A.I clearly needs some rework/overhaul

[Ragnarr Loðbrók]

A.I is often enough acting plain stupid
A.I having sometimes Pathfinding issues
A.I spamming workers despite cheating wasting 40-50%+ of the Cap slots to workers, then not having enough military to fight properly.
A.I placing too many TC's on places where it doesn't make any sense
A.I trying to constantly flee during a outnumbered fight, leaving it ignoring my units and getting decimated, but if i flee instead despite being have more units, they start to following again, choosing to fight them, makes them flee again.......
A.I building docks ond massing ships on a map with a tiny river and building fishing ships in a tiny river without fish......
A.I struggles to fight properly near bridges

Maps with Water has a chance to negativly impact A.I's fighting capability.

the AoE4 a.i is actually quite worse...

[Moriendor]

I agree. The pathfinding issues are especially jarring. It's like it is 1997 all over again. If you have a lot of units inside a stone walled fortress, it is incredible how they get stuck on each other or how they are unable to clear the way through a gate if one unit or a group of units is ordered to pass through the gate. And let's not even talk about the narrow walls... sheesh.

I could hardly believe what was happening last night when I played the final mission of the English campaign. One time I just ordered a single monk to move outside the castle to heal some units and he could not do it. He got stuck on the gate. It is really sad that AI has made zero advancement in all those years, at least when it comes to pathfinding. It's like C&C harvesters blast from the past 1995 all over again.

[YouMoMCallME]

I advise you to download the ZycatAI mod. In the mod AI plays a little better BUT still not good enough.

[Ragnarr Loðbrók]

Originally posted by YouMoMCallME:

I advise you to download the ZycatAI mod. In the mod AI plays a little better BUT still not good enough.

thanks for the info i will take a look :)

[YouMoMCallME]

Originally posted by Ragnarr Loðbrók:

Originally posted by YouMoMCallME:

I advise you to download the ZycatAI mod. In the mod AI plays a little better BUT still not good enough.

thanks for the info i will take a look :)

Regarding AI errors. You can leave a bug report on the official AoE4 forum.

https://forums.ageofempires.com/c/age-of-empires-iv/age-of-empires-iv-bugs/185?order=views

[Ragnarr Loðbrók]

Originally posted by YouMoMCallME:

I advise you to download the ZycatAI mod. In the mod AI plays a little better BUT still not good enough.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/1466860/discussions/0/3276939823301748662/ The Thread to ZycatAI mod, some interesting insides to the A.I the original A.I is seriouly allowed to have 50% of the cap as workers..... that explains alot
Just sad that the A.I of AoE 4 doesn't let one be modified like in CoH 2..... which is clearly a step backwards...

Originally posted by Zycat:

A (slight?) improvements and adjustments to the standard AI files. Makes the AI more aggressive both on land and water maps. Many low-hanging mistakes fixed, although unfortunately we don't have the same access to the internal AI files like in Company of Heroes 2 and thus I don't think I can improve the AI a lot further without more cheating.

Can be downloaded in the mod and tuning pack section of the game. Please try it if you are playing vs AI.

What we can't currently access :
* ai\personality\*.scar files. In Company of Heroes 2 we can access and modify those files in a tuning pack. Now, not even Win Condition has access to those files. This is a huge hit to the customisability of the A.I
* All the machine learning and the associated parameter tunings. Yes it does have a machine learning feature that learns from players but it seems to only work on micromanagement and unit compositions
* ai_tuning, ai_formation_coordinator, ai_formation_path, ai_formation_target_priority, ai_statemodel_tunings, ai_updater

Because of that I'm not comfortable calling this anything other than just a "Lite" mod. Maybe someday Relic allows us to modify those or we have a good workaround.

Differences between difficulties :
(ORIGINAL) means it's from the original AI
(MODDED) means it's from my mod

Villager Production (ORIGINAL) :

EASY - Limited to 14% of Max Pop Cap, Limited to one villager per 55 seconds.
INTERMEDIATE - Limited to 25% of Max Pop Cap, Limited to one villager per 45 seconds.
HARD - Limited to 37.5% of Max Pop Cap, Limited to one villager per 30 seconds.
HARDEST - Limited to 50% of Max Pop Cap

Military Production (ORIGINAL) :
EASY - Limited to 1 per type
INTERMEDIATE - Limited to 2 per type
HARD - Limited to 3 per type
HARDEST - Limited to 4 per type

(side note : I am having troubles to get them to even build 2-3 of the same military productions consistently)

Upgrades (ORIGINAL) :
Minimum 8 minutes must have passed to research any upgrades. Easy gets no upgrades other than incendiary arrow, applies to Easy Sultanate as well.
(MODDED)
Wheelbarrow and Fresh Foodstuffs will be researched ASAP (including Easy). Many adjustments to the priority. Will no longer research professional scouts because the AI can't use it.

Town Center (ORIGINAL) : Mongol limited to 1, (MODDED) No limit for Mongols.
Outpost (ORIGINAL) : Easy - 2, Intermediate - 4, Hard/Hardest - 8 max. (MODDED) No maximum, more often.
Keep (ORIGINAL) : Easy/Normal - 2 Max, Intermediate - 3, Hard - 4, Hardest - 5. (MODDED) No maximum, more often.
Wooden Fort (ORIGINAL) : Easy/Normal - 2, Intermediate - 3, Hard - 4, Hardest - 5. (MODDED) No max.

Traders will be built after 12 minutes (Mongol/French) or 15 minutes.

Starting Resources is modded on HARDEST, they get slightly more starting resources (+50 food, +100 wood, +50 gold, subject to change). This is unfortunately necessary to fix the absolutely abysmal Mongol AI (allows them to build an Ovoo and a Ger, then research Wheelbarrow at start). Also, at the start somehow Relic decided that 3 vils on food and 3 vils on wood is the best idea (Hint : it's not).

Tier List :

French
English
Delhi - Unable to use infantry to build things. Unable to garrison Scholars to military production buildings.
Abbasid - Unable to properly build to get Golden Ages. House of Wisdom is built way too early. (MODDED) will almost always choose the Economic wing now with the Fresh Foodstuffs, which is GOOD.
HRE - Unable to garrison a prelate in the Aachen Chapel. Also Aachen Chapel placement is abysmal. Unable to rush to Imperial and get the swaggia villager printing machine.
Chinese - Unable to use official to supervise. Barbican is never built early enough.
Rus - Scouts unable to attack wildlife and thus unable to rack up passive bonuses. Also Kremlin is almost never built.
Mongol - Unable to scout using Khan (needing to build a Scout early on). Unable to use Khan abilities effectively. Unable to build anything before an Ovoo is built. Every building is built in the Ovoo range, means traffic jam when the army gets big enough. Town Centers (including the capital) will be built on the Ovoo - Workaround is to just build it at the starting position, at least it's around 15 seconds earlier compared to needing to wait for 30-40secs. Villagers unable to work without a completely unpacked town center early on, means idle time. Ger is expensive for a drop off point. Unable to unpack buildings unless mass attacked. Unable to get more TCs (workaround in place).

Going to post this on reddit as well.

[Ragnarr Loðbrók]

Originally posted by YouMoMCallME:

Originally posted by Ragnarr Loðbrók:

thanks for the info i will take a look :)

Regarding AI errors. You can leave a bug report on the official AoE4 forum.

https://forums.ageofempires.com/c/age-of-empires-iv/age-of-empires-iv-bugs/185?order=views

can't make use of it..... stupid forum doesn't let me sign nor register.... always getting an error. When i try to login with my Microsoft account it redirects me to create an account, when i try to create an account it tells me "Something went wrong, perhaps this email is already registered, try the forgot password link".... but whenever i try this it redirects me to create a account >.<

[Bubs]

Originally posted by Ragnarr Loðbrók:

A.I is often enough acting plain stupid
1- A.I having sometimes Pathfinding issues
2- A.I spamming workers despite cheating wasting 40-50%+ of the Cap slots to workers, then not having enough military to fight properly.
3- A.I placing too many TC's on places where it doesn't make any sense
4- A.I trying to constantly flee during a outnumbered fight, leaving it ignoring my units and getting decimated, but if i flee instead despite being have more units, they start to following again, choosing to fight them, makes them flee again.......
5- A.I building docks ond massing ships on a map with a tiny river and building fishing ships in a tiny river without fish......
6- A.I struggles to fight properly near bridges

7- Maps with Water has a chance to negativly impact A.I's fighting capability.

8- the AoE4 a.i is actually quite worse...

I numbered the above to respond to each of them more easily.

1- The only issue I ever found was in one of the last Mongol missions where you have to defend against 8 raids. I accidentally built a wall with no gate (which is actually not stupid), and 2 of the last raids all clustered in one spot on a river. I'm guessing because there was no 'path' to wherever they needed to go, more or less.

2- Isn't have 40-50% workers the best way to have an economy? The map, unless super huge, isn't supposed to be 1 blob army stomping thru everything. There should be things going on in all places. Perhaps this is saying how the game should be played, which is wrong, but if i'm not mistaken that is how the more experienced players play.

Now I sort've disagree with what I just said, because every game I have no much resource I can't even spend it all on units fast enough. So I guess that many workers isn't needed, but it does making losing tons of them irrelevant. AI never has a maxed out army anyways, and I never see them go past 30% workers.

3- Maybe.

4- I thought this was a great aspect of the AI, to come and go based on factors of victory. Even down to minute things like running away from your army near a tower, then turning back to fight you when the tower is out of reach. If you're going to lose anyways, maybe it's better to just hope they let you go. Would be better if they had reserves or ambushes to make their fall back better. Still, I thought this was a great change from just dying with no chance to win.

5- It happens in all AoE's so far. Your scout didn't expect to find cannons on the pond, did he? Owned.

6- I don't have much experience in this. River crossings they seem fine. Bridges I didn't notice anything.

7- I played literally 2 water maps, and I thought I would be safe for at least 8 minutes. Not even close. That was hell. But maybe.

8- I may not have enough experience to know, but going by any other RTS I played (certainly not all), they all seem to be the same basic thing, and of those, AoE4 is the one that stands out most for AI using tactics other than rush or massive blob army. So I'd disagree that the AI isn't up to par with other games, it seems better.

[Ragnarr Loðbrók]

Originally posted by Bubs:

2- Isn't have 40-50% workers the best way to have an economy? The map, unless super huge, isn't supposed to be 1 blob army stomping thru everything. There should be things going on in all places. Perhaps this is saying how the game should be played, which is wrong, but if i'm not mistaken that is how the more experienced players play.

If an A.I Cheats , by getting more ressource and starting with more ressource, compared to a non cheating A.I it doesn't need to lock up 40-50% of the Cap to workers....

A.I's usually tend to be weak, reserving 40-50% of the popcap to workers only, cripples the A.I even further in it's military aspect. Making it weaker than it could and should be.

[Bubs]

Cheats is a stupid word though, because in almost all games the AI gets bonuses instead of being programmed for different difficulty levels. That's how almost every game is. This game seems to be a mix, which I think is a step up.

I see the point though.

[Ragnarr Loðbrók]

Originally posted by Bubs:

Cheats is a stupid word though, because in almost all games the AI gets bonuses instead of being programmed for different difficulty levels. That's how almost every game is. This game seems to be a mix, which I think is a step up.

I see the point though.

yeah cheating A.I might not the best words to describe it , what about A.I with handicap`? ^^ :D

[TeaSipper555]

Does the base AoE 4 AI cheat with resources?
I don't think I have noticed it. I have "starved" the hardest AI and they really stop producing stuff from my impression. Granted, I haven't paid painstaking amount of attention to AI production like that.

Either way.. I personally find the hardest AI to be very weak in this game. I absolutely crushed it on my first try. Like, not even close. I am pretty average casual player when it comes to RTS games, too. I still tend to panic and lose the grasp of basics when getting overwhelmed in most games of this type, haha!

It wasn't a fluke either, I tried more games and hardest AI barely gives you any challenge. Even when I was playing civs for the first time and spend a lot of my time reading tooltips.

I think this is why most of the campaign missions don't involve actual AI controlled bases too much. The AI just is not up to the task. Even missions with enemy bases the enemy just autobuilds attack waves regardless of anything and villagers are there for decoration more than anything. Then again, the campaign is so glitchy and bizarre that it feels like it loads up some beta version of the game for it.

[Varg]

I'd like to see some sources on the AI cheating with resources.

AFAIK the AI doesn't cheat in AoE2 or AoE4 - which is one of the biggest positives since you can starve it or deny resources just as you would any human opponent, and also the AI won't be able to produce unit faster or in greater scale.
In this aspect I really like the AoE AI, even if it sometimes is dumb as a rock.

It has some mad multitasking skills however. And I think it has some kind of "see the map" advantage.

[Bubs]

Originally posted by Ragnarr Loðbrók:

yeah cheating A.I might not the best words to describe it , what about A.I with handicap`? ^^ :D

I think that's the right word.

Originally posted by TeaSipper555:

Does the base AoE 4 AI cheat with resources?
I don't think I have noticed it. I have "starved" the hardest AI and they really stop producing stuff from my impression. Granted, I haven't paid painstaking amount of attention to AI production like that.

Either way.. I personally find the hardest AI to be very weak in this game. I absolutely crushed it on my first try. Like, not even close. I am pretty average casual player when it comes to RTS games, too. I still tend to panic and lose the grasp of basics when getting overwhelmed in most games of this type, haha!

Yeah, I don't think they do get a handicap, or if they do it still requires having income to get the bonus to. So many civs have passive resource collection, so it's hard to say how much is workers and how much is that. Or both, in something like England, who gets food and gold from farms. I don't know how that really works still.

To learn the game we did intermediate then upgraded, and i agree that the AI is weak at all levels. I can still lose to them, when i get lazy. 1/2 the time it's a sacred site victory because of stupid stuff, like my entire army can't kill 2 elephants in 5 minutes.... I'm still mad...

[TeaSipper555]

I watched some of my replays for Skirmish.

Honestly.. it feels like they just shut down once in late Feudal and early Castle. It is like it gives up somehow and doesn't really have any "plans" for late game so it just does whatever. Even in late Imperial without player raiding its economy, the AI feels... underwhelming - sending relatively small attacks out, allowing the player to just set-up the killing blow without interruption.

In the replay I watched, I don't think the hardest AI even reached 150 pop despite me never really touching his base at all and with plenty of time. At least this is my experience.

If the devs ever decide to check the AI, I think they might want to look into making the AI a bit more active in later half of the game. I think the AI is a bit too passive in general on the hardest difficulty.

[Zycat]

Originally posted by TeaSipper555:

Does the base AoE 4 AI cheat with resources?

No. No cheats at all. In fact if you consider that their villagers must idle a few moments after being created (can't use rally points, AI villager management script only runs every x frames - the more AI players the longer the delay so they don't overload the CPU) it's the players that have an advantage.