AI can see ambushes and always avoids them.

[76561198996048619]

Did a test:

I placed my army in a mountain pass in the ambush stance.
The AI Skaven army ended their turn standing just outside of the zone of control.

I reloaded the savefile and placed my ambush a little bit closer, so that it covers that area.
And they still stopped just outside of the zone of control.

The ambush wasn't foiled in either of the cases.

[Immortalis]

No, it cannot see ambushes and no, it doesn't alway avoid them.

Do the following test:
place your army in ambush stance, then place a weaker army just behind it.
The AI will try to attack the latter, falling in the former ambush

[zefyris]

No it does not. I use ambushes a lot so there's no freaking way it can see them.

[Alar]

It might feel like it sometimes but I guarantee you - ambush is pretty much your best tool in most situations

[Valthejean]

It doesn't see your ambush. What's most likely happening is your army is physically blocking the spot they want to go, so they're just stopping before it.

I've seen similar interactions setting up ambushes in Norsca. They'll sail right to the coast where I'm ambushing, and then stop. I suspect it's because they can't physically occupy the space they're trying to get to, rather than them seeing through your ambush.

[AurumHawke]

Already proven, but seems you've found the audience who needs to see it.

Originally posted by Immortalis:

No, it cannot see ambushes and no, it doesn't alway avoid them.

Do the following test:
place your army in ambush stance, then place a weaker army just behind it.
The AI will try to attack the latter, falling in the former ambush

The only thing this proves is there are conditions where the AI will ignore a hidden army.
You would not need bait in the first place if AI didn't know where the army or its zone-of-control were. And settlements are already bait enough in most cases.

[Immortalis]

Originally posted by AurumHawke:

Already proven, but seems you've found the audience who needs to see it.

Originally posted by Immortalis:

No, it cannot see ambushes and no, it doesn't alway avoid them.

Do the following test:
place your army in ambush stance, then place a weaker army just behind it.
The AI will try to attack the latter, falling in the former ambush

The only thing this proves is there are conditions where the AI will ignore a hidden army.
You would not need bait in the first place if AI didn't know where the army or its zone-of-control were. And settlements are already bait enough in most cases.

If the AI falls for ambushes in certain circumstances, the sentence “it always avoids them” is wrong.
There is no way around it.

If the AI could always see your ambushes it would not rush straight for them; again the sentence “it always sees your ambushes” is wrong.


You can use ambushes against the AI, they work.
Once again I am surprised at people constantly demanding a better, smarter AI and yet complaining anytime it doesn’t do something completely stupid: if you are moving your army around, notice a 20 something Skaven stack and that army disappears over the end turn, do you move cautiously trying to avoid the ambush they have clearly set up? Why should the AI be any different?

And yes, the AI correctly calculates the movement range of enemy armies, often sitting just out of range; it’s something you can do as well.

[Ashley]

I've seen them avoid it more lately. Used to be they'd charge ahead if you left a target. Not always.

I would not say always but seems random.

[Falaris]

YOU can spot ambushing armies by looking at the terrain (they often leave debris around hiding spots), without rolling the dice. It would not be tremendously unfair if the AI could occasionally too.

With that said, I don't think the AI does, unless you talk sophistry about how the PC has the information stored.

[chipofsalt]

Yeah, the AI definitely cannot. I'm not sure what your scenario was, but there's two "checks" for ambush detection. If there are heroes on the campaign map nearby (any heroes that don't belong to you) they EACH roll detection as well. Obviously lords make the same roll. Then there's a second roll which is the actual ambush chance. In other words, if there are several lords or agents near the ambushing army, the chance of you pulling it off is really low.

Also, 100% ambush success =/= guaranteed ambush. It's scaled off against ambush defense chance.

A second possibility is that they didn't see your army, walked into it, but successfully defended against the roll and declined to attack.

I absolutely guarantee you that the AI cannot automatically see ambushing armies. Someone mentioned one test, but another is that if you have an ambushing army outside of detect range, which causes the AI to move armies away/towards it not knowing it's there.

[AurumHawke]

Originally posted by Valthejean:

It doesn't see your ambush. What's most likely happening is your army is physically blocking the spot they want to go, so they're just stopping before it.

I've seen similar interactions setting up ambushes in Norsca. They'll sail right to the coast where I'm ambushing, and then stop. I suspect it's because they can't physically occupy the space they're trying to get to, rather than them seeing through your ambush.

Yours wasn't up while I was writing last time, and this one's a good point.
From what I remember with hidden armies you can attempt a move into their cell but your character (preferably a hero) will stop as if blocked - since they of course shouldn't be able to share the cell.
I don't believe that's in play here because they do this across open paths.
One time, Astragoth walked in a perfect circle around one to get at a settlement just to retreat because it was still in reinforcement range.

Originally posted by Falaris:

YOU can spot ambushing armies by looking at the terrain (they often leave debris around hiding spots), without rolling the dice. It would not be tremendously unfair if the AI could occasionally too.

With that said, I don't think the AI does, unless you talk sophistry about how the PC has the information stored.

If you have any form of alliance with an AI and get war-coordination missions from the AI, their targets always point to the exact position of the enemy army, regardless of Los/FoW and hidden state.

[ChaosKhan]

Originally posted by Droned Orc Montage editor:

Did a test:

I placed my army in a mountain pass in the ambush stance.
The AI Skaven army ended their turn standing just outside of the zone of control.

I reloaded the savefile and placed my ambush a little bit closer, so that it covers that area.
And they still stopped just outside of the zone of control.

The ambush wasn't foiled in either of the cases.

You don't quite understand how ambushes work exactly and I am not about to blame you, because they work differently, depending on whether you or the AI do them.

For the player, there are certain limitations. If you enter ambush stance close enough for the AI to "see" (there seems to be some sort of area, that is considered "line of sight", because it's certainly not the "real" LOS), the ambush will ALWAYS be foiled, even if you enter it with 100 % predicted success. Therefore, you need to enter the stance from some distance away in order for it to trigger later. I am not quite sure how lone agents interact with it, but my impression is, that they don't matter. I went into ambush stance multiple times while being basically on top of some AI agents and the ambush still triggered just fine later, as long as I kept my distance from stacks and enemy settlements while doing so.

I am not quite sure how far exactly this "area of automatic discovery" is, but from subjective experience, it seems to be about 3/4 of the default movement range.

As you noticed already yourself, for the AI, things are differently. It will happily go into ambush in spite of being in your LOS and simply "disappear" from the map entirely, unless you either successfully make the check to foil the ambush or walk into it with some sacrificial lord.

[Cpt Obvious]

Ambush works and is the most important tool the player has in this game. Git gud.

[Isaac]

so funny how people can't read and missed the point that his ambushes were not foiled.....
anyway, ambush is really wonky in this game. there are situations where the AI will allways fall for ambush, but other times they do seem to know where your armies are and avoid them. I once tried something, an enemy army was in range of 2 of my settlements, and I had an army nearby. I saved, made an ambush near one of my city, and the AI will ALLWAYS choose to attack the other city, no matter how often I reload and change the city I defend.

[ChaosKhan]

Originally posted by Isaac:

so funny how people can't read and missed the point that his ambushes were not foiled.....

In this case, the ambush wasn't foiled, but the enemy discovered the ambush and refused to fight the battle. In this case, the player doesn't get any notification and the stack will just remain on the border of the zone of control. The AI seems to have a "blackout" in some cases and doesn't do anything with the stack.

Originally posted by Isaac:

I once tried something, an enemy army was in range of 2 of my settlements, and I had an army nearby. I saved, made an ambush near one of my city, and the AI will ALLWAYS choose to attack the other city, no matter how often I reload and change the city I defend.

Are you sure, the ambush wasn't foiled? Because I've never experienced the AI doing stuff like that.

[CrUsHeR]

TBH i also noticed this a couple of times since the last update.



Example, i'm setting up ambush within the control zone of my city.

The AI (Grimgor) would just march directly in front of my army, and set up raiding camp there. Just so it doesn't touch the control zone of my army.

On the third or so time i've seen this, the AI army would do as described above, but then also start moving again. The ambush trigger actually failed, but the AI also didn't attack the city or army (basically stuck in the control zones).



Note that

1) The ambush was NOT foiled in these cases, i keep close track of that

2) Ambushes have been working fine otherwise, including other ambushes against Grimgor