Lots of problems with tactics

[Alonshowman]

I'm experiencing a lot of problems with tactics. Very often my characters just ignore the tactics I have defined for them. I'd say this happens about 20-30% of the time.

 

Here's an example of tactics ignored in a relatively straightforward fight with four skeletons in the Brecilian forest ruins:

1. Character: Alistair - Tactic: Shield bash on enemy with lowest health - Actual behaviour: Uses normal attacks
2. Character: Morrigan - Tactic: Horror on enemy with highest health - Actual behaviour: Uses normal attacks
3. Character: Protagonist - Tactic: Aggressive behaviour, enemy in range - Actual behaviour: Does nothing
4. Character: Alistair - Tactic: Shield pummel on enemy with lowest health - Actual behaviour: Uses normal attacks
5. Character: Morrigan - Tactic: Lightning on enemy affected by vulnerability hex, enemy affected by vulnerability hex - Actual behaviour: Uses normal attacks
6. Character: Leliana - Tactic: Aggressive behaviour, enemy in range - Actual behaviour: Does nothing

This makes combat quite frustrating because it requires me to look all the time at the action indicators to check whether everyone is doing what they are supposed to do.

 

I'm using several mods: JB3 textures, Advanced Tactics, More hairstyles, Bidelle's cosmetics, Custom number of tactics slots, QUDAO Fixpack, Dain's fixes and FTG UI mod. I have tried disabling my mods to check if one of them is causing the problem, but when I do it and try to load a saved game, the game complains that the mods are missing. It does give me the option to force the load of the saved game, but I don't think doing so would be wise, forcing the load would probably cause more problems than it solves.

 

So, any idea of what might be causing the problem and how to fix it?

Edited November 27, 2020 by PericoPalotesasdfa234

[Pasquale1223]

I would highly encourage you to study the wiki page about tactics - their actual operation is not entirely intuitive, and it's easy to misunderstand how to set them properly.

A couple of things I'd like to point out:
-- For each "round", the logic starts at the top of of the programmed tactics and examines the conditions of each one until it finds something it can do. By that, I mean the condition is met AND the programmed action is available (not on cooldown). If there's nothing programmed that fits (and is not on cooldown), it'll do a default attack on the current target and then start again from the top.

-- Some of the "Enemy:" conditions operate on the current target while others actually select a different target. Which is which is explained in the wiki page I linked.

Character: Protagonist - Tactic: Aggressive behaviour, enemy in range - Actual behaviour: Does nothing

What you've typed here is a condition, but does not include the action to take.

 

And I'll offer a couple of suggestions FWIW:

- I generally avoid using the "aggressive" behavior. I choose "ranged" for archers and mages and "default" for melee characters, because it tells them to avoid hostile AOE.

- I'm not sure why you're using (wasting?) talents/spells (and the stamina/mana) on lowest health. For clean-up duty (that is, to finish off enemies that are almost dead) I sometimes put Enemy: Lowest Health -> Attack at the bottom of the tactics list.

[theskymoves]

In addition the excellent explanation/advice from Pasquale1223, I'll throw in a mod-specific question: do you have the Ultimate Edition of the game? And if so, did you follow the somewhat unusual special instructions for installing CNTS to that version?

[Alonshowman]

I would highly encourage you to study the wiki page about tactics

That page could use some proofreading, I couldn't manage to understand much of what it says. I've done some proofreading myself of the parts I do understand. Still, it doesn't look like anything in that page explains the problems I described.

 

 

-- For each "round", the logic starts at the top of of the programmed tactics and examines the conditions of each one until it finds something it can do. By that, I mean the condition is met AND the programmed action is available (not on cooldown). If there's nothing programmed that fits (and is not on cooldown), it'll do a default attack on the current target and then start again from the top.

 

-- Some of the "Enemy:" conditions operate on the current target while others actually select a different target.

 

Again, it doesn't look like this explains any of the problems I described. For the record, in all of the cases I described the condition was met and the programmed action was available (not on cooldown).

 

 

 

Character: Protagonist - Tactic: Aggressive behaviour, enemy in range - Actual behaviour: Does nothing

What you've typed here is a condition, but does not include the action to take.

It's not a condition, it's a behaviour. According to the description a character with aggressive behaviour automatically attacks visible enemies (if no tactic applies, I guess), which means he should never stay there doing nothing in the middle of combat.

 

 

- I generally avoid using the "aggressive" behavior. I choose "ranged" for archers and mages and "default" for melee characters, because it tells them to avoid hostile AOE.

 

I use the aggressive behaviour for all of my characters because otherwise very often they just stay there in the middle of combat doing nothing, which means I have to do a lot of tedious micro management. It's true that the behaviours you suggested save some micro when there is hostile AoE, but I'd say that on average they save much less micro than the aggressive behaviour (when it works, at least).

 

 

- I'm not sure why you're using (wasting?) talents/spells (and the stamina/mana) on lowest health. For clean-up duty (that is, to finish off enemies that are almost dead) I sometimes put Enemy: Lowest Health -> Attack at the bottom of the tactics list.

 

The tactics I use for lowest health always go after another tactic with the same action but with the condition "enemy rank: elite or higher". For example, the tactic "Shield bash on enemy with lowest health" goes after the tactic "Shield bash on enemy with rank elite or higher". This means that the lowest health tactic only triggers when all the enemies are low level. In that scenario it's best to finish off first those that are already almost dead.

[Alonshowman]

In addition the excellent explanation/advice from Pasquale1223, I'll throw in a mod-specific question: do you have the Ultimate Edition of the game? And if so, did you follow the somewhat unusual special instructions for installing CNTS to that version?

That might have something to do with it. First I bought the standard edition, then I installed a few mods and then I bought the ultimate edition. I thought I would have to uninstall and reinstall everything, but when I launched the ultimate edition it worked with the mods straight away, so I assumed I didn't have to do anything else. So yeah, I'll check the special instructions for CNTS and tell you what happens.

[Alonshowman]

In addition the excellent explanation/advice from Pasquale1223, I'll throw in a mod-specific question: do you have the Ultimate Edition of the game? And if so, did you follow the somewhat unusual special instructions for installing CNTS to that version?

I have tried to follow the special instructions for CNTS, but it says that you have to install it with DAO mod manager. I have downloaded DAO mod manager and I can't figure out how to use it. The page of DAO mod manager has a link to instructions, but the link is dead. Do you know how to do this?

[theskymoves]

How do you normally install DAzip mods? I know you can use the native DAupdater that comes with the game (because that's what I use to install it), and installing DA Modder should work, as well... just don't use Vortex. How you install the DAzip is less important than following the steps after that, renaming the folder and copying the files to it.

 

Other than this, I don't have a link to any instructions on how to use DAO -ModManager, since I found it to be pretty intuitive. (Install program, set paths, put mods in storage folders, profit!)

[Alonshowman]

just don't use Vortex

OK, this is new for me. I have used Vortex for all my mods except one or two that were not very Vortex friendly. Coming from Baldur's Gate and its crazy complicated modding scene, I just thought that Vortex was a godsend. So what is wrong with Vortex? And, since there is something wrong with it, should I uninstall everything and reinstall without Vortex before proceeding with anything else?

[theskymoves]

I'm not an old skool or especially experienced modder - I've only been using and making mods for about a dozen years - but I do know a small bit about modding the Dragon Age series.

 

Modding DAO is more complex than most games (though probably not as bad as a modded up Balder's Gate Tutu install... I still get a headache thinking about that!), because there are multiple kinds of mods, each with special installation requirements.

 

Vortex might correctly install manual overrides, as they are merely a direct copy/paste of some files to a specific directory. (And I stress 'might' because I have actually not heard any anecdotal evidence of it.)

 

On the other hand, it is a well known bug that when installing DAzip packaged mods, Vortex can completely replace the addins.xml file, rather than appending it. This has the nasty side effect of effectively removing every DAzip that was previously installed (including official DLC!) and leaving the user with a working copy of only the last mod installed.

 

And Vortex can't install or configure .override packages, like NBaio.

[Alonshowman]

 

This has the nasty side effect of effectively removing every DAzip that was previously installed (including official DLC!) and leaving the user with a working copy of only the last mod installed.

Thank you for the background, @theskymoves. It doesn't look like this has happened with the mods I have installed, although I have to say that I couldn't really notice any improvement in the graphics after installing JB3 textures, so maybe that one didn't install properly.

 

Do you have any suggestion of how I should proceed in my case? Should I ditch Vortex altogether? And if so, what would be the recommended install method for Dragon Age mods?