Ai ignoring my melee units

[VioletGrey\\TTV]

Whats up with that? The ai just ignores my front units and walks his stuff right through them into my archers. Especially annoying with cathay since you need to keep your units close for the harmony buff. The battle for sleneshes soul was a nightmare since his units just walk past my celestial guards and sentinels and just shreed my archers, even after turning of the "keep Formation" on them. In the end i had to ditch my archers and artillery and just got melee units that took heavy losses fighting slenesh.

[The Void Boy]

it's a new feature in the game. In the past even if the unit models got knocked down, the game would behave as if the unit's formation was still in place and units would rush to get back in formation. Now for the first time in maybe forever, you can actually break apart unit formations to pull fast units or monstrous units through an enemy unit to attack a back line.

That part if fine. The problem is still that Bracing doesn't really work fully. It'll block some of the charge bonus, but it doesn't have any bearing on how many units get knocked down from a charge. Counter-charging cavalry with melee infantry is still the way to go.

[Roflberries]

My response to another post:

From my experience this seems to be an issue with the formation attack toggle that Cathay has on their infantry. Turn it off and it's not quite as bad, although super high mass units like stonehorns will still be able to pull through.

[Draken]

I think the AI gives constant attack/move orders to go after your vulnerable units.
Things like casters or ranged units.
This means that the enemy units are basically force moving through your units. Similar how players use it to get their cavalry out of an infantry surround. The good new is that they don't attack the units they are pulling through and are taking free damage while doing it.

Try to make your frontlines thicker or bait them with one vulnerable unit while you shoot them to pieces with the rest. During Ogre attacks on my caravans I can reliable get the enemy Tyrant Lord to get stuck in two jade spear units by making them 7 units deep and putting them directly in front of my magistrate.

[sg1darkcalling]

You can bait the enemy for example. I was confused at first when I saw the enemy constantly break through my front line and focus my vulnerable back line. But the thing is the AI is predictable. So you know they will always do it so you account for it.

I just put anti large spears near my vulnerable ranged to defend them. When they try to break through to my back line they get collapsed on by my spears to death if they are monsters. Plus make sure you have your ranged scattered so if they focus one your other ranged can support them and focus fire whatever breaks to the back line. I always like to keep my ranged back and seperate so they dont get caught in fighting or blob up. That way you can micro them effectively and its harder for the enemy to focus your ranged.

If you can afford it, always, always have anti large units protecting your back line. your archers and artillary protect them with anti large and the AI will almost always suicide his best units into them trying to get your back line.

[sg1darkcalling]

Kisvlev is actually amazing thanks to the fact they are hybrid units. One strategy I like with them is even if your ranged get focused down they are sturdy combatants. If you can pick apart enemy units you can basically take your extra and idle units after and flank the enemy with their ranged. I turned a losing game around against nurgle that way.

Near the end my front line managed to cripple some of his units. So I took the free units and flanked his remaining units and used their range to cripple the rest of his troops. Earlier I was losing hard and all of my ranged were focused early and losing fights.

[sg1darkcalling]

Even in multiplayer having a turtle with a few ranged protected by anti large works. I used to main skaven before they were popular and got the new units and I never lost. I made a box with my units and it was impenetrable. The enemy couldn't get to my few artillery and death and poison wind globes and my ranged would just whittle their army down without me needing for my front lines to even break ranked just by keeping all units in defend mode.

It is so fun. You have a front line of skaaven slaves to slow the enemy down and tire them. Followed by a stronger front line of clan rats which acts as a second line of defense. They have to get through both while artillery and poison wind and death globes destroy their infantry. And if they try to target your back line then the elite halberds and poison winds which have anti large destroy anything that tries to focus the back line be it cav or large monsters. You almost never lose.....

[VioletGrey\\TTV]

Originally posted by Roflberries:

My response to another post:

From my experience this seems to be an issue with the formation attack toggle that Cathay has on their infantry. Turn it off and it's not quite as bad, although super high mass units like stonehorns will still be able to pull through.

i did disable it but that didnt really change anything.

Originally posted by Draken:

I think the AI gives constant attack/move orders to go after your vulnerable units.
Things like casters or ranged units.
This means that the enemy units are basically force moving through your units. Similar how players use it to get their cavalry out of an infantry surround. The good new is that they don't attack the units they are pulling through and are taking free damage while doing it.

Try to make your frontlines thicker or bait them with one vulnerable unit while you shoot them to pieces with the rest. During Ogre attacks on my caravans I can reliable get the enemy Tyrant Lord to get stuck in two jade spear units by making them 7 units deep and putting them directly in front of my magistrate.

yes my caster gets constantly sniped as well like that most of the time i dont even notice cause i try to save my units.

Originally posted by The Void Boy:

it's a new feature in the game. In the past even if the unit models got knocked down, the game would behave as if the unit's formation was still in place and units would rush to get back in formation. Now for the first time in maybe forever, you can actually break apart unit formations to pull fast units or monstrous units through an enemy unit to attack a back line.

That part if fine. The problem is still that Bracing doesn't really work fully. It'll block some of the charge bonus, but it doesn't have any bearing on how many units get knocked down from a charge. Counter-charging cavalry with melee infantry is still the way to go.

quite the stupid new feature i must say since this counters the cathay harmony mechanic, unless you have some melee units dedicated to your ranged units but that also dosnt change the fact that my ranged units will always be engaged in melee. in case of slenesh even when i got melee units right away to attack his units in the back they just melt my ranged units way faster then my melee units can kill his attacking unit. i just feel like that all use for proper formations is gone because the AI can just ignore it.

[Draken]

@VioletGrey

I did was the following:

Put your frontline units in a deeper formation, that should slow down the enemy units a bit.
Place a vulnerable single entity like a caster behind the frontline.
Place Iron Hail Gunners behind the caster.

Any unit sneaking through your frontline will most likely go after the caster and gets blasted by the Iron Hail Gunners instead. At least that's what is working quite well for me.

[VioletGrey\\TTV]

Originally posted by Draken:

@VioletGrey

I did was the following:

Put your frontline units in a deeper formation, that should slow down the enemy units a bit.
Place a vulnerable single entity like a caster behind the frontline.
Place Iron Hail Gunners behind the caster.

Any unit sneaking through your frontline will most likely go after the caster and gets blasted by the Iron Hail Gunners instead. At least that's what is working quite well for me.

i did imploy that too yes. and that works really well if there is 1 unit coming through. anything more and the guns will usualy get attacked too in my experience.

[Cacomistle]

When I fought ogres as western provinces, I went pretty melee heavy. Ai tried the same sort of pull ogres through the line thing. My ranged in each army was just a few peasant bowmen, who didn't matter a ton, so I just ran them around away from wherever ogres were trying to break through. My jade halberds and even peasant spears to a lesser degree ended up with 1000 value and near 0 damage taken every fight and my peasant archers still managed a few hundred from the moments of relative safety.

So I think you just go a bit more melee heavy vs melee factions than in previous games. If they try to pull through melee, they just get killed by the melee. Having a couple of the flying cav as backline sweepers works well too.

[Kharnath]

i've seen mob units walk straight through phalanx formations in rome 2 total war. this has been an issue for a long time

[Dou B Jin]

I can tell you its definitely not a feature. Heros in TW 2 had a horrible tendency to do this as well but melee always had an easier time tieing them down as they should since thats part of their role. With TW3 I've had cases where cavalry would suicide charge into my front-line halberd units trying to get into my range units and usually lose 80% of their health without fighting in the process if they have lower mass.

The AI by default are going after targets that are advantageous so monster and large by default will prioritize your range and artillery and it has been like this since TW 1 but for w/e reason TW3 they will completely ignore anything between it and the units it's tunneling.

Melee units do not take into account a range unit's range attack as their threat level so to the enemy AI the range units will always be an easier target against your range unless that range also comes with some ridiculous melee power.

The AI's large units will generally have an easier time pulling out or going through your units because they will constantly spam command to the units to do so until they hit the target they want so when you got a range unit near your melee it will constantly command the unit to aim for your range instead even when they're inside a blob of melee for some reason.

This was a huge issues while I was doing demon prince quests as Cathay where enemy monsters would run through 4 lines of celestial dragon guard trying to reach my crossbowmen so I opted to just withdraw all my range units and sure enough the cavalry and monsters actually attack my melee again. It actually made the fight faster because the enemy wasnt wasting time tunneling my range.

[Hexagoros]

Originally posted by sg1darkcalling:

You can bait the enemy for example. I was confused at first when I saw the enemy constantly break through my front line and focus my vulnerable back line. But the thing is the AI is predictable. So you know they will always do it so you account for it.

That doesn't make it fun, and makes for some 'very' odd looking situations, which are just immersion breaking - and yes, immersion counts if you're playing solo, which most TW players do.

[omar_uav]

yeah no more it feels they are units, more like individual soldiers , and the AI can abuse this mechanic pretty much, because AI can spam attack order which unit would keep ignoring units they clashed with and attack specific target

[chickabumpbump]

I literally just did the Slanesh fight with Cathay, my melee couldn’t hold ANYTHING I spent my entire battle with this stupid blob of chariots slowly pushing through people and my archers refusing to run off.

Then many of my melee units stop attacking and disengage!!

They didn’t test this. This wasn’t ready. **** this game and I’m glad I refunded it and played for free on gamepass