camera pic is the Battle of Bibracte again where I just went to outflank Julius Ceasar right flank without him asking his army to do anything about it. Now I don't ask the AI to be Julius Ceasar but shouldn't it at least have a notion that it is being outflanked? unless they are all blinds it's pretty obvious what I was trying to achieve.

So I'm pretty sure that a human player would play this much better than the AI but then just don't create an AI to sell an accurate historical simulation that can't handle it at all. Just don't bother. Now of course the designers need to put up some sort of pretense of an AI to sell more games.

Now why wouldn't I play against a human player? simply because the game mechanics are not suited for it. Let me explain:

- I had situation were some units were surrounded by Heavy Foot units in front and one side, in the rear by cavalry and missiles units. And those troops didn't care. You really need to read about Ancient battles that were lost because a few units started to panic being outflanked and in the mess of a battle I can't imagine soldiers fighting in a melee being able to see clearly that the units in their back are just light foot units that base on the rule of warfare can't really melee with them. This is just bullshit as you surely understand. Once you fear for your life, think you are in a hopeless situation then it's just that, you loose hope and most probably start running for your life.
- Cavalry and Light foot can evade charging units without loosing cohesion or even rolling some test to risk being disrupted or fragmented. Just put to the test to take 500 hundreds of your friends and run away from 500 hundreds cavalrymen bend to trust their lances into your belly, then stop turn around and just be in the same cohesion with the same buddy on your left, right, back and front. Sure enough you can't test that but hopefully you see my point.
- In the same example try to run side by side with a galloping horse without losing ground. In this game it happens repeatedly when light foot evade a cavalry charge and I have to roll my eyes every time. Believe you imagine what happened in a real battle, those light foot were just trampled over and gone.
- Now that the cavalry can evade fine but explain to me why they can turn around and move while evading a charge without being disrupted while you can't do that when doing a normal movement? any good explanation?
- I decided to hide some missile units in woods to surprise some other light foot units then to notice that woods don't really protect you as the enemy was doing about the same losses than I was doing to them while they were in open ground. Unless in that Ancient age the trees where made of butter then I'm not sure how to explain this either.
- Now most importantly, units have no reaction to the overall state of the army. In some battle I did manage to outflank both left and right flank, start attacking some units from the rear and still loose because the enemy troops were of superior quality or just more numerous. Sometimes while killing the 3 generals there. This is how some excellent C-C managed to beat all odds and won incredible battle that they should have lost. And it's impossible to recreate this in this game as to win you have to physically rout 60% of the army. While in reality many battles were lost because suddenly the troops of one of the two armies thought it was being close to a disaster and lost spirit or the C-C lost spirit. Here the units keep maneuvering the same way they did at the start whatever the situation of the army is... maybe with the exception of the free 45 degree turn if you have no generals. Once an army looses cohesion, spirit then it starts to be a mess than the other army if having still cohesion will use to do the killing blow. In FOGII nothing comes close to recreate this.

So again I'm just stating that to simulate ancient battle you need to put in place the necessary to be able to recreate the feel that could have been an Ancient battle.

Therefore I don't want to be a human player being able to outmaneuver a human opponent to just notice that it has zero impact.

Why bother?

Some might feel otherwise and will read comments, if any, on what I just posted.

[jomni]

Don't know if OP is trolling but I will take the bait.
Now the game advertise clearly "Named generals who can influence combat and morale of units under their command." but when they are killed then it has no impact. False statement once more.

If you want, there is a custom battle game mode where the death of a C-in-C results into a lost battle no matter what the rout percentage is. This condition is not activated in historical scenarios as I would think it's too much of a wildcard and people might not enjoy it. But I guess you think this is important. Just letting you know that it exists in the game in one way or another. I suppose someone can mod the historical scenario to also have this condition but the AI is not programmed to preserve their commander and would rather use the much needed combat bonus as it simulates combat results to make decisions.

[Mirek69]

Petiloup ---- What was the difficulty level AI ? I propose Deity

[Cheimison]

but I'm just insisting that this game is no simulation and certainly nothing close to being historical.

You bought a game based on toys where in alternating turns where little men standing in perfectly square blocks go in one of eight possible directions and deal mathematically defined 'damage' to each other, and are surprised it's not a simulation?

[Petiloup]

Petiloup ---- What was the difficulty level AI ? I propose Deity

As you can imagine, I'm getting that kind of reply in other posts I did on other games as well.

Now rest assured that changing the game difficulty level is not going to fix the game mechanics and have the AI play better. It just makes it more difficult, not more realistic.

On the comment about changing the setting to losing a battle automatically when the C-C dies, it doesn't change the fact either that the C-C wouldn't be in the front line squandering his live with no purpose.

Alexander the Great went charging himself at the head of it's Companions, and a clear example is the Battle of Gaugamela, but he did so only at the right time to win the battle.

So changing the setting would not change the fact that this game AI is not catered to think of a tactic to win a battle and respond to the human player movements with a proper tactic.

The AI just moves units here and there, that's it.

A setting will not change that.

[Petiloup]

but I'm just insisting that this game is no simulation and certainly nothing close to being historical.

You bought a game based on toys where in alternating turns where little men standing in perfectly square blocks go in one of eight possible directions and deal mathematically defined 'damage' to each other, and are surprised it's not a simulation?

That might be the best comment I have ever read, very well thought and straight to the point. Thanks.

But for me if you want to do a game about Ancient battles then the least you can do is study this period long enough to understand how battles were fought, how armies were moving, how C-C had an impact, how tactics were impacting troops, how battle were won and lost, then if you are passionate enough program the difference between a Phalanx based army, a barbarian horde, a Cataphract and a Roman legion.

For example, rest assured that if a Cataphract is charging a bunch of undisciplined troops, they will just go through and crush that unit without a sweat. It will be catastrophic but not in this game.

Now do the same with a Cataphract against a Phalanx and those horses would just be slaughtered in a jiffy, in reality they won't even try unless charging the flanks or the rear. Just read about it if you don't see what I mean.

Are you really going to tell me that, in 2017, this can't be programmed correctly enough?

[Cheimison]

But for me if you want to do a game about Ancient battles then the least you can do is study this period long enough to understand how battles were fought, how armies were moving, how C-C had an impact, how tactics were impacting troops, how battle were won and lost, then if you are passionate enough program the difference between a Phalanx based army, a barbarian horde, a Cataphract and a Roman legion.

For example, rest assured that if a Cataphract is charging a bunch of undisciplined troops, they will just go through and crush that unit without a sweat. It will be catastrophic but not in this game.

Now do the same with a Cataphract against a Phalanx and those horses would just be slaughtered in a jiffy, in reality they won't even try unless charging the flanks or the rear. Just read about it if you don't see what I mean.

Are you really going to tell me that, in 2017, this can't be programmed correctly enough?

You probably want to play Ancient Warfare or the Runequest 6th edition pen and paper game to get that much detail. A lot of the game is simplified for the AI, and also because it's based on a tabletop game where you're very limited in how many rules and dice rolls are tolerable.

I do agree that cataphracts or pretty much any kind of heavily armed men tend to waste peasant conscripts. But the Dutch did pretty well against the steel baguettes.

[76mm]

But for me if you want to do a game about Ancient battles then the least you can do is study this period long enough to understand how battles were fought, how armies were moving, how C-C had an impact, how tactics were impacting troops, how battle were won and lost, then if you are passionate enough program the difference between a Phalanx based army, a barbarian horde, a Cataphract and a Roman legion.

Frankly, to claim that Richard does not "understand how battles were fought, how armies were moving, how CC had an impact" etc etc. is, well, ridiculous. If you don't like some of his design decisions you are free to pass on this game and wait for the next, more realistic ancients game to come out--which probably won't happen for a looooong time.

[JaM2013]

petiloup: can you mention few battles where death of C-in-C caused lost battle? I cant remember of any.. (and i'm not asking for battles that were lost on battlefield and then C-in-C was killed.. but those where his death caused whole army to rout)

[76mm]

The only battle I can think of off the top of my head where a commander's death led to defeat is Eumenes' defeat of Craterus, in which Craterus died at the beginning of the battle, resulting in the rout of his right wing. Craterus' left wing was also defeated, so not clear if the whole defeat can be ascribed to his death.

But it does not seem to be a common occurence--for instance, on the other hand, one of the consul's death at Telamon did not prevent a Roman victory there.

[JorgenCAB]

Don't know if OP is trolling but I will take the bait.
AI is competent. The fact that it does not care about loosing generals is because they are not extremely important in this game, which is rather historically inaccurate (especially when it comes to C-in-C). The game genarelly does not factor the C4 that much although you do get the feeling of formations being unwieldy and you cannot just move them around how you want. You also loose control over the units once they clash.

TL,DR: the game is no simulation and it does not care about leaders and C4 that much which is historically inaccurate but it has enough ancient feel to it that I'm generally ok.

Quite a few good comments after reading:

- Totally right that most of the time I don't read back my post as some comments are just nasty but here those were quite civil so I take the time to reply.
- I had to google Troll as being 52 years old, it's not quite my language. Sorry about that. Now I'm not there to saw discord, just stating that I bought this hoping to play accurate/historical [enough] battles against a competent [enough]. But really far from anything as advertised as an accurate historical simulation. "Accurate simulation of Ancient battle in the last three centuries of the pre-Christian era." is therefore a false statement to boost sales.
- True enough I take pics with my camera as I didn't want to bother looking on how to do screenshots. I seldom do this so was a waste of time to look how to do it properly.
- True as well that I kept going over the 60% losses to see if at any point the rest of the troops would be routing any faster, but they were happy to stay there and be slaughtered.
- At last, I'm sure winning a battle would be much harder against an Human but I bought this game to play against an AI as advertised. That I would need to play against a human defeats my purpose of buying this game.

Now due to my old age I have read enough on Ancient Warfare to know how some battles have unfold and those are my points to state that this is no-simulation and I bought this game hoping to see one as advertised.

- Ancient battles have been lost due when the C-C was killed or decided to run away. Therefore many C-C were not in the front lines, maybe so they could see what is happening and react. Small details but I did the Battle of Bibracte playing the Gauls and routed Julius Ceasar unit with again no sweat for the rest of the troops. Just don't put those C-C there if it means nothing. Just because it's cute to have the Generals names doesn't make it a simulation when a general falls and no one cares. Now the game advertise clearly "Named generals who can influence combat and morale of units under their command." but when they are killed then it has no impact. False statement once more.
- Same battle the AI did send all it's Skirmishers [Javelin, Slingers, Archers,...] all alone to be slaughtered with the rest of the Roman army doing anything about it. 12% of the army gone [dispersed] as I did surround them unit by unit, the re-did my line nicely and went on to flank the Roman army and crush it. Competent AI? sorry but I beg to differ once more. You can try it as I tested that a few times with the same results, the AI sends 12% of it's army to the slaughter. Simply because the game plays unit by unit and not as an army. As said, you need to surround those before attacking the Light Foot so they don't evade. I know it's not accurate historically but it shows again that the AI has no idea how to handle units in the contexts of them being outflanked and retreat before hand. It just does not compute ad the AI is incompetent but this kind of game. Now maybe the Designers expect me to play by the rules so they don't bother to improve the AI and just expect me to charge Light Foot units so they can keep evading.
- Playing the battle of Pydna the Roman army was a confused mess because the AI as no clue on how to move troops in an formation flank to flank. I'll attach a pic taken by my camera... yes I know... I know. Here as well, just read about the Roman army and you'll know that discipline was just the main reason why Rome won so many battles and wars. Here I just took the Roman army piece by piece till it was crushed. Not even sweating over it.
- The second camera pic is the Battle of Bibracte again where I just went to outflank Julius Ceasar right flank without him asking his army to do anything about it. Now I don't ask the AI to be Julius Ceasar but shouldn't it at least have a notion that it is being outflanked? unless they are all blinds it's pretty obvious what I was trying to achieve.

So I'm pretty sure that a human player would play this much better than the AI but then just don't create an AI to sell an accurate historical simulation that can't handle it at all. Just don't bother. Now of course the designers need to put up some sort of pretense of an AI to sell more games.

Now why wouldn't I play against a human player? simply because the game mechanics are not suited for it. Let me explain:

- I had situation were some units were surrounded by Heavy Foot units in front and one side, in the rear by cavalry and missiles units. And those troops didn't care. You really need to read about Ancient battles that were lost because a few units started to panic being outflanked and in the mess of a battle I can't imagine soldiers fighting in a melee being able to see clearly that the units in their back are just light foot units that base on the rule of warfare can't really melee with them. This is just bullshit as you surely understand. Once you fear for your life, think you are in a hopeless situation then it's just that, you loose hope and most probably start running for your life.
- Cavalry and Light foot can evade charging units without loosing cohesion or even rolling some test to risk being disrupted or fragmented. Just put to the test to take 500 hundreds of your friends and run away from 500 hundreds cavalrymen bend to trust their lances into your belly, then stop turn around and just be in the same cohesion with the same buddy on your left, right, back and front. Sure enough you can't test that but hopefully you see my point.
- In the same example try to run side by side with a galloping horse without losing ground. In this game it happens repeatedly when light foot evade a cavalry charge and I have to roll my eyes every time. Believe you imagine what happened in a real battle, those light foot were just trampled over and gone.
- Now that the cavalry can evade fine but explain to me why they can turn around and move while evading a charge without being disrupted while you can't do that when doing a normal movement? any good explanation?
- I decided to hide some missile units in woods to surprise some other light foot units then to notice that woods don't really protect you as the enemy was doing about the same losses than I was doing to them while they were in open ground. Unless in that Ancient age the trees where made of butter then I'm not sure how to explain this either.
- Now most importantly, units have no reaction to the overall state of the army. In some battle I did manage to outflank both left and right flank, start attacking some units from the rear and still loose because the enemy troops were of superior quality or just more numerous. Sometimes while killing the 3 generals there. This is how some excellent C-C managed to beat all odds and won incredible battle that they should have lost. And it's impossible to recreate this in this game as to win you have to physically rout 60% of the army. While in reality many battles were lost because suddenly the troops of one of the two armies thought it was being close to a disaster and lost spirit or the C-C lost spirit. Here the units keep maneuvering the same way they did at the start whatever the situation of the army is... maybe with the exception of the free 45 degree turn if you have no generals. Once an army looses cohesion, spirit then it starts to be a mess than the other army if having still cohesion will use to do the killing blow. In FOGII nothing comes close to recreate this.

So again I'm just stating that to simulate ancient battle you need to put in place the necessary to be able to recreate the feel that could have been an Ancient battle.

Therefore I don't want to be a human player being able to outmaneuver a human opponent to just notice that it has zero impact.

Why bother?

Some might feel otherwise and will read comments, if any, on what I just posted.

While the game is in no way a perfect simulation of history it is ok if you play against a decently skilled human opponent. So before you dismiss the game based on the AI performance at least try to play against a human opponent that actually know and understand the game mechanic and tactical maneuvering of an entire army.

There are practically no AI in any game that are challenging unless you give them enormous benefit in resources or plain cheating of the game mechanics, this game are no exception. I think the AI in this game are decently good for smaller battles and get worse the larger a battle get, nevertheless easy to beat unless you give it insanely more resources to overwhelm you with.

[Cheimison]

There are practically no AI in any game that are challenging unless you give them enormous benefit in resources or plain cheating of the game mechanics, this game are no exception.

Yeah, I was just playing a campaign in RTW where the first battle ended when the lone enemy general's heavy cavalry charged my phalanx, before I had even engaged his main line. Then, last night, I formed a V-wedge of triple-deep phalanx on a bridge which they proceeded to funnel their entire army, including chariots, into. FoG2's AI is Temujin level compared to that.