The AI is entirely unfun to fight on the campaign map

[Joshwerds]

The AIs decisions on the campaign map frequently lead to unfun scenarios. I believe this is because the AI will chose whatever path leads to the highest chance of survival in an effort to provide the most challenge. This often at the cost of providing an actual challenge and more importantly fun as the AI frequently avoids fighting your armies and defending its settlements.

I played a Reikland game, and after reconquering ostermark I decided to attack Sylvania since my armies were now positioned right next to their provinces. I figured by attacking their vulnerable and valuable core territories I would force them to defend them and that would lead to a fun fight between my superior quality armies and his more numerous armies in a fight for sylvania. Instead only the weakest armies of pretty much just zombies halfheartedly defend the province while I blitz through at almost no cost, the rest of Vlads armies march to the relatively undefended province of Reikland to simply just sack the ♥♥♥♥ out of everything. I mean maybe shame on me for leaving it undefended but at the start he was closer to drakenhof than altdorf so I figured why would he attack their and not my armies. Oh, and even when his armies actually try to defend sylvania, they simply just sack the settlements instead of retaking them.

What should have been a fun a challenging fight against a more powerful rival turned into a boring slog of just autoresovling settlment battles and sieges. By the time I got to fight Vlads army it was spent from sacking its way through reikland and was hardly a challenge at that point. The only real damage was done in the most annoying way possible.

And thats my point. The AI often chooses the most annoying decisions and its not fun or challenging.

[Chaoslink]

Yeah, the way the AI plays can be pretty irritating. Especially the whole force march just outside of your reach over and over so you can never fully finish them off. I get it, they want to live, but its still annoying that they'll always have just the slightest amount of movement. I feel like forced march should have diminishing returns over multiple turns.

It definitely feels like artificial difficulty in a boring way.

[Puggly the Grey]

I hear you fren, le AI can be annoyingly cowardly, it gets frustratin’, especially when I can see dat der army and my army would lead to a really fun fight, if we actually fought.

Tis jus one of le many reasons I wants Hotseat Mode.

[Cacomistle]

Yep.

I think they figured that the ai cannot provide a challenge if it fights directly, because over the course of the years they've added a substantial number of buffs to the player. If the ai takes direct fights, it will inevitably just bash its head into some cheese army that repeatedly annihilates it (this actually kind of happens if you build for instance a vampire hero doomstack on vlad. The ai will see it's weak in auto resolve, actually fight it, and get demolished, so you just run over everything without having to deal with backcaps). And, with all the post battle loot the player gets from winning fights, they'll be able to easily afford stronger and more numerous armies in the future.

By making the ai run away constantly and attack undefended settlements, it tricks inexperienced players into moving their army back to defend their settlements. That way, the ai can perpetually stalemate the player, which leads to a feeling of difficulty. And if the player gets stuck and isn't fighting, they lose out on all the rewards of post battle loot and army experience, which both make the game massively easier, so they can end up getting overwhelmed when the ai actually brings its armies together and attacks.

The only other ways to make the ai a challenge would be things that annoy a lot of players, like if they started giving the ai loads of extra magic (like the player), or made the ai spam heroes (like the player), or just spawned their units in at rank 7 with level 30 lords (the player doesn't spawn that way, but you fight so much on harder difficulties that it happens quite fast), and have the ai start doing things like opportunistically declaring war on you every time your armies get injued/separated in order to take out your main force immediately (like the player does when they declare war).

There's definitely other things they could do (like make the ai stop splitting its armies up constantly), but I think they're afraid that you'd win 1 battle then take over empty settlements and feel bored, or just get overwhelmed and lose instantly. I don't think VH is designed to make you lose, I think its designed to make it feel like there's a constant fight, which doesn't happen if the ai actually brings all its forces at once.

And I suppose they've just given up on challenging experienced players.

[Chaoslink]

Yeah, I'm really starting to feel like they need to do a full overhaul of the game mechanics again. Just like how Rome II changed Total War fundamentally, they really need to do something like that again and reinvent the game. People are too accustomed to how it plays now and things would have to change dramatically to make things difficult or interesting again.

I'd love to see the ability to recruit units to your own garrisons again.

[MjauMix]

Originally posted by Average Warhammer 3 Enthusiast:

Gonna Cry?

what a dumb comment.

[KoboldUtopian]

Would you rather the AI just mindlessly ran headfirst into your armies? What you're describing sounds pretty tactical and forces you to play clever (or at least tricksy).

[Toaster Maximus]

Ambush mode ends up being your friend for dealing with the ai, it seems to fall for traps quite easily leave an area close by open and lure them in, ambush then steam roll their areas

[IonizedMercury]

Originally posted by Joshwerds:

The AIs decisions on the campaign map frequently lead to unfun scenarios. I believe this is because the AI will chose whatever path leads to the highest chance of survival in an effort to provide the most challenge.

You couldn't be more off the mark if you tried.

The AI's decisions are made to avoid combat as much as possible. It'll move as far away as it can from any player armies, abandon all settlements to be conquered, including its last settlement and ask for peace if it suffers even the tiniest setback.

The AI is entirely weak and pathetic. It puts up no fight at all.

[Shodan]

My suggestion is to try to use some mod on the AI (to increase its aggressiveness), and a mod to reduce the movement radius (-25% or even -50%), this will give the AI more time to react (but I don't recommend -50%, otherwise you need mods to slow down technology and reduce army recovery, in which case it will already be less compatible with other mods or even units, but if you prefer vanilla, it'll be fine))

[Man of Culture]

I particularly enjoy fighting factions like Vampire Counts and the new Tamurkhan LL. They can get their wound timers down to 1 turn and the way they recruit units means they can basically bankroll an entire army every single turn. Wait until you're crawling through mountain passes trying to clear Tamurhkan out. I hope you enjoy fighting him and his army every turn. I fought him on my Geldt campaign 11 turns in a row with full stacks. The only thing that made it somewhat fun was that I had an army of wizards and two steamtanks so I could basically nuke him from the sky and there wasn't a thing he could do about it. But that being said he was a mortis engine with something like 19k health and a ton of ward save so it took me 5 overcast Final Transmutations and a few Spirit Leeches in between to kill him. If I had to actually fight that battle on the ground I'd have to cheese him so hard. And the fact that after you'd kill him and capture the settlement the very next turn he's spawned in at the next settlement already with an army waiting for you.

The TL:DR of that is just that they can't balance this game at this stage without a total overhaul and they're never doing that. So the game is playing how the game is likely going to always play until someone mods it.

[an entire Roman legion]

Originally posted by MjauMix:

Originally posted by Average Warhammer 3 Enthusiast:

Gonna Cry?

what a dumb comment.

and that's with using 100% of his brain

[Chaoslink]

Originally posted by CoerciveUtopian:

Would you rather the AI just mindlessly ran headfirst into your armies? What you're describing sounds pretty tactical and forces you to play clever (or at least tricksy).

Clever of tricksy? Feels more like it favors cheesing the AI. I find it just encourages the whole ambushing 20 stack while you dangle a lone lord with maybe 5 units in the ambush range to bait the AI into a swift autoresolve instead. I’ve had so many moments where there’s a possible 40v50 battle coming up with two full armies on both sides and a garrison on theirs, but because autoresolve says I’d be favored with high losses, but I’d win, the AI instead bails on what’d be a fun battle to play out and instead splits both armies up, dashes off into my territory and starts burning down all my cities while I do the same to theirs.

It’s just annoying. It’s like saying a difficulty is harder because you gave the enemy twice the HP and damage, but their combat AI is still as exploitable as Bethesda pathfinding.

[IonizedMercury]

Originally posted by CoerciveUtopian:

Would you rather the AI just mindlessly ran headfirst into your armies? What you're describing sounds pretty tactical and forces you to play clever (or at least tricksy).

I'd rather have the AI fight than constantly run away and give all intitiative to the player.

[Cacomistle]

Originally posted by CoerciveUtopian:

Would you rather the AI just mindlessly ran headfirst into your armies? What you're describing sounds pretty tactical and forces you to play clever (or at least tricksy).

I would rather the ai take direct fights yes.

They don't need to needlessly charge headlong into your army (they should group their forces then charge headlong into your army, the lack of that first step is a big part of why the ai is so easy to beat), but for instance when they're down to their last settlement and I have a stronger army, I'd rather they just defend it than run away so they can force me to chase them.

Its basically like, I want to fight lions and bears and such, and then I come across a swarm of flies. I don't want to come up with a tactical solution to beat flies, I'd rather they just die so I can go back to fighting lions and bears. So I'd rather the ai just charge into me and kill itself than try to run around sacking minor settlements.

And the way the ai is right now, it often has a lion/bear equivalent (since its massive cheats usually give it a larger army than you, and after you're rank 1 you're usually fighting several ai at once), and yet it chooses not to fight you. It chooses instead to split up into several swarms of flies and annoy your undefend settlements (I know a bear splitting into flies doesn't make sense but just go with it).

Its also a design direction flaw. The game gives the player way too many buffs. I mean we all discuss ai cheats, but things like post battle loot or crazy magic reserves are far more rewarding for the player than the ai. Making the ai take direct fights might actually make the game easier, but then they can simply tone down the insane player cheats on the higher difficulties. Well, "can't" because people would whine about it incessantly, but it'd make the game better long term.

[Chaoslink]

Originally posted by Shodan:

My suggestion is to try to use some mod on the AI (to increase its aggressiveness), and a mod to reduce the movement radius (-25% or even -50%), this will give the AI more time to react (but I don't recommend -50%, otherwise you need mods to slow down technology and reduce army recovery, in which case it will already be less compatible with other mods or even units, but if you prefer vanilla, it'll be fine))

I think that’s what annoys me too, the ridiculously high replenishment basically makes taking high losses in a battle meaningless because it takes like 2 turns to go back to full strength. I much prefer the old retraining mechanic where your elite troops felt valuable because they only replenished if you sent them back to a city you could recruit them from and spent money and turns to get them back to full strength. This really held back the player snowball. Not to mention that your own units had to become the garrison, so even two full 20 stacks became one after just 2-3 settlements taken.

The game is so fast now where armies return so fast and losing units, especially powerful ones, isn’t a big deal. Kinda cheapens the gameplay.