I want to make a famous battle renactment of Hannibals assassult on Antioch.
Can anyone tell me how to have like 200 vs 300 without much lag?

Fenrirr wrote:
Can anyone tell me how to have like 200 vs 300 without much lag?

lag is not an issue here, its that the game will only let so many of them do battle at once. I think its around 20 to 30. not the point though. It didn't work when I tried to make a massive battle, so... I can't say it will work for you.

You sure. I'll see if I can.

I doubt you can have that many, but you don't need to create it down to the exact number of guys. You can just toss as many as you can in and there ya go.

Thanks

You can also set them to respawn to give the illusion of a bigger battle.

How to have them not lag? Get a really good graphics card, a lot of RAM, and a computer with large amounts of processing power.

Jetboy109 wrote:How to have them not lag? Get a really good graphics card, a lot of RAM, and a computer with large amounts of processing power.

That basically works for me, but I also play on a little netbook with very little lag -- and it has an unsupported graphics card.

I think your graphics setting, and keeping the graphics cache clear has a lot to do with general performance. A gig of ram with adequate cache will run adventures.

I'm guessing that if you want battle vistas with lots of soldiers, you may have to resort to back drops of some kind to help he illusion of numbers. There is also dust, mist, and lighting that can be used when you move in closer to help with the illusion of many participants.

Fenrirr wrote:I want to make a famous battle renactment of Hannibals assassult on Antioch.
Can anyone tell me how to have like 200 vs 300 without much lag?

Carthaginian Hannibal? I don't he ever went that far east.

That being said, 200 vs 300 is too big to handle (Lag, complexity, and the general unwieldy nature of battle choreography). I would say 40 vs 60 would be the best similar number.

If this is a Historical event, get my attention when you are done and I will toss it in a sporecast I have for those.

It would be possible if he was making a video.

Film one battle part then film another. Then mash them together. Or edit the overall footage to make copies of more of them to show up. Or of course mod the game to take out the limit.

I see it being possible...

One basic problem with large combats is that the combatants try to engage the closest enemy target. So when you have 50 vs. 50, it often happens that 50 all try to attack a single enemy that happens to be in the front of the rest (you get 50 vs. 1). But instead of all 50 swamping that one guy, what happens is that the closest 6 engage that one guy and the remaining 44 look at that one enemy waiting their turn to attack it instead of moving on and attacking some other enemy NPC.

At the same time, the enemy 50 is encountering the same problem.

One thing that reduces this problem is make sure that if you use advanced AI, you have
attack any when attack by any as one of your first AI lines. This makes it so that if an NPC is attacked it fights back against that attacker. If you don't have this line, sometimes NPC A will wait in line to attack that enemy A instead of attacking enemy B who is attacking NPC A.

DVDMaster wrote:One basic problem with large combats is that the combatants try to engage the closest enemy target. So when you have 50 vs. 50, it often happens that 50 all try to attack a single enemy that happens to be in the front of the rest (you get 50 vs. 1). But instead of all 50 swamping that one guy, what happens is that the closest 6 engage that one guy and the remaining 44 look at that one enemy waiting their turn to attack it instead of moving on and attacking some other enemy NPC.

At the same time, the enemy 50 is encountering the same problem.

One thing that reduces this problem is make sure that if you use advanced AI, you have
attack any when attack by any as one of your first AI lines. This makes it so that if an NPC is attacked it fights back against that attacker. If you don't have this line, sometimes NPC A will wait in line to attack that enemy A instead of attacking enemy B who is attacking NPC A.

I had not even though of this. Queuing up does not make for great melee, huh?

With the Battles I have made, they only do that with the first one to appear. Once that guy dies, everyone else is caught up and they simply start to attack the closest enemy.

Vilageidiotx wrote:With the Battles I have made, they only do that with the first one to appear. Once that guy dies, everyone else is caught up and they simply start to attack the closest enemy.

Often that is what happens, but it can depend on the terrain (you get queuing when you have a bottleneck). It also happens when you have lopsided groups (50 vs 5).

Another AI trick is to use:
attack any when attacked by any
shoot red team timer 10 seconds
attack red team always
The shoot red team timer 10 seconds gives the NPCs that are waiting in cue something to do. The net effect is that the close guys fight with melee attacks and rest shoot ranged attacks every 10 seconds. You can use:
attack any when attacked by any
shoot red team timer 10 seconds
shoot red team timer 10 seconds
attack red team always
To get them to shoot more often. However too many shoot timer lines makes the NPC stand stationary instead of advancing towards the enemy.

Vilageidiotx wrote:With the Battles I have made, they only do that with the first one to appear. Once that guy dies, everyone else is caught up and they simply start to attack the closest enemy.

Well, I would probably beg the question entirely and settle for backgrounds and vignettes. Only the scouts and officers on the mountain see that sort of thng any way.

Most of my writing tends to change perspective to the individuals or groups fairly quickly.

Could you not simulate from a distance with lines of different "polypods"?

Or perhaps from closer up, if they are strucutred right..

From a distance, foot soldiers rather quickly break into segmented files, and you are not going to need much detail unless you are down in melees.

Then simulate that with a few detailed polypod groups, some mist or dust, and your "main players"?