AI Cheating

[Bambi]

Top review right now says the game has a very badly cheating AI which always keeps up with you and instantly respawns units. This is a HARD pass for me. I've played enough RTS with this kind of feature to know I will not enjoy it at all.

So is this true or not? If yes, I know many deeply indoctrinated defenders will come to this thread, making excuses, or delving into some pseudo-philosophical B/S about whether a good RTS AI can even exist at all which I will not respond to.

The bottom line is that such an AI reduces your options to a single optimal counter-strategy. It makes raiding and other soft attacks impossible since the only thing that is ever counted against the AI is a full loss, and your personal performance hardly matters either since the AI will always catch up and be at the same level.

Nobody expects an AI to play at a professional level, it's even expected that they may receive a leg up here and there since they need the help, An explicit "allow cheating" setting would be a good user experience too, as long as the cheating is restrained. but an AI which instantly recovers and rubber bands from anything you can do is not fun and will never be fun.

[Ulmace]

ye this exists, i hate it too, still im enjoying conquest as a pve challenge. Overall its ok.

[some moron]

Originally posted by Bambi:

If yes, I know many deeply indoctrinated defenders will come to this thread, making excuses, or delving into some pseudo-philosophical B/S about whether a good RTS AI can even exist at all which I will not respond to.

The bottom line is ...

Translated :
"Does this game offer a challenge?
If yes, and if you aren't pissed-off and throwing a tantrum about it and generally being negative and disagreeable person, then that means you are a 'brain-washed indoctrinated defender who can't think for themself'.
Everyone elses' point-of-view is "BS" and I ignore other people's thoughts because I refuse to converse with other people who's views don't already agree with my own, or to ever learn anything in my life again, and I am too insecure to have my opinion challenged by something I don't already believe, and I wouldn't be able to defend my point of view anyway, and as I've already explained, I can't handle a challenge.
Nobody should explain their point of view because that's "BS". And now I am going to explain my point of view. Ahem, the bottom line is..."

[Ulmace]

Originally posted by some moron:

Originally posted by Bambi:

"Does this game offer a challenge?
If yes, and if you aren't pissed-off and throwing a tantrum about it and generally being negative and disagreeable person, then that means you are a 'brain-washed indoctrinated moron who can't think for themself'.
Everyone elses' point-of-view is "BS" and I ignore other people's thoughts because I refuse to converse with other people or to ever learn anything in my life again, and I am too insecure to have my opinion challenged by something I don't already believe, and I wouldn't be able to defend my point of view anyway, and as I've already explained, I can't handle a challenge.
Nobody should explain their point of view because that's "BS". And now I am going to explain my point of view."

how do you feel about jehovah?

[Occasional Gamer]

Glad I'm reading this before I bought it. I hate the cheating AI in AoE, it just takes away all the fun from the game for me.

[Tex Conway]

I just experimented with the Normal AI a bit. I intentionally kept an enemy kraken down to their starting tile and one other food producing tile. No upgrades on that second tile's buildings. I had 4 farms all producing at the highest possible rate with max upgrades, lore bonuses, and worker's tools upgrades. 12 farmers producing a large quantity of food, on top of the other random fish or meat tile I had here and there. Despite this, the Kraken was able to not only produce enough food to make 15 unit armies thrice over, after I wiped them each time, but also out-produced myself and my two other AI partners the entire time.

AI cheats like crazy.

[joemama1512]

I agree that the AI implementation is rather lacking. I dont mind cheating per se, but it needs to have SOME basis in gameplay rules. They might get extra production lets say, but they dont get food with NO food tiles at all for example. Or be able to break rules such as artifact cooldown and spam draconic jotnir like crazy.
Or all the other super cheaty stuff that they do.

I guess the devs decided its better to just cheat like crazy rather than model the AI based on actual tiles and stuff produced. This prevents cheezing the AI in some ways such as cutting off food tiles or whatever. But it also basically removes the players ability to do any real strategic attacks either since it doesnt actually matter how many peons you kill or which zones you take.

[Winchester]

Originally posted by joemama1512:

I agree that the AI implementation is rather lacking. I dont mind cheating per se, but it needs to have SOME basis in gameplay rules. They might get extra production lets say, but they dont get food with NO food tiles at all for example. Or be able to break rules such as artifact cooldown and spam draconic jotnir like crazy.
Or all the other super cheaty stuff that they do.

I guess the devs decided its better to just cheat like crazy rather than model the AI based on actual tiles and stuff produced. This prevents cheezing the AI in some ways such as cutting off food tiles or whatever. But it also basically removes the players ability to do any real strategic attacks either since it doesnt actually matter how many peons you kill or which zones you take.

You couldn't have worded it better mate. Exactly how I feel and I would like to add:

AI cheating is ok in small measures but needs to be bound to game rules. There must be strategy to beat the AI and not sheer power and RNG, that's not an RTS kind of AI. Imagine you play a First person shooter and the moment the AI has vision of you , you die instantly to a headshot. Now you respawn, get to the same area but instead you toss a grenade to the side KNOWING he's gonna do that, because that's all he does, just stand there like a moron and now congratulations you've beaten the AI. Is that gameplay? I'd expect him to patrol, do more stuff. Many games usually will offer the kind of gameplay from RTS so it's not an unacceptable request from the players of this game. I'd suggest you pass. If I knew ahead of time just how bad the AI is at extreme I wouldn't play so much (My time spent was mostly on creating maps)

[=Mcbober=]

The AI in this game is designed to give you more of a PvE experience than to give you the feeling of fighting a simulated player. Even beyond the obvious cheating, they don't really play like players either tactically. It's fun if you're doing cooperative games or solo play, but if your goal is to do free for all matches with both players and AI involved, I wouldn't recommend it.

[Hunger]

Just played FFA with 4 AIs. I raided tirelessy dragon clan with my 4 hero pack of hound clan. I killed about 4-8 dragonkins per year and some slaves along with civilians. With no market and shipayard they managed to insrease dragonkin amount somehow without starving to death and build relic and pop jotun drakonkin. No matter how much i killed dragonkin amount remained the same. Other ais killed his opponent and now i was 1 vs 2.

My point is: Your ai is unrealistic ♥♥♥♥. Amount of damage i did to enemy would have put down player easily. Ai still lived under CONSTANT raids. And even PROSPERED ENOUGH FOR A RELIC AND ARMY INCREASE. AND THAT WAS NORMAL AI. I AM VERY DIASATISFIED.

[Cayh]

Also very sick of AI ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, used to be fine to play Conquest on normal with any clan, now as soon as they have a numerical advantage (including in the 2v2 defend the oppressed battle) they just rampantly cheat with constant riads from winter of the first year with raven, and ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Ox clan units along with normal land unit from raven as well, large army gets wiped, here comes another 2 armies out of nowhere, still strong economy behind it all for some reason, meanwhile my wolf clan AI has done nothing to attack, instead only wiping out dwarves and jotun to make sure it's even harder to get allies.

What is the point then? There is none. Absolute rampant cheating and it has gone up over the years, used to play 3-4 years ago just fine with not much problem and only minimal cheating from the AI.
Also very obvious that the AI cheat when most of them at the exact same time get upgrades to military path or construct relics.

[Ikezawa]

Originally posted by some moron:

Originally posted by Bambi:

If yes, I know many deeply indoctrinated defenders will come to this thread, making excuses, or delving into some pseudo-philosophical B/S about whether a good RTS AI can even exist at all which I will not respond to.

The bottom line is ...

Translated :
"Does this game offer a challenge?
If yes, and if you aren't pissed-off and throwing a tantrum about it and generally being negative and disagreeable person, then that means you are a 'brain-washed indoctrinated defender who can't think for themself'.
Everyone elses' point-of-view is "BS" and I ignore other people's thoughts because I refuse to converse with other people who's views don't already agree with my own, or to ever learn anything in my life again, and I am too insecure to have my opinion challenged by something I don't already believe, and I wouldn't be able to defend my point of view anyway, and as I've already explained, I can't handle a challenge.
Nobody should explain their point of view because that's "BS". And now I am going to explain my point of view. Ahem, the bottom line is..."

I like how the OP predicted this post. And you went for it anyway! Delicious irony.

[rdkehoe]

Yes the AI is terrible. We've been asking for fixes for years but all they wanna do is sell more clans.