Some feedback on new AI behaviour

[Amur]

I love how the new AI thoroughly beat me before I realized it got updated. However, I do have a few remarks on it.

#1 Resurrect focus

Though it has a nice feeling fighting an AI that does it's best to use all the tools that it has. It resurrects via spells or potions, and thats fine. However..

#1.1 Charm

It has unexpected/unintended drawbacks. One of them is it essentially stopping you from using Charm. It occured a few times to me that I charmed an AI, they then resurrect one of my allies in a spot that they instantly die again. It took away all benefit of charming the AI, and actually added a downside (injury stacking).

My suggestion would be scripting that resurrection can't be done by charmed units.


#1.2 Coalesce chaining

Unsure whether it's a true negative, but the AI mobs that have Coalesce 100% prioritize coalescing dead units back into existance. As they sacrifice their own lives when doing that, the next AI will do the same. Regardless of their health status.

Perhaps script that coalesce is only done by mobs at critical health?


#2 Health potions

The AI uses health potions now, and that's good. But I felt they ignored efficiency. So the AI often uses the larger potions whilst they only needed to heal 120 health or something. Some finetuning would be good there.

#3 Snipershot

Unsure whether this is a skill balance issue, or an AI thing. The battles tend to last a bit longer now, and I noticed that Snipershot became an issue. In all fights with AI that had that skill, I was sure to lose a lot of units to just being one shotted. Perhaps I had a team that didn't focus on defense enough, but the damage output of snipershot is so much higher than anything else, it feels like it's an issue in longer fights.


#

Love the game, keep up the good work!

[Boweh]

I played the mission where primus is fighting alongside you with teleporting knights into pools, and the fact that the ai can ressurect allies in that fight stuck primus in an infinite loop of just killing the same one unit over and over as the AI kept reviving it in his range. Eventually primus stopped teleporting enemies even though there were non-swimming targets and decided to warp to the top of the stairs, chug a couple potions and then just stand there and wait for the fight to be over, so either something else is busted with his AI or his teleport enemy spell is actually a limited use item? I would reccomend reworking that fight to not let the AI casters have revive access. Maybe have some more enemies pop out of doors as reinforcements after a few rounds to make up for it, and also give primus new non-swimming targets to drown if he and the players eliminate them too quickly, and also fix whatever it is that stops him from casting teleport after a few turns.

[piemax]

@Amur: "My suggestion would be scripting that resurrection can't be done by charmed units. " Yikes, yes, this sounds like an important fix.

[RavenOfRazgriz]

Wrt Revival:

As much as Charm in previous updates has been one of the more exploitative way to win fights, that current behaviour is yikes, indeed. The AI being able to revive the player's units without their consent and cause them to accrue more Injuries is pretty bad. Part of that sounds liike a general AI flaw - resurrecting units that don't have a reasonable chance of achieving AT, only for them to die again. It's a sandbagging gameplay style that, while not always a bad move, is usually just a null turn that draws out fight, and those AI units are usually going to be more impactful doing anything else unless the player just does something stupid out of frustration. When done by an AI ally (Charmed or otherwise) and combined with the Injury systems, however, it's so much worse than that. I also certainly hope something gets done about that. The AI not using its ressurection options much in previous updates sometimes lead it to making mistakes where ressurection was actually optimal but overall it lead to more good decisions than not and games not being drawn out needlessly.

It's important to remember, I think, when balancing AI revival - the player is punished (on most settings, anyway) for bad play and relying on resurrection loops to win, in either small or large ways. The AI isn't. Spammy revival use can not only lead to above issues but can also feel like the AI is exploiting the fact it doesn't contend with such considerations to shove units down the player's throat. It's a tight rope to walk, and despite being the guy who loves difficulty, I think it's a better overall experience if revival is underutilized rather than overutilized, as good fight design can compensate for underutilization in a number of ways, whereas overutilization just leads to bad experiences.

There's also one particular advantage the AI has when they're over-utilizing revival due to the above context, but I'll discuss it below.

Wrt Sniper Shot:

Sniper Shot is just that good. It probably just feels like a bigger issue because the AI at the difficulty levels you like to play at are more reliably getting the MP to fuel it. It's the one true advantage the AI gets over the player from having overly spammy heals - their big attacks get to charge up when they're forcing the player to micromanage a resurrection loop, until they can launch a big hit with it (or other big-damage moves like Righteous Blade or Assassinate, that do less base damage but are more likely to nail back/side hits to compensate) to take kills and flip the tempo in the other direction.

Part of it is definitely just the fights being dragged out and giving them more opportunities to fire off Sniper Shots and moves like it, but Sniper Shot is also just one of those moves that can't ever be allowed to resolve if playing on settings like Permadeath or Permanent Injury. Your party is probably a bit on the glassy side if everyone is getting oneshot by it, but surviving it is really something that only particularly tanky or buffed units can be expected to do.

[Syger]

I was afraid this would happen. Sometimes adding more, means less in the end. If fights are starting to get pidgeon holed into buff battles with reliance on purely the strongest single target nukes it might be time to edge back a bit on the AI, especially it's defensive tendencies. If we can scale their strength for challenge that is great, but if they get too smart the game will likely end up being less fun instead of more simply because it starts to take away some of the rng flavour of the genre and makes it a bit more like chess.

[nosafune]

I noticed this also about the Coalesce thing, if there are two units with that ability they will often take turns reviving eachother when their turn could be better spent doing damage.

Also, allied Templar guest units and even enemies, absolutely WASTE the move that sacrifices to cleanse debuffs.
great update tho

[6E_Pixelestial]

This is just the kind of feedback we're looking for after the latest AI overhaul. Thanks, everyone! We hope to look into these issues soon.

[Boweh]

I will also add there have been situations where I've had a mender in critical condition and one AI ranged unit who acts immediately before her, the AI unit at well over half health pops a potion and runs away instead of popping off the mender. I like the use of items but the priority for it over damage really needs to be tweaked.

As long as we're on the subject, I also want to add I really feel like the monster enemies really shouldn't be using items at all. Not only is it quite silly, but in terms of gameplay, the whole point of monster enemies is to add variety. If both major enemy groups all use the same shared moveset, that's not great.

[Conan The Librarian]

Originally posted by MistahBoweh:

As long as we're on the subject, I also want to add I really feel like the monster enemies really shouldn't be using items at all. Not only is it quite silly, but in terms of gameplay, the whole point of monster enemies is to add variety. If both major enemy groups all use the same shared moveset, that's not great.

As a small clarification on this, note that only the “humanoid type monsters” should be able to use items, while “beasts” cannot, so not all enemies can use them.

[Boweh]

In that case something's wrong, because in my game the enemy quadrupeds are chugging potions on a regular basis during patrols.

[6E_Pixelestial]

Thanks for bringing that to our attention, MistahBoweh. The only monsters that should be able to use items are Arpia, Kawa, Blardger, Malcubus, and Archafflictor (and maybe Rakkerjak, I can't remember). None of the quadrupeds should be able to. Do you remember which type of quadruped it was?

[Boweh]

Not sure, sorry. If I run into it again, I'll be sure to let you know.

[BloodyValentine]

Regarding resurrection, I think that the priority makes the AI abuse it creating an unbalanced situation. Now the skills that prevent units from being resurrected have become insanely good. Also normally the AI tends to have many units who can revive and heal and some battles become eternal

[Amur]

I went for another playthrough (such a good feel this game!), and one other issue with this behavior is quite clear in the second Yates House fight.

The problem in that fight is that you have 2 IA fighters. I won't describe the scene too accurately to avoid spoilers, but let's state that one of these IAs is perma-berserk.

The situation is such that the fight itself forces babysitting. A lot of damage is done from an elevated area, and it simply takes one or two healers to keep the IA up.

Now the problem that I have in this fight is that you already have low dps to begin with due to the babysitting situation, and the fighting field is essentially split up in two area's (low / high) and it is difficult to manouver between them (traps / IA blocking stairs). Both area's have a reviver. The combination of these 4 parameters cause an impossible situation. Kill an enemy in the one field, and they re-appear in the other. Add to that life-font / leech enemies, and you have a fight of attrition that you simply can't win (in a any fun or fulfilling ways).

To me, this fight can be fixed quite easily, and perhaps needs to be set apart from the rest of this revival discussion. I think the setup of the fight is fun, but revival simply has no place in it. So I would switch out the units that can revive with other units.

As I'm an old guy that can't be bothered smashing his face against stacked odds trying to find ways to defeat it, I'll return when it is fixed.

Let me be clear, really looking forward to returning though!

[6 Eyes Studio]

@amur and everyone else: Thanks for all the comments! :)
With respect to the original points:

1.1 and 1.2 should be fixed in today's update.

2. There's already code in place to help with that. For example, if an enemy is missing 90HP, they will favor using a potion (100hp) rather than a Heavy Potion (200hp) for example. But, if they're missing 120HP, they might just favor the Heavy Potion since it will give them 120 rather a potion that will only give them 100.
Is it wasteful? A little. But at the same time, it's not an unreasonable choice either (many players might go for that). The issue is that if I start factoring "wasted healing" on the potions, it has the potential to break the 999HP potions and even the 500HP potions quite often since it's rare that someone will have that much HP.
I'm hoping it's in an OK state as it is, but we'll keep an eye on it.

Cabin fight: good point. I fixed that map by disabling revives for the AI fully on it (and a few other early maps).

I still have to look into Revives in general and see about reducing the freqency. That's probably going to be in next week's update though I think.

Thanks again!

[Amur]

Music to my ears, Looking forward to it!