For the "normal/casual" player, is Hard AI really that hard?

[对不起我只会说英语]

So I haven't gotten the chance to play PVP yet and is mostly practicing against the computer (my internet sucks anyway). I've gotten to stage where I can beat Intermediate AI but struggle to beat Hard AI.

But I had to wonder, are Hard AIs really hard 1v1? Or do I just need to practice more? :/

[Quintem]

Początkowo opublikowane przez A.:

Alright, most answers here are "AI is easy" so I guess I just suck so bad, lol. I'll take everyone's advice on exploiting AI's behavior as well as try getting good eco and hold out, and I guess I'll try to practice more 😅

Hey, that's the spirit!

Początkowo opublikowane przez Despiser:

Początkowo opublikowane przez Quintem:

If the AI cheated it would not be so damn easy.

Also the AoE2 DE AI does not cheat, the Starcraft 2 AI does not cheat. Developers have gotten pretty good at making AI that does not cheat.

Not true. Most games have deplorable AI and are easy to beat at the highest difficulty. Civilization for example. Note that I am not distinguishing between genres. If they didn't cheat these games would not get out the door. If you tried to program an AI that compete with human players then the game would cost thousands of dollars. They tried in the eighties and it didn't work as algorithms had to compete with improving graphics and increasingly complex games then processors could handle. Hence, the development of powerful graphics cards. I used to write educational games for the Ministry of Citizenship and Culture in Canada (doesn't exist anymore (the ministry, not the country)). I was also part of early development of the Prolog language that was used in AI. I think I know a thing or two about how AI works. You may not see it cheating in all cases but it does, or rather, has to. AI can optimize production far better than you. But what it can't do is decide how to best defeat you. It's not so good at dynamic decision making. Even the best chess game is beatable by a human and that's a game with a very strict rule set.

What's not true? The AI I mentioned or just in general. In general AIs have more information that the player to function. Halo Infinite's AI acts human like for example. I think that's the general goal of most modern AIs to try make something acts somewhat human. AI over the years has greatly improved. Just a lot of games don't try to make it good.

Also depends on the Chess AI, since AI we're discussing is not real AI its well made scripts. Real AI thinks and adapts. There is AlphaStar that played Starcraft 2. It actually beat human pros, it was also limited on it's APM as well so it could not micro everything to perfection. AI's have beaten Chess grand masters.

[PK SPACE JAM]

Ive been trying several days to beat the hard AI with no luck, new to the game, getting better at it though, I realized partly it was the opponent I kept choosing, I played as HRE and kept choosing the French as opponents who just ended up cutting through my infantry with their knights

[About47Pandas]

I dont understand how people are having a hard time with Intermediate AI- or even Easy--

Game Start > Vills on Sheep > Queue Vills > Collect the 2 sheep near base and return them > Have one Vill Build house > One Build Mine at gold > One build lumber > One build mill near berries > Send Scout out with Shift click around the map to collect more sheep (Between Queuing your first vills and sending out your scout, that should be something you master in about 10 to 15 seconds or less). pump out Vills until you have around 15 to 17 Vills with 7 on food, 5 on gold, the rest on wood. Build a Barracks-- around the 4 minute mark you should be aging up.

After aging up build a stable or archery range. Make 1 of each, make more vills, build another house > more vills > More military > Black smith/upgrades-- AI will come in with like 5 units by that time you should have a 5 to 8 units.. easily defend. Rinse and repeat.

Once you are in a position to defend the first wave-- defending the next waves just get easier. -- Then you can just build Defense, and casually build up a stupid army that will roll them.

[IMissMyKids420]

Początkowo opublikowane przez VoiD:

The thing about AI, not just in this game, is that it either cheats or gets ridiculously efficient at doing some things, like build orders, etc...

But the AI will always be the AI and once you get the hang of it, it will stand no chance, it will always do the same things, have the same weaknessess, and the same strengths.

IE: If the AI is programed to micro and deal with a certain tactic, that tactic will always be bad and it will never work, if it's not, it will always work against it.
The one thing the AI can do that players can't is perfect micro with no reaction time, of every unit in the map at the same time, but it can't use actual strategic decisions. Eventually you'll be playing on large maps with every AI vs you for ♥♥♥♥♥ and giggles because 1v1 is no longer fun, or run into MP.

its ok you just have to realize to make more towen centers and get like 80 vills and wall up

[PK SPACE JAM]

Początkowo opublikowane przez IMissMyKids420:

Początkowo opublikowane przez VoiD:

The thing about AI, not just in this game, is that it either cheats or gets ridiculously efficient at doing some things, like build orders, etc...

But the AI will always be the AI and once you get the hang of it, it will stand no chance, it will always do the same things, have the same weaknessess, and the same strengths.

IE: If the AI is programed to micro and deal with a certain tactic, that tactic will always be bad and it will never work, if it's not, it will always work against it.
The one thing the AI can do that players can't is perfect micro with no reaction time, of every unit in the map at the same time, but it can't use actual strategic decisions. Eventually you'll be playing on large maps with every AI vs you for ♥♥♥♥♥ and giggles because 1v1 is no longer fun, or run into MP.

its ok you just have to realize to make more towen centers and get like 80 vills and wall up

I think this is the thing I keep missing, its difficult to remember to manage your economy while fighting a war, it would be great if you could co-op as one side with one friend managing war and the other managing the economy lol

[Despiser]

Początkowo opublikowane przez Quintem:

Początkowo opublikowane przez A.:

Alright, most answers here are "AI is easy" so I guess I just suck so bad, lol. I'll take everyone's advice on exploiting AI's behavior as well as try getting good eco and hold out, and I guess I'll try to practice more 😅

Hey, that's the spirit!

Początkowo opublikowane przez Despiser:

Not true. Most games have deplorable AI and are easy to beat at the highest difficulty. Civilization for example. Note that I am not distinguishing between genres. If they didn't cheat these games would not get out the door. If you tried to program an AI that compete with human players then the game would cost thousands of dollars. They tried in the eighties and it didn't work as algorithms had to compete with improving graphics and increasingly complex games then processors could handle. Hence, the development of powerful graphics cards. I used to write educational games for the Ministry of Citizenship and Culture in Canada (doesn't exist anymore (the ministry, not the country)). I was also part of early development of the Prolog language that was used in AI. I think I know a thing or two about how AI works. You may not see it cheating in all cases but it does, or rather, has to. AI can optimize production far better than you. But what it can't do is decide how to best defeat you. It's not so good at dynamic decision making. Even the best chess game is beatable by a human and that's a game with a very strict rule set.

What's not true? The AI I mentioned or just in general. In general AIs have more information that the player to function. Halo Infinite's AI acts human like for example. I think that's the general goal of most modern AIs to try make something acts somewhat human. AI over the years has greatly improved. Just a lot of games don't try to make it good.

Also depends on the Chess AI, since AI we're discussing is not real AI its well made scripts. Real AI thinks and adapts. There is AlphaStar that played Starcraft 2. It actually beat human pros, it was also limited on it's APM as well so it could not micro everything to perfection. AI's have beaten Chess grand masters.

The part about devs have made AIs better so they don't have to cheat. Just by saying they have access to more information implies cheating. But that isn't mutually exclusive either. I'm not saying there hasn't been strides in making a better AI. There may be an argument as to what constitutes cheating as there is a grey area since humans and machines do not process in the same way.

[Quintem]

Początkowo opublikowane przez Despiser:

The part about devs have made AIs better so they don't have to cheat. Just by saying they have access to more information implies cheating. But that isn't mutually exclusive either. I'm not saying there hasn't been strides in making a better AI. There may be an argument as to what constitutes cheating as there is a grey area since humans and machines do not process in the same way.

I'm pretty sure the Starcraft 2 AI for example does not have any information the player does not have. Pretty sure, it's about as pure as an AI can get in an RTS. (plus no extra resources and other blatant stuff like that). I think the AoE2:DE AI is similar.

As for processing information, true. That's what made Alphastar's development so cool, it went from having to interpret the game as a weird abstracts, to viewing the entire map at once because it could not pan the camera like a human. It did not cheat it only saw it's PoV but obviously seeing the entire map at once is bonkers. Eventually it was able to play using "standard" interface and played the game similar to a human. Real AI is both scary and fascinating, it's going to be a real Pandora's box once its out, not likely to put it back in the box.

[oldschool]

I lost my first 3 matches to easy AI... When i was finishing RUS mastery I won my 2nd match vs hardest AI.... Then when playing as the french vs the hardest AI for my second mastery, i honestly thought I forgot to turn up the difficulty until the game was over

[jey123456]

Początkowo opublikowane przez Subject19:

Początkowo opublikowane przez Dayve:

It's not as hard as the hard AI in Age 2 DE was, but yeah it's pretty hard (for a casual player). They'll hit you with decent sized armies early on, and yes it does cheat.

Nope, AI is not cheating in AoE4, you can read a lot of articles about it, thats something unique here. The AI is tought by machine learning.

Out of my few games vs hard ai, 2 of them had an interesting "event" while i was destroying their main base, a stone wall would suddenly appear all around their base and a wonder start building outside. forcing me to bring new siege stuff to break out my army from inside the ai base lol. While i cant say the ai cheat on resources, it definitely has the power to poof things into existence.

[xero814]

I don't consider myself a good player, but we do 3 on 3 with hardest AI and it seems a lil too easy. Once you get them bombard canons in there they just wipe things right out.

[Ashoka]

A good player will continuously beat the hard AI

[PK SPACE JAM]

I finally beat the hard english AI this morning with the HRE. Things that helped - the AI doesn't seem to respond well to rush strategies, even just mildly harassing their villagers will slow down their production enough to give you time to get other ♥♥♥♥ done and process whatever else is going on. Walling my stuff also helped a bit as it discouraged head on attacks and I could more efficiently station defensive forces.

[PK SPACE JAM]

Also, the hard AI doesn't seem to expand very well either for it's own sake, i denied them a gold vein near the start of the game and they never ended up placing a mine near another, allowing the AI to develop an economy previously just meant that the AI would do so faster and more efficient than I could otherwise.

[Raampage]

Początkowo opublikowane przez PK SPACE JAM:

Początkowo opublikowane przez IMissMyKids420:

its ok you just have to realize to make more towen centers and get like 80 vills and wall up

I think this is the thing I keep missing, its difficult to remember to manage your economy while fighting a war, it would be great if you could co-op as one side with one friend managing war and the other managing the economy lol

I actually played a game like that one time - one of the 100's of RTS's I've played in my lifetime. One team, one color, anyone could do anything with the units. You went through epochs instead of ages if I recall. From stone age to nuclear capability. Oh what was that game...

[PeteSkTemplar]

Początkowo opublikowane przez oldschool:

I lost my first 3 matches to easy AI... When i was finishing RUS mastery I won my 2nd match vs hardest AI.... Then when playing as the french vs the hardest AI for my second mastery, i honestly thought I forgot to turn up the difficulty until the game was over

I got stuck on sacred victory with fully upgraded monks. I won with all upgrades but nothing happened. Then I tried to win in III rd age but also nothing happened.

Do you remember how you won that?

Ok, I got an answer problem was that landmark - Abbey of Holy Trinity had to be chosen.