The AI Needs To Play To Win, Not Play To Annoy

[IonizedMercury]

One of the main reasons why campaigns in WH3 have no staying power and get boring very quickly is the lack of pressure. Yeah, my win condition is to conquer a bunch of places but since that becomes only a question of time really early, why bother? The AI itself has no win condition and is ultrapassive and cowardly anyway so I can take all the time I want to build up, develop and overwhelm whatever faction I want.

Zzzzz...

Compare that to something like Dune Spice Wars where the AI does have win conditions including some that don't involve directly attacking the player. Suddenly I can't just leisurly expand, build and develop until I feel I'm ready to just steamroll my enemies, I actually have to be on the lookout for what they're doing and react accordingly.

One example, in one of my Spice Wars matches, one AI faction went for the economic victory conditions, one for the military ones and one for the subversive ones. The military faction kept attacking my territory with swarms of units so I had to prioritize. I allied with the economic faction to allow them to take some pressure off of me and assassinated the leader of the military faction to end the threat of invasions. But doing so gave my "ally" time to accumulate funds to pursue its victory condition at an accelerated rate. So now I was in a race to eliminate them first before they could win which involved attacking their money making regions and hoping it would slow them down enough for my assassination plot to complete. I also had to fend off the occasional assassination plots from the subversive faction during that.

It's these sorts of sitations that are utterly missing from WH3. The player is always on top of events and there's nothing that can threaten them.

So what if the AI actually was given means to "win" the game without it necessariily involving eliminating the player? Let's say, every campaign a bunch of factions are picked and they pursue whatever is their campaign win condition with the winner being the one who either finishes first before a deadline or has made the most progress when hitting that deadline. The choice of "rival" factions should be decided by what faction you pick yourself, so if you pick Dwarfs your rivals would be Skaven or Greenskins, if you pick Empire your rivals would be Beastmen and Vampire Counts etc.

I think that alone would already alleviate a lot of the tedium in campaigns.

And before anyone starts complaining about "muh sandbox", make it a checkbox at the start of the campaign "rival factions yes/no".

[Solvem Probler]

You mean like at launch when random factions from across the continent would send stack after stack at you?

[IonizedMercury]

Originally posted by Born2Dive:

You mean like at launch when random factions from across the continent would send stack after stack at you?

No, I mean it like how I described it at the end of my OP.

[bibron]

People didn't like that in game 2

[IonizedMercury]

Originally posted by bibron:

People didn't like that in game 2

Read the OP all the way to the end before you bother replying.

Also, I don't give a damn what some nebulous "people" ostensibly didn't like.

[Jebe]

Increase your difficulty and stop using doomstacks that should „unbore“ your campaigns

[Ashardalon]

why should i care that my enemy wins if it doesnt defeat me and doesnt get in the way of my winning
why would the game end because someone else has a good time
if they are going to get crushed later anyway
victory is just a steam achievement
its just an abstraction to get good boy points and feel some sense of accomplishment in your empty life
as long as others still live there can be no peace
so why should the game end

[Ashardalon]

you can always play the souls race
oh wait no, people complained till that was removed

[IonizedMercury]

Originally posted by Jebe:

Increase your difficulty and stop using doomstacks that should „unbore“ your campaigns

Increasing the difficulty doesn't change or add anything that makes campaigns interesting.

Originally posted by Ashardalon:

why should i care that my enemy wins if it doesnt defeat me and doesnt get in the way of my winning
why would the game end because someone else has a good time
if they are going to get crushed later anyway
victory is just a steam achievement
its just an abstraction to get good boy points and feel some sense of accomplishment in your empty life
as long as others still live there can be no peace
so why should the game end

Because I'd like my games to have a point.

Why play a WAR game you can never lose?

Originally posted by Ashardalon:

you can always play the souls race
oh wait no, people complained till that was removed

Removed? It's still there.

But only for a select few races. Everything else is zero-stakes boredom.

[Ashardalon]

Originally posted by IonizedMercury:

Why play a WAR game you can never lose?

how are the orcs losing when the empire wins an economic victory
how much gold they have doesnt matter to a race that pays in teef
explain the lore behind having enough gold to no longer care about slaanesh

Originally posted by IonizedMercury:

Originally posted by Ashardalon:

you can always play the souls race
oh wait no, people complained till that was removed

Removed? It's still there.

the ability to lose was removed

[Immortalis]

Originally posted by IonizedMercury:

Originally posted by Ashardalon:

why should i care that my enemy wins if it doesnt defeat me and doesnt get in the way of my winning
why would the game end because someone else has a good time
if they are going to get crushed later anyway
victory is just a steam achievement
its just an abstraction to get good boy points and feel some sense of accomplishment in your empty life
as long as others still live there can be no peace
so why should the game end

Because I'd like my games to have a point.

Why play a WAR game you can never lose?

One hand there is no way to properly code "victory" condition in this kind of game, outside of complete map painting.
Each of us decide when the campaign has been "won" for himself: is it a victory to reunify the Empire and kill the Von Carsteins? Do I also need to secure Kislev against Chaos? Must I travel in Norsca? Should I bring all humanity under the Empire banner by conquering Bretonnia and the Border Princes as well? Must I head off to Cathay?

On the other hand, several factions can "win" at the same time: what is stopping Malekith from "winning" by conquering Ulthuan whilst at the same time Settra "wins" by unifying Nehekhara? Why should Kislev "lose" the campaign after completely mauling Chaos in the North because the dwarfs have defeated the Greenskins in the South? Why should I lose after unifying Cathay because Tyrion has defeated the Druchi?

[IonizedMercury]

Originally posted by Ashardalon:

Originally posted by IonizedMercury:

Why play a WAR game you can never lose?

how are the orcs losing when the empire wins an economic victory
how much gold they have doesnt matter to a race that pays in teef
explain the lore behind having enough gold to no longer care about slaanesh

Buddy, I can turn that around and ask why all AI factions lose just because you own a bunch of settlements out of an arbitrary list.

Originally posted by Immortalis:

One hand there is no way to properly code "victory" condition in this kind of game, outside of complete map painting.
Each of us decide when the campaign has been "won" for himself: is it a victory to reunify the Empire and kill the Von Carsteins? Do I also need to secure Kislev against Chaos? Must I travel in Norsca? Should I bring all humanity under the Empire banner by conquering Bretonnia and the Border Princes as well? Must I head off to Cathay?

On the other hand, several factions can "win" at the same time: what is stopping Malekith from "winning" by conquering Ulthuan whilst at the same time Settra "wins" by unifying Nehekhara? Why should Kislev "lose" the campaign after completely mauling Chaos in the North because the dwarfs have defeated the Greenskins in the South? Why should I lose after unifying Cathay because Tyrion has defeated the Druchi?

Winning when nothing is at stake is meaningless.

See, if I can't lose it means I already won and the only "challenge" is whether I want to waste my time to make the game arbitrarily recognize that fact.

[Ashardalon]

Originally posted by IonizedMercury:

Originally posted by Ashardalon:

how are the orcs losing when the empire wins an economic victory
how much gold they have doesnt matter to a race that pays in teef
explain the lore behind having enough gold to no longer care about slaanesh

Buddy, I can turn that around and ask why all AI factions lose just because you own a bunch of settlements out of an arbitrary list.

no you cant
because the ai hasnt lost
the game isnt over, its just that you stop playing after the game tells you you won
the only way the ai lost is when they are dead
the ai hasnt lost, you just won
and winning means nothing to the ai

[IonizedMercury]

Originally posted by Ashardalon:

Originally posted by IonizedMercury:

Buddy, I can turn that around and ask why all AI factions lose just because you own a bunch of settlements out of an arbitrary list.

no you cant
because the ai hasnt lost
the game isnt over, its just that you stop playing after the game tells you you won
the only way the ai lost is when they are dead
the ai hasnt lost, you just won
and winning means nothing to the ai

So if the AI got a win condition and beat you to it but the game continued, what would be the problem?

Your argument is half-baked and self-defeating. Your real objection is that you are afraid you might actually lose in such a scenario. Well, then switch it off and enjoy your zero stakes boring sandbox like I suggested in my OP.

[Raider Deci]

Originally posted by Immortalis:

One hand there is no way to properly code "victory" condition in this kind of game, outside of complete map painting.

Completing objectives? Adding victory conditions when starting a game? Stuff that all 4X-games already does.

[Ashardalon]

Originally posted by IonizedMercury:

Originally posted by Ashardalon:

no you cant
because the ai hasnt lost
the game isnt over, its just that you stop playing after the game tells you you won
the only way the ai lost is when they are dead
the ai hasnt lost, you just won
and winning means nothing to the ai

So if the AI got a win condition and beat you to it but the game continued, what would be the problem?

Your argument is half-baked and self-defeating. Your real objection is that you are afraid you might actually lose in such a scenario. Well, then switch it off and enjoy your zero stakes boring sandbox like I suggested in my OP.

if they win and nothing changes
how do you even know they arnt doing that already
your argument doesnt exist, find one then come back to argue