Dude, the cheat

[Buntkreuz]

Like how hard has the AI to cheat?
We had a normal 2v2v2v2 and my partner was rushed by Lion and Lynx, each with hero and 8 soldiers, ofcourse all his areas already scouted and their clans having expanded right next to him.
He had only 3 spaces conquered and they approach with a fully developed army.
Let alone that AIs have upgraded scouts from the get go, which kills the entire diplomacy mechanic too.

My partner died, obviously.
I managed to survive by turtling, a long boring match of attrition against an unwinnable scenario.

I explored the Lion player and was kind of shocked.
I play this game since it released into early access. The AI cheating ever was a thing, but there was a phase where the AI felt more bound to the games rules.
Harsh Winters would cause the same effects to them as to the player, they had to defend against events, they needed an economy and so on.
Up to a point, where they could even die to events and not having food.

But now, they dont need any economy at all.
Its all fake. They construct buildings for no reasons as they obviously dont need them.

The Lion AI spawned a villager every 5 seconds, turned that villager into an upgraded Infanry Soldier instantly and thus stacked an army of about 15 soldiers at any given time.
Conquering only one tile from Lion would take about 8 Minutes, as he constantly was able to send more people into the field and delay, while also gathering even more from somewhere to repel any attack.
The Lion AI also had ZERO economy.
The entire base was empty.
So the AI can maintain a pretty huge army, that increases in size constantly, train soldiers for defense, while not having a single villager to get the food to feed the 15-20 soldiers, no gold or faith to train them, no happiness to spawn new villagers, no wood to keep them warm.

They also seem to never really harvest wood or iron and yet have fully upgraded stuff everywhere, including upgraded towers. (and we all know how high upgrading costs can be. You cant just upgrade 10 production buildings and still have enough to instantly upgrade any tower you build).

At this point, its dumb and low quality.
The game once was fun to play against AI, now its just a pointless, boring slog. The Conquest Missions arent fun anymore because of that and since the AI isnt bound to any rules, nothing in this game affects it either.
Sure they get attacked by Draugr or Ghosts, but this doesnt matter, since casualties dont matter when you spawn a new villager every 5 seconds.
And ofcourse they can expand diagonally across the entire map in 6-8 minutes playtime, when they dont have anything to take care about, winter not having any effect etc.

Fix it please. Its the worst AI i have ever witnessed in a strategy game.


https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197977146636/screenshot/2513653416247563522/
Love the emptyness.



Also did i miss something?
I remember that being allowed 2 towers in the same field was a unique skill or something a long time ago.
But any AI now features 2 upgraded defense turrets.
Viking clans even the "Protection" Turrets although they didnt go that military path (or outright dont have that path, like Lynx).

[LMJ]

Yea, there's been a few threads on the issue. AI cheating a bit is fine but having absolutely 0 workers for economy and still a cheatingly strong army is just absurd.

I hope the devs find a fix to the issue, as obviously many people are feeling the same way. Until then the game is just not worth playing or purchasing anything for.

[Shiro_Steven]

Hi! I have a few question to ask you:

• What was the level of the AI?
  
• Have you ever played or learned how to play the southern kingdoms?
  
• When was the last time you played the game?

Depending on those it might explain some of what you say. The AI is made to give a challenge to the player, so if you played on extreme or hard it would explain your difficulty to get rid of it.

On easy, for exemple, the Ai doesn't attack you for a while, and with less numbers, etc...

This new adjustement coupled with the fact you might discover new mechanics coming from the Southern kingdoms might be the reason you felt that way, which I am sorry for.

For the rest, AI rework are still think that can be done and are in the plan for a later updates, alongside other adjustements. The goal is still to provide a challenge for players facing AI but the feedback concerning cheating is someting we'll explore later on if possible

[Buntkreuz]

Originally posted by Shiro_Steven:

Hi! I have a few question to ask you:

• What was the level of the AI?
  
• Have you ever played or learned how to play the southern kingdoms?
  
• When was the last time you played the game?

Depending on those it might explain some of what you say. The AI is made to give a challenge to the player, so if you played on extreme or hard it would explain your difficulty to get rid of it.

On easy, for exemple, the Ai doesn't attack you for a while, and with less numbers, etc...

This new adjustement coupled with the fact you might discover new mechanics coming from the Southern kingdoms might be the reason you felt that way, which I am sorry for.

For the rest, AI rework are still think that can be done and are in the plan for a later updates, alongside other adjustements. The goal is still to provide a challenge for players facing AI but the feedback concerning cheating is someting we'll explore later on if possible

Thats just gaslighting in the face of information (screenshot) that leaves no area for doubt of what i describe.

As said, i play the game since it went into Early Access and have several hundred hours of play.
Its not a "i dont know this game mechanic" problem.
I finished several Conquest Modes on Hard especially with for example the Kernev Kingdom.
We play on Hard right now.

But come on dude. The AI had ZERO workers. You can see that.
This was not a "yeah, but the Southern Kingdom just works that way"-situation, it was clear nonsense.

The AI worked far better 2 years ago and then it was already cheating badly.
Everyone knows it, but in the past year or so when we noticed the Ai to get ridiculous advantages, we never actually checked out how much it cheats.

You pretty much hollowed the AI out completely.
Its just there as a cosmetic asset but nothing in the background of the AI actually works with the games rules.
Which also causes the game to have impossible to win missions.
LIke for example the mission defending the Egg from 6 (!) cheating AIs that play in a team and rush you with over 50 units in the second ingame year.


Lets be frank:
The AI has a fake economy, which means it has none.
It doesnt need food, it doesnt need money, it doesnt need happiness, it doesnt need anything.
It just pumps out villagers in a fixed timeframe and can do whatever it wants.
You repell an attack of 10 warriors and kill them all including the hero?
Screw cooldowns or anything else, the AI returns with the second wave of 10 units and its hero 2 minutes later (thats how my partner got wiped out in this mission, the AI performed 4 attacks with 10 soldiers each in the timeframe of 5 minutes playtime).
Everyone in the community knows that, i just guess that no one really knows or noticed how much it cheats and betrays.

Just look at my screenshot.
Theres nothing to not understand there.
You can literally see NO villager at all.
Theres no one.
You can see the AI sending an attack force from the right side (bottom right corner), which consists of its hero and about 12 infantry soldiers.
Another units was just produced and approaches to be added to the attack.
The AI wants to defend a tile i want to conquer.
The following 4 minutes the AI spams villagers from its Townhall, i measured that it spawned one Villager every 5 seconds, instantly sending it to a military building right next to the Townhall and then sending the unit into combat.

The AI here has no villager working in a Tavern, so thats nonsensical.

I fought the 12+ infantry units and the hero and killed them, but suffered losses too and had several damaged.
With the AI constantly being able to send new ones, i couldnt keep conquering the tile, as it would kill my soldiers one by one.




Just because its on hard, the cheating is ridiculous and unnecessary.
The AI in this game is pointless and you receive numerous reports and criticism for it.
The past 3 months saw a ton of discussions where people pretty much contributed in consensus and stop playing the game because of it.




This is FACT, not a "feeling".
Look at the screenshot, this AI should be dead and i should be able to conquer any tile i want from it as theres literally no one left.
But instead i wasnt able to conquer this AI with 26 Viking Warriors and a hero (i gathered enough resources and performed a later attack to finally finish it).

I know the game well enough.
Im not insanely good at the game, but this is just dumb and i feel like you treat me as dumb by attempting to gaslight me here as if i misunderstood something or am just uninformed.

-----------------------------------------------------------
My friend and i created negative reviews because of that.
We are longtime fans and theres possibly no game we play this frequently.
We own nearly all DLCs, we play Conquest all the time. We dont analyse stuff deeply but we know the drill.
The AI is broken and during the past 7-8 years it went from bad, to dumb, to pointless.
Shiro needs to realize that people notice the lack of quality in the game and constantly move away from it.
I consider Northgard a prime example of a great Strategy game with a ton of stuff i wished other games would copy (like the concept cooperative Conquest with random buffs to choose).
But quality wise it was never great (placeholder text, bugs, glitches, bad AI) and the past year it became worse.
Start fixing the stuff or even longtime fans like us wont come back.

[Shiro_Steven]

I asked question especially to be sure to give you better, information, if you feel my comment was inappropriate or that it invalidate yours I'm sorry and it was not the goal.

Some of my comment, for exemple regarding the fact it's a kingdom, is not an answer to everything but only a few point I could already answer (see, your commentary about the 2 upgrade defense tower)

For your main comments on the AI, the AI doesn't work on the same rules as the player, it's even more true in conquest where it is customized to give a challenge depending on which conquest it might be.

Overall, I am not against your commentary that the AI is cheating, as I said it is common, I also explained one pass was made to make the AI "strong enough to survive attack" but further rework was necessary, and your comment is coming in this way as well.

I cannot comment on how the AI work especially, if you have the impression it works completely artificially then trying to explain over a small text wouldn't be enough, I'll be sure to remind the devs to give further explanation on how the AI work on the next AI update

[Buntkreuz]

The two tower problem is one that apply to any enemy.
We frequently play against a selection of enemies (just like here) and every AI has two towers in their starting area.
This is not unique to a specific clan or kingdom when the AI plays it.

I highlighted that because it clearly breaks rules.


I understand Conquest should be challenging, but the way it does right now doesnt make it fun or challenging.
Its just broken.
I also think you might have a problematic understanding of the concept of "difficulty" and "challenge" then, as challenge doesnt arise from simply increasing/decreasing numerical values in a onesided way.


I hope that Shiro will focus on such quality issues in future and provide better means of providing challenge without being unfair to the players.
I also hope that Shiro will flesh out Conquest too, as its the best mode the game offers, is played by many but at the same time too limited and i guess thats why it needs the AI to cheat so heavily too.

We like the game, its factions and Conquest a lot.
Wished you guys focussed on improving that more. But the games quality decreased over the recent years and theres still crucial issues and bugs ignored, some even since release or even early access.

I have seen a ton of AIs as i mostly play Strategy games, especially RTS and City Builders.
I know coding a proper AI is tough work, but as of now, across my thousands of games and many strategy games, Northgard has possibly the worst AI i have ever witnessed.
If you ever played Age of Empires 2 against AI, you know what a solid one can look/play like.
Occasional adjustments to resource costs or resource income rates are fine, even if hopefully not necessary.
But hollowing out the AI so much that no game rules apply to it is a sign of bad work in that area.
Sounds harsh, but what to say about it as of now when the AI doesnt need any economy while maintaining an army of 10+ people and isnt affected by events in any noticable way?


Challenge comes from tough choices with tough options and tough results.
It comes from questions like "do i sacrifice this area to be able to stabilize this one" and not from having to throw your 11 villagers against a force of 10 warriors 5 minutes into the game.

[Vegurok]

yeap. playing against the AI latetly feels like a tower defense game. There is no "harming their economy" anymore

[Ikezawa]

I find it most cynical to call this a "rework". You just did the easiest thing you could—give AI free resources. Or has anyone noticed some behavioural changes of the AI? Is the AI able to utilise tactics and strategies? Work towards a set goal instead of lumbering from one tile to another?

These gaslighting platitudes elected to assuage the players are insulting.

[Shiro_Steven]

Originally posted by Ikezawa:

I find it most cynical to call this a "rework". You just did the easiest thing you could—give AI free resources. Or has anyone noticed some behavioural changes of the AI? Is the AI able to utilise tactics and strategies? Work towards a set goal instead of lumbering from one tile to another?

These gaslighting platitudes elected to assuage the players are insulting.

Actually, yes!
Depending on the difficulty level, the AI will prepare more thoroughly before attacking you, they will also regroup before attacking and work overall more on their defense than their attack (as of now)

Once again, I'll ask the devs to do some more clarification to be sure to answer your questions in details when we'll work on the AI again, but know that your feedback (even when rude) have been aknowledged

-Steven

[Buntkreuz]

Originally posted by Shiro_Steven:

Originally posted by Ikezawa:

I find it most cynical to call this a "rework". You just did the easiest thing you could—give AI free resources. Or has anyone noticed some behavioural changes of the AI? Is the AI able to utilise tactics and strategies? Work towards a set goal instead of lumbering from one tile to another?

These gaslighting platitudes elected to assuage the players are insulting.

Actually, yes!
Depending on the difficulty level, the AI will prepare more thoroughly before attacking you, they will also regroup before attacking and work overall more on their defense than their attack (as of now)

Once again, I'll ask the devs to do some more clarification to be sure to answer your questions in details when we'll work on the AI again, but know that your feedback (even when rude) have been aknowledged

-Steven

But to be frank, letting the AI prepare longer while it gains a resource advantage and considering my screenshot and experience with the game and its AI it doesnt need any workers to generate resources, thats even more broken.

Basically i can never actuall win, because mathematically its a war of attrition, only that my opponent gets more resources for free, including human resources and then additionally it waits to stack them up and better Zerg me?
Thats like the most anti-balance thing i have ever seen in a strategy game.

And lets be honest here. The AI preparing before an attack or its defenses is not what the above user meant.
Thats a very simplistic task and not actual strategic thinking.
In an ideal game the AI was bound to the same rules i am bound to.
It needs workers, workers generate resources.
And the AI then gains its strength A: from performing tasks faster (better micro) and B: from better strategic decisions and caluclating the most effective distribution of workforce to get the maximum outcome.

If its necessary to boost the AI in Conquest so it can keep up with the players and their Perk Bonuses, which i understand, then the AI possibly should also get Perk Bonus depending on how many missions we finished.
And then all it does was being clever, not getting mathematical advantages and resources generated out of thin air.

Right now we often can only win by totally cheesing the AI, until it bugs out and cant recover properly.

I might also add, that you implemented several mission objectives that are based on diplomacy but never added a way to kill Scouts.
So i can just watch how the AI cheats to victory when sending upgraded Scouts to Jotun Outposts and trading with a trading post day one and i cant catch up and cant interup the scouts.
Diplomacy is a broken and unfinished feature you raised up to a victory condition, which means its often pure luck to win these missions.

[mnadeau1992]

Originally posted by Buntkreuz:

I might also add, that you implemented several mission objectives that are based on diplomacy but never added a way to kill Scouts.
So i can just watch how the AI cheats to victory when sending upgraded Scouts to Jotun Outposts and trading with a trading post day one and i cant catch up and cant interup the scouts.
Diplomacy is a broken and unfinished feature you raised up to a victory condition, which means its often pure luck to win these missions.

You got that mission wrong btw. Your victory condition is to befriend the jotuns before the AI KILLS them. It's actually super easy right now because the AI befriends them instead of killing them. It's a free win.

And you are right. The extreme AI is awfull and it compensates by cheating hard. The thing is, it's very hard to make a good AI in a random map generation game.

I disagree with you though, I am glad the AI Cheats a lot. It is pretty bad in it's current state and if it wasn't cheating so hard there wouldn't be any challenge in the game and it would be boring. I always play on extreme and barely find any difficulty ever.

[Buntkreuz]

Originally posted by mnadeau1992:

Originally posted by Buntkreuz:

I might also add, that you implemented several mission objectives that are based on diplomacy but never added a way to kill Scouts.
So i can just watch how the AI cheats to victory when sending upgraded Scouts to Jotun Outposts and trading with a trading post day one and i cant catch up and cant interup the scouts.
Diplomacy is a broken and unfinished feature you raised up to a victory condition, which means its often pure luck to win these missions.

You got that mission wrong btw. Your victory condition is to befriend the jotuns before the AI KILLS them. It's actually super easy right now because the AI befriends them instead of killing them. It's a free win.

And you are right. The extreme AI is awfull and it compensates by cheating hard. The thing is, it's very hard to make a good AI in a random map generation game.

I disagree with you though, I am glad the AI Cheats a lot. It is pretty bad in it's current state and if it wasn't cheating so hard there wouldn't be any challenge in the game and it would be boring. I always play on extreme and barely find any difficulty ever.

I think you got the mission wrong.
Maybe a bug though but the AI specifically befriends them which ENDS your mission as a failure.
They often just kill them if you are ahead of befriending.
I know what im talking about, we tried that mission like 10 times with another clan combo before and couldnt beat it.


The Ai was also far stronger in earlier versions of the game when it was affected by game rules and still made better decisions.
The only thing it does better is coordinating attacks now. Which is also pretty cheaty in and of itself.

I dont care if someone wants AI to cheat, it should improve to be challenging without cheat.
A Cheating AI is like a abd rubberbanding racing AI.
Its not challenging, its just numerically there and could also be missing entirely as it doesnt make much of a difference.
The problem with cheating Ai is that is isnt capable of using the games mechanics properly and thus becomes hollow. Just like above screenshot, it might give you the cosmetical illusion of "playing" but nothing of what it does matters.
It builds a Tavern, but it doesnt need it because it just gets the villagers no matter what and even faster.
So all you get is the Shell of an enemy. It could also be a bunch of neutral enemies like the goblins and it wouldnt make a difference to the gameplay.

This also means a cheating AI doesnt provide a dynamic experience.
EVERY match is the same, it has the same start, the same arc and the same strategies from your opponents side.
Its just mathematically strong, which means its stronger by number but once you overcome that number, its a brainless victory.
Typically playing Kernev or Squirrel meant i just snowballed enemies at one point because that clan is able to do that easily.
Thats boring because its not challenging, just annoying.
And thats the state of our conquest experience right now.
We dont feel challenged and we dont really have fun.
We are annoyed as hell and sometimes frustrated when the game communicates badly and then also just zergs you with nonsense in a deathspiral you cant see coming.

[Ravensong]

Originally posted by Shiro_Steven:

I asked question especially to be sure to give you better, information, if you feel my comment was inappropriate or that it invalidate yours I'm sorry and it was not the goal.

Some of my comment, for exemple regarding the fact it's a kingdom, is not an answer to everything but only a few point I could already answer (see, your commentary about the 2 upgrade defense tower)

For your main comments on the AI, the AI doesn't work on the same rules as the player, it's even more true in conquest where it is customized to give a challenge depending on which conquest it might be.

Overall, I am not against your commentary that the AI is cheating, as I said it is common, I also explained one pass was made to make the AI "strong enough to survive attack" but further rework was necessary, and your comment is coming in this way as well.

I cannot comment on how the AI work especially, if you have the impression it works completely artificially then trying to explain over a small text wouldn't be enough, I'll be sure to remind the devs to give further explanation on how the AI work on the next AI update

Lazy, Lazy lazy game design.. Give the AI cheats so we dont have to make it play well.
You RTS devs need to get this through your damn heads.. This practice Is NOT and never will be fun.. Its Lazy.. These RTS games work on the idea that all players/AI have the same resources and units to work with.
Its a stratagy game, not a wave defence game.

[Teratheon]

I also disagree with the statement that AIs in general don't (shouldn't) work on the same rules as the player in order to give a challenge.

The AI *should* work on the same rules as the player, with bonuses to starting or running conditions for difficulty the same way as a player will get penalties for difficulty. The "I" is supposed to stand for intelligence. The idea that the programmed player is simply set up to ignore all gameplay is missing the point. The idea is to *play the game* against either other people or against a programmed opponent. If the programmed opponent (or the other players) don't have the same rules then you are no longer playing the game at all.

[Buntkreuz]

Im by far not new to strategy gaming. Im fine with occasional numerical buffs or starting bonuses.
The overall design premise and dogma should still be "only as much as necessary, at best none".
I personally liked how strategy games like Warcraft handled secondary difficulty. The Ai was coded competent but you also get the option to tweak handicaps for yourself, other players and the AI.
This ever allows for the most individual and customized difficulty.

My expectation is, the AI should play by the same rules and mechanics as the player.
If winter decreases my food, then so should it work on the AI.

See, im not even blaming them. Creating a good AI that is able to not only use the games mechanics but also in a dynamic way according to the situation and then on top be challenging to a vastly heterogenic group of players with individual skillsets, is tough work.
Possibly sometimes impossible to get perfectly right.

But Northgards AI is like the lowest key AI i have witnessed in 30 years of (strategy) gaming.
So from that point on theres a huge potential of improvement. Even minor changes could drastically improve the situation.

Im all for challenge, otherwise i wouldnt play Conquest with a friend so often and try different clan combinations.
But there is challenging (fun) and theres frustrating (unfun).


Currently the games mission designs coupled with the difficulty of enemies is just frustrating.
Having 3 tiles, being raided by an AI that has such a strong boost and then also being attacked by 8 draugrs from a neighbour tile is dumb.
Especially the latter feels like a bug, as that wasnt the case before the PvE update. You never had monsters all leave their hometile to raid you and leave their original tile unprotected.
And certainly they wouldnt not only capture the neighbour tile, but then also advance to the next one.
So you arent actually just fighting the overpowered buffed clans with their fake economy, you also fight a far more dangerous PVE environment.

And im frank with you:
Im also suspecting that you coded the AI of the PvE to cooperate with the AI Clans.
I had numerous situations where the wildlife acted the same way as the AI clans.
The AI has a "tactical" maneuver where when it sees that you move your army at another direction of your realm, it will gather and attack on the other side.
Often when you have enemy AI teams they coordinate to attack the same time.

I have seen the Wildlife do the same and coordinate with the AI.
So that an AI clan attacks on one side of my realm and the wildlife suddenly spawns an attack on the opposite side with 9 foxes or 7 wolves or 6 draugr, pretty much all they had in the neighbour tile.
We had that so often and either its a bug (because in the past 7 years of the game there was no situation where i was attacked by more than 2 monsters at the same time from one tile, let alone them all leaving a wolf den unoccupied.
Or its intentional design to make it more challenging, which leads back to "fun or frustrating".
As i have never seen the Ai being attacked by 6 or more draugrs.