The AI cheating needs an urgent rework

[Skull]

I just gave up a 3 pretender kings game where I killed over 20 full stacks of one single enemy in less than 15 turns. I thought I finally had it, having killed their leader over 4 times already and I thought I would finally be able to siege down their capital. THat is a big no no. In 2 turns the leader was back with 5 more 6 stacks to kick me out.

I understand that the AI must cheat but serious, wtf. The city states don't help in anything, the AI is not agressive towards each other, they have unlimited heroes with free items, they don't have to worry about upkeep at all, etc etc etc

Oh, and I'm playing on normal. I can't even imagine playing this game on the hardest difficult. Dont't get me wrong, I love hard games, but this game is feeling just unfair. Feels like playing old age of empires 2 game where in 10 minutes the AI is appears on your town with an Onager.

[Skull]

One more thing. THe AI programming in this game is so bad that they have to give an absurd amount of advanteges to the so they can even compete. This is not how this game was supposed to be.

[Frienby]

I am okay with a little cheating too, but yeah, I play on normal so that we are seemingly on an even field. However, I could tell there was some rediculous cheats when killing four heroes, I got three champion breast plates from one ai player empire. Game just dumping items on them, even ones unique to materium focused empires if they are shadow focused. It gets to be a bit silly. It was funny that it ended up with being able to kit every melee hero of my own with some of the best stuff, but that shouldn't be done so easily.

[The Doctor]

Is that a story realm? I don't play those but they appear to be scripted. heroes can return quite quickly too with full hit points depending on the development of the wizard tower.

The experience you're describing there is not familiar to me at all in my sandbox games. However, I can summon, conjure, build very large armies very quickly as well as use the affinity tree to get a latghe army from nothing (this depends on the affinities you're working with but there are a few of them to be found) and I assume that the AI is more aggressive about doing this than I am as my playstyle is more builder-oriented.

[djheat]

Pretender Kings is a realm modifier, you can make your own map with it, it just makes 3 premade lords with extra cities preset to be at war with each other

[The Doctor]

Originally posted by djheat:

Pretender Kings is a realm modifier, you can make your own map with it, it just makes 3 premade lords with extra cities preset to be at war with each other

Thanks. I haven't tried to create my own realms yet.

[Midas]

Yeah... I'll defend a lot of the cool stuff in AoW4, but the AI was awful in past games, and they've somehow managed to make it even worse.

[Pumis]

Gotta agree on this one. Sure you can defeat A.I with exploits or making the most OP builds out there. But for casual players it's a huge headache when you need to take down 10x more stacks than what you can realistically ever produce. Somehow A.I is able to produce units insanely fast. Little cheat is understandable. But when the difference in stacks (and high tier ones at that) is that large. Then it's just boring grind to defeat them.

[********]

... and this is the reason why I haven't bought this game yet. I have AoW3 and Planetfall and the AI in both games is cheating. I figured the same crap would continue in AoW4 and it sounds like Triumph still hasn't learned how to properly code AI.

[Skull]

It is ok for the ai to cheat. But when they cheat that much it is just boring. I hoped for a better balance of competence and cheating. Right now it feels like it is all cheating

[hunter.gatherer.on]

Remember the AI does have access to the same tricks you have like rushing units, summoning units, summoning whole stacks using imperium, and various ways of reducing hero respawn time. I'm not saying they don't cheat, but I haven't had it happen to me. I can confirm the AIs can possess many full stacks by late game (turn 80+).

[quark35]

Agreed - AI insta-summoning multiple level 3/4 stacks (not level 1 summons) every turn. You smash one massive army and think you have broken them then 2 turns later whilst you are plodding forward - bam - another 4-5 stacks.

[ReverseRaven]

Having just beaten a map with Pretender Kings on hard.... I gotta say the AI doesn't actually cheat THAT much resource-wise. I had two of the brothers beaten score-wise about halfway through the game.

The worst size-wise was the Shadow-affinity brother who had like 30 stacks but that's because the majority of them are T1/T2 undead chaff. The other two were just running around 12 stacks of T3-T4 units with the occasional T5, which is difficult, sure, but far from unmanageable. Mind you, this is just talking about the three brothers who start with larger empires by default. The other three AI even on hard are a cakewalk.

What kind of annoys me about the AI admittedly is the whole temporary hit points deal. I cannot auto without the AI eventually grinding me down so I have to fight every battle myself. Which is frustrating when you have to do it 2-3 times a turn.

This is also why I will never play on Brutal.

Edit: Also can anyone confirm the AI insta summons entire stacks in one turn? Because having played on Hard for two games now I haven't seen it. They just have a lot of units but it doesn't seem anywhere as instant as people complain it is. That's just called having stacks underground/behind the fog of war. At most I saw the AI produce a stack of 6 units over 3 turns while I besieged his throne.

[Skull]

Originally posted by ReverseRaven:

Having just beaten a map with Pretender Kings on hard.... I gotta say the AI doesn't actually cheat THAT much resource-wise. I had two of the brothers beaten score-wise about halfway through the game.

The worst size-wise was the Shadow-affinity brother who had like 30 stacks but that's because the majority of them are T1/T2 undead chaff. The other two were just running around 12 stacks of T3-T4 units with the occasional T5, which is difficult, sure, but far from unmanageable. Mind you, this is just talking about the three brothers who start with larger empires by default. The other three AI even on hard are a cakewalk.

What kind of annoys me about the AI admittedly is the whole temporary hit points deal. I cannot auto without the AI eventually grinding me down so I have to fight every battle myself. Which is frustrating when you have to do it 2-3 times a turn.

This is also why I will never play on Brutal.

The brother that made me give up the game was the shadow brother. I was managing pretty fine the manual combat. Being able to wipe them out one after the other, but eventually they manage to wear me down enough that I have to stop and heal. And when this happened j had to the deal with 10 more stacks on my doorstep.

The auto combat really doesn't work very well when you are suffering so much pressure.

I don't agree with you that they don't cheat so much. They have unlimited mana and gold yo summon and recruit. This by itself is enough to make it completely broken. Of course it is doable, but makes the game very boring. The ai plays a war of attrition where you have to spend more hours on manual combat to be able to stand a chance.

[ReverseRaven]

They do not have unlimited mana and gold. Having allied the realm-boosted AI in two different hard games and been able to see their empires, it is far from unlimited. One of the ways I make up the difference in cheating in both this and planetfall is selling the AI things we both don't need for exorbitant prices.

E.g. selling a basic bow to the AI for as high as 200 gold if our relations are good enough.

On many turns the AI cannot offer me this because the AI doesn't have enough gold. Heck, on the game I'm on now the realm-boosted Druid is basically stuck because she has so many free summons (that she has to pay upkeep for) from her Empire Tech that summons an animal whenever she annexes a province that she's seemingly out of gold and mana every turn.

[Star Paladin]

Sadly, I see little difference between this AI and Planetfalls. It even moves it's stacks in the exact clumps PF use to; like you can have up to 7 stacks in a battle. And in PF, even when the entire world was going to end in 15 turns, they still would not attack you. They still don't, but a magical group of creatures go *poof* next to your towers to cover up the AI impotence.