AI "reaction" question

[wulfir]

dita said:
My scenario was a human player defend, and all the victory hexes were in the human players control, I assume that this is what effected the "reaction" and made AI the units advance.

Yes, I would suspect that is the case. My method might be of limited use to you though, but it's the only way I know of making the AI sticking to reaction turn. Note also that it isn't 100% foolproof, sometimes the AI makes up it's own mind about how it wants to run things.

What I do to make some units stay in place and some advance is this:

1 - Figure out what units I want the AI to have defending. Set the mission to AI delay and purchase the units. Their reaction turn is automatically set to 99. These troops will not move unless routed or forced to make the 'take back VH flags counterattack' move that usually happens at the end of a game.

2 - Figure out what units I want the AI to move around with. Set the mission to meeting engagement and purchase the units. These units will also have their reaction turn set to 99 so I will edit them to whatever turn I want them to start moving. These troops will generally behave as if they were on an advance mission.

3 - Switch back the mission to AI delay before saving.
- CRITICALLY IMPORTANT! - if the AI mission is meeting engagement, advance or assault reaction turns will be ignored. The AI will advance forces even if starting the game in possesion of all VHs.


Btw, on AI assault missions: you can time AI artillery to land on a specific turn by shifting the artillery around in the bombard menu increasing the delay of the firemission. If the AI is assaulting it will often fire off map arty on turn 0 and depending on the map this might land in crazy areas. Or you can make AI off map assets turn 1 reinforcements (I often do this to prevent turn 0 fire).