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".

[IonizedMercury]

Publicado originalmente por Good Night Owl:

I like the idea. This is obviously not as much of a problem in Realms of Chaos because you do get rival factions all working towards something, but in Immortal Empires, late game the AI really doesn't act with purpose, giving the player all the agency on the map.

I've been playing Sylvania, and I'm allied with so many dwarves, and humans that I am absolutely steamrolling everyone I go to war with. The irony is I am playing Sylvania, and allied with Reikland, a faction that I have to completely eliminate to achieve long term victory conditions. You would think that conflict of interest would operate in both directions, but it doesn't. I can manipulate just about anyone.

Much of the AI operates based on short term issues that are easy to exploit.

That's because you receive too much diplomatic benefit from fighting the same enemy. It's been a massive flaw in this series since at least the second game where Skaven and Dwarfs always became BFFs due to both fighting Greenskins.
It's one of the reasons why the lategame is so boring, everyone is either your friend or too cowed to bother with you...partially because you are invincible by then and partially because you are best buds with half the map.

There should be racial modifiers that nullify this effect. Dwarfs shouldn't care one bit if Skaven and Greenskins have a go at each other. Skaven and Greenskins shouldn't care whether anyone else fights someone they don't like. The map grinds to a halt until CA fixes this.

[Immortalis]

Publicado originalmente por Bloodwyrm Wildheart:

Publicado originalmente por Immortalis:

One hand there is no way to properly code "victory" condition in this kind of game

Oh, you have the source code? :LaughingOwlcat:

If you bothered reading the post you’d get what I was saying:

Why should my campaign as Karl Franz end because Wulfhart has successfully conquered Lustria? What do I care as Thorgrim that Malekith has taken over Ulthuan? Why should Settra “lose” because Cathay has taken out the Ogres?

And again, how would you do it?

Win by killing enemy faction? What happens if someone else kills them, maybe very early on? Should I be forced not to wage war on faction X because destroying them would mean the end, and defeat, of my campaign? Or leave them with one settlement and protect them against factions that would be my natural ally?

Win by conquering certain regions? Again, what happens if someone else has control of it? Should Alarielle declare war on the Sisters of Twilight because they’ve taken out Morathi?

[IonizedMercury]

Publicado originalmente por Immortalis:

Publicado originalmente por Bloodwyrm Wildheart:

Oh, you have the source code? :LaughingOwlcat:

If you bothered reading the post you’d get what I was saying:

Why should my campaign as Karl Franz end because Wulfhart has successfully conquered Lustria? What do I care as Thorgrim that Malekith has taken over Ulthuan? Why should Settra “lose” because Cathay has taken out the Ogres?

This is such a lame retort. As if the game making you conquer a bunch of settlements from an arbitrary list to "win" isn't already gamey enough.

Why should I play a war game that I can't ever lose and where nothing is at stake? It's called WARhammer, not Sandboxshovel, buddy.

Also, you've chosen spectacularly terrible examples there. Thogrim would care because Malekith is an imperialist overlord and someone who betrayed the trust of his Dwarf best friend. Him becoming more powerful and expanding his warmongering efforts would mean war coming to the Dwarf Karaks sooner or later.

Settra would care because he's a narcissist with an inflated ego who thinks the world owes him, he would care about other people conquering what he'd like to conquer himself, especially uncultured morons like the Ogres who'd just smash all the impressive stuff before he could get his boney fingers on it.

See, in the Warhammer universe, you don't really need to dig deep to find reasons why any faction would have a go at any other faction.

If you don't like that and want Total Peace then you've picked the wrong series.

[Immortalis]

Publicado originalmente por IonizedMercury:

Publicado originalmente por Immortalis:

If you bothered reading the post you’d get what I was saying:

Why should my campaign as Karl Franz end because Wulfhart has successfully conquered Lustria? What do I care as Thorgrim that Malekith has taken over Ulthuan? Why should Settra “lose” because Cathay has taken out the Ogres?

This is such a lame retort. As if the game making you conquer a bunch of settlements from an arbitrary list to "win" isn't already gamey enough.

Why should I play a war game that I can't ever lose and where nothing is at stake? It's called WARhammer, not Sandboxshovel, buddy.

Clearly you and I have different opinions about what the game should be, it’s fine but personally I prefer the sandbox experience, that doesn’t end because someone on the other side of the world completed its list of objectives.

But I do not see how changing the victory conditions from “conquer X settlements and outlast factions A, B and C” to “conquer this specific settlement and kill this specific faction” improves the experience at all, particularly when it results in an end game screen you have little control over.

Once again, why not simply set some goals on your campaigns?
As Malekith I need to take over Ulthuan by turn 50, else I lose the campaign.
As Belegar I must retake the Eight Peaks and defeat Skarsnik by turn 25, else I lose the campaign.
And so on

Publicado originalmente por IonizedMercury:

See, in the Warhammer universe, you don't really need to dig deep to find reasons why any faction would have a go at any other faction.

If you don't like that and want Total Peace then you've picked the wrong series.

But you’re not arguing about Settra making war on Cathay, or Thorgrim on Malekith. You are arguing that their respective campaigns should end because someone on the other side of the world has “won”, even if those victories do not affect them at all.

Respectfully, I am not the one arguing for a complete overhaul of how the game works. I think I have picked exactly the series that suits my playstile.
You though? Clearly not so much

[jtordoff]

The title says it all. The current AI exists to SLOW down the players, to drag out play time. There are plenty of examples of this. TRADE deals that benefit the AI faction will be refused because it also benefits the player. The AI exists to stymie the player NOT to help itself achieve it's own victory conditions, THAT is the root of the problem. The AIs goal, for every faction ought to be to survive and then to thrive. That doesn't mean that a handful of factions can't be "crazy" or pawns of chaos or full on kamikaze mode but that should be the exception not the rule.

[Alinsar]

Totally agree! Started the campaign for Tomb Kings on max difficulty yesterday. I didn't bother with any defense at all as the enemies just waited until it was their turn to die. Killed one faction? The next one declared war... Everyone waits politely for their turn, no one yells or shoves :)

At the same time, I will never forget the campaign for the dwarves from the first game in the series. On max difficulty, the orcs didn't give me any respite at all. I often had to fight with incomplete squads. And warlord talent points aimed at accelerated replenishment of troops suddenly became the most valuable (which had never happened before).
It was difficult and even almost impossible, but this campaign is now forever in my memory :)

[Captainbeastfeast (Rat-ee-JiK)]

OP: this is well put, more options =more fun.

The exception to this is the realm of chaos where the AI can actually win by other means. Imo, this takes too long, RoC's flaw is that it should be a shorter campaign lasting about 60-70 turns rather than 120 or so. The solution to this would be to make the portals open more frequently or offer more opportunities to access portals.

I like the portals in RoC, they should be added in some capacity to the I.E campaign. Ideally, I would also like the realm of chaos to be acessable in the I.E campaign, with different win conditions.

[Hex]

The problem with the AI is that it plays like an AI, badly coded one. Nonsensical wars, no cohesion, garbage units, forced marching to sack a settlement a die, running away from your armies without even trying to defend, ever. It makes decisions based entirely on the auto-resolve bar and that can be so easily exploited. I understand that the AI is designed to lose, but there is no immersion at all because it doesn't feel like you're fighting a war at all, you're playing whack-a-mole.

[provokastoras]

U c what u ask is for some work on the Ai... all those other developers in 4X games not only develop ais for their factions but develop ais that do different things... IE... economic based ais striving for economic victory, or science based ais that strive for science domination or military ais.
Sorry to brake to u but TW francize all those years is trying to develop one type of ai a military ai... AND SUCKS AT IT
so don't get ur hopes up. I mean they could literrally had a chat gtp clone self play a faction till its proficient with it at this point and sell it as part of the ai but... this seems 2 b 2 hard 2.

[provokastoras]

Publicado originalmente por Ashardalon:

Publicado originalmente por 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

0.0 i ll let Ghandi from civilzation 1 +2 explain 2 you why u should care whether another faction achieves scientific victory before u. insert nuclear Ghandi meme.

[Oni-Lyrics]

The only thing that really bothers me is when they start running across your land and you have to chase them in circles like a tom and jerry cartoon.

[Replicant Six]

I remember that there is a point in Shogun 2 where the ai will turn to be more aggressive, they'll grow strong enough, stabilize their economy and look outward to invading new lands. You would get actively sieged and pressed by the AI.

In WH3 if you even have a couple units standing in a settlement with walls the AI will REFUSE to attack unless its a forced event or they have a massive doomstack. Their armies will jump around the map avoiding your armies and attacking your lamest smallest settlement over and over. It's like the AI know where my armies are at all times and skirt around them no matter the cost.

[Ashardalon]

Publicado originalmente por provokastoras:

Publicado originalmente por 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

0.0 i ll let Ghandi from civilzation 1 +2 explain 2 you why u should care whether another faction achieves scientific victory before u. insert nuclear Ghandi meme.

then he doesnt win because of tech victory
he wins because your home turned into a nuclear wasteland
if he achieves tech victory 2 turns before you flatten his last city
who won
according to civ2 it would be gandi
yet he would have never had the chance to fire enough nukes before his death
he would have lost and his people wiped out
arbitrary science amount doesnt change that

[Human bean]

If all the different factions could actually win without defeating the player by completing objectives would make the sandbox impossible to win for the player. If you cant win, why bother?

[Tr4cker0]

Publicado originalmente por 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

it incites you to play more agressive, less safer to cancel wining conditions of other.