Why is the A.I. so stupid?

[Miggy]

So... I'm currently a vassal of Vlandia and joined in on a big fight against the Khuzait. Before I joined, it was around 1.8k Vlandia forces vs. 700 Khuzait forces. When my 200 troops join in, the Khuzaits doesn't have a chance, and to be fair we won in the end. But the ally A.I. was doing some very stupid things that just frustrated me. Just to make it clear, we were the attacker while the Khuzaits were defending.

1) So I set my unit cap to only 500 or else my old PC would melt and murder me as it did and the game represented the 2k vs. 700 fight spawning 400 troops for us and 100 troops for the Khuzaits more or less.
2) The 1st thing the A.I. does is to chase down the suicide horse archers with ALL their units. Since I wasn't suicidal enough to charge the main enemy force on my own when they positioned themselves in a terrain advantage, I followed the ally A.I. Good so far.
3) This is where it gets frustrating. After dealing with the HA, the A.I. marches to the main enemy force then stops at a certain distance with the infantry in front and the archers behind all clustered together so they can't all shoot. Their cavalry just charges in to chase the opponent's cavalry.
4) So, since the ally A.I. was being cowardly despite it's 3 to 1 advantage, I position my archers so that they have a clear line of sight while my infantry is with the ally A.I.'s infantry.
5) But when the defending A.I. suddenly charges in, the ally A.I. suddenly pulls ALL it's units back. WHY?!?! Lost plenty of units because I didn't realize what was happening at 1st.
6) This kept happening until it was OUR units that was pushed to the other side of the map. Afterwards they just stand there not charging. The infantry just stood in front while 10 or so archers fired from the back cause they were all bunched up. While the defending A.I. has all their archers in front and all of them were firing.

This made the fight so much longer than it had to be. In the end, I just pulled back my forces and let them idle while making the 2 brain dead A.I. fight each other. Just made my lunch while they duked it out. In the end, the fight took 30-40 minutes and casualty was 700 Khuzaits dead and 700 Vlandia dead. Let me remind you this was a 4 to 1 unit count in our favor.

Just venting out my frustration.

[connelld1965]

Sounds like the friendly lords don't like you and pulled back to whittle you down to size. Well played AI, well played indeed.

[Miggy]

connelld1965 eredeti hozzászólása:

Sounds like the friendly lords don't like you and pulled back to whittle you down to size. Well played AI, well played indeed.

Nah, I only lost units in the 1st pull back around 20 units of which only 3 were actually killed. After I saw how stupid the A.I. was, I ensured my units were always behind the A.I. units. Maybe it was infighting then? After all, 2 Vlandia armies were involved in the fight :P

[CellNav]

Miggy eredeti hozzászólása:

So... I'm currently a vassal of Vlandia and joined in on a big fight against the Khuzait. Before I joined, it was around 1.8k Vlandia forces vs. 700 Khuzait forces. When my 200 troops join in, the Khuzaits doesn't have a chance,....

Slightly off topic (apologies) ... I set my battle limit to 1000 instead of the default 500, and it fights better (IMO) than a staggered fight of less units.

On topic ... Look left and right at the commanders next to you. They might out rank you and are idiots, so your job is to make them look like they knew what they were doing ... :)

I had a similar fight not long ago (small 500 vs 450). I was clan 1 with a hand full of chumps, I covered the left flank at the edge of some woods. Sure enough, the Vlandian cavalry couldn't stand me being on their flank and they attacked me (in the woods). I chased them down after the attack until the end of the battle.

The moral of that story wasn't a stupid AI, but if I wasn't covering the flank then those Vlandian horses would have attack the main army's flank ... I made the lead commander look "smart".

:P

EDIT: ... Oh, I made him look so good, I got 2 Charm points for it, thank you.

[Miggy]

CellNav eredeti hozzászólása:

Miggy eredeti hozzászólása:

So... I'm currently a vassal of Vlandia and joined in on a big fight against the Khuzait. Before I joined, it was around 1.8k Vlandia forces vs. 700 Khuzait forces. When my 200 troops join in, the Khuzaits doesn't have a chance,....

Slightly off topic (apologies) ... I set my battle limit to 1000 instead of the default 500, and it fights better (IMO) than a staggered fight of less units.

On topic ... Look left and right at the commanders next to you. They might out rank you and are idiots, so your job is to make them look like they knew what they were doing ... :)

I had a similar fight not long ago (small 500 vs 450). I was clan 1 with a hand full of chumps, I covered the left flank at the edge of some woods. Sure enough, the Vlandian cavalry couldn't stand me being on their flank and they attacked me (in the woods). I chased them down after the attack until the end of the battle.

The moral of that story wasn't a stupid AI, but if I wasn't covering the flank then those Vlandian horses would have attack the main army's flank ... I made the lead commander look "smart".

:P

EDIT: ... Oh, I made him look so good, I got 2 Charm points for it, thank you.

Hahaha! Maybe that was the problem. My army is usually all archers (the infantry I commanded cam from my clan member's party) so I usually just hang back and let the ally A.I. take the brunt of the attacks. Maybe they got sick my my sh*t this time :P

Also, my PC already struggles with 500 units at mid-low settings. I don't think it would survive 1000 units. :P

[Theo Hardmeier]

AI archers have a stupid habit of forming a compact box when there are too many of them.
Many of them are unable to fire their ranged weapons that way.

Your right on that one OP.

The friendly AI pulling back without warning is annoying to. Since it means you have to sit back and babysit your soldiers instead of getting in the thick of it.
Beats getting knocked out and watching the the AI take over your troops and do horrifying things with them.

Lets say I rage deleted a save after I got knocked out in a massive battle early once.
Seeing my top tier forces wiped out by a recruit army still haunts me to this day.

[Odium_Apollyon]

Miggy eredeti hozzászólása:

So... I'm currently a vassal of Vlandia and joined in on a big fight against the Khuzait. Before I joined, it was around 1.8k Vlandia forces vs. 700 Khuzait forces. When my 200 troops join in, the Khuzaits doesn't have a chance, and to be fair we won in the end. But the ally A.I. was doing some very stupid things that just frustrated me. Just to make it clear, we were the attacker while the Khuzaits were defending.

1) So I set my unit cap to only 500 or else my old PC would melt and murder me as it did and the game represented the 2k vs. 700 fight spawning 400 troops for us and 100 troops for the Khuzaits more or less.
2) The 1st thing the A.I. does is to chase down the suicide horse archers with ALL their units. Since I wasn't suicidal enough to charge the main enemy force on my own when they positioned themselves in a terrain advantage, I followed the ally A.I. Good so far.
3) This is where it gets frustrating. After dealing with the HA, the A.I. marches to the main enemy force then stops at a certain distance with the infantry in front and the archers behind all clustered together so they can't all shoot. Their cavalry just charges in to chase the opponent's cavalry.
4) So, since the ally A.I. was being cowardly despite it's 3 to 1 advantage, I position my archers so that they have a clear line of sight while my infantry is with the ally A.I.'s infantry.
5) But when the defending A.I. suddenly charges in, the ally A.I. suddenly pulls ALL it's units back. WHY?!?! Lost plenty of units because I didn't realize what was happening at 1st.
6) This kept happening until it was OUR units that was pushed to the other side of the map. Afterwards they just stand there not charging. The infantry just stood in front while 10 or so archers fired from the back cause they were all bunched up. While the defending A.I. has all their archers in front and all of them were firing.

This made the fight so much longer than it had to be. In the end, I just pulled back my forces and let them idle while making the 2 brain dead A.I. fight each other. Just made my lunch while they duked it out. In the end, the fight took 30-40 minutes and casualty was 700 Khuzaits dead and 700 Vlandia dead. Let me remind you this was a 4 to 1 unit count in our favor.

Just venting out my frustration.

I wish you could tell your troops to target specific troops. Like HC target HA then when the HA are gone order them to targets archers or infantry or other HC instead of letting the AI control it.

[Miggy]

Odium_Apollyon eredeti hozzászólása:

I wish you could tell your troops to target specific troops. Like HC target HA then when the HA are gone order them to targets archers or infantry or other HC instead of letting the AI control it.

I wish for this too. It feels so clunky to only be able to get your units to charge without being able to set what they should engage.

Theo Hardmeier eredeti hozzászólása:

AI archers have a stupid habit of forming a compact box when there are too many of them.
Many of them are unable to fire their ranged weapons that way.

Your right on that one OP.

The friendly AI pulling back without warning is annoying to. Since it means you have to sit back and babysit your soldiers instead of getting in the thick of it.
Beats getting knocked out and watching the the AI take over your troops and do horrifying things with them.

Lets say I rage deleted a save after I got knocked out in a massive battle early once.
Seeing my top tier forces wiped out by a recruit army still haunts me to this day.

Its why I've learned my lesson. I do not join any army unless its a siege. I'd rather follow an army while they're travelling and just join in when they go to battle. That way I still control my units while the A.I. does its thing.

[Apples]

They didn't want the AI out smarting the average Steam user base.

[FighterJet27]

This happens when your side receives reinforcements, the ai gets all the forces on the frontline to go back to re-group with the reinforcements. Both enemy and allied ai do this, it will take TW many weeks/months to actually fix this, so I'd say get used to it. The ai likes to keeps it's units together (which makes sense in theory) but can't put it into practice without being annoying for the player. This scenario happens frequently in large battles and is part of the reason you should have more archers, they can attack without having to get near the enemy, partly negating the need to engage, which will just have the ai disengage when it gets reinforcements.

In team battles, just leave your troops way back and lets the ai take it's sweet time running back and forwards, it'll be over eventually. Once it took over 40 minutes of waiting for me, because they ai would refuse to engage for enough time to do real damage.

There might even be a mod to just have both sides use a simpler ai for battle tactics to avoid the issue, maybe even just plain charging and no tactics at all, but I don't know if it's out there. But that up to you to find if it exists.