I formed an alliance with the female orc Mage and watched her move several units back and forth between 2 hexes for more than 100 turns. She attacked a mob beyond a water hex with archers for the entire game, never killing it. She spammed fortresses all around the map for no apparent reason. Most of her actions/moves made little sense. I don't remember the W1 AI being this obviously broken; am I wrong or is the AI in this game very much worse than in W1? I know there's been threads on the AI problems, but is there a general consensus that the AI is not just faulty but utterly knackered?
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You found threads about AI, that's good. Why not using one of them, perhaps the last one, and post your comment there?
Last ones
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?773268-Devs-what-are-your-plans-for-the-AI
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum...shed-Impossible-Battle-for-Outplanes-feedback
Both nearly in parallel i think.
It's a real problem that no forum moderator is active here. Same topic spitted through hundred of threads, no managed thread to collect ideas is existing. :-(
And yes, for me AI is a major problem of the game, and for me it kills all the fun, so I don't play it. See last threads for more details^^
And if you want to, you find a posting with all AI-related threads and many problems and improvement suggestions linked in my signature.
Last ones
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?773268-Devs-what-are-your-plans-for-the-AI
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum...shed-Impossible-Battle-for-Outplanes-feedback
Both nearly in parallel i think.
It's a real problem that no forum moderator is active here. Same topic spitted through hundred of threads, no managed thread to collect ideas is existing. :-(
And yes, for me AI is a major problem of the game, and for me it kills all the fun, so I don't play it. See last threads for more details^^
And if you want to, you find a posting with all AI-related threads and many problems and improvement suggestions linked in my signature.
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Right Man-at-Arms, so the AI is the game's bugbear at the moment. I wonder are the Devs working on it? The patch notes thread doesn't mention anything being worked on atm. How to hell it isn't going to be left as it is.
Yes the AI has gotten worse since the first game. A lot of it were assuming has to do with bugs as a few weeks prior to launch the AI had some severe bugs that were worked out but there still MANY issues left to be resolved. The AI has always been Warlocks biggest weakness and all this time since the original launch has not helped. If it all was moddable like in say, Supreme Commander, then the community could get involved and poke around and try to help out. After all Supcom launched with a terrible AI but the modders came up with new AIs which were infinitely better.
And Man-at-arms, while I agree that there are existing threads on the subject, we honestly need more such threads. At least a new one each week to remind the devs that they are still failing horribly in this crucial area.
And Man-at-arms, while I agree that there are existing threads on the subject, we honestly need more such threads. At least a new one each week to remind the devs that they are still failing horribly in this crucial area.
I also wonder why there is so little criticism of the AI. Somehow they must have been forgotten in this game. I just finished a game in round 375. You other magicians have built no more units and have already been conquered by the neutral monsters.
The negative critic is not so small, the full amount of threads/postings in this forums for example is not very high. But at least each week new threads about AI problems, new postings, and new disappointed User related to AI coming and posting. So I think ratio of all postings to AI-related postings is not really small. And in addition to this comes the fact, that perhaps player are tired of talking about AI issues, because we are talking about same things all the time, most things exist already in W1. Many big AI issues have pointed out already, small one had been fixed, most big issues are open since W1. Sometimes I ask myself if it make sense to continue writing about AI issues.
In the link in my signature are 10 threads with x postings about AI listed, and a big collection of AI related problems. If someone think AI-related problems in this list are missing, please let me know, so I will add them.
When I read about W2 reviews for example on metacritic (there are also reviews of game magazines collected), also AI is often a mentioned aspect of the game, and then it's all the time marked as bad. Many talk about real good base and good game design, only lacking some specific points, and good AI is one of them.
Yes, often exploring is biggest challenge. AI mages sometimes get destroyed only be beasts/monster.
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Unfortunately, I stopped playing too because of stupid AI. Too bad the game is great, but all the interesting things in it are meaningless without real resistance from AI.
The developers said they are working on it, we will see.
The developers said they are working on it, we will see.
Game needs more challenge.
With AI being weak you can not make symetrical challenge like with MP games, where rules are fair between great mages.
What you need is asymetrical challenge. Have AI mages overpowered so to speak, and then have them lose due to good player tactics and bad enemy AI, despite having both better army and economy.
This is something I would expect from high game difficulty, but game does not deliver it currently.
With AI being weak you can not make symetrical challenge like with MP games, where rules are fair between great mages.
What you need is asymetrical challenge. Have AI mages overpowered so to speak, and then have them lose due to good player tactics and bad enemy AI, despite having both better army and economy.
This is something I would expect from high game difficulty, but game does not deliver it currently.
Pretty much every patch note released (stickied at the top of these forums) state that AI tweaks are being implemented.
And there are a lot of threads about this issue and we replied in several of them.
The best way of pushing a suggestion is to make a well formulated thread with good naming (after making a quick search to see if anyone else did it before) as a collected suggestions thread usually go bananas fast. Also, if you really feel a certain type of thread is needed, please feel free to make it yourself. We can sticky it for you if we feel it should be. Thank you for taking your time to post feedback!
TL;DR More tweaks to AI incoming
And there are a lot of threads about this issue and we replied in several of them.
The best way of pushing a suggestion is to make a well formulated thread with good naming (after making a quick search to see if anyone else did it before) as a collected suggestions thread usually go bananas fast. Also, if you really feel a certain type of thread is needed, please feel free to make it yourself. We can sticky it for you if we feel it should be. Thank you for taking your time to post feedback!
TL;DR More tweaks to AI incoming
What a lot of people don't seem to realise is that it's not the AI that is getting worse, it's the game that keeps getting more complex. As BjornB just said, the AI is continuously improving, but it's just not enough to keep up with increasing game complexity. It's not fundamentally worse, it's just performing worse within a more complex environment. It's all perception.
Now that that's been said, I wonder how much longer is it going to take for you to realise that if you started playing MP instead of complaining that the AI offers no challenge, you'd actually start enjoying yourselves.
Now that that's been said, I wonder how much longer is it going to take for you to realise that if you started playing MP instead of complaining that the AI offers no challenge, you'd actually start enjoying yourselves.
After watching AI get eaten by monsters over and over again, I went through all the races and buffed their defensive buildings (castles/magic towers) via the editor. I also buffed all the heroes a bit. Since then, the AI seems to have a better chance at accomplishing things. In a couple cases, they made it to Ardania before me. I also had a bit of a challenge when the AI declared war on me with a buffed hero.
Yes, it's a bandaid.... but it did help.
Yes, it's a bandaid.... but it did help.
@BjornB
1. Find a collection in the link in my Signature. Someone has to work on these big AI changes. Surely I can make a new post in a new thread with this, but then there will be more work on it?
2. Find many collections in older W1 forums. Player have often pointed out AI problems long ago, also in detail!
3. Find details to AI problems that I passed to you in past directly.
4. Yes, you did AI improvements, but that was more like fixing new heavy AI bugs which were coming with w2, like AI was not correctly attacking. But you never began to address the big AI problems in form of strategy, tactics, behavior! See the link in my Signature, with all problems still in the game and most of them were also in W2(!), but get more effect in W2 because of stronger beast/monster environment and more features. All these things has to be addressed with new AI behavior, most based on AI problems also were in W1, and nothing of that has improved much till now.
@Modjo:
Sorry for disagree, because often I am same opinion as you are. But as I posted already in other threads, not everybody wants to play MP. Competing in MP is an other style of competing, other playing style is needed, other playing time management is needed, other kind of frustration with winning and losing is coming up, more questioning balancing is comming up. It's a completely other style of enjoy the game. And as I said on other threads often, we are not talking about details, we are talking about that AI is looking really bad, do really bad things, and don't understand basic challenging strategy and not understand all game features. We are not talking about details in tactics which player uses, but about thinking "Why AI is doing that" all the time.
And you are not alone.
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I'm not pretending MP is like SP with a better AI, that would be like comparing apples and oranges. Don't take me wrong, there is a lot of frustration in MP too, some of it comes from the game itself, some of it come from the other players. What I'm saying is that if what you're looking for is a challenging opponent, then you should consider MP and stop whining about the AI. It's never going to reach competitive level, the sooner people realise that, the better for everyone.
The issue with MP is that games lack longevity. There is no that epic feeling of 4x game that exists in SP.
It's more like short duel of skills in 4x environment.
It's more like short duel of skills in 4x environment.
That's not necessarily true. You can have long games in MP depending on map size, configuration and players aggressiveness (or lack thereof).
I beg to differ. It is true the environment is more complex but in W1 AI GM were much more challenging. They sometimes expanded to as many as 20 cities and could eventually conquer the wild areas by luck, persistence and force of numbers. They produced a ton of units and waged war persistently. That was their main problem and as several people, including me, pointed out the AI could have been serious opposition to a human on impossible ... if they all ganged up and attacked together instead of fighting each other. Essentially the difficulty of SP games in W1 could have been ramped up enormously simply by adding a big bias in diplomacy for the AIs to make peace among themselves and pick fights with the human player, effectively dogpiling as it is called in other games. Unfortunately this was never done. But the W2 GM need a lot more than that diplomatic help, they need serious bonuses to things I will cover below. Most other strategy games give the AI very big bonuses on the top difficulty level and Warlock can follow on that path.
In W2 the AI does not seem to get beyond founding 5 cities now and so doesn't get to use the huge advantage it has in gold (is it X4 on Impossible difficulty?) by producing loads of units like it used to. When I run over their capital after killing their units faster than they can build them they often have 5000 gold! They do buy the gold perks for their units and when a unit gets killed the perks are recycled it seems. But the weak expansion means they don't get many resources for perks so that is limited. Also I don't think I've noticed any spell perks on units, so that is an area that it can be improved.
I think the easiest way to make the W2 AI more competitive is not to simply give the GMs even more gold or mana, it can't spend what it has already. The AI GM need more perks right form the start. I think adding a few extra of the non economic perks could make their troops tougher and giving them some good starting damage spells would make them perform better. So on Challenging give the AI 20 starting perks and on Impossible 30 starting perks
If all their troops start with Koatl Training, Instructor and Glorious Tactician they will be a lot better at dealing with the wild areas and conquer the neutral cities.Simply double the starting City limits for Impossible difficulty from 5 to 10 and do the same for perks from resources, just double the amounts, so they get 10 perks from 1 iron resource and so on. Increasing the limits will be a lot easier than trying to get the AI to deal with them like human players do.
Special cities are not used at all by the GMs. The gold and mana special cities are not needed as that aspect is mostly covered by the bonuses they get already but if the AI could aggressively settle fortresses they could present a much more formidable opposition.
I am sure there are other bonuses that could be given to the AI to bolster their fighting ability, like free temple units every 10 turns after turn 50 say but let's see if any of the changes I suggested above make a difference. I am not sure if any of these things can be put into a mod but if the developers don't do something like this I would be interested in playing an impossible version of the game that really was (nearly) impossible.
JJ
In W1 the environment was a lot simpler and there were less variables to take into account to make decisions therefore the AI was performing better. QED.
Do you really think the devs went about making the AI worse just for the sake of it?
As for the AI being a challenge in W1, I beg to differ as well.
I said "more of a challenge", I could still beat it without much effort. Its performance was variable but it was often better than I've seen in W2.
The W2 AI is significantly weaker in Sandbox mode than it was in W1. I guess the AI has been altered to play better in Exile mode, to move and attack between the planes and deal with the city limit. Somehow this has broken the Sandbox AI or perhaps it is the limitations imposed by the city limits and resources.
We probably need different flavours of AI behaviour for the different game modes.
JJ
The W2 AI is significantly weaker in Sandbox mode than it was in W1. I guess the AI has been altered to play better in Exile mode, to move and attack between the planes and deal with the city limit. Somehow this has broken the Sandbox AI or perhaps it is the limitations imposed by the city limits and resources.
We probably need different flavours of AI behaviour for the different game modes.
JJ
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@Man-At-Arms: Jörgen is well aware of the AI thread that you linked. Thank you for putting in your feedback.
We are reading your concerns and the AI is constantly being worked upon. I'm sorry if you feel it's not progressing in the pace you wish. We haven't abandoned working on it, so hopefully more improvements (in your opinion as well) should be coming soon.
We really appreciate your devotion guys!
Best Regards
Björn
We are reading your concerns and the AI is constantly being worked upon. I'm sorry if you feel it's not progressing in the pace you wish. We haven't abandoned working on it, so hopefully more improvements (in your opinion as well) should be coming soon.
We really appreciate your devotion guys!
Best Regards
Björn
But it definitely needs to be improved. I am also one of those that really doesn't want to play MP. The AI does some pretty basic things is a brain dead manner, especially creating units and crossing water. Really, if you start out on an island in Sandbox, you win.... The AI will never be able to effectively attack your capital. They cannot pull off an amphibious invasion....