Annoying AI ?

[Pastek]

Just want to know if you think the new DE AI is annoying ?

I'm not so much talking about difficulty, but rather the fun of playing, the offering of a great experience.

I am not very good at AOE2, and need more practices. But still the AI do not offer a good experience in my opinion. This is why :

1) The CD AI build walls, gates and towers, creating some sort of a fortified city, which is way more fun to attack unlike the new DE AI that only spam castles and a lot of buildings. It is not fun at all to destoy a hundred of spam-buildings and castles to defeat a spread out and disjointed ''city''. I remember in Conqueror, when I was strategically breaching a portion of a rear wall of the AI city to enter with a special force to destroy a isolated monastery to end the relic victory route.

2) The CD AI sends ''regiments'' of regroup and varied units which walk in formation. This is not only more realistic but also more fun to play against. The new DE AI sends a lot of sporadic waves of stray and scattered units, which also are a spam of the same units. A played already several dozens matchs and in every one the AI sends only rush-archers, some skirmishers, catapults, rams and late in the game it sometimes send spam-UU, maybe some knight-line units and trebuchets. In rare occasion I see some pikemen. But it feel always the same ; especially and always rush of archers and sieges unit. When I try to play a infantry civ, it's a waste of time.

3) The new AI lack some aggressiveness and ambition. It happens a lot that my town is almost burned to the ground, the AI is winning of sure. I have no units left. But for a reason, all AI units retreat and leave the battlefield, or destroy only some buildings at within reach in advanced position. Sometime the AI do not even try to attack for a long time.

I could continue the list, but I will keep it short.

What do you think about it ?

Do you know if the devs are planned to update the AI ?

[Novi]

1) You seem to enjoy playing sim city more than an RTS, that's not the game's fault.
2) That is incredibly inefficient and simply makes the AI weaker.
3) Seen this mentioned elsewhere and that seems like a bug, which will hopefully get fixed.

For points 1) and 2), it's a good thing the devs included the old AI for you to play against then.

And btw. You can tell your allied AI to wall their town too (taunt 55 or something iirc).

[Cacomistle]

I think you just prefer the playstyle of the conquerors ai. The new ai is designed to be competitive, at least the expert one. The conquerors ai was designed to be that sort of casual experience of strategically destroying a sim city without floods of units constantly attacking you. Its clear you're just looking for the conquerors ai experience.

There are probably modded ai that do the sort of sim city playstyle you're talking about without being as weak as the conquerors ai is. At least in hd I think there were.

[Pastek]

If you want to know :

I play against Hard AI

Mostly on Arabia, but sometimes on Black Forest and Bogland

Most of the time 1v1 on tiny, if not 2v2 or 3v3 on bigger map

[Cacomistle]

Also a lot of people are claiming DE ai is bugged on hard and below. I haven't had that bug, but one of my friends spectated a game and said they definitely were bugged. If its not rallying at least 20+ units at you constantly past 40 minutes, its bugged.

[Redwood]

Everyone has the style we like playing.

[Pastek]

Originally posted by Novi:

1) You seem to enjoy playing sim city more than an RTS, that's not the game's fault.
2) That is incredibly inefficient and simply makes the AI weaker.
3) Seen this mentioned elsewhere and that seems like a bug, which will hopefully get fixed.

For points 1) and 2), it's a good thing the devs included the old AI for you to play against then.

And btw. You can tell your allied AI to wall their town too (taunt 55 or something iirc).

Sim city ? whut lol !?

I have a lot of city builders game in my steam library, I did not need AOE2 to become a city-builder and it is not the way I'm playing the game either. But I think building walls and towers should surely be more used. I dislike games that offer a lot of features in it, but in practice when you play it only a thin part of these features are truly used. Human players use towers. Pro players may not always use walls, but they do sometimes build palissade walls and outpost, which the new AI do not. It is not about city-building, but about using the game features and enjoying a more ''realistic'' and ''accurate'' game (but I know, AOE2 is far but accurate and realistic, still most of us enjoy the middle age and it's fortifications, after all sieges are a big part of middle age).

2) inefficient ? Maybe. But human players do it and still beat hardest AI. So it can be efficient. No human players can control 100 separates and scattered units around the map.

3) Nice to read, hope it will be patched.

I know that I can just play against the old AI, but the CD AI cheat and is really crap. I'm a little disappointed that the devs did not update the old one too.

Finally, I admit the game have maybe changed in nature. Maybe I'm no more the kind of players the game try to reach. Maybe now it is only a pure competitive arcade game where you throw waves of spam-units at the enemy the early it is possible. But somehow I miss the old middle age RTS where you were building city, defending against sieges, and where building a strong eco or rushing were both common way to play the game.

[Novi]

I don't disagree that the AI should build walls, but I also don't blame the devs for not implementing it, because to build walls the way human players do would be incredibly difficult to code. As for towers, the only real use they have is for tower rush and I think you yourself should be glad the AI does not do that.

The old AI cheats and is crap precisely because it plays the way you want it to play. Wasting resources on useless things, attack moving a group of units+siege in a group and so on.

Don't blame people for wanting to be competitive (and also have competitive AI to play against). I think the devs cater enough by including easy difficulty options and the old AI precisely for people that are either not as good or want to role-play a middle-age empire. Again, the option to play the game the way you want is still in the game and nobody took it away.

[Cacomistle]

Originally posted by Phalanx:

Originally posted by Novi:

1) You seem to enjoy playing sim city more than an RTS, that's not the game's fault.
2) That is incredibly inefficient and simply makes the AI weaker.
3) Seen this mentioned elsewhere and that seems like a bug, which will hopefully get fixed.

For points 1) and 2), it's a good thing the devs included the old AI for you to play against then.

And btw. You can tell your allied AI to wall their town too (taunt 55 or something iirc).

Sim city ? whut lol !?

I have a lot of city builders game in my steam library, I did not need AOE2 to become a city-builder and it is not the way I'm playing the game either. But I think building walls and towers should surely be more used. I dislike games that offer a lot of features in it, but in practice when you play it only a thin part of these features are truly used. Human players use towers. Pro players may not always use walls, but they do sometimes build palissade walls and outpost, which the new AI do not. It is not about city-building, but about using the game features and enjoying a more ''realistic'' and ''accurate'' game (but I know, AOE2 is far but accurate and realistic, still most of us enjoy the middle age and it's fortifications, after all sieges are a big part of middle age).

2) inefficient ? Maybe. But human players do it and still beat hardest AI. So it can be efficient. No human players can control 100 separates and scattered units around the map.

3) Nice to read, hope it will be patched.

I know that I can just play against the old AI, but the CD AI cheat and is really crap. I'm a little disappointed that the devs did not update the old one too.

Finally, I admit the game have maybe changed in nature. Maybe I'm no more the kind of players the game try to reach. Maybe now it is only a pure competitive arcade game where you throw waves of spam-units at the enemy the early it is possible. But somehow I miss the old middle age RTS where you were building city, defending against sieges, and where building a strong eco or rushing were both common way to play the game.

The problem with building walls and towers is that its kind of a decision making type thing. You need to know when to do it, when not to do it, where to build your walls, when to expand past your walls, etc. An ai that properly uses walls would be better overall, but its not really an easy problem to solve. Like if they run out of room, what do they do? Do they just build out of the walls, and then their units get stuck on the other side funneling out through a gate into mangonel fire? Or do they just delete their walls the moment they run out of room, potentially making them useless. What direction do they even wall, they don't know where you start automatically anymore so they'd probably end up walling behind themselves.

The whole grouping units together thing is just a difference in how players and ai select units. Players select their units in big clumps. Units naturally move into formations when you move them. The ai selects units individually. If players had infinite actions per minute like the ai does, players would likely clump with units like archers vs knights, and spread out against archers and mangonels. You can kind of see the general pattern in games like starcraft where units don't auto formation, especially brood war where players can only select 12 units so they have to use all their apm on unit movement anyways.

On the last point, both strong eco and rushing are still common ways to play the game. Its just the way you go for strong eco has changed. Players get more efficient, and they've now made the ai more efficient. You have to build up fast rather than just taking time to build a perfectly structured city. And you often will either get pressured or counter pressured. Its the type of thing where you have to attack and go for eco at the same time. The ai is meant to be competitive now, so its not going to wait for you to build the city you want and build its city in a way that's fun to siege down. Its just gonna build as much stuff as it can as fast as it can.

But basically yes, rts games have turned into being a lot about player speed. You can still get by fine without playing fast, but you do so by making strategies that require less apm than your opponent and gain power faster. Its kind of like chess, where with new players you can do basically anything and as long as you don't blunder your queen you're probably fine. But once players learn, its less about coming up with new strategies and more about methodical play and learning how openings work, etc etc. Modern rts you either have to learn what's optimal, or you have to play faster than your opponent so you can pressure them off their game. And the ai now fits into that sort of playstyle, optimized macro play into spam kiting with archers to make its units effective.

TLDR: most of this post was just me describing my view of gaming. The only important take away is that walls are actually a pretty hard problem to implement on the ai.

[Swagrath]

Originally posted by Phalanx:

1) The CD AI build walls, gates and towers, creating some sort of a fortified city, which is way more fun to attack unlike the new DE AI that only spam castles and a lot of buildings. It is not fun at all to destoy a hundred of spam-buildings and castles to defeat a spread out and disjointed ''city''. I remember in Conqueror, when I was strategically breaching a portion of a rear wall of the AI city to enter with a special force to destroy a isolated monastery to end the relic victory route.

2) The CD AI sends ''regiments'' of regroup and varied units which walk in formation. This is not only more realistic but also more fun to play against. The new DE AI sends a lot of sporadic waves of stray and scattered units, which also are a spam of the same units. A played already several dozens matchs and in every one the AI sends only rush-archers, some skirmishers, catapults, rams and late in the game it sometimes send spam-UU, maybe some knight-line units and trebuchets. In rare occasion I see some pikemen. But it feel always the same ; especially and always rush of archers and sieges unit. When I try to play a infantry civ, it's a waste of time.

3) The new AI lack some aggressiveness and ambition. It happens a lot that my town is almost burned to the ground, the AI is winning of sure. I have no units left. But for a reason, all AI units retreat and leave the battlefield, or destroy only some buildings at within reach in advanced position. Sometime the AI do not even try to attack for a long time.


Do you know if the devs are planned to update the AI ?

I have noticed some of this too -- as someone who played the hell out of the originals and the interim release of HD.

I tend to find that when playing skirmish the AI is very weak, inconsistent can be quite easily manipulated into doing stupid things. I've seen examples of people building a few archers and positoning them around an enemy TC with 4 points on a square, every arrow send the villagers to the TC, and then they immediate exist and return to work.

You can keep this going just by setting the behaviour of your Bowmen. It completely breaks the AI and they resign about 10 minutes later.

They are also easily susceptible to tower rushing.

Unit movement feels chaotic and nonsensical sometimes, if you're fighting multiple AI in teams they don't assist each other, you can use the above tactic and can quite easily win 1v2s and if you're skilled enough you could do 1v3. Wouldn't be surprised if pros could do even better.

I still love the game, that hasn't changed but it desperately needs some improvements to AI.

There is actually a mod (though I forget the name) that consists of AI scrips developed by an extremely high ranked player that completely changes how the AI plays and feels like you're actually playing against something more than an easily circumvented AI.

Campaign AI feels fairly different though. Some campaigns are extremely easy, others are much harder (many of the Forgotten Campaigns and battles can be fairly challenging) on their own. The third Vlad missions is one i struggled with in particular.

[Pastek]

You are all making good points.

But I think I am misunderstood a little here.

I dont want AOE2 to be a peaceful city builder like SIM. There is other games for that purpose. And if I would really want to do that in AOE2, I would play alone in a match, or maybe with ally only, or in wonder race mode. Even the editor is useful for this purpose.

I like to play both eco-oriented match with big cities and agressive-competitive match with rush and hardcore battle. This is not the point of this topic.

My point is that the AI is becoming more and more efficient, faster and faster. It is not mean to become wiser, stronger or funnier. It is mean to be faster and efficient, like a big calculator. There are a lot of nice features in the new AI, like villagers who repair siege rams, or the better hunting, etc. But my point is that overall, it do not look more human at all, it is only more efficient and is mean to become a huge swarm of spam-units, where the point is to have bigger and bigger swarm.

The game was first a strategy game, now it's a calculator game :P

It is okay to have more difficulties and more efficient AI. It is nice if players enjoy it.

But, I dont know, I'm not enjoying it. And it is funny that you're talking about Starcraft, a game that a played and enjoyed a lot. You see, for me Starcraft is exacly the kind of competitive game where all is about efficiency, micro-management and build orders. You must play like 100 hours a week to play online like koreans haha

It look like AOE2 is becoming a starcraft game.

[Novi]

The AI was improved to be more of a challenge to players. But at the end of the day, there is only so much you can do with scripting an AI. It's called artificial for a reason.

If you want it to play more like humans do, you'll have to wait for when deep learning AI develops enough to be put into an RTS like this, but that is probably still a decade or few away.

[Swagrath]

Keep in mind the AI for Starcraft 2 in general was developed specifically to play like a person. They've iterated on that since WoL came out and it's only gotten better and better in that respect.

I would like to see AOE2 go down that road, competitive and multiplayer AOE is entirely about efficient use of villagers, micro, economics and constant awareness of your environment, all of which are present in Starcraft too.

I suggest trying to find that mod I mentioned above, there will undoubtedly be a port introduced for it here if it's not already available.

[Pastek]

@Borknagaar

Are you talking about the AoFE mod that offer different forms of AI ?

Like : barbarians, horde, crusade, economic, etc.

Something similar to the AOM AI with different personality (builder, protective, agressive, conqueror, etc.).

If a good AI mod is published in DE, I will surelly give a try. For now, I'm trying different games with DE AI, HD AI and CD AI... The CD AI was my favorite but it is now so much outdated and stuck... The only good point about the CD AI was the fortifications. For me, give the new DE AI the ability to build walls (properly or like the CD AI at least) and it will be sufficient for me.

[dande48]

There's a big difference in a lot of these games between "fun" and "competitive". Sporatic raid parties, building spamming over walls, etc are much better strategies for just about every RTS, than defensive city building.

RTS's play by different rules, that can be hard to wrap your mind around. You can create units out of thin air, relatively quickly, with a handful of resources and a few seconds. Life is cheap. Cities don't care of they get ravaged... just build more elsewhere. You want to keep your stockpiles as low as possible, and produce every moment you can. In a lot of ways, it's more like "risk" than war.

I'm not a fan of it either, but AI and humans tend to play towards what's the most effective, not what's the most fun.

[Cacomistle]

Originally posted by Borknagaar:

Keep in mind the AI for Starcraft 2 in general was developed specifically to play like a person. They've iterated on that since WoL came out and it's only gotten better and better in that respect.

I would like to see AOE2 go down that road, competitive and multiplayer AOE is entirely about efficient use of villagers, micro, economics and constant awareness of your environment, all of which are present in Starcraft too.

I suggest trying to find that mod I mentioned above, there will undoubtedly be a port introduced for it here if it's not already available.

So I think if you want an ai that plays well and sort of like a person, the best one is the barbarian ai for aoe 2 (not sure if its on DE, but its on voobly). Its got the annoying kite every single archer thing, and ridiculous mechanics, but other than that its strategy can be pretty human.

Other than that, I think its arguable whether this ai or the starcraft one is better. I think the extreme ai is better relative to other players, but I think that's because there's more optimization to be done in this game that an ai can handle. And they chose not to turn the starcraft ai into a micro bot (even though such things exist without machine learning). So arguably this can make the starcraft ai more fun.

However, the starcraft ai does not play more human. At least not the last time I played against it (probably a few months ago). It doesn't harass your base. It doesn't do any sorts of weird strategies. It doesn't transition into late game doomstacks. And it really does not handle certain strategies well. When I played 1 liberator in the ai's mineral line would actually kill it because it would stand units at the edge of the liberator range where they could take damage but not fight back. Same thing against siege tanks, and lurkers if you had decent numbers, and if you force fielded the ai would just keep running into it.

Overall, I personally think the ai here is more valuable. Because you would often abuse the starcraft ai just playing the game naturally. Whereas the aoe 2 ai, if you avoid attacking them in feudal they start becoming a lot less abusable. Which means you can practice macro and trying to get more units than the ai does. But then again, I'm not that good at this game and I was actually good at starcraft.