The AI in 1.12 is flat out broke when it comes to waging war. Its fine fighting other AIs as they are broke too so it evens things out, but against the player it is just crippled. On my current map I setup a me vs team of 4 vs team of 4, all AIs set to Expert. I figured id sit in the corner building up my empire while the 4 vs 4 duked it out, and when one of them was winning (or had won) they would then come after me. That part worked out beautifully and eventually after many hours I had the 3 strongest nations that were teamed all declare war on me within like 3 turns. So here I thought I would get this awesome siege on my territory that I could repel (or at least try to). Instead...
After declaring war on me, none of the three AIs, all of whos territory and cities bordered my kingdom, had even a single unit at my border ready to attack. This was like 1939 poland declaring war on germany and then trying to prep some cavalry to go across the border. This is all the while my whole armies are stationed at the borders to defend my frontier. I waited and waited and eventually the first enemy stack arrived, 5 units, three of whom were spearmen and two were archers. Why on earth would the AI send an incomplete stack? All by itself? So it died a horrible death as expected, and I waited and waited and eventually another stack showed up. 3 units, two of which were spearmen and one was an archer. That AI's military strength at the time was rated 2500. So I kept pressing next turn hoping that eventually the blitzkrieg would show up and I giant wave of enemies would descend upon me. Nope. They kept slowly streaming in one incomplete stack after another, single file, from all three AIs. EVENTUALLY the AI rolled out its giant gun: a stack of 1 champion and 5 pioneers. *facepalm* . This was followed up by 2 champions without any escorts who would then after coming back to life after 10 turns without even having full health charge and attack my main stack all by themselves. The strategy of confuse the player, brilliant!
So eventually I got bored and sent my two main stacks in opposite directions to conquer some enemy cities. I wouldnt raze them, I wouldnt build anything there, and I wouldnt station any units there to defend. Just wanted to see what the AI would do to try to take the cities back. To my surprise (and in hindsight I shouldnt have been surprised) the AI did next to nothing. It initially tried to take back one of the cities, which I let it a few times, only to retake it. It soon after that stopped trying to take them back, even though they were undefended. I went deep into the enemy territory and captured a few cities here and there and then retreated to my homeland. Surely the AI would retake undefended cities deep in its lands, yes? Sadly the answer is no, it went about its business completely ignoring the loss of the towns it once had, even though it had them fully surrounded with other towns it controlled.
So to recap:
AI does not send full stacks to attack, or at least very rarely
AI does not escort stacks with other stacks to create a big attack
AI does not escort champions enough and uses them as just a regular unit, probably treating them as just scouts
AI does not defend its border which it should do at all times, even during peace time
AI does not change attack patterns based on previous results and thus never learning from its mistake (aka always attacks same spot, same way)
AI does not setup multi pronged attacks (attack 2+ different places at the same time)
AI does not retake cities with any priority
I played Elemental 1.0 when it first came out for a few hours. Uninstalled it and waited till FE 1.1 to play again hoping to get the complete and fixed Elemental experience. Im still waiting.
Civ V is very impressive IMO. I get surprised nearly every game and its a constant race with the AI's. I always get attacked and I normally end up being attacked by all the other AIs. That's challenging.
I play FE on Expert/dense. I think it would be hard to actually lose a game... The only thing that is surprising is the dang MOBs wandering out of the AI areas into my areas and destroying my cities but this isn't a "surprise" I enjoy In most games I don't build units but instead get the free hiring. With a stack of 7 that gives me 11 movement points per turn which really makes a big difference.
FE is a great game, but its AI is horrible. I don't expect genius AI, but currently the AI's shortcomings include (from playing at least a dozen games, 2/3 on expert and 1/3 on ridiculous, well over 200 turns each game):
-declare war on me without having an attack stack anywhere near me in 11 of 12 games
-declare war on me and never sending an attack stack in 11 of 12 games
-declare war on me and not have defenders in their nearby cities in >9 of 10 cities
-not attempt to retake their cities deep into their empire (not once)
-not casting strategic spells on me such as tremor or freeze to slow my units in their territory
-once in all my games I had a strategic spell cast on me -- the winter spell. I dispelled it immediately, it was never repeated
-I see several 'armies' of 1 archer and 1 melee only, within a few squares of each other, never attempt to combine (when the AI could field armies of at least 7 units) when they easily could/should
-the one game I saw AI send a few armies at me, one of the AIs had 4 decent sized armies stacked on each other, and as the stack-of-armies approached it split up allowing me to take it out piecemeal with my one defending army
-units sometimes stop moving (forgotten? pathfinding fails so they don't move?) for 5-10 turns, then resume movement. One time a unit didn't move for >100 turns (and it wasn't a 'ghost' unit)
Expecting the AI to have a waiting offensive army before initiating a war ain't rocket science, nor is having the AI put a few defenders in their adjacent cities, nor is expecting AI armies to somewhat coordinate or combine when near each other.
I don't expect the AI to rival a human, but we're nowhere at that stage now. Yes, the AI is better than back in the WoM days (I'm not seeing 'armies' of only pioneers attacking me anymore), but I've seen the bragging posts about how the AI will make us cry, and so far the only 'crying' I'm doing is with disappointment.
If we had MP then the disappointing AI wouldn't be so bad, but...
The rest of the game is great -- I'd give it a 90+ metacritic score. Great graphics (very very good, makes the game fun), balance is good and getting better each patch, game is stable (2 CTD since release, I can easily live with that), moddability is very nice (been using Heavenfall's mod and Ecomental) and keeping me interested despite the AI, etc.
AI is the limiting factor now, but a long shot. Were I king of the FE forest I'd be hiring a dedicated full time AI programmer and making that my #1 thru #10 priority.
Prince is the equivalent to Challenging. The AI in FE gets no bonuses on challenging. Only on hard and above.
Overall, I find the AI in FE more challenging than Civilization V. But I think FE could benefit from having the AI prepare for war better. GalCiv had this problem too imho.
If you want to talk about broken AI, Warlock is hopeless. It goes through the motions as if its all scripted but beyond a narrow set of parameters, I lost interest. Civilization V at least becomes challenging when you play on King or better but that's mostly because it is really good at ganging up.
The problem with a game like FE is that there are so many possible places for abuse available. Some of the player factions are worthless and if you end up going up against them you end up with an unchallenging game.
If I were the Lord of FE, I would request they do 3 things to dramatically help the challenge level.
#1 Either have the AI design more units or get the community to design tons of units for the AI and include them. I think the latter would be fun, especially if there was a tooltip as to the author of the unit so that we could see which units the AI felt were the best.
#2 Give more diplomatic options, especially ones that encourage players to gang up more.
#3 Don't let the AI declare war unless it has an invasion force ready to go. That seems like a low hanging fruit for them.
.....NOW....with all of that stuff said calling the FE broken is hyperbole. It provides a good challenge and if a player finds some blind spot in the AI they aren't force to abuse it --hint hint super dodge exploits.
Here's a problem that is common to both GalCiv and Fallen Enchantress. When you build up a superior (or even just a sufficient) military force, the AI stops trying to kick your head in and leaves you alone.
This is a mistake.
When you have superior strength, the AI should be scheming ways to pull the carpet out from under you despite that military strength. You can't be everywhere at once, after all. If the AI just leaves you to keep building up your force, it's going to suffer horrendous losses if and when you do launch an attack.
No more brownie points in diplomacy for having a better military. That's not to say that the AI shouldn't take your military into consideration, but it should be guarded about dealing with someone who could very well be invading next turn.
I also think that hostility should be based not just on whether you have a military, but where it's positioned. If you have lots of forces stationed in and around a staging point near another civ's territory, then it should cause distrust and hostility. But more than that, what you do when you're challenged about this military build up should also shape relations. If you say honestly that you're expecting an attack from another civ entirely and that attack actually happens, it should go some way to justifying your claim that you need those units there.
Actually having the AI engage with the player, perhaps even using the map to highlight grievances and negotiate, there is less of an incentive for the player to casually build up units any old place and more diplomatic finesse needed to smooth over ruffled feathers.
Love it. pretty much a perfect thought. The I in the AI is not A. Read that either way. The fans expect too much. I'm burnt from the beta but try once in a while to get back in.
An ugly start would be cool.
While I agree with some of the criticisms here, it does seem that I'm playing a different game than many of you. I've only played one full campaign and one half campaign (both on Normal) but I've seen the AI do many of the things you guys say you aren't seeing.
In both my games, the AI declared war and immediately (i.e., the next turn) attacked me. in my most recent game, the AI simultaneously attacked two cities on opposite ends of my realm. One enemy stack set up the attack by taking several turns to march the length of my territory to get into position for the attack. I was impressed.
In both my games, the AI attacked with full stacks, sometimes multiple full stacks. It sent three waves against my capital in my latest game.
Only time I've seen an undefended city is a small city remote to the front lines. Big cities have always had big garrisons, and I've lost 2-3 sieges.
When I captured my enemy's biggest city in my last game, the AI immediately bombed it with the spell that increases unrest. Pretty good move, I thought.
Yes, the AI could be better (what AI couldn't?), but I haven't found it be as bad as some suggest.
Consider yourself lucky I suppose
What size world are you playing on?
My dozen-and-counting games have been on large (the first ~third) and xxlarge maps (most of the last dozen) -- Ecomental mod -- and expert and ridiculous difficulty settings (game world and AI were both set the same). (City spacing set to 7 squares)
Play a dozen games and see if your luck continues? Try harder difficulties -- maybe the AI is getting 'overwhelmed' on higher settings?
Have you ever had an AI cast tremor or freeze on your troops? You mentioned one time a spell was cast on one of your cities -- is that the only time in 1.5 games? I've seen it once (the winter spell) in all my games.
Does the AI cast it's more powerful spells (blizzard for example, or the mud spell then ranged attack you to death) on you in tactical battles? If so, how often -- every tactical battle?
Do AI armies coordinate to arrive at one of your cities at the same time for an attack (as was bragged about several versions ago in beta)?
Do you feel the challenge in your games is from an 'intelligent' AI (smart moves) or from a 'powerful' AI (the units/mobs have big hit pools and attack values, spawn in large numbers, etc.)?
Until devs ditch the failed concept of having the AI play the same game as the human player (it can't), I don't think this problem is ever going to be fully solved.
AI can be written to perform fairly well in restricted environments (ie, tactical combat), but it's never going to be as good as a proficient human player on a strategic level.
It's even worse when the AI is expected to perform some sort of 'diplomacy', which also never works well, and is almost always hilariously open to player exploitation (or requires bandaids in the form of no tech trading et. al. to prevent weird problems).
I want to see a TBS dev tackle the entire construct of the game from the "AI"'s side of the fence by creating a challenging game world, and filling it with challenges for the player to overcome on the way to victory or defeat, instead of trying (and failing, over and over and over again) to create an AI that can play the same (ridiculously complicated freeform) strategic layer gameplay that the human can.
The players are somewhat guilty about causing part of this problem also - they will scream bloody murder if the AI 'cheats', and yet the player is possessed of innumerable advantages that the AI can never have, until we have some sort of revolutionary AI breakthrough.
The whole idea of having a level playing field with the AI needs to be tossed, because the playing field is not level, and I think it would be a lot more fun to play against a challenging strategy game than a challenging strategy game AI. Subtle difference perhaps, but an important one.
I think its a minor miracle that any of these absurdly complicated strategy games have AI that even approximates a human player, much less actually play the game well or present any meaningful challenge for a remotely experienced player. Insane variety of units (and god forbid, custom units, as is the case here), spells, equipment, heroes, buildings, terrain, etcetcetc, all add up to ridiculous numbers of options that must be coded around.
That isn't to say that these games aren't fun because of bad AI, more that they're typically fun in spite of said AI. The rest of the game can still be enjoyable for other reasons - art, music, story, exploration, building, powering up your empire/hero and conquering stuff, etc. etc.
Anyway. That's a whole rework of the game structure from the ground up, not something that is going to happen here. For my part, I've dropped the game and moved on to others for now. I hadn't touched it since beta early this year, and I was able to step all over it in my first game with the retail version. I didn't see the complete complacency issues reported here, it definitely had meaningful armies, both in its cities and on its heroes, but with the typical abuse of issues I had with the game in beta (hello teleportation), it was pretty easy to win.
There are some cool concepts in the game for sure, but I've found some other TBS games to scratch that itch that are either more challenging (Eador) or engaging (King's Bounty/Warlock's Armageddon expansion).
good post
I think more A.I. cheating is a good thing, as long as its the right kind of cheating (makes the game more fun)
Medium, Bay of Capacea map.
No. Though in both my campaigns the wars occurred fairly early, before either of us had many advanced spells.
No, but again I haven't yet had any late-game wars.
Yes. The AI attacked my capital with three full-strength stacks, all on the same turn. The stacks were fairly balanced, with a mix of ranged, melee and mounted units.
The challenge feels comparable to other similar games, at least at normal difficulty. I ultimately won easily after I defeated the AI's initial onslaught. But I did feel reasonably pressed at the beginning of the war. The AI captured and razed my strongest economic city, for example (the one they marched the length of my territory to target before declaring war).
I would not be suprised if the people who are being attacked by the AI using full stacks and good troops are experiencing the research trade bug. The only time the AI actually attacked me properly is when they had 10,000 or 20,000 research knowledge and probably had almost every tech researched in the very early game. If you are getting attacked and such try and trade with some of the AI you are at peace with and check out how many research points they have available for trade.
I did. Their research levels were in the low hundreds across the board. Their research was well ahead of mine, but not unreasonably so. There was no bug that I could see.
It's probably the case that the AI is currently optimized for the default settings, and just cannot deal with large maps?
It might also be that a larger map like what I play on puts an AI closer to another AI than me, so they attack each other instead of me (in games where I was never attacker even tho declared on, I could see the AIs occasionally taking another's cities, so they were attacking, just not me).
Other problems don't seem to be affected by map size tho, such as the AI not having decent defensive troops in their cities while they have stacks outside cities wandering around, or not trying to retake undefended cities deep into their empire, or not using mid-level spells like tremor/freeze to slow player attacking armies.
Some minor changes could make a big difference:
-AI seems to dec on the weak and peace the strong, that makes sense from one perspective but is backwards from another. Instead of dog-piling a player when weak, let them build up a bit then dogpile?
-adaptive 'cheating' -- add multipliers to AI strength/resources/build rates/etc. that increase as the players strength/rank increases (been done before with FFH mod for Civ4).
-give AI more garrison troops (adaptive to player's strength), and a pool of adaptive, inexhaustable, mana for strategic spells?
-?
@Mr Zepplin -- thanks for the responses to my questions, and for another point of view from your games. We all have the same goal here -- a more challenging, balanced game. Polite and well-reasoned discussion is helpful
It's a shame that some people won't acknowledge how much better the AI has already is in 1.1 over when it first came out. I see complaints about the AI that were specifically addressed in the release notes in 1.1. I never see AI cities left weakly defended anymore, for instance. If you want to complain about the AI then at least make sure you're actually playing the current games. It stinks of bellyaching to the point of sounding only a little better than the people who still complain about WOM.
I see the AI make mistakes in EFE but compared to my recent PC strategy game experiences, it's a genius. At least with EFE I don't know if I'm going to win or not in a given game if I play on challenging. That's not something I can say about any other game in this genre.
Wait a second. So you are complainig that the AI didn't play as well on your modded game? How is that a remotely fair criticism?
My god, have any of you ever played the Fall from heaven mod? It's amazingly good but the AI is positively weak compared to the base Civilization IV AI.
That is what I think too. The AI in Galactic Civilizations always played best on medium maps or smaller. The bigger the maps the harder of a time it had. Not surprising really. The bigger the map the more coordination of varied forces matter which is what humans are masters at.
I dont like when the computer cheats. I want a game where it does play on a leaving playing field with me. If I play monopoly with someone who isnt as good as me I dont give them free shit to make up for them not being good. Telling me that the design of the game needs to change and that i'm wrong for wanting a leave playing field wrecks of not knowing your customer base. That or i'm a minority opinion and just dont know it yet.
What I mean by this is that i hate unfair advantages. I dont like it when the computer earns more than me for no reason, I hate it when they get more defenders than me, fo no reason. I hate it how the AI in FE can conquer my city and destroy it in one turn but I need 5 turns to do it to them. I dislike in other games where the AI exploited Fog of War and moved its armies to always avoid mine and always to hit where I wasnt. Its challenging when the AI cheats, but its not fun.
Small tweaks and perks to give the AI an edge might be in order and there ok, but it sholdnt be in your face, it shouldnt be so obviouse that you just go "oh my god its bloody cheating!" That said I always support options and if there was a "Let AI cheat slightly, Let AI cheat, Let AI cheat its ass off, Forbid AI cheating." That I could support.
As for Diplomacy, I'm not after anything insane. I expect the AI to behave logically. It should like me for when i do things that aid it, such as gifting it items or money, aiding it in war etc. It should dislike me when I harm it, either directly or its allies. Depending on where I rank on the like/hate bar it should react to be with more or less friendship. Then give it more human responses to say based on these things.
That might also be due to people having different perspectives about what a strong defense really is.
A thing I have noticed over my reading the forums is that a lot of people play rather differently, Some think turn 200 is where the game enters mid-game, some (me for example) think that turn 150 is late game.
Another thing that I think is, You CANNOT have a proper garrison in trained units alone, and you SHOULD NOT leave heroes standing idle in a city for no reason but only defend it, unless there is a bb (Big Beast) in immediate vicinity.Teaching the AI to beeline for the Air Teleportation spells would help the AI some of the time, if it was taught using it properly of course.
I think the differences in opinion and playstyle is what hits the AI developer "Frogboy" too,it is hard Aiming the AI at both:200 turn = midgame playersand 150 turn = endgame playersIts a whole different pace, and if 1 AI scripting have to bear it all, either the faster players is going to be slightly inconvenienced at the AI's lackluster ability to field proper units and manage cities properly in the early game, or the lategame players will suffer from being rushed from strong armies all the time, and in general I think the AI is somewhere in the middle of this chart, except it isn't as good at fielding armies, controlling them and killing the opponent as the player is, even a mediocre player will field better armies than the AI currently does.
Another thing I wish the AI would learn is "properly" escort pioneers, when I escort pioneers myself, I rarely have them in the exact same stack as the escorting units, the pioneer will be 1 or 2 tiles away, and the escorts will be wiping off annoying monsters in the vicinity, or they will merge with the pioneer to pass an unpleasant unit I don't want to do battle with (You are less likely to be attacked if your stack have a high combined attack power).
The thing I think is the problem is that the AI developer haven't the same varied skill set that the AI requires, The developers might have a pretty fantastic skill-set at one strategy, but truly you cannot teach an AI what you don't know yourself, and IF the developer don't know how to do a proper rush, the AI wont ever learn how to do a proper rush.I did send a few save games during the beta to a developer (I'm looking at you Frogboy) but never got an answer, so I don't even know if the Dev's WANT to teach the AI to play the game more than one way.
Sincerely~ Old Grumpy
Cuz if you are, I'm playing the current version, several games in fact, and undefended cities are common. It's to the point that it's unusual to see non-militia units in cities once I take a few.
Just because you don't see something... And your assumptions, you know what they say about assuming, right?
Thanks for your impolite and poorly considered reply tho lol
Kids these days...
It is fair that you don't like the AI cheating, but I would at least prefer it as an option, I always wanted there to be 2 sliders for the AI players, one for intelligence level, and one for the amount the AI cheats, mostly so the players that feel like you can turn it up to max and play at that difficulty.
The reason I prefer SOME AI cheats, is that sometimes the computer needs that little kick in the back to get the cycle up the hill, or rather I have found gameplay or AI flaws that gives me a straight up advantage against it, or rather I just became better at the game than the AI did, and to keep it interesting, I can turn up the cheat level, giving the AI bonus building time and gold income (some of my more preferred AI cheats include nodges to the income gained at both gildar, mana and production, when the AI gets 4 times HP, and 5 free traits, combat just starts to get tedious instead of fun).
My problem with the current AI is not that the developer didn't code a PERFECT AI, because I know I can't expect that until I see them bringing up the SKYNET and we all have to run around in circles with our arms waving over our heads screaming in panic.My problem is that the AI is more or less clueless at tactical combat, playing by rules that doesn't even exist in tactical combat, and that it is so terrible at combining armies, I kind of cry inside when I see the AI attacking my borders with stacks that include rubbish like pioneers or the crap-unit "Militia".
Sincerely~ Kongdej
Further, the issues I and others raise exist in vanilla games, so please to explain that as well.
For example, having the AI instantly create full, tricked out armies and having them instantly appear to deter your well-planned and executed attack is 'unfair' cheating. Or having destroyed armies/units keep re-appearing.
Giving the AI an adaptive multipliers to production/resources/etc. so as to prevent the usual end game steamrolling is different and could be considered 'fair'.
I think that this would also be affected by map size -- defenses are not a static issue, and it's much easier to move defenders into position on a smaller map (or, to launch an counter offensive to draw troops away from your weaker cities).
I've also experienced that the more I play the game and get better at it the less of a challenge the AI represents on the harder difficulty levels. Especially as I learn easy ways to exploit it. I'm setting something up to hopefully provide a very challenging game that I'll share in case someone also wants to try it. I created a new kingdom and empire faction each with a unique sovereign. I then went into the xml files of both factions and the sovereigns of each faction and added all the stongest positive traits, well beyond what the in game creator would allow. Later tonight I plan on playing agaisnt these two factions on a smaller map. Me verses them with them being on the same team. I'll use one of the factions already created, not one of my custom ones. I'll tweak it from there on the number of resources available, champions, magic shards ect ect. Its not an answer and I already know its not for everyone but I do think it may be a challenge considering the number of traits added on.
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