Is the AI really that bad?

[Mayo]

Im a fan of chucklefish, with starbound being my favorite game from them despite being their worst game. I saw the coupon thing I got and remembered this game was gonna be a thing, and now it is a thing.
So I read through some reviews and saw the singleplayer AI is kinda ♥♥♥♥♥♥, is this true? Can someone give me an indepth explanation as to why the AI is good or bad? I wanna buy this game, but I dont ever plan on playing with anyone else as im a strict singleplayer person (unless its with friends, which I already know wont be buying this game) so if the singleplayer AI is really bad, I rather just save myself some cash.

[Atermi]

Originally posted by Towerbooks3192:

That + is it just me or the swordsman is totally useless. They get torn to shreds by basically anything and everything.

Soldiers were always useless in battle in AdvanceWars.
They are the city capturing units who can move further than much stronger pike/bazooka infantry.

[Atermi]

Originally posted by Smugass Braixen-Chan:

EZ Fix, make Ballistas effective vs. light infantry. Makes sense really, since it's basically a giant crossbow

I'm not sure why they would make Ballistas ineffective when the enemy isn't fielding air units. Because do you know where else Ballistas were used without air-units to use them against? Real life.

In this game, ballista is the local variant of the AW AA missile unit with the same behavior for the balance sake.
The alchemists are the local AA guns and, same as AW AA guns, are effective vs. infantry.

[BeeVeelutions]

I think the reason the ai sucks is because it was programmed to be that way. If you go into map editor, you will see that the ai has different settings, for example it can be balanced, defensive, agressive, guard or even turtle, whatever that means.

[Ellye]

Honestly, the AI is better than I expected.

Must say that by default I expected the AI in any strategy game to be quite bad, because they usually are. Developing an AI to this sort of game isn't easy, there's a lot of stuff going on and a lot of variables - it's not like Chess, Go or other games that are mostly fixed.

So the fact that the AI can hold its own is already a decent surprise. It becomes predictable after playing for a while, but I can live with that.

Originally posted by froz:

For their cost, they are not that bad. Consider you can get 6 swordsmen for one knight. It all depends on map and your income/number of barracks ratio.

Not really, you can't build 6 swordsmen for the cost of 1 knight.

Because you're only thinking about the gold cost, but there's another part of the cost that is maybe even more important - barracks usage.

Building 6 swordsmen use 600 gold and 6 uses of your barracks.
Building 1 knight use 600 gold but only 1 use of your barracks.

[Carighan]

Originally posted by davidkvis99:

If you go into map editor, you will see that the ai has different settings, for example it can be balanced, defensive, agressive, guard or even turtle, whatever that means.

Guard vs Turtle is interesting. Turtling means playing full defense, usually with a focus on some sort of barrier in front of strong ranged units to prevent anyone from ever approaching.

In Wargroove terms, that'd mean Swordsmen or Doggos in front of Trebuchets (the superior siege weapon!).

But guard? No clue where it differs from turtle.

[Senlin]

Originally posted by Ellye:

Originally posted by froz:

For their cost, they are not that bad. Consider you can get 6 swordsmen for one knight. It all depends on map and your income/number of barracks ratio.

Not really, you can't build 6 swordsmen for the cost of 1 knight.

Because you're only thinking about the gold cost, but there's another part of the cost that is maybe even more important - barracks usage.

Building 6 swordsmen use 600 gold and 6 uses of your barracks.
Building 1 knight use 600 gold but only 1 use of your barracks.

Why have you ignored the last sentence you quoted? I have very clearly wrote it depends on map and how many barracks you have compared to what is your income. Obviously if you earn 1000 gold and can train one unit per turn, you are not going to train soldier.

[Ellye]

Originally posted by froz:

Why have you ignored the last sentence you quoted? I have very clearly wrote it depends on map and how many barracks you have compared to what is your income. Obviously if you earn 1000 gold and can train one unit per turn, you are not going to train soldier.

Oh, you are correct. I had misread you, my bad.

[Senlin]

Ok, cool, no problem. Sorry to react a bit aggressively, I thought you did that on purpose.

[Kai]

Originally posted by froz:

Originally posted by Ellye:

Not really, you can't build 6 swordsmen for the cost of 1 knight.

Because you're only thinking about the gold cost, but there's another part of the cost that is maybe even more important - barracks usage.

Building 6 swordsmen use 600 gold and 6 uses of your barracks.
Building 1 knight use 600 gold but only 1 use of your barracks.

Why have you ignored the last sentence you quoted? I have very clearly wrote it depends on map and how many barracks you have compared to what is your income. Obviously if you earn 1000 gold and can train one unit per turn, you are not going to train soldier.

That 1 soldier can survive 2 hits on average from full health enemies.
That 1 knight can survive 2-4 hits on average from full health 'decent' enemies.

The question here is whether you can manage your soldiers to bunch up into a kill squad before you lose them to enemy raids.

So having more soldiers generally means longer turns for them to get killed off if you keep them out of harms way until you need them.

Against AI, it's worth it to back off a bit if they want to take your villages, and when the village goes down, retake it and make them attack it again, as freshly captured buildings have so little health it generally will go down in one hit.

[HighLanderPony]

Lol, what is this? People "Mech spamming" already? lul

[Kai]

Originally posted by HighLanderPony:

Lol, what is this? People "Mech spamming" already? lul

If it works, it works. Having a higher soldier count doesn't always help if your tactics are god awful though. I make use of large numbers and carefully positioned tactics to bait enemy players into acting in certain ways. For instance having 10 soldiers means nothing if they bait you into a mountain valley or long bridge where its forced 1v1.

For some reason, people ignore ballistas half the time and go Trebuchet, but the extra 1 range in windy weather lets you poke and harass enemies, and weakened enemies are more harm than good than dead enemies, especially if AI wastes money healing them.

Also once someone reinforces a building to heal, it can get weakened to cap, so that's another viable tactic if you can bait AI into 'reinforcing' their units on their stronghold or barracks to weaken them.

Unit spamming is more viable in AW maps because on average you start with a minimum of 2 bases though, in this game on average it's 1, +1 from a neutral point you find.

[Master Knight DH]

Mechs were already stupid good in pre-Days of Ruin before Infantry were determined to cost-effectively defeat them, which does at least make sense. If you're wondering about the math with Infantry taking out Mechs, 3 Infantry against a Mech on 3 Star terrain would deal 31% + 35% + 39% = 105%, and take a total of at most 11 HPs worth of counter damage--65% x 1.1 = 71.5%, or effectively about 700G in losses compared to the full 3K. The Mech striking first is unlikely as well--the only way it could reasonably happen would be the map getting cramped with units, but by then the Infantry counterflood would have Artillery out to blow the Mechs to dust.

In Days of Ruin, Mech spam loses this check, because Infantry had their price increased to 1500G and Mechs' cost was decreased to 2500G. There was still some cost-effectiveness and terrain defense was nerfed (in a stupid manner but I digress), but the shrink in the headcount gap when the base damage values stayed the same meant that flanking wasn't going to be as useful, and the Mech spammer could also send actual counter units since they weren't going to drop dead any time soon against the Infantry counter. And remember: these nuisances had only 2 Movement Power.

BTW, this actually punctuates how messed up the CO Unit system's handling was. Take a good look at these 2 Google sheets I did some time back:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1fiCEhnhxbWo8w7tIXQotbdM5wZhn8QWUzi6PyosARCk/edit?usp=sharing (pre-DoR Mech VS early rush vehicle MUs)
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1W6qiuUq4A0qzS49OFD70TfUjK1yslagVXy7VG9Rhew0/edit?usp=sharing (Tabitha CO tank stats)

And yes, outside overly restrictive map conditions, most COs in DoR still can't even handle Lin's CO Light Tank rush without absolutely mish-mash COing.

Of course, that aside, this would make Wargroove's Spearmen clearly *MUCH* stronger than DoR Mechs, which again is saying something. Oh, and ANOTHER thing to point out. In the Nintendo Wars series as a whole, there is a unit called the Anti-Air Tank that besides in Famicom Wars and Game Boy Wars 1/2/Turbo would deal strong damage to infantry without having to resort to an expensive ol' tech unit such as the Main Battle Tank for the involved tempo. It was unfortunately niche in the AWs already because its base damage against infantry was 105%, which means it struggled to allow for surgical strikes because terrain boosts were a thing. I looked at the details of Wargroove's equivalent, the Mage, and let me tell you: needing to be on a Forest or Mountain to 1HKO with direct-fire is arguably worse than needing enemies to be on Road tiles, because at least an enemy spammer can't avoid that. Who is going to place units right next to Forests or Mountains mindlessly by contrast?

I direct your attention to Game Boy Wars 3, because even with Bazooka units being more overtuned there than in Days of Ruin, I still say Anti-Air Tanks are easily at their best there, because their damage output against infantry is absolutely immense, with Anti-Air Tank VS Grunt having base damage clocking in at a whopping 17 HPs. Not only that, but defense boosts are basically non-variable aside from of course being affected by the defender's own HP--long story short, a Grunt spammer absolutely can't hope to prevent the 1HKO if the Anti-Air Tank is at full health, which shouldn't really be a problem. Their usefulness doesn't even end there either, oh no, because there's also this unit called the Work Car that long story short can gain the player added economy, so of course it's going to be a valuable support unit. And yes, the Anti-Air Tank 1HKOs it through property defense as well. The relevance of this is how the Anti-Air Tank can quickly finish already won games with economy scorching.

Suffice to say that GBW3 Anti-Air Tanks were able to be monsters, and that's because there was little condition for them to work their magic, while still demanding skill because armor units would still take them out.

Seriously, Game Boy Wars 3 has good ideas going for it, even if there's execution issues.

[Monty Sigurdson]

My thoughts on the AI (copied from another post I made on here):

I've played the game for like 30 hours now, and unfortunately I came to the conclusion that it's completely worthless as a Single Player experience. The difficulty is there, but it's completely artificial. The AI is totally stupid and to make up for it, it gets massive advantages. This is a) terrible game design and b) not fun to play against.

Campaign sucks because almost every map is a meatgrinder where you try to bait the AI into being stupid so that you can even the odds.

Arcade (on Hard) sucks even harder because the AI just gets twice your income which is ridiculous. I've been getting so fed up with this that I've just resorted to Trebuchet- and/or Dragon-rushing the enemies' HQ which works consistently most of the time - except on the very last Arcade maps ofc, where the AI's advantage is so big that it will eventually stop your rush. It's really sad when the AI needs like 3x your income to stop the dumbest strategy in the world.

Also, who made it so that you have to start over Arcade from the beginning if you lose once? That's probably the dumbest thing I've seen all year (next to the game's AI of course). It's completely pointless because you can beat most maps consistently if you've figured out how to exploit the AI to get it to be stupid, so all this does is waste your time.

The devs pretty much ripped off Advance Wars, yet they forgot to rip off the more competent AI and the better UI. If you're gonna rip off Advance Wars, at least do it all the way. I'm very disappointed in this game. Seeing that I've not bought it for Multiplayer, this title is worthless to me. I'd rather dust off my old Advance Wars cartridges.

The game is SUPPOSED to be like chess. But it isn't - instead it's like chess where you play against a chimpanzee who gets twice the moves. And you only have half of his pieces. That's not really my idea of fun. I expected better from this game, but clearly I shouldn't expect anything from games anymore these days.

At this point, I'm just waiting for someone to make a guide on how to cheese the AI on all Arcade maps so I can finally finish this stupid game.

[Master Knight DH]

Originally posted by Monty Sigurdson:

My thoughts on the AI (copied from another post I made on here):

I've played the game for like 30 hours now, and unfortunately I came to the conclusion that it's completely worthless as a Single Player experience. The difficulty is there, but it's completely artificial. The AI is totally stupid and to make up for it, it gets massive advantages. This is a) terrible game design and b) not fun to play against.

Campaign sucks because almost every map is a meatgrinder where you try to bait the AI into being stupid so that you can even the odds.

Arcade (on Hard) sucks even harder because the AI just gets twice your income which is ridiculous. I've been getting so fed up with this that I've just resorted to Trebuchet- and/or Dragon-rushing the enemies' HQ which works consistently most of the time - except on the very last Arcade maps ofc, where the AI's advantage is so big that it will eventually stop your rush. It's really sad when the AI needs like 3x your income to stop the dumbest strategy in the world.

Also, who made it so that you have to start over Arcade from the beginning if you lose once? That's probably the dumbest thing I've seen all year (next to the game's AI of course). It's completely pointless because you can beat most maps consistently if you've figured out how to exploit the AI to get it to be stupid, so all this does is waste your time.

The devs pretty much ripped off Advance Wars, yet they forgot to rip off the more competent AI and the better UI. If you're gonna rip off Advance Wars, at least do it all the way. I'm very disappointed in this game. Seeing that I've not bought it for Multiplayer, this title is worthless to me. I'd rather dust off my old Advance Wars cartridges.

The game is SUPPOSED to be like chess. But it isn't - instead it's like chess where you play against a chimpanzee who gets twice the moves. And you only have half of his pieces. That's not really my idea of fun. I expected better from this game, but clearly I shouldn't expect anything from games anymore these days.

At this point, I'm just waiting for someone to make a guide on how to cheese the AI on all Arcade maps so I can finally finish this stupid game.

I have to point out that Arcade would be that way because arcade games were like that.

Still I do agree that AI should be handled well. Otherwise, we end up with repeats of idiotic levels like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XoP1L8evwDc

And for those who think I don't know the trouble that goes into making AI, I've been datamining Game Boy Wars 3's AI to get an idea of how AI in general works. I've actually had success in doing that, and let me tell you that the code is enough to tell me how the Work Car's pathfinding to development candidates is bugged. I know that Game Boy Wars 3 is a Game Boy Color game, so there's only so much RAM to work with, but even then, I also noticed the AI ROM block by itself has nearly 6K bytes to spare and that could have been useful for, say, having direct-fire units in general not disregard counterdamage in the interest of dealing *ANY* damage. And yes, I'm calling out AI problems in a Game Boy Color game that had an absolutely problematic release date as it was. Wargroove is an active console game with active advertisement. Why does it think to drop the ball with AI?

Here's something Wargroove should have considered: following specific targets, friendly OR enemy. Battalion Wars was able to achieve Follow and Wait Modes *AS A BASIC GAMEPLAY FUNCTION*. Heck, datamining that game also showcases how some enemies can be put on Follow Mode on the player's units too--this is how you can cheese the Bomber harassment mess of Bonus Mission 3 in BW1, because the enemy Bomber, which infinitely respawns until the last phase, is set to Follow a given one of your Heavy Tanks. Battalion Wars 1 was a GameCube game if you, again, think RAM is a concern. Wargroove takes notes from only Advance Wars, but it doesn't even care about any good ideas Battalion Wars OR Game Boy Wars 3. Why?

[Nibbie]

I haven't played that much, but the AI definately seems mediocre. Sometimes it plays around your units ranges, other times it just lets your trebuchet get free crits. One moment in particular stands out, when I did one arcade mission (on hard) to see what it was like, and the enemy bought a harpy (air-to-ground unit) while I had a witch (air-to-air unit) a couple tiles away. It wasn't even like they had a ranged unit nearby to bait my witch in, or any other air units I could be going after instead. I just instakilled their harpy and went about my day. I think in that mission they also never captured their sea villages, pretty sure they made a merman, maybe captured one of the three on their side, then walked him into the fray. The ai isn't horrible, but it certainly isn't good.