Are you satisfied with the A.I. in skirmish mode?

[RedHaze1911]

Just wondering how the A.I. compares to other similar games out there? I know its never perfect but is it mostly serviceable in your opinion?

[Skorpius]

I mix it up usually have one on hard, a couple on intermediate, etc..

[Ragnarr Loðbrók]

33% Yes, 33% No, 33% still needs alot of improvement 1% screw this....

[Xaphnir]

I think it's fine at how well it handles macro, but its micro leaves quite a lot to be desired. For example, I've seen it often do things like walking a bombard right up to a gate rather than shooting at the wall from range. Making it simply a-move at the player's base would be a significant improvement.

[Namie]

Im fine with it, sometimes i struggle a bit in hardest which i feel its kinda "easy" considering im not very good at RTS, so most probably veterans would laugh a lot in hardest dif.

[The waffle]

Since the last update, the AIs are no longer really challenging. They don't really get out of the base even on very difficult.

[Soccer]

I use jakcys A.I. mod.

With it its really fun.

[rbdoallo]

No walls, no great handling of the siege engines, but very agressive and quite good at economy until hardest, then it's cheats. It could be better, really the lack of walls kills it a little for me, for example.

[RedHaze1911]

Originally posted by rbdoallo:

No walls, no great handling of the siege engines, but very agressive and quite good at economy until hardest, then it's cheats. It could be better, really the lack of walls kills it a little for me, for example.

U mean they dont build walls at all?

[kevolagyo]

Originally posted by RedHaze1911:

Originally posted by rbdoallo:

No walls, no great handling of the siege engines, but very agressive and quite good at economy until hardest, then it's cheats. It could be better, really the lack of walls kills it a little for me, for example.

U mean they dont build walls at all?

they build walls only if you actively attack them or its quite late in the game, I have hardly seen AI build walls for flank, overchop etc but if you build walls they will for whatever reason be so agro just to drop that wall segment, and will fallback

[Cacomistle]

This is from my perspective as someone who is significantly better than (non-cheating) ai in any rts I've played and was easily within the top of half of pvp players in each of these games (except rise of nations, never played pvp in that).

Its ok, but not great. Its macro, while worse than a decent human player, isn't awful, but its decision making and micro are both trash. And it frequently attacks into positions that make absolutely no sense, like it will dive keeps against a larger army to snipe a vill.

What that leads to imo is an ai that on lower difficulties just sucks and doesn't put up a fight. It has a smaller army, then throws it away.

And if you go up in dfificulty, it becomes a bit annoying. The ai starts getting more units than me on the 50% cheating ai, and it feels kind of like it just throws units around randomly until I don't notice one of them, and then they get like 1-2 vills and idle me for 15 seconds for the price of like 5-6 units, and that's worth it not because its a good trade, but because of cheats.


In contrast I think some other games do it better. The best ai is probably aoe2, which is just the most functional non cheating ai. I mean I'm still better than the best ai, but it feels like it at least puts up a fight (unlike hardest), and I think playing vs ai is the most fun with randoms anyways (since then you get some variance, otherwise vs ai games are very samey).

I also like company of heroes ai better. Its not more skilled, coh2 (coh3 is worse for ai) ai is really bad at the game, very 1 dimensional, and already cheats on normal difficulty. But I think just because of the mechanics of how the game works it starts feeling like a small group of elite soldiers taking on overwhelming odds and winning, and personally I think coh does aesthetic better (and gameplay/strategy worse) so I don't mind playing against an inept opponent as much. In other words it is worse skill-wise, but I like playing against it.

Starcraft 2 ai from what I remember (haven't played it in a while) I think is more skilled than this ai, but by the time they made a decent ai for starcraft I just didn't like the game much anymore. So I can't say whether I like it better.

Aoe3 ai I think is worse. Both it and aoe4 ai just turn stupid sometimes... but aoe3 ai consistently starts breaking around 15-20 minutes when hunt starts running out. They build like 8 mills (equivalent of like 80 farms) just to ignore them and keep trying to send their vills to the hunt your army is standing on. This means aoe3 games are the same thing every single time, you get rushed, you defend the rush, and the ai dies. If anything else happens, the ai broke.

And going back to some older games, I think rise of nations has a better ai. I think its slightly stronger than aoe4's, but more importantly it actually plays the game in a sensible way. So, when you give it say 25% cheats, it feels like a mediocre opponent on an equal economy. Oh and I also played vs ai in brood war and generals zero hour. Both their ai suck.


So to answer your question, no not really. Maybe if it was just aoe2 having a better ai since that game has had decades for people to work on it... but Rise of Nations ai is better. I think expecting a rise of nations level ai is reasonable.

TLDR: Aoe2 and Rise of nations have better ai. Sc2's is more skilled but I don't like sc2. Coh2's ai is worse but more fun to play against for some reason. Only aoe3's feels worse. And no, not really satisfied.

[Ragnarr Loðbrók]

i can get A.I to build walls in SP, but for some reason i can't get them to build walls in MP matches.... which is extremly frustating.

[Aluminum Elite Master]

I think the AI is relatively robust.

Originally posted by Ragnarr Loðbrók:

i can get A.I to build walls in SP, but for some reason i can't get them to build walls in MP matches.... which is extremly frustating.

The AI has issues with walls, yes. It spams them if they feel there are skirmishing units out in any numbers... spam horsemen against an Intermediate or better AI and it often will start rushing up walls. If you skip the mid-game units and let them build up their own army, though, they often do not build walls.

But overall, the AI is *mostly* good. It still spams the lumber mill more than needed, so wastes wood there. And the incessant spam of demolition ships can be an issue on water maps where it doesn't realize I am massing my ships to destroy the demolition ships before they get in range.

Other than that, though, it's better at building armies than it had been, and is more competent at exploring to gather sheep, so it's a step up from at launch now.

[kuromi]

I find the AI serviceable for an average player, its not the best RTS AI in the world or anything, but it gets the job done, and is far from the worst. aoe2DE has better build orders because they trained the AI on actual pro strats, and have iterated it over decades. The AI here in aoe4 kind of reminds me of the AI from starcraft2, except here its more stubborn and wont surrender even when it has no hope.
I am no expert, but ive played a lot of RTS games and imo this one is fine. However, i personally found the campaign to be a bit dull, but that had more to do with general level design.

[Snuggy Serian]

In my opinion, different parts of the whole are sometimes good, decent, better or bad, depending on the patch.
Example: I remember well handled siege units in the past, currently doing dumb stuff regularly.

Generally, it is servicable for learning and improving i would say, at least to a point the player understands the mechanics and uses them as supposed to. Which can be difficult, depending on the CIV used.
Currently excluding mongol AI on mega-random. Personal experience.

[Innisfree]

Have ya'll watched the AI on replay?

I have played possibly 50 1v1 vs AI hardest difficulty random civ since the expansion released. I started to watch every replay.

The AI will always end with around 90% idle villager count. If the 80 has 70 villagers, at least 60 are idle.

The AI seems to bug out once a resource expires. The AI will leave the villagers where ever they happened to sit. It then seems incapable of tasking villagers to any other resource nodes. It will start to build villagers just to leave them idle