Field of Glory II 1.5.20 Public Beta

Tamas
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Field of Glory II 1.5.20 Public Beta

Post by Tamas »

Hi Everyone,

We have another public beta for you. It has some important changes, so we would like to get your feedback on it before we make it official.

If you are interested, you can download the public beta update from this DIRECT LINK.

The public beta is also available on Steam, as a beta branch. To activate it, you need to use the Steam client:
1. In your Library, right-click Field of Glory II, and choose "Properties
2. In the new window, select the "Betas" tab
3. On the drop-down menu, select "openbeta - Open Beta", and click Close. Steam will proceed to update your game.


Please post your feedback in THIS SUBFORUM


Here is the list of changes:
Beta Version 1.5.20
The main change in this beta update is the removal of the Heavy Foot +1 CT modifier for “Below Average” or worse quality Heavy Foot.

Also, a couple of bug fixes (see main 1.5.20 changelog below) and two items that seem too trivial to include in the main changelog:
• Battle Reports and Situation Intro text boxes (the top two boxes) should now always be scrolled to the top when the Campaign stage screen first appears each stage.
• At the end of the campaign, “End” will be displayed instead of, for example, “Stage 10/9”.

Version 1.5.20
• Gameplay:
o Heavy Infantry that are of “Below Average” (or “Somewhat Disheartened”) or worse quality (quality <= 90) no longer get the +1 CT modifier for Heavy Foot.

• Manual:
o Change: Close Order Warbands and troops of “Below Average” (or “Somewhat Disheartened”) or worse quality are excluded from the +1 Cohesion Test modifier for being Heavy Foot.

• Bug Fixes:
o Fixed bug that corrupted campaign unit database if player rolled back to previous stage of campaign instead of playing one of the choices in a pursue/don't pursue decision.
o Fixed bug that could sometimes cause the game to crash if a new sandbox campaign was started after playing (or loading) another one in the same session.


Beta Version 1.5.19
• The new AI code for cavalry armies fixes an issue whereby in some circumstances the cavalry wing of a cavalry army that has no significant enemy force facing it might halt to wait for its own army’s centre to advance, rather than sweeping round the enemy flank. Please play some test games with balanced armies vs cavalry armies to check whether the new code seems to work well if the player places all or most of his army on one flank. A “cavalry army” is one that has only a small amount of non-light infantry. (You can tell whether the game considers it a cavalry army, because if so, it will initially deploy any non-light infantry in the rear).
• Please observe the effects of the new cavalry break off logic.

• AI:
o Improved AI for the cavalry wings of cavalry armies.
• Gameplay:
o Non-cataphract cavalry will now break off from infantry unless they will have a significant advantage in the ensuing melee. (Previously they would stay in combat if they had a very slight advantage, which tended to lead to an attritional combat that they were unlikely to win in the end). Break off logic for cataphracts has been left unchanged because they often have a better chance of winning the melee than the impact, so staying in combat if they have some advantage is often the better option.
MVP7
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Re: Field of Glory II 1.5.19 Public Beta

Post by MVP7 »

Sounds good. I'll try to find the time to play through some cavalry heavy campaign.
Latro
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Re: Field of Glory II 1.5.19 Public Beta

Post by Latro »

Not too sure if it's working.
I had a nomad archer unit attacked by hoplite inf, they lost 30 men in the melee but did not fall back.
Next turn they got attacked from their other front and the usual 'surround and destroy' happened, without me being able to extract my cavalry.
rbodleyscott
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Re: Field of Glory II 1.5.19 Public Beta

Post by rbodleyscott »

Latro wrote: Thu Sep 12, 2019 5:49 pm Not too sure if it's working.
I had a nomad archer unit attacked by hoplite inf, they lost 30 men in the melee but did not fall back.
Next turn they got attacked from their other front and the usual 'surround and destroy' happened, without me being able to extract my cavalry.
If this happens again, please can you attach a screenshot. The reason they did not break off may have been an enemy ZOC. (Break offs do not ignore ZOCs)
Richard Bodley Scott

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Latro
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Re: Field of Glory II 1.5.19 Public Beta

Post by Latro »

Could not reproduce the situation but I think you are right in that the unit was pinned by a diagonally facing unit.
melm
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Re: Field of Glory II 1.5.19 Public Beta

Post by melm »

I played one customed battle at last, Roman vs Sarmatian

I deployed as the OP suggests, concentrating to one flank. The new AI works as Sarmatian lancers opposing my other "vacant" flank advanced immediately. Shortly after, lancer in mid and the other flank also advanced. This indeed is different to the AI behavior in earlier version. I think AI works.
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Re: Field of Glory II 1.5.19 Public Beta

Post by rbodleyscott »

melm wrote: Mon Sep 16, 2019 3:22 pm I played one customed battle at last, Roman vs Sarmatian

I deployed as the OP suggests, concentrating to one flank. The new AI works as Sarmatian lancers opposing my other "vacant" flank advanced immediately. Shortly after, lancer in mid and the other flank also advanced. This indeed is different to the AI behavior in earlier version. I think AI works.
Thanks
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majgentob
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Re: Field of Glory II 1.5.19 Public Beta

Post by majgentob »

I'm worried. AI has stopped moving in formation, even when far from my army, and the processing of the individual moves seems MUCH slower. Can't tell you how the new AI is working because the large battle I built is going so much more slowly. Not really playable.

Points to consider----
Battle made in editor before the beta patch
100 vs 100 units (that size worked fairly well pre patch)
AI army is all-cavalry
Modded squad files to max out figures per unit (it looks really good,and it's a lot of fun when it works:))

Update:
Processing speed of moves improves on second turn
Tested another scenario I played before the patch, and I'm quite certain AI moved in formation for the first one or two turns.They did not move in formation post-patch.
Last edited by majgentob on Thu Sep 19, 2019 5:57 pm, edited 7 times in total.
rbodleyscott
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Re: Field of Glory II 1.5.19 Public Beta

Post by rbodleyscott »

majgentob wrote: Thu Sep 19, 2019 1:27 am I'm worried. AI has stopped moving in formation, even when far from my army, and the processing of the individual moves seems MUCH slower. Can't tell you how the new AI is working because the large battle I built is going so much more slowly. Not really playable.
Can you post a saved game please.
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majgentob
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Re: Field of Glory II 1.5.19 Public Beta

Post by majgentob »

rbodleyscott wrote: Thu Sep 19, 2019 6:56 am
majgentob wrote: Thu Sep 19, 2019 1:27 am I'm worried. AI has stopped moving in formation, even when far from my army, and the processing of the individual moves seems MUCH slower. Can't tell you how the new AI is working because the large battle I built is going so much more slowly. Not really playable.
Can you post a saved game please.
Good Morning!

Tried to attach save game, but I get a message that .LSF is not a supported format.
Tried to paste in the .LSF data in Notepad, but I exceeded the character limit.
Sent you a link to a Google doc with the LSF data via PM.
Please see updates in my original post.
Standing by.
Last edited by majgentob on Thu Sep 19, 2019 5:54 pm, edited 1 time in total.
rbodleyscott
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Re: Field of Glory II 1.5.19 Public Beta

Post by rbodleyscott »

majgentob wrote: Thu Sep 19, 2019 4:02 pm
rbodleyscott wrote: Thu Sep 19, 2019 6:56 am
majgentob wrote: Thu Sep 19, 2019 1:27 am I'm worried. AI has stopped moving in formation, even when far from my army, and the processing of the individual moves seems MUCH slower. Can't tell you how the new AI is working because the large battle I built is going so much more slowly. Not really playable.
Can you post a saved game please.
Good Morning!

Tried to attach save game, but I get a message that .LSF is not a supported format.
Tried to paste in the .LSF data in Notepad, but I exceeded the character limit.
Please see updates in my original post.
Standing by.
Could you .ZIP it and also the .BAM file (and .BSF file if any).
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majgentob
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Re: Field of Glory II 1.5.19 Public Beta

Post by majgentob »

Done. I zipped the whole folder from the campaigns folder in my docs. Hope that's OK. I attached it here, but I can't see that it's attached.
Last edited by majgentob on Thu Sep 19, 2019 6:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Field of Glory II 1.5.19 Public Beta

Post by rbodleyscott »

majgentob wrote: Thu Sep 19, 2019 5:58 pm Done. I zipped the whole folder from the campaigns folder in my docs. Hope that's OK.
Can you attach the .ZIP file to a post? (You won't be able to if it is larger than about 250k. It shouldn't be if you just include the .BAM and .BSF file for the scenario).
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majgentob
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Re: Field of Glory II 1.5.19 Public Beta

Post by majgentob »

Done!

As I wrote in my update to the original post, the processing of moves sped up after the first turn, but I'd recommend checking (if you have not done so already) that the formations are still working post beta patch.


Best,

mjt
Attachments
savegame and scenario files.rar
(171.04 KiB) Downloaded 112 times
rbodleyscott
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Re: Field of Glory II 1.5.19 Public Beta

Post by rbodleyscott »

majgentob wrote: Fri Sep 20, 2019 12:36 am Done!

As I wrote in my update to the original post, the processing of moves sped up after the first turn, but I'd recommend checking (if you have not done so already) that the formations are still working post beta patch.


Best,

mjt
Thanks. The issues are not due to the beta changes, but to problems with your created scenario.

1) The battle is extremely large (the Bulgars have 6682 points - 120 units). This is really too large for the game to cope with without loss of performance. The game can cope very well with 64 units per side, but performance seem to rapidly fall off after that. I recommend keeping the number of units down to a maximum of 64 on the larger side and using the "StrengthMultiplier" universal variable to scale the reported number of men in each unit to fit the historical situation (see below).

2) No teams have been assigned, so the whole AI army is all in one massive team - team 0.

3) It isn't using the Custom Battles AI (AI_Masterplan()), as there is no scenario script telling it to do so. Slith_RandomMap2.BSF is not a scenario script, it is the main custom battle script. Including it in the folder will not make an epic battle use the custom battles AI.

So the reason why the units are not using group moves is that they don't have any group orders! Or to put it another way, the reason why the high level AI isn't working is that there isn't any!

Here is a scenario script for your scenario (Test.BSF) which reassigns the units to teams to suit AI_Masterplan() at the start of the game, and then runs AI_Masterplan() each turn.

It still goes very slowly because of the number of units, but they do use group moves.

SCENARIOS.zip
(39.66 KiB) Downloaded 122 times

To make a scenario script, copy the SCENARIOTEMPLATE.BSF script from the main directory of the main build into the SCENARIOS subfolder of your custom folder, and rename it to match the name of your scenario .BAM file - in this case test.BSF to match test.BAM. Then, if you want the scenario to use AI_Masterplan(), remove the comment marks "//" from lines 36:

// AI_Masterplan(15);

and 60:

// AI_ReassignTeams(1);

(The comment marks tell the parser to ignore those lines, so by removing the comment marks you are activating them).

Note that AI_Masterplan() only works correctly if the armies are deployed with the player army on the left and the AI army on the right, as per custom battles. Hence many of the vanilla epic battles (including all of the reversed scenarios) use other, simpler, AI code.

If you are designing a historical scenario, you can scale the number of men per unit by editing line 50:

SetUniversalVar("StrengthMultiplier", 100);

The value of 100 is 100% of the default, so if you want to double the number of men in each unit (so you can reduce the number of units on each side in your scenario to 50 and 60, instead of 100 and 120), you just change the 100 on line 50 of the scenario script to 200. Note that this does not alter the way the units fight in any way, it just alters the reported number of men (and casualties to match).
Richard Bodley Scott

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majgentob
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Re: Field of Glory II 1.5.19 Public Beta

Post by majgentob »

Thanks so much! Sorry to send you down the rabbit hole of my bizarre way of making large scenarios. It's a strange world compared to the way the game is designed, but it's usually quite fun as it usually works with only small performance hits. For some reason the game was slower than usual on the first turn, but it started working much better bon the second turn. Huge relief, as it means I can keep making my ridiculously epic battles -- the fact that they work pretty well is a testimonial to the excellence of the game engine.

Re formation orders: In the past the giant Team 0, if it had an AI value of 16, would initially move simultaneously as one giant team until it got close enough to trigger the process of moving the units one at a time. That was great because it expidited the movement to contact. Now the game seems to be going right to the latter mode.

I will build some scenarios with the file you have so kindly provided using your suggestions. Many thanks for taking the time to provide these. You guys are the best!
Paul59
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Re: Field of Glory II 1.5.19 Public Beta

Post by Paul59 »

majgentob wrote: Fri Sep 20, 2019 9:06 am Thanks so much! Sorry to send you down the rabbit hole of my bizarre way of making large scenarios. It's a strange world compared to the way the game is designed, but it's usually quite fun as it usually works with only small performance hits. For some reason the game was slower than usual on the first turn, but it started working much better bon the second turn. Huge relief, as it means I can keep making my ridiculously epic battles -- the fact that they work pretty well is a testimonial to the excellence of the game engine.

Re formation orders: In the past the giant Team 0, if it had an AI value of 16, would initially move simultaneously as one giant team until it got close enough to trigger the process of moving the units one at a time. That was great because it expidited the movement to contact. Now the game seems to be going right to the latter mode.

I will build some scenarios with the file you have so kindly provided using your suggestions. Many thanks for taking the time to provide these. You guys are the best!
You have probably already seen these guides, but they explain how to assign units to teams and AI orders. Although strangely I omitted to mention the AI_Masterplan, perhaps I will add that later.

https://www.slitherine.com/forum/viewto ... 91&t=80250

https://www.slitherine.com/forum/viewto ... 91&t=81190


cheers
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Re: Field of Glory II 1.5.19 Public Beta

Post by rbodleyscott »

majgentob wrote: Fri Sep 20, 2019 9:06 am Re formation orders: In the past the giant Team 0, if it had an AI value of 16, would initially move simultaneously as one giant team
Strange. I wouldn't expect that, as 16 means "seek and destroy" i.e. every unit for itself.
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melm
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Re: Field of Glory II 1.5.19 Public Beta

Post by melm »

Having played another hot-seat mode custom game to check the performance of cavalry logic.

I found that now the lancers is more likely to fall back.
1. Charging the irregular, caused red loss, irregular passed the test and helm firm, lancers fell back. (even if the melee odds is about even)
2. Charging into the limitanei, limitanei held firm, lancers fell back.
3. Charging the limitanei again, limitanei disrupted, lancers stayed in melee. When it was charged by Auxilia Palatina, lances fell back.
4. Lancers got charged by irregular. Irregular held firm, lancers fell back.

It looks like that if lancer succeeded in disrupting the target, it will stay in fight. Otherwise, it isn't willing to stay in melee even with the irregular.
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Re: Field of Glory II 1.5.19 Public Beta

Post by rbodleyscott »

melm wrote: Sun Sep 22, 2019 8:37 am Having played another hot-seat mode custom game to check the performance of cavalry logic.

I found that now the lancers is more likely to fall back.
1. Charging the irregular, caused red loss, irregular passed the test and helm firm, lancers fell back. (even if the melee odds is about even)
2. Charging into the limitanei, limitanei held firm, lancers fell back.
3. Charging the limitanei again, limitanei disrupted, lancers stayed in melee. When it was charged by Auxilia Palatina, lances fell back.
4. Lancers got charged by irregular. Irregular held firm, lancers fell back.

It looks like that if lancer succeeded in disrupting the target, it will stay in fight. Otherwise, it isn't willing to stay in melee even with the irregular.
Thanks.

Of course it isn't specifically coded on the basis of whether the enemy is disrupted or not, but on what the overall chances are in the melee. Previously it just had to be (marginally) better than even (to not break off), now it has to be significantly more. Generally speaking, disrupting the enemy will be sufficient, but sometimes not even that vs elite troops - but a second charge vs disrupted enemy is likely to be more effective anyway.
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