How to do a "fallback" AI plan right?

[Bulletpoint]

Simple question here:

 

I want to make an enemy unit deploy behind a hedgerow, wait five minutes, then fall back across a field and take up position behind another hedgerow.

 

I can make them fall back just fine, but they end up sitting exposed in front of the hedgerow. How do I get the unit to go BEHIND the hedgerow? 

 

The thing is, I can only order the unit to a specific action square. Since the hedgerow runs straight through the square, it's up to the unit TacAI how to place itself, and they don't care that the enemy direction is set to 'North' and friendly direction set to 'South'.

 

Maybe if I ordered them to run through the hedgerow, and then spent a whole order more to move them back up to it, they would do it right. It just doubles the amount of work, and halves the amount of available orders.

[umlaut]

 

Maybe if I ordered them to run through the hedgerow, and then spent a whole order more to move them back up to it, they would do it right. It just doubles the amount of work, and halves the amount of available orders.

 

Alas, I think this is the only way to do it. I seem to remember that to be the answer to a similar question in another thread. Hopefully, we will sometime get a "face" function for the AI orders

[snake_eye]

@bulletpoint

@Umlaut

 

You are right. The only way is :

1/  to have the troops move back, well behing the hedgerow

2/ to order them to move close to it

That way they will deploy along the hedgerow and face the enemy  since they were on their last order moving toward them.

[ASL Veteran]

AI troops will only deploy along a certain side of a wall or hedgerow depending upon how the friendly edges are set.  For diagonals you can always place your waypoint at the spots where the tip of an action spot intersects with a wall but if you want to put your AI troops along the correct side of the wall in a action spot that the wall intersects you have to have your friendly edges set correctly.

 

IIRC AI troops will always align themselves on the same side of the wall as the friendly edge.  So if your friendly edge is the west side of the map then your AI troops will align themselves along the west side of the wall.  However, if you have any walls that go east to west such that you want the AI troops to align along the north or south side of the wall I think they will always align themselves along the north side of the wall.  So there are limitations as to how you can align the AI troops along walls and hedges since you will only get one side of each wall to work with depending upon what edge is the friendly edge.  If you have a two pronged attack with troops coming from both north and south and both prongs need to use walls you will not be able to use the walls correctly for both prongs.  The exception to that is with diagonal walls since you can always use the action spots where just a corner touches the wall.  Troops will always remain on that side of the wall with diagonals.

 

It generally isn't necessary to face the troops since they should hug the wall regardless.  Sure, they probably get a minor spotting disadvantage, but they will quickly turn around and fight the enemy like normal once the shooting starts.

[umlaut]

I just ran a little series of quick tests. I set a company of AI controlled germans to move up to a low wall in the middle of a map.

 

The result:

 

The AI troops will position themselves on the side of the wall that is opposite the enemy´s friendly edge.

 

The troops'  own friendly edge is irrelevant - according to these tests.

Edited August 14, 2015 by umlaut

[umlaut]

A bit more details:

 

Axis forces start at map´s southern edge. Allied hiding out of sight at the northern edge.

 

A low wall is placed in the middle of the map running east-west the entire width of the map. The axis AI orders are simply to move the german troops from the southern edge of the map to the wall.

 

I ran four different tests, with varying friendly edges:

 

Axis S, allied N - axis troops on south side of wall

 

Axis S, allied S - axis troops on north side of wall

 

Axis N, allied N - axis troops on south side of wall

 

Axis N, allied S - axis troops on north side of wall

 

 

 

[ASL Veteran]

Yeah, running tests is the only way to be sure and once you have the test results you can just write them down because it will always be the same after that.  I always have the enemy side opposite the friendly side so I never discovered that it was the enemy side and not the friendly side that affected it.  I guess you can teach an old dog a new trick.