Well Djinn, I guess I like them apples just fine.

But... you are helping your bots, and so have different results than I do. I've been spawning at the airfield and just camping the entire round while the bots do their thing.

Today I am trying a new basic approach to this map's strategies, and will see how things work if Matmata is heavily prioritized over Lower Gabes.

I think the Brits should defend Mareth once they take it, and go for Matmata, the Command Bunker, and the flag in D1 before trying to take the town.

I thought so as well at first,and indeed tried it that way to begin with. It doesn't work out in practice. If you go that route, the allies are too impossibly slow to mount any kind of organized assault without being driven out of Mareth eventually.

The only success I've had has been to work my way North, and then "Cleanup" the remaining hard points after the airfield has been taken.

Though the main push after Mareth is toward Lower Gabes, I do send some bots attacking Matmata at this time, mostly to keep the Germans from coming down and retaking Toujane.

The Command Bunker isn't targeted until after Matmata falls, which it rarely does.

The above is just summary;the tactics employed by the British are more detailed. As I write this the Brits have 19 different strategies available, and I'm not even finished with the SAI code. Close, but not finished yet.

Anyone here know how to put maps and spawn points on flags?

I know how.

Changing up control points, moving/adding/deleting spawns, changing Strategic Areas / SA Neighboring - all these things I can do. I just thought you knew also, and that you were going to work up a map version like the idea you posted.

I may make your changes to Luttich myself if no one else steps forward. Would rather first do some SAI coding on a map that doesn't need a makeover.

I have BF2 Editor open right now in fact. I have added some infantry and vehicle waypoints to Mareth Line, and am in the process of removing the tank blockades from the start of the road in to Toujane. The other static obstacles in Toujane I will leave alone - I just want to see what happens with those bot trapping hedgehogs out of the way.

"ESAI: Forgotten Hope Edition" exists now. I will post a d/l link as soon as I have a satisfactory FH2 map ESAI enabled and running the way I want.

Well, I've diven into Mareth Line and have done some coding. The situation at this point seems almost hopeless for the allies. I've been writing a custom ESAI plugin for the map, and using new strategies for the brits and standard ESAI strats for the germans.

I quite like the code I've written, except that it doesn't work yet. ESAI helps the Germans too for one thing. Typically both Toujane and Mareth are taken, then eventually the allies are driven out for the duration of the round.

The British infantry spawn is problematic because it interrupts the flow of tanks to the front. Can I make it for humans only, or is that cheating?

The bridges are a bot trap. Once the brits are on the other side, I need to keep them spawning on that side unless they are going to bring in armor.

Toujane is a bot trap for any vehicle. Ideally I would have infantry cap it and send all tanks to Mareth, but that is not possible within BF2.

I'd love to write bad AI for the Germans, but that would be cheating also.

You guys gave me a beast! I can, err, work on two maps at once, if someone wants to nominate a fun one.

Wow, this map is a beast! This is a challenge,alright. I have to correct some severe SP issues before even worrying about the SAI code.

I've managed to get this map in the editor (more on that in a bit) and change the layout of some of the spawn points

I've fixed the Allied Airfield so that bots only spawn there if there is an airplane for them to fly. There is a human spawn down there as well. This alleviates the first issue of having a third of the allied invasion force wandering around the bottom of the map doing nothing useful.

The tanks at the British Motor Pool area are still a nightmare - the bots are just camping them after spawn for the most part. I propose to start with trying to add vehicle waypoints to get them moving, and if that doesn't work, spawn the British tanks closer to the main road in.

As soon as I can get those allied tanks moving, I'll be ready to start adapting ESAI and creating FH2 specific AI modules. Yeah, I'm planning a version of ESAI specifically for FH2. The FH2 version will live in \mods\fh2 instead of \mods\bf2.

Now to my Bf2 Editor problem: every time in the editor when the map is loaded up, it crashes whenever I click Render-->Ai-->Toggle Draw AI. I need to be able to see the navmesh if I am going to try adding waypoints for the Brit tanks.

I'm not using the included \Editor folder from the level. I made my own, and am using just the sp3-64 GPO and AI folder. For purposes of editing, I have everything moved to layer 1 (default).

Can someone link me to a tut on setting up the Editor for use with FH2? I've set it up the way I've done with every other mod I've tinkered with, but still get that crash on AI draw.

Hi all, just found this forum. I'm the same Void from BFSP that wrote ESAI.

I'd like to point out that ESAI was created to replace the Vanilla BF2 Default strategies. It tries to be an improvement in general for the majority of SP maps out there. Map based custom strategies are always more effective.

In ESAI, overall patterns of bot spawning can be further tweaked by adding certain Object Type Flags to Strategic Areas in the file strategicareas.ai .

I'd also like to address something I read above, about ordering bots to cap certain flags under certain conditions. It was claimed this cannot be done. Not true! At a minimum of complexity, control points can be grouped into 10 "classes": Center,North,South,East,West,Flank,Route,Bridge,Remote,and Base. Different attack strategies can target one or more of any of these types.

If someone wants to give me a challenge, suggest a FH2 SP map that needs custom Strategic AI, and I will see what I can come up with.

The next step with ESAI is to find a mod interested in using it,people to test it, and so have a reason to keep developing it.