Arrow unit attack the Battering Ram

Avoid unit isn’t the same that focusing other unit. A unit never choose who attack him, it only choose who he attack.
Actually the rule is :
For unit

  • Focus the closest unit and the weakest (if two unit are at the same distance, they will focus the one with the less remaining hp (it’s more complex than that)
    if no unit are seen by the unit, it focus building
    For siege unit, only balista and onager have the same behaviours all other siege unit have different logic.
    Building have the same logic as regular unit.

Because ram are not a threat to bow man like a wall isn’t a threat to him.
If you are not a threat to someone and it’s not a threat for you it’s quite logical to don’t be your top priority.

The question of 1 damage doesn’t mean that your oponnent cause you 1 damage.

Dump thing like this are patch, for example with a house you was able to attack unit. You click on the house and then click on attack the unit who attack the house and it deal 1 damage to the unit. It was “logic” that a house owner could defend himself and it was very weak

I know it’s not the same. But I don’t accept that cleverness should be reduced to only targeting and not movement. As targeting cleverness one-sidedly can only benefit ranged units.
If ranged units shall be made more “clever”, melee units need to be more clever aswell.
I don’t accept your rationalizing attempt. For me it looks like that you only try to buff ranged units with some kind of weird “we only talk about targeting here”. And I really dislike attemps like this. If you continue talking about auto-targeting I will talk about auto-avoiding unfavorable matchups aswell.

Melee unit are not dump like a bow man.
Melee unit had a big patch recently, you can’t anymore stack a lot of unit to deal a lot of damage. There is a limit per tile of how many unit can attack at the same time.
I would like this to also apply to range unit. It will remove the exploit of stacking bowman.

You talk like if unit are totally dump and attack the closest unit. Logic behind that are more complex and at the time of the release of AOE2 they was limited by the computer.
Unit search units and building in the closest tiles. Stop the research when it found unit. Choose the unit to attack in this same distance units(at the same distance you can have many units) found. If they was no unit, it choose the closest building found.
Wolf and boar are more clever than bow man.

Melee unit without wanted it avoid unit and it’s very efficient. The unit speed in a big fight (10 vs10) is very important. Make two teams of 20 units. In one team you double the walking speed and you will see the result.

Another good point. It makes no sense that only ranged units can stack. What’s the difference?
Melee units should be stackable aswell.

And I think you are basically the only one that says that melee pathing is better than ranged pathing. Especially with the new attack move micro. It’s impossible to move melee units in a fashion like this, they stupidly bump into each other all the time.

Don’t try to gaslight people here please, everybody knows that melee units behave way dumber even in the basic pathing than ranged ones.

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unit AI should be a lot better, but the game is made for computers from the pentium I era

very sad, but 100% accurate

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About stacking unit. I said it’s a great thing that they patch the stacking of melee unit and they should do the same for range unit.

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Well yeah you can put them on stand ground and they’ll stay put, but then if the other player is microing the archers he’ll just move them away or something and the rams will just be sitting there doing nothing xD

While this might be the case its a strategy game so instead of pure archers you can add siege of your own or melee to deal with rams.

other way around its a good strategy against mass archers to mix in rams…

i dont like taking away a strategic aspect in a strategy game…
There are also strategy’s with houses/rams in naval battles… dont want that to be removed either

I have to disagree with this comparison. Knights should attack pikes because they are the most threatening enemy unit. This one happens to work out fine because pikes are a melee unit and knights prioritize the closest enemy. Hypothetically, if every knight prioritized fighting stone walls (zero threat to them), while a couple of pikes could walk around killing them one by one, that would be a problem with the AI. This is exactly what we see with archers and rams.

Better to compare this with archers facing skirmishers, again the counter unit is a threat, and obviously the archers should fight back so the skirms do not kill them. However, the presence of a ram should not completely distract all of the archers, allowing the skirms to kill them. This would never happen in a real battle, self-preservation means shooting at the guy throwing javelins at you. Raining arrows on the nearest wooden box while the enemy picks off your friends one by one is not realistic behavior. It’s no different from archers shooting at the nearest house, but this was already programmed into their AI to be a poor decision if enemy units are around.

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This already is normal, but even in Castle Age, it takes 3-4 good Magonel shots to kill a single Battering Ram. Magonels are quite economically demanding.

Well obviously you can’t put your units in position then look away for 5 minutes and expect them to still be doing something useful, the point of stand ground here is to stop them rolling away so you have 1 less thing to micro.

While at some points in Castle Age this is doable, in the later part of the game, fights become wars of pressure, where conceding a single hard point is costly. You want to contend as many fronts as possible, whilst slipping as many raiders into enemy territory as possible. Towers can help against raiders, but they have to compete for stone. Moving your units to a different spot is either a concession, a luxury, or at best an advance. Microing means prioritizing areas. It only gets worse when the gold runs out.

Ah yes, the units that never rebel, always obey even way dumber stuff (ie.not doing anything while being attacked if they are on passive stance) should totally be expected to be rational. If they should be so smart as to avoid wasting shots, should they start hit and running by themselves while we are at it?

That is quite the extrapolation from the point of the thread. It’s a very basic concept, attack priority should consider which units can fight back. This is already implemented for nearly all units, but not for archers vs rams.

Tbh I would have no objection if all units treated rams/trebs as lower priority when choosing targets. A ram is not going to kill a knight, but nearby pikes are likely to if all the knights focus the ram. It’s easy enough to command a group of archers or knights to focus down a siege weapon whenever it is needed, and if left to the AI then they could kill rams after enemy units and before enemy buildings.

Edit: Maybe add Hussite Wagons to the list as well. Not to nerf their ability to tank archer fire, but just so their damage reduction mechanic will see some use (with archers firing at units behind the wagons). IMO Hussite Wagons should also have the ram armor class for bonus damage reasons, so this all fits together.

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Fun fact: rams can attack units. You got your priority.

It’s easy enough to shift click a group of units to focus down enemy troops whenever it is is needed, and if left to the AI they could kill enemy rams if they are the closest unit.

You see it’s a slippery slope. One post ago archers were supposed to be rational and not shoot the wooden box, now they must not shoot back the gunbox that is shooting them for gameplay reasons. So why this one civ-specific interaction should have the game rules accomodated for it but the balance of literally every civ (since everyone has rams) should be left out?

[quote=“CactusSteak2171, post:36, topic:195452”]
Fun fact: rams can attack units. You got your priority.[/quote]

lol, this is actually a great point. Rams CAN attack archers, but they only deal 1 damage so the AI is smart enough to choose a different target. If only archers had the same level of intelligence.

In Castle Age maybe, in Imperial this is too much micro and too much overkill.

The AI still would kill rams with the proposed target priority, as long as there is not a more significant threat within their LoS.

It’s not really a slippery slope, just includes wooden boxes within the category siege, and more specifically ram, that are designed with high pierce armor and health to survive arrow fire. That’s it, slope over, all flat ground beyond this. Other high PA enemies (Rattan, Huskarl, War Wagon, Tarkan) do not fit the category, and should be targeted based on proximity.

Some might argue for WW getting the same treatment, but I think there is a clear distinction between it and the other wooden boxes. WW is a cavalry archer, not a siege weapon and not a ram, which means it takes bonus damage from Skirmishers. Although it may be a losing battle for archers, they need to be consistent with skirmishers for AI targeting.

I could go either way on HW, depends on whether or not devs decide to give it the ram armor class. That was just a thought to showcase its unique ability, which almost never has an effect in games.

and that’s the reason why rams are added to a composition: to make ranged units less effective

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why theres a need to argue on this issue?

Ram is designed to soak arrow damage, game designed to reward players who does the micro. imagine you have a player just spam units and use attack move and outplays their opponent whos doing more work with micro, nobody would want to micro at that point.

I wouldnt be surprised if this guy is trolling.

@OP, if you aren’t trolling and don’t like current design, you can create your own mod and own ram behavior.

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Sure, I’m aware why people do it, I use this trick myself. It just seems like an unintended mechanic that has been in the game so long players don’t want change. I’m obviously open to smarter AI, and then battering rams would be created for battering, not zigzagging in an open field to distract archers.