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rominet
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Pharos siege problem

Tue Sep 30, 2014 8:07 am

Hi

I have played 2 game (-219 scenario) as romans against AI (level tribun) and usually, Pharos is falling after 4 or 6 months of siege and naval blocus.
Well!

Now, i am in a PEBM with Sval06 and we have chosen the same AI.

After 1 year (!) of siege and naval blocus, Pharos still holds, in spite of 3 breachs, each of them being immediately reparaired (!!).
Because of Hannibal's arriving in Cisalpine Gaul, i have been forced to retreat the Legions and i continue the siege (and naval blocus of course) with mercenaries hoplites.
My hope is Pharos will fall by lack of supply.

But 1 year later (so we are at the beginning of -217 !!!), Pharos is still in Démétrios hands (!!!!) and this one is beginning to attack my hoplites (!!!!!).

Here is the first screen of the attack:
Image

Now, 1 month later, one more attack:
Image

My question is: do you see a difference in Démétrios forces between the 2 screen?

No, no differences in spite of the fact these forces suffer losses and elements losses during the first attack.

So, there is a king of spontaneous generation here (!!!!!!).

At contrary, my hoplites are suffering real losses.


At this stage of our game, Sval06 and I decided to stop the PBEM and i continue it alone against AI only and concentrate myself on Pharos trouble.

I began to decrease the AI level from Tribun to Centurion (just in case).
And with Hannibal's army (in AI hands now) doing nothing in Cisalpine Gaul, i was able to send back 2 Legion/Alae at Pharos, in the hope of making breachs.


Do you guess what has happened?

2 years later (so we are in -215 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!), Pharos still holds but for the first time since 3 years, a new breach has be made.
But as my consul was not activated, i wasn't able to launch an assault.
Image


And, of course, 1 month later, my consul was activated, ready for attack, full of determination to exterminate and exterminate again this silly illyrians, ... but the breach has been repaired once again.
Image


As we say in France "shortest jokes are the best one's!!"

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Franciscus
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Tue Sep 30, 2014 8:29 am

Good.

I like when the AI can hold it's own and make real troubles for the players ;)

Jokes aside , and as always, impossible to make any analysis without a saved game...

Regards
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]

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rominet
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Tue Sep 30, 2014 9:07 am

Good.

I like when an AGEOD team member answers so quickly :D

Here it is:
[ATTACH]31655[/ATTACH]
[ATTACH]31656[/ATTACH]
Attachments
Scripts.rar
(867.94 KiB) Downloaded 253 times
Saves.rar
(2.49 MiB) Downloaded 255 times

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Franciscus
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Tue Sep 30, 2014 11:37 pm

Hi

Sorry, not much time for testing, just a few points:

- you have at your disposal 3 siege works RGD. You can play them in Pharos (although they are not regenerated)
- Pharos is a level 2 fort. As soon as 2 breaches are made, your roman army can assault and end the siege
- (gamey advice): if your consul is inactivated, just remove him from the stack and assault with the rest of your forces. Even if no other leader is present (and you have) and you have CP penalties, chances are an assault will be victorious
- finnaly I was not able to get up to March 215, to replicate your battles against demetrios. I can only speculate that as he is in possession of the city, the AI is buiilding new units there (not sure, though)

(BTW: in the 1.01 official patch if the roman player does not capture Pharos by 218 some harsh penalties will now occur (in your version they did not occur because of a bug, already corrected :cool :)

Regards
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]

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rominet
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Wed Oct 01, 2014 1:20 pm

Franciscus wrote:Hi

Sorry, not much time for testing, just a few points:

- you have at your disposal 3 siege works RGD. You can play them in Pharos (although they are not regenerated)
- Pharos is a level 2 fort. As soon as 2 breaches are made, your roman army can assault and end the siege
- (gamey advice): if your consul is inactivated, just remove him from the stack and assault with the rest of your forces. Even if no other leader is present (and you have) and you have CP penalties, chances are an assault will be victorious
- finnaly I was not able to get up to March 215, to replicate your battles against demetrios. I can only speculate that as he is in possession of the city, the AI is buiilding new units there (not sure, though)

(BTW: in the 1.01 official patch if the roman player does not capture Pharos by 218 some harsh penalties will now occur (in your version they did not occur because of a bug, already corrected :cool :)

Regards



Ok, thanks but you didn't answer the question.

The question is:
why, when i play against AI (level tribun), Pharos, under siege and naval blocus falls in few months (between 3 and 7 months)* but when i play a PBEM (with same level for AI), Pharos can hold more than 4 years(!!!), Demetrios systematicaly repairs any breach, makes counter attacks, is able to recover forces between 2 attacks so in one word, everything works as if Demetrios had no supply troubles and as if i wasn't making a complete hermetic siege and naval blocus?
You should at least see there is a trouble here.

Yes, i have noticed i had not penalty for not having captured Pharos before -217 which is a small and, after all, a fair compensation of my irrealistic Pharos trouble.




Now, i am answering your propositions.

You said:
you have at your disposal 3 siege works RGD. You can play them in Pharos (although they are not regenerated)

Considering what i have seen in this PBEM, i will spend 1 precious siege card to gain 1 breach and Demetrios will repair it immediatly.


- Pharos is a level 2 fort. As soon as 2 breaches are made, your roman army can assault and end the siege

Only 1 breach is enough to be able to assault a level 2 fort and in 4 years of siege with 2 Legion/Alae, my forces haven't managed to have at least 1 during 2 consecutive months, so no assault.


- (gamey advice): if your consul is inactivated, just remove him from the stack and assault with the rest of your forces. Even if no other leader is present (and you have) and you have CP penalties, chances are an assault will be victorious

Same answer as the previous one's.
Activated or not, if the conditions are not met, no assault.

- finnaly I was not able to get up to March 215, to replicate your battles against demetrios. I can only speculate that as he is in possession of the city, the AI is buiilding new units there (not sure, though)

He is in possesssion of the besieged city only, not the region which is 95% under of my control.
I never saw it is possible to build new units, or receive replacements in a beseiged city.




* this point is confirmed by other players.

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Franciscus
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Wed Oct 01, 2014 5:52 pm

Hi

I don't know if I have an answer.

What I can tell you is that:

- there is no difference whatsoever in the AI settings, code, scripts, or resources, rules, etc, of the pirates faction between a single-player or a PBEM game.
- I have played the "Pharos siege" as roman vs the AI countless times, testing scripts, etc. I have had sieges that lasted 3-4 months and I also have had completely failed campaigns, culminating in having to admit defeat and retire my troops from Illyria in 217.

So, don't make generalizations based on a PBEM game. You will see that there are hardly 2 Games that "Play" equal.

If you get again a strange apparent building of Units, please post a save.

I am sorry if my posts are not as helpful as you might like.

Regards
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]

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rominet
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Wed Oct 01, 2014 7:29 pm

Ok, thanks for the time you took even if it remains dark.

I will take avantage of my AAR to report everything seems strange to me in the game.

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Bohémond
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Wed Oct 01, 2014 7:31 pm

Do you play with a mod or vanilla ?

Regards
Marco, perché vai così forte in salita?» «Per abbreviare la mia agonia.

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rominet
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Wed Oct 01, 2014 7:47 pm

Vanilla

Numahr's mod will be for later

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rominet
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Fri Oct 03, 2014 8:33 pm

Hi

there is something new.
I tried to build a Circumvallatio for my hoplites at Pharos.

After the turn, the game told me that Circumvallatio was not possible because there must be a siege in the region (??).

Image

I also noticed that during the very short time of Demetrios attack, the siege symbol was disappearing but was still here after failure of attack.

At last, look at the detailed report of the battle:

Image

It is written that Demetrios's units are fighting in the vicinity of a supply source.

How do you interpret theses facts? What's wrong with the siege and naval blocus?

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Franciscus
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Fri Oct 03, 2014 9:40 pm

No saved game (+ backup, and if possible logs of the relevant turn) = no interpretation
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]

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rominet
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Sat Oct 04, 2014 7:56 am

Franciscus wrote:No saved game (+ backup, and if possible logs of the relevant turn) = no interpretation


Sorry, here, they are:
[ATTACH]31731[/ATTACH]
[ATTACH]31732[/ATTACH]
Attachments
Logs.rar
(1.83 KiB) Downloaded 237 times
Hannisval-Rominius.rar
(4.76 MiB) Downloaded 267 times

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Franciscus
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Mon Oct 06, 2014 11:33 pm

Hi

Sorry for a late feedback, but real life got in the way.

I discussed this with Pocus.

The issue is that the turn is processed in phases. The pirates leaving their city and attacking your army causes the siege to "disappear" for the engine. Next phase, the Circunvalatio card tries to take effect, but there is "no siege", and it fails (the message in the log is not very helpful, agreed). When turn resolution ends, the siege continues, but the circunvalatio failed.

We could possibly change the script for this RGD, perhaps making it possible even if no siege is ocurring. But I am afraid it could break the mechanism...

Anyhow, as it is it is not that hard to "rationalise" what happens:
- the romans are besieging Pharos and part of their forces start building outer defences against a possible attack by an enemy relief force (BTW, not that necessary as there are no enemies near by...)
- seeing this, the besieged pirates make a sortie in force and start to rout the first lines of the romans.
- in reaction, the commander orders the units building trenches, etc, for the circunvalatio works to abandon the shovels and pick up their swords.
- the re-combined roman army counter-attacks the pirates, that are forced to retreat to Pharos

it makes some sense, do you agree ?


(PS: as to the pirates being "near a supply source", it is true, as their city is a supply source. No mention is made on how much supply there is, though :) )

Regards
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]

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rominet
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Wed Oct 08, 2014 2:27 pm

Franciscus wrote:(PS: as to the pirates being "near a supply source", it is true, as their city is a supply source. No mention is made on how much supply there is, though :) )

Regards


The city (or region) shouldn't be a supply source for illyrians as it is 95% under roman control.

Anyway, thanks for your efforts; you will be able to follow the legendary Pharos resistance in the AAR.

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