Having trouble understanding how to make a force attack objective(s) on my built map

[MG327]

The Map is made, the forces distributed. The Germans are north and it is set to have the Axis friendly direction North. The Soviets are on the southern edge with the south being the friendly Allied direction.

When I go to test it the Germans sit there and don't move.

I set a point on the middle of the southern edge as the Axis territorial objective right where the road is.

How do I make the AI get those axis forces moving out to attack?

note: the Axis artillery is shelling the proper target area - that part works.

Any help sure would be appreciated!

[George MC]

It sounds like you need to create an AI Plan? See the link in my sig or check out this link:

http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=110294

[MG327]

Thanks George !

[MikeyD]

At its most basic the AI editor lets you paint destinations and assign travel times to your units. You can get considerably more sophisticated than that, but that's the basic concept.

[MG327]

I'm pretty good with setting up the units, trees, trenches , fences, bridges, grasses, roads, and flavor objects, fortifications, buildings, etc. and can build out a fairly detailed map in an hour.

a couple things that are fuzzy are:

1. I still don't get the way to paint the starting setup zones for each side.

2. When I use the elevation buttons - all 4 buttons seem to change every tile on the map - I just want to change them singly with the paintbrush.

[Combatintman]

These are pretty easy to solve ...

1. Set up zones have specific buttons (Allied 1, Allied 2, Allied 3, Axis 1, Axis 2 and Axis 3).

So let us say your German force is going to attack from the West and can setup anywhere on the West edge of the map. Just click Axis 1 and paint the Western edge of the map.

If however you have two German groups that are going to enter from the NW and the SW and you don't want the player to mix and match those groups during setup then you need to use 2 setup zones. To do this, just make your NW setup zone 'Axis 1' and your SW setup zone 'Axis 2'.

Let's say that you have 3 German groups and the premise of the scenario is that you have a remnant group in the centre of the map that is surrounded in a village which is going to be rescued by a Panther Bn attacking from the NW and a Pz IV Bn attacking from the SW.

Paint the NW area as 'Axis 1' and place your Panthers in there.

Paint the SW area as 'Axis 2' and place your Pz IVs there.

Paint the village areas as 'Axis 3' and place you remnants in there.

By doing this, the player can individually select defensive positions for the remnants within the village but cannot move those remnants to either Axis 1 or Axis 2. Likewise for the other groups.

If you don't want the player to be able to move units from their start positions, all you do is deploy the units in the unit editor without allocating a setup zone.

2. Elevation buttons - there is one button labelled 'Direct'. By clicking this you set the elevation for that single tile. However, what the editor will do is 'correct' all the other elevations as you have seen. Working around this is pretty simple.

Let's say you want to set an elevated W-E road at 21m elevation with the base terrain being 20m. Use the 'Direct' button as follows:

BASE 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20

ROAD 21 21 21 21 21 21 21 21 21 21 21 21 21 21 21 21 21 21 21 21 21 21 21 21 21

BASE 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20

Let's say you want to have a 22m high hill to the north of the road and an 18m depression south of the road but want to retain the base level of 20m elsewhere:

20 20 20 20

20 20 20 20

20 22 22 20

20 20 20 20

20 20 20 20

BASE 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20

ROAD 21 21 21 21 21 21 21 21 21 21 21 21 21 21 21 21 21 21 21 21 21 21 21 21 21

BASE 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20

20 20 20 20

20 20 20 20

20 18 18 20

20 20 20 20

20 20 20 20

Ok I had to edit this because of the way the forum formats this. The bold numbers are the ones that you put in with the 'Direct' button, ignore all the others as the terrain editor will allocate a suitable intervening elevation.

Very rough and ready but this should get you started. The important thing is to see what works best for you and remember that you don't have to use 'Direct' for every single elevation change (it also has performance effects on the map) because the 'correcting' behaviour of the map editor will automatically reshape the ground to make any unpainted areas fit naturally to your directed elevation changes.

Other people have different ways of doing this but this is the technique I use most frequently.

Hope this helps.

[MikeyD]

May I suggest you put aside you 'real' map briefly, open a new map and just play-play-play! Go crazy experimenting. See what does work, see what doesn't. see what happens when you place wildly different elevation points next to eachother. Try running water up the side of a hill just to see the results. Hit every button you can find in the editor, try your best to break the game. Then after you've finished discard it. When you then return to your 'real' map it'll seem like child's play.

[MG327]

Great - it's coming together now - thanks

[sburke]

May I suggest you put aside you 'real' map briefly, open a new map and just play-play-play! Go crazy experimenting. See what does work, see what doesn't. see what happens when you place wildly different elevation points next to eachother. Try running water up the side of a hill just to see the results. Hit every button you can find in the editor, try your best to break the game. Then after you've finished discard it. When you then return to your 'real' map it'll seem like child's play.

good plan, also find a map you really like and check it out in the editor to figure out how they did stuff. No need to reinvent the wheel.