Is the AI really bad?

[Vandal Savant]

I want to pick up this game sometime before the sale's over regardless, but I recall reading a lot about how the AI is utterly brain dead beyond simply rushing forth to kill you, foregoing any other priority, self-preservation, and sometimes reasonable pathfinding (ie getting stuck), in the process of their vendetta.

So, forgive me if this sounds a bit snarky, but how low exactly should I set my expectations for the AI to act interestingly?

[The Void]

With no offense to the devs, yes the AI is weak. It basically spreads out to search for you, then beelines its troops to you once it spots you. If you use this to your advantage, this often means you can knock out a few of their troops before they can bring their entire force to bear on you.

However, the map design is excellent, so even against the AI you have to think tactically, as they can come from any direction. The AI also recieves some buffs, even on "easy" difficulty to make up for their lack of real strategy.

There's also always PvP, if that's your thing.

tl;dr
The AI isn't very "interesting", but the game is still very fun :)

[happy]

the AI will charge you.

yet, charging is often the most annoying thing the AI could do. Annoying for your warriors life expectancy.

things are a bit more complicated than good AI bad AI.

even with a bad AI the game can be a ♥♥♥♥♥ because difficulty comes from situations not from AI tactics.

different deployements, different secondary objectives bring diversity situation wise.

the AI is braindead and yet you will lose a lot of characters if YOU do not play well.

the AI sucks but this affects the game in a lesser way than in any other tactical game.

early on you will consider the AI ruthless, and it will be, you will suffer from bad AI mostly very late game, when your warriors are strong enough to survive 2-5 blows.

you will notice AI impressive(large) units sometimes getting stuck, this issue can not be debated, it sucks.
but it only affects players who field impressive themselves.

[Elldrytch]

If you're comfortable with the following, you should be fine with it

1.) AI units spending the whole game trying to run through doors they can't actually fit through
2.) AI units running past combats and around people to go stand behind walls doing nothing because they're convinced there's a weaker unit they can get too and all they care about is trying to drop a few of your units before they die
3.) Being completely oblivious to any attempt at winning, purely because their only desire is to charge the weakest unit and drop it, even if that means they're going to die the next turn.

That's basically the AI for this game. They don't try to win, they don't try to do any of the secondary objectives. All they do is try to punish your team, loot any items they can get, and then leave you weakened. They also get huge bonuses to health, damage and most of their stats. So if you're against the game cheating against you, then also you should probably avoid the PvE stuff.

Me personally, I find how the game deals with certain actions to be more frustrating than the AI. THE WORST one is, you can put your troops on an overwatch (for ranged) or ambush (for melee) action. Things within range will get shot/charged as appropriate. Except if the other unit suddenly gets in LOS because of an action on their part (like climbing up a sheer wall) then they can climb up the wall, and then charge you from that position.

I'm sorry game, but if I'm standing there waiting for someone to show up I'm totally not going to let you climb a darned wall and then charge me.

[PfuncTyrant]

It could be just me, but since the last update, Ive been seeing the AI act pretty "smart" setting up ambushes instead of charging, picking up only shards and clusters alot more than they did before, waiting me out in choke points etc etc, justt the last few days. In fact I had my first real wipe yesterday, where they split up and hit 3 of my toons while leaving my archer alone, killing my knight and leader right off the bat with the weakest in easy access. (I sometimes use a lvl 1 I dont care about as bait to draw the AI out) Ive only been playing about a month or so, yet Ive never seen the AI act like that before. Then again it could just be my imagination *shrug

[Warlord]

Some of the best AI i've ever seen in a game. Sometimes it goes full autism though and just stands in place or tries to hide the entire match then the match becomes hide and seek trying to find the last AI character left that always passes it's leadership test but literally does nothing the whole game.

[Prince Kaine]

Let's put it like that:

The AI sucks. That is to be expected anyway, Mordheim is a very very hard game, with hard choices to make. Super computer barely keep up with human in chess, a nearly purely maths problem so how do you want OUR pc to do smart things. But I've seen some improvement.

Second point is that the game is difficult by itself, with loads of thing able to go wrong. With a very very good AI I'm afraid most humans will have a very VERY bad time.

EDIT:
Oh and another thing, the AI DOES not love its pixel. Something a lot of players should learn from it.

[D Enhanced]

They AI does some things that takes getting used to.

As has been said, some rounds it goes full derp mode, for instance, enemies will climb a wall, then jump down and climb again. Sometimes they will get stuck on ground debris like overturned tables fence corners as they attempt to move directly towards one of your units.It is more noticeable against skaven warbands, but some missions will end quickly because the AI heroes have used their high movement value to get ahead of the rest of their warband and suicide into your entire warband. Often they will target your weakest character on the field with laser-like precision, and (to me) it seems like they always know where you are so splitting up is generally a horrible idea.

However, apart from those things randomly happening the AI plays as I imagine a human griever would, so there is still plenty of challenge.

Just like any griever, it will punish you for leaving an important character out of position. If you rush your heroes out of position because of their higher movement, it will bite you for it. AI will position itself to get multiple people in combat with one of your guys, while setting up others to ambush characters you try to move to assist with. It will try to get it's ranged units above you.

The thing is that this game seems to be a process of patient improvement. It's got reasonably active devs and there have been many, MANY improvements since release. As people have said, the AI used to ignore secondary objectives completely, but recently I've been having matches where the AI enemy warbands have been looting as many wyrdstone nodes and treasure points as I was.

The devs listen to the fanbase and do their best within their constraints to make the improvements needed for the game to be better. For example, a year ago the loading screens were long enough to go make a coffee, even on an SSD. Now I don't even need to have the game taking up precious space on my SSD and it still loads very swiftly.


Ultimately, if you are even semi-interested, it is worth the sales price.

[Vandal Savant]

Figure I may as well reply at least once. After about 10 hours of playing, I'm decidedly pretty happy with the purchase.

The AI is kind of wonky in the fact I've noticed so far that it tries to set up "ambushes" in incredibly ineffective places, especially when in LOS of player units. I guess it's trying to do area denial, even when it'd be better to jump into the fray to help out its pals that are getting singled out.

It's not quite as bad as I thought it'd be, though. I've seen some pick up wyrdstones via objective feed, and loot my fallen warriors. Some ranged units set up effective sniper nests, have very reasonable hit-and-run tactics, and have occasionally baited me into ambushes in the process.

It'd be nice if the AI got continually improved. But I'd not be surprised if it didn't, in favor of pvp balances where I presume the "real game" is supposed to be. I'm not really into turn-based pvp, though.

[mikeblackburn13]

Originally posted by project_mercy:

They also get huge bonuses to health, damage and most of their stats. So if you're against the game cheating against you, then also you should probably avoid the PvE stuff.

This is not entirely true. The AI gets a flat buff to health and damage based on the difficulty rating of the mission you select. This ranges from a minor boost at normal, to a significant increase at deadly. These buffs are clearly listed in every enemy unit's buff list (hotkey "b", target unit to see). The AI also gets a flat bonus to stupidity tests due to an inability to properly use mitigating skills. These are the only buffs the AI receive. The AI does not "cheat".

[La roca]

Yeah I have to agree with everything said before, first matches ai seems hard and punishing, but the more units you add to a battle, and if you put in a impressive.. then AI starts having lots of trouble not getting his units stuck. I really enjoy the game, but it was starting to get frustrating to me after many battles only fighting half AI warband, and getting easy wins.
Not having the option for a pvp campaign its a shame, so we started one on steam today, and it's looking good.
You're wellcome to join us, you just need to create a new warband, and post screen here:

http://steamcommunity.com/groups/MordheimPermaleague

[LarkinVB]

The AI is very weak and once you know its moves, you will win without much effort. So the game becomes less fun the longer you play. The worst thing is that big impressives get stuck and you fight against a weak AI which has its biggest unit being useless 90% of the time.
The game is still fun but could be so much better with a decent AI.

[Prince Kaine]

Originally posted by LarkinVB:

The AI is very weak and once you know its moves, you will win without much effort. So the game becomes less fun the longer you play. The worst thing is that big impressives get stuck and you fight against a weak AI which has its biggest unit being useless 90% of the time.
The game is still fun but could be so much better with a decent AI.

OK the AI is weak.

One question, can you clean the map with a warband level 10 in deadly on a random deployement?
Because most of the players complain that the ai is weak, and then very VERY carefully select only Rival in the Ruins, Pillagers and lost in the fog.

When a player able to pass lvl 10 full random deployement states the AI is weak I respect his word. If you can't do that don't state the AI is weak when you put yourself in the most favorable condition. Take random dployement, I'll bet you'll get your ass handed over to you once or twice before getting how to play vs the stoopid AI.

[Quardak]

IF you take random deployment AND "both warbands shattered"... you will loose at least 1-3 warband members in DEADLY for the fact the enemy starts near you.. rush you ... have a lot extra damage and Hitpoints.

You always have to consider that no player will try to play with planned casualities... you always try to avoid looses. So its easy to call the AI weak...if they play smart like other player you will always in any fight loose 1 or 2 member.

I played all 4 factions to Warband lvl 10 an and mastered all Story Mission.

[moneytalk18]

Originally posted by Prince Kaine:

OK the AI is weak.

One question, can you clean the map with a warband level 10 in deadly on a random deployement?
Because most of the players complain that the ai is weak, and then very VERY carefully select only Rival in the Ruins, Pillagers and lost in the fog.

When a player able to pass lvl 10 full random deployement states the AI is weak I respect his word. If you can't do that don't state the AI is weak when you put yourself in the most favorable condition. Take random dployement, I'll bet you'll get your ass handed over to you once or twice before getting how to play vs the stoopid AI.

Totally agree with this one. Worse scenario would be when you are Ambushed/Sneak Attacked by the Deadly enemies at deployment. Posting a sample image of it outside of steam app since I am currently at office.

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/vbcRLaA0FGs/maxresdefault.jpg

[Quardak]

What i considered the last games i played:

AI comes not in a line (as usual) ... AI comes as a bubble, which is a lot smarter or difficulter for the player. Last games i cant avoid some losses, but thats Mordheim