AI only defends, how to change that?

[Moll Dubh]

Basically this. The ai is simply passive and dont go for the kill unless you are right at her side, and sometimes not even that. It produces tons of soldiers, it prioritize the right units, its including more eficient than us on that... but if your base is somewhat far, like, not in the sight of its own buildings, it will only stay chilling in its own city, doing nothing, waiting for you. Then the game gets simply boring, you know the ai will never go after you, it will just take hours to defeat.

Its just like the ai in the steam version of aoe3. It does not actively search for you. It doesn't try to corner you, catch your resources first and keep coming until your existence is erased. Its the opposite of the old non-steam version: I have the AOE2: Forgotten Empires from when the project still was just a fan project, and while the ai is not much bright for some things (like insta-target and destroy siege wepons as the ai here do, or contrary to here, can be easily herded by walls openings), it would use its advantages from harder difficulties to overpower you and actively seek your demise, wherever you hide, the fastest possible. The ai would only ever go to defensive if you manage to corner it in such way that would be a total waste of resources to attack. We (me and my family who play togheter) only managed to do this once, and after hours of total bloodshed, where the ai would lose all the soldiers it have without killng more than a few of ours. The ai of the original aoe3, too, would go right to the offensive according to the ai personality, but always would try to beat you... now after a while looks like simply gets tired and mostly stop attacking.

Now back to this aoe2... the ai is always mostly on defensive, even if it could tottaly obliterate you. You must try hard to atract it to your base, and if you beat her army, it will simply give up and come back to defensive. Also, at certain point, it simply gives up from gathering resources: my last game, for example, the enemy kept on defensive while me and my friends eliminated the other ais with the ones not under attack doing absolutely nothing, even being ou neighbour, and when we started attacking him, he used soldiers until its resources run out, and when we arrived his town, there wasn't a single villager everywhere, even with trees everywhere to gather... even if he had eliminated all his villagers for a greater army, like the fan aoe2 would do when had excess resources, the fan aoe2 ai would reestabelish its gathering once its resources started to lower too much.

There is no trill of fighting for your life, the ai doesnt care about you. It only works better on small maps where the ai already starts cornered, wich is very previsible and boring, you just do ridiculous teutonic wars scale skirmishes at the best and everything end at the castle age. This to not talk about the "can't cross water" ai problem on every map that separates your territory from the enemy with water, but this the fan aoe2 also had.

So, there is any trick to make the ai properly assume its role as enemy of the mankind and actually attack its foes? Perhaps a chenge in the ai script that works on multiplayer, like changing some values or even import the ai from the aoe2:FE non-steam version? An mod for multiplayer? Because this ai simply boring, even the original dumb one was better, at least tried to do something against you with its 30 units attacks.

[KingKickAss]

Which AI and what difficulty?

[Flakstruk]

I think there ought be a personality selection option that lets you set the Ai more to youre prefereence. I have no online, and the harder AIs seemed tailored to that play type. I want and Ai that expands slowly and relentlessly so i can smoosh it in catastrophic mass battles after ive made a massive city of neat lines

[James3157]

Be more specific please. Are you referring to Definitive Edition AI, HD AI, or CD AI? Have you played against other types of AI besides the normal version?

CD AI overall seems to be the least aggressive AI, but they will also sometimes (but not always and I am not sure why) build walls and gates contrary to DE and HD AI while HD AI seems to be harder than DE AI only from moderate and easier difficulty settings. You also did not specify the difficulty levels of AI you have played against. Does the AI seem like it is too easy even on harder difficulty levels than moderate?

[BirbNotBird]

Recommend looking up for modded AI if your base game AI is not for your taste.

https://youtu.be/1w73LOmYbPg?feature=shared

[Moll Dubh]

I played with all avaliable ais, "AI", "CD ai" and "HD AI" in the hardest difficulty. HD AI is the only one that could be challange, but since it doesnt attack, the game get simply tedious. It gets just a matter of time until I just build a base right in the face of the enemy and stream him down with troops. Me and my friends like to play usualy 4 humans against 4 ais, and the HD AI neither help its allies or attack someone. Single player against the hd AI looks like a 1X1 match no matter how many allies or enemies you have. As for the normal ai, it lacks both defensive and offensive capability, and de CD ai is below that.

Note, we are boderline bad players, we are terrible at micromanaging and manage economy and attacks at the same time. So, is not like the ai can't be challange to us... if the HD ai simply attacked would be enough.... the others though don't make enough units to become a threat.

Note 2, I read that the HD AI should be the 2013 version from the Forgotten Empires... but having the FE version from before it was an official version, I can say that it is much more agressive, doesn't matter the map size, will build things all across the map to make sure it will spot you trying to sneak around, will search everywhere until find you and will start attacking as soon it reaches castle or feudal age with a unstopable stream of soldiers. Will send villagers to collect resources near you whenever you are not looking. It will attack your back if its unprotected. It will not rest until defeated all its enemies. It will use both land and sea to crush you. This is the kind of ai we were used to, so its just underwhelming playing with the steam version... it gets more disapointing thinking about the life quality improvments, like auto-renovating farms and commanding sequential orders.

[KingKickAss]

Początkowo opublikowane przez Moll Dubh:

I played with all avaliable ais, "AI", "CD ai" and "HD AI" in the hardest difficulty. HD AI is the only one that could be challange, but since it doesnt attack, the game get simply tedious. It gets just a matter of time until I just build a base right in the face of the enemy and stream him down with troops. Me and my friends like to play usualy 4 humans against 4 ais, and the HD AI neither help its allies or attack someone. Single player against the hd AI looks like a 1X1 match no matter how many allies or enemies you have. As for the normal ai, it lacks both defensive and offensive capability, and de CD ai is below that. I would like to know were this DE AI can be found, its not on the possible selctions I have...

Note, we are boderline bad players, we are terrible at micromanaging and manage economy and attacks at the same time. So, is not like the ai can't be challange to us... if the HD ai simply attacked would be enough.... the others though don't make enough units to become a threat.

DE AI is just the "AI" (Definitive Edition AI). It sounds like something is wrong with your game(Or some sort of bug thats consistently in play), but its also weird that you're playing multiplayer with it as well. Are you playing on any gimmicky maps by chance?
Some people might ask for a replay as well because what you're experiencing is awfully peculiar. AI should generally wipe the floor with the other two for what it's worth, but at the very least you could rest easy in knowing that what you're experiencing isn't normally how the AI is, and you'll get what you're looking for whenever it actually works.

[Moll Dubh]

kingkicksass, I was editing the answer when you send a new message, haha

[Moll Dubh]

So, whe usually played on black florest because of how challanging the ai we were used was... but with this passive ai, we tried different random maps with different sizes... the HD ai could be the challange we want if attacked. If I manage to convince them to play again on steam, I can send a replay, yes... we made so many tries that we got convinced the non official FE ai was better, so they want to spend their free time actually having fun next time... maybe I can get a replay from the the aoefe version we play

[KingKickAss]

Początkowo opublikowane przez Moll Dubh:

kingkicksass, I was editing the answer when you send a new message, haha

No worries!

And you haven't modded the game at all prior to trying out the AI on higher difficulties, right?

[James3157]

When I watch AI vs AI matches where I am not involved as a human player I noticed that when the CD AI has enough time to build walls regardless of whether it is CD or DE AI they overall act dumb and clueless around walls and gates . I have watched stalemates before on AI vs. AI where neither side seemed to be winning and I had to call it quits meaning that in some situations and not only just on water maps HD and normal AI do not seem to know how to take out walls and gates properly if built by CD AI. I am however confused by the randomness of CD AI even on normal skirmishes as opposed to custom scenarios. Take for example the CD AI will sometimes ignore building walls, gates, and even castles even if they survive long enough to build them not only just for the Goths (because they only get wooden walls and gates anyway), but for other civilizations as well especially if difficulty is set to moderate or easier.

[grraf]

Smth is definitely off with your game, just for context in a 4v4 arabia game with AI's on the highest difficulty in matches even shorter then an hour you should see anywhere from 700 to 1.5K+ kills for the top two players in each team... while ai's will start attacking as soon as early/mid feudal age with fairly size able armies.

Simply use extreme AI difficulty(no cd no hd <-- these are older ai) and smth like arabia or mongolia as either water maps or heavily forested maps like black forest tend to make ai stay passive and not engage into clear bottle neck traps and instead wait for an opening to attack that never comes.

[Kampfschwein Fjonda]

Yes, try Arabia.
On some other map types the AI is just not able to play.

[Krosis Priest]

Its just like the ai in the steam version of aoe3. It does not actively search for you. It doesn't try to corner you, catch your resources first and keep coming until your existence is erased.

Huh, the AoE3:DE AI does exactly that. Unlike 2:DE AI, it actually hunts you down and attacks from unexpected directions.

The AoE2:DE AI, on the other hand, is painfully stupid and terribly designed to the point of caricature, but it has one strength: it's really good at brainlessly spamming you to death at an inhuman pace (there is no strategy involved, it just ♥♥♥♥♥ out units so fast it's humanly impossible to counter if you reach mid-late game, especially on Hardest). So it does sound like something is off, or you were unfortunate and used one of the 512 possible non-default settings that break this gloriously designed AI in AD 2023. In case you're unaware, one of those things is MAP HAVING ANY WATER, in which case the AI starts playing Fisherman Simulator and makes barely any land troops. It's basically designed for mind-numbing maps like Arabia, 1v1, with whatever the default meta multiplay0r settings are, and changing any of that risks breaking the AI completely.

[Moll Dubh]

Huh, the AoE3:DE AI does exactly that. Unlike 2:DE AI, it actually hunts you down and attacks from unexpected directions.

eh, sometimes the ai on aoe3 litteraly just stop producing units at all, specially if is Washington, and the america endogenous civs are the only ones that try to defend themselves properly... I'm starting to get convinced that might be a problem with my files...

I got some mods installed but not enabled in aoe2 (and in aoe3 too, by the way), gonna check with my friends if they also have something.

[KingKickAss]

Początkowo opublikowane przez Moll Dubh:

I got some mods installed but not enabled in aoe2 (and in aoe3 too, by the way), gonna check with my friends if they also have something.

It wouldn't hurt to do a fresh install of the game(or remove the mods if they're easy to get rid of). It would be the first thing I would look at for your issues. There has to be something in common with you and your friends if you're all experiencing the "bug" when playing together, because if you were to play an AI game with some random person hosting online, there would be no reason for the AI to be weird like that.