CA fix the battle AI asap !!!

[Belegar]

The battle AI has been completely ruined in the new patch, it no longer understands how to prioritize and will just focus on a few flying units instead of the rest of your army

The game is pretty much unplayable because of this, and after all the controversy i think you (CA) would be smart to get this fixed as soon as humanly possible.

[Dizzy Ioeuy]

Amen. Or, Sissboombaah, or whatever.

[CA_Nova]

Hey there, our live QA team is looking at as many instances of battle AI problems as they can - we'd really appreciate replays/save files/map details so that we can replicate what players are seeing. Here's the link https://forums.totalwar.com/categories/support-total-war-warhammer-iii Guidance on what our support team needs to help identify the issue is listed here: https://forums.totalwar.com/discussion/318110/read-me-before-posting#latest Best, CA_Nova

[Lone Wolf]

I don't have this issues. As long as my units fly and the enemy doesn't have flying units, then the AI will ignore them and only tries to shoot at them from their formation. As soon as they're landing, the AI will try to attack them with the apropriate unit (spearmen vs big units) and that's a good AI.
So the AI is actually more intelligent than in the last patch.

[CriticalM@ss]

Originally posted by CA_Nova:

Hey there, our live QA team is looking at as many instances of battle AI problems as they can - we'd really appreciate replays/save files/map details so that we can replicate what players are seeing. Here's the link https://forums.totalwar.com/categories/support-total-war-warhammer-iii Guidance on what our support team needs to help identify the issue is listed here: https://forums.totalwar.com/discussion/318110/read-me-before-posting#latest Best, CA_Nova

Good, hopefully CA fixes the AI. The battle AI is a significant downgrade right now

[Atari 2600]

Originally posted by Lone Wolf:

I don't have this issues. As long as my units fly and the enemy doesn't have flying units, then the AI will ignore them and only tries to shoot at them from their formation. As soon as they're landing, the AI will try to attack them with the apropriate unit (spearmen vs big units) and that's a good AI.
So the AI is actually more intelligent than in the last patch.

Really, I can bait the enemy LL to chase me away from his entire army and into my 8 archers every single battle. They run right into their deaths. Same thing with cavalry. I don't even try to do it, just a natural organic event that you HAD to have happen at least a few times...

[Lone Wolf]

Originally posted by Drizzt Fan:

Originally posted by Lone Wolf:

I don't have this issues. As long as my units fly and the enemy doesn't have flying units, then the AI will ignore them and only tries to shoot at them from their formation. As soon as they're landing, the AI will try to attack them with the apropriate unit (spearmen vs big units) and that's a good AI.
So the AI is actually more intelligent than in the last patch.

Really, I can bait the enemy LL to chase me away from his entire army and into my 8 archers every single battle. They run right into their deaths. Same thing with cavalry. I don't even try to do it, just a natural organic event that you HAD to have happen at least a few times...

Weird. The AI sometimes makes questionable decisions and the siege AI is very dumb, but in Field Battles they act ok. I played Daemons of Chaos and tried to distract the enemy formation with my Daemon Prince and my other flying units, but they only shot at them. As soon as they landed, they enganged them and tried to rub my units off on their spearmen. And this happens all the time.
In the last patch (3.1?) the AI would send single units to my formation to die. I'm glad that this is no longer the case.

[Kaneda]

Originally posted by CA_Nova:

Hey there, our live QA team is looking at as many instances of battle AI problems as they can - we'd really appreciate replays/save files/map details so that we can replicate what players are seeing. Here's the link https://forums.totalwar.com/categories/support-total-war-warhammer-iii Guidance on what our support team needs to help identify the issue is listed here: https://forums.totalwar.com/discussion/318110/read-me-before-posting#latest Best, CA_Nova

Hmm i have an good idea. CA is testng their fixes and new fwatures before release ? I might be wrong, but maybe it will provide us from some new bugs. AND would be show that the higher development costs, (CA was talking about) are reality and not only excuses for milking their costumers.

[Triple G]

Originally posted by Lone Wolf:

Weird. The AI sometimes makes questionable decisions and the siege AI is very dumb, but in Field Battles they act ok.

I mean there are videos showing that one fast ground unit binds the whole AI army and lets it follow that one unit, while ignoring the rest of the army, which shoots at the AI units. In my 2k+ hours in WH2 and WH3 i haven´t seen that behavior*, while i agree that the AI was never super good, but it was okay-ish to play against it. Even if it could easily be cheesed. But not that easy - this now is MTW II level. And in WH they would 100% use their cavalry or flanking units to flank, and cycle charge with their cavalry, and focus fire, and attack with the rest of their units, while trying to get anti large units vs large units and so on. While of course sometimes their lord was fastest, so he came first to charge, and was shot down before ever reaching the line. Or their own frontline gets destroyed with friendly artillery fire or misplaced spells.

Before the 3.0 update my main complain about the battles were units being stuck in melee, while ignoring commands, ranged units running into melee when they´re out of ammo - or Units doing nothing when standing 2 pixels next to a unit which gets slaughtered - and if it´s about the AI that they constantly regroup sometimes instead of doing something, and offering some unit so the AI wastes all spells and ammunition on it is kind of using cheese.

But it wasn´t soo much about the AI, even if it could be improved a lot, and i also understand that the AI can never act on some human level - if it isn´t about cycle charging and avoiding that the unit gets stuck, because it needs constant micro.

First i don´t understand why the ranged unit running into melee wasn´t already fixed in 3.0, as that is probably easy to do, as it worked before WH3 as well - i don´t even understand why it made it into a release version. And second i don´t know if someone plays battles at CA to look how fun it is, or how easy to exploit, or how they behave to certain tactics - to find a good compromise what is realistically possible as AI decisions, and what is something which looks like a battle. Atm i´m not even in the mood to start up the game, as my last impression was like it needs some improvements, mostly on the player side, while addressing some CAI problems, which were more severe than the BAI problems (suicide in different ways, lord level dominating thee auto-resolve) - and then it´s probably a good game which i look forwards to after getting some updates. But then again my problem was that i bought WH2 late, and waited with WH3, as i thought some initial patches and updates have to be done anyway - to then get into it. Which turns out was too soon.

As even 4 major updates can´t really improve it, but somehow manage to make it worse in some cases, when fixing minor bugs in some long list - or bugs which again shouldn´t be in a release version in the first place, like battle maps not working, or non-DLC material being locked behind the DLC, or heroes having more skillpoints than skills when always giving the notification for leveling up, or other obvious things which should be visible for anyone playing one campaign. While i still wait for some QoL feature to show the enemy movement range in different stances, when You can only see the movement range in their actual stance...

*Edit:
Of course with the exception that slower units also tried to chase down faster units, which could make sense when they would try to corner them with more units - but it was usually 1 stronger vs 1 weaker unit. Or that their ranged units are always on skirmish, so You need only send one unit in, to make them all unable to shoot...

[cb4n28]

Originally posted by Drizzt Fan:

Originally posted by Lone Wolf:

I don't have this issues. As long as my units fly and the enemy doesn't have flying units, then the AI will ignore them and only tries to shoot at them from their formation. As soon as they're landing, the AI will try to attack them with the apropriate unit (spearmen vs big units) and that's a good AI.
So the AI is actually more intelligent than in the last patch.

Really, I can bait the enemy LL to chase me away from his entire army and into my 8 archers every single battle. They run right into their deaths. Same thing with cavalry. I don't even try to do it, just a natural organic event that you HAD to have happen at least a few times...

I've been playing Ostankya and making significant use of cave bats. I've observed dodgy AI behavior related to them once so far, where they sent about three ground units (without missiles if I remember right) to chase down a unit of cave bats I had sent wide towards the edge of the map. They were Greenskins, and I had sent the bats that direction because they had a couple units of reinforcements incoming including a Rock Lobber. I didn't have a solid use for the bats in general in that battle, so right at the start, I sent them off to be in position to keep the Rock Lobber busy. It wasn't typical behavior for me, while I regularly send my Cave Bats off to the flanks early in the battle, in this instance I sent them super wide immediately, like it might have been my first command because I was just trying to get them in position and out of the way.

So I'm wondering if it was me going so wide right at the start that triggered the AI to behave weirdly since typically it doesn't react that way to me sending my bats to the flanks? Alternatively it could be some glitch to do with the reinforcements coming from that side

[Lone Wolf]

Originally posted by Triple G:

Originally posted by Lone Wolf:

Weird. The AI sometimes makes questionable decisions and the siege AI is very dumb, but in Field Battles they act ok.

I mean there are videos showing that one fast ground unit binds the whole AI army and lets it follow that one unit, while ignoring the rest of the army, which shoots at the AI units. In my 2k+ hours in WH2 and WH3 i haven´t seen that behavior*, while i agree that the AI was never super good, but it was okay-ish to play against it. Even if it could easily be cheesed. But not that easy - this now is MTW II level. And in WH they would 100% use their cavalry or flanking units to flank, and cycle charge with their cavalry, and focus fire, and attack with the rest of their units, while trying to get anti large units vs large units and so on. While of course sometimes their lord was fastest, so he came first to charge, and was shot down before ever reaching the line. Or their own frontline gets destroyed with friendly artillery fire or misplaced spells.

Before the 3.0 update my main complain about the battles were units being stuck in melee, while ignoring commands, ranged units running into melee when they´re out of ammo - or Units doing nothing when standing 2 pixels next to a unit which gets slaughtered - and if it´s about the AI that they constantly regroup sometimes instead of doing something, and offering some unit so the AI wastes all spells and ammunition on it is kind of using cheese.

But it wasn´t soo much about the AI, even if it could be improved a lot, and i also understand that the AI can never act on some human level - if it isn´t about cycle charging and avoiding that the unit gets stuck, because it needs constant micro.

First i don´t understand why the ranged unit running into melee wasn´t already fixed in 3.0, as that is probably easy to do, as it worked before WH3 as well - i don´t even understand why it made it into a release version. And second i don´t know if someone plays battles at CA to look how fun it is, or how easy to exploit, or how they behave to certain tactics - to find a good compromise what is realistically possible as AI decisions, and what is something which looks like a battle. Atm i´m not even in the mood to start up the game, as my last impression was like it needs some improvements, mostly on the player side, while addressing some CAI problems, which were more severe than the BAI problems (suicide in different ways, lord level dominating thee auto-resolve) - and then it´s probably a good game which i look forwards to after getting some updates. But then again my problem was that i bought WH2 late, and waited with WH3, as i thought some initial patches and updates have to be done anyway - to then get into it. Which turns out was too soon.

As even 4 major updates can´t really improve it, but somehow manage to make it worse in some cases, when fixing minor bugs in some long list - or bugs which again shouldn´t be in a release version in the first place, like battle maps not working, or non-DLC material being locked behind the DLC, or heroes having more skillpoints than skills when always giving the notification for leveling up, or other obvious things which should be visible for anyone playing one campaign. While i still wait for some QoL feature to show the enemy movement range in different stances, when You can only see the movement range in their actual stance...

*Edit:
Of course with the exception that slower units also tried to chase down faster units, which could make sense when they would try to corner them with more units - but it was usually 1 stronger vs 1 weaker unit. Or that their ranged units are always on skirmish, so You need only send one unit in, to make them all unable to shoot...

What should I tell you? The AI in my campaigns use cycle-charge, spearmen against big units and archers against everything. And not one enemy unit disenganges their formation to chase down a unit. Maybe I'm just lucky, that my AI isn't broken.
One time some chaos dwarf melee machines successfully penetrated my melee lines between two units to charge through to get to my archers. That was some very good play on the AI part.

[Klax]

The fact that CA officially responded to this post. lol

[meowbeast]

people are saying AI isn't getting their charge bonus on normal and higher difficulty as well.

[Carog the Fat]

Originally posted by CA_Nova:

Hey there, our live QA team is looking at as many instances of battle AI problems as they can - we'd really appreciate replays/save files/map details so that we can replicate what players are seeing. Here's the link https://forums.totalwar.com/categories/support-total-war-warhammer-iii Guidance on what our support team needs to help identify the issue is listed here: https://forums.totalwar.com/discussion/318110/read-me-before-posting#latest Best, CA_Nova

Hi, I tried to post on CA forums but i hit 2 problems one it wouldn't let me log in and two when i was writing the post, the instructions to add a file show the image of a button that isn't there when creating the post, could you please sort your forums out so I can post a replay of the awful battle AI.

This link from 2016 shows how to add a file but that button doesnt exist when creating a post on the forum
https://forums.totalwar.com/discussion/182954/how-to-attach-a-file-to-your-posts/p1?new=1

[Triple G]

Originally posted by Lone Wolf:

What should I tell you? The AI in my campaigns use cycle-charge, spearmen against big units and archers against everything. And not one enemy unit disenganges their formation to chase down a unit. Maybe I'm just lucky, that my AI isn't broken.
One time some chaos dwarf melee machines successfully penetrated my melee lines between two units to charge through to get to my archers. That was some very good play on the AI part.

Yes - this may very well be, but if You do something like You usually would do with certain units and get a result like that in this video - i´m unsure what to think about it. Last time i played the game the AI would perhaps send one or two units to chase the one in question down, even if it only has one unit which is the same speed or faster. It doesn´t make sense at all to chase the unit down - except for reducing some losses via their arrows, but there´s not much You can do against it, except for waiting that their used all their ammo - or send the wolf riders in. Even less so with the whole army. Why take an infantry unit to chase down a cavalry unit anyway? I wouldn´t call it very good AI play.

Similar things might have happened before, but not on that scale, while the AI would probably used their boar rider to flank the infantry formation, which would probably destroy them alone without infantry support... That´s why i call it MTW II level, in which all AI units would attack the nearest target. And it doesn´t matter if that happens in 100% of the cases, or only in 30% of the cases - it shouldn´t happen at all, while before the AI ranged units would focus on the nearest target, which made it so that You could have a fast flying lord to deplete the ammo of the artillery or something, while Your infantry could advance unharmed, but that is kind of an exploit. That one there in the video, is just something which You normally do. Flank, and then move away to not get destroyed. If that breaks the AI - it´s doen´t seem like the most fun gaming experience.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvN_8KMdUm0

Edit: and it´s the same when others report that the AI over-commits to chase down units in sieges, when not caring about the victory points, while before they had on unit - or even many, to get the victory points, which could also end a battle...

[Lone Wolf]

Originally posted by Triple G:

Originally posted by Lone Wolf:

What should I tell you? The AI in my campaigns use cycle-charge, spearmen against big units and archers against everything. And not one enemy unit disenganges their formation to chase down a unit. Maybe I'm just lucky, that my AI isn't broken.
One time some chaos dwarf melee machines successfully penetrated my melee lines between two units to charge through to get to my archers. That was some very good play on the AI part.

Yes - this may very well be, but if You do something like You usually would do with certain units and get a result like that in this video - i´m unsure what to think about it. Last time i played the game the AI would perhaps send one or two units to chase the one in question down, even if it only has one unit which is the same speed or faster. It doesn´t make sense at all to chase the unit down - except for reducing some losses via their arrows, but there´s not much You can do against it, except for waiting that their used all their ammo - or send the wolf riders in. Even less so with the whole army. Why take an infantry unit to chase down a cavalry unit anyway? I wouldn´t call it very good AI play.

Similar things might have happened before, but not on that scale, while the AI would probably used their boar rider to flank the infantry formation, which would probably destroy them alone without infantry support... That´s why i call it MTW II level, in which all AI units would attack the nearest target. And it doesn´t matter if that happens in 100% of the cases, or only in 30% of the cases - it shouldn´t happen at all, while before the AI ranged units would focus on the nearest target, which made it so that You could have a fast flying lord to deplete the ammo of the artillery or something, while Your infantry could advance unharmed, but that is kind of an exploit. That one there in the video, is just something which You normally do. Flank, and then move away to not get destroyed. If that breaks the AI - it´s doen´t seem like the most fun gaming experience.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvN_8KMdUm0

The behaviour of the AI in this video is really dumb, that's right. In my over 3000 hours in Total War Warhammer (1-3) I NEVER encountered such behaviour. In 3.1 the AI was the worst for me (AI standing still or sends single units to die).
I wonder why people experience such different behaviour from the AI...