Modded AI warning: with the new patch, some won't work

[Marco]

Hello there,

I've been testing AI mods lately. Since the new patch, however, some have been broken.

I subscribed to Super Villain AI and AI pack.

For those who don't know about modded AI:

- Super Villain AI provides 2 modded AI, Grausamer Guenther and Corleone (which is incredibly stupid, as it spams archers + skirmishers forever but won't go past Feudal Age so you can easily defeat it). I only tested Grusamer Guenther after the new patch and it seems to work as intended.

- AI mod pack, which provides multiple AIs (tribal warrior, Barbarian, unknown, Pharaon, Promi and Yggdrasil, which the latter can do tower rush with 2 towers in your base). Well, all of them are broken since the new patch. Before the game starts or before you click to save a scenario, you get an error (sry, I forgot to take screen of it) which says that a parameter such as imp_eagle-warrior_counter or something is not declared or another error about a 'promisory' parameter which is missing. So when the game starts, here is what happens: these AIs do not make villagers, do not research loom and do not send the scout to explore. They sometimes send one villager to wander around the map, sometimes two, and a third villager collects food from the berries but not from herdables despite bringing the first 4 ones under the TC. They won't go over 480 score and get stuck in Dark Age forever. If you attack TC, one villager will garrison and will attack your units. If you go away and return after a while, enemy TC is repaired. These AIs now always lose a villager to a wolf, sometimes another villager goes to the edge of the map and gets stuck there (it is possible you need spies in order to locate them, assuming you deactivated cheats and you do not build everywhere or don't research town watch-line technologies).


So if anybody is going to play with modded AI, beware some of them are now broken until their authors will fix them. Please also note that even standard AI couldn't work if you keep the mod pack enabled because it seems to affect DE official AI somehow. If you disable it, at least standard AI will work OK again.

[Marco]

Update:

I tested other AIs I found on the mod browser: Black AI (it has some variants: Resistance, Power, etc.), BruteForce and Charlotte. Only Charlotte works good, the other ones seem to have the same problem as the ones from the AI pack.

[V.taliko]

after the penultimate patch that came with the Greek DLC, the AI ​​worked very well on random maps, including sea maps. It seemed they managed to fix it. The AI ​​loaded troops onto transports and landed them as needed and even colonized other islands. To my great joy. Many people used to complain about its complete helplessness on island maps. After the last patch, it again stopped doing anything logical. It's stuck in place and doesn't know how to do anything.

[Gequi]

I noticed a year ago that default AI (CD, HD or DE) struggle with water maps. They produce like 80 % offensive units as naval, only 20 % terrain units. If the map type = isle (or something with water separating players) the AI usually do not produce transport boats to attack with terrain units, they almost attack only with naval units.

In the last few days is worse, because they even do not use transport boats at all.

Today I have tested "AI pack" and almost all (barbarian, pharaon, promi and tribal) work fine, but still, some of them only attack with naval units (no transport) and other do not even build docks nor naval units, just terrain units idle in their island.
The only AIs failling here are:
- Yggdrasil: "error invalid encoding" still it seems that everything is working.
- The_Unknown2: check the error message:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3477616887


I will test "The SuperVillain AI" to see differences.

Can you be more specific with "black AI"? the search on the mod list can't find it.

cheers

[Marco]

Originally posted by Gequi:

I noticed a year ago that default AI (CD, HD or DE) struggle with water maps. They produce like 80 % offensive units as naval, only 20 % terrain units. If the map type = isle (or something with water separating players) the AI usually do not produce transport boats to attack with terrain units, they almost attack only with naval units.

In the last few days is worse, because they even do not use transport boats at all.

Today I have tested "AI pack" and almost all (barbarian, pharaon, promi and tribal) work fine, but still, some of them only attack with naval units (no transport) and other do not even build docks nor naval units, just terrain units idle in their island.
The only AIs failling here are:
- Yggdrasil: "error invalid encoding" still it seems that everything is working.
- The_Unknown2: check the error message:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3477616887


I will test "The SuperVillain AI" to see differences.

Can you be more specific with "black AI"? the search on the mod list can't find it.

cheers

Hello Gequi,

It's the BlackPower AI, I found it from the Mods Browser when using the keywords custom AI.
https://www.ageofempires.com/mods/details/2408/

Did you test all AIs on water maps? Because I mainly refer to Arabia, even though I tried Charlotte on Yucatan and Oasis.

When playing vs Supervillain, I recommend Grausamer Guenther playing as Goths on Arabia. Corleone AI only fills the map with archers and skirmishers but never gets past Feudal Age. According to its author, it's designed to play that way on purpose because it's experimental. Both SuperVillain AIs can beat Charlotte AI, however.

P.S. Sorry if I've never replied to your PM. Unfortunately I don't own Tekken seies for PS1, but I can look for SNES fighting games if anything.

[Gequi]

Originally posted by Marco:

Hello Gequi,

It's the BlackPower AI, I found it from the Mods Browser when using the keywords custom AI.
https://www.ageofempires.com/mods/details/2408/

Did you test all AIs on water maps? Because I mainly refer to Arabia, even though I tried Charlotte on Yucatan and Oasis.

When playing vs Supervillain, I recommend Grausamer Guenther playing as Goths on Arabia. Corleone AI only fills the map with archers and skirmishers but never gets past Feudal Age. According to its author, it's designed to play that way on purpose because it's experimental. Both SuperVillain AIs can beat Charlotte AI, however.

P.S. Sorry if I've never replied to your PM. Unfortunately I don't own Tekken seies for PS1, but I can look for SNES fighting games if anything.

I see no problem in Arabia with default AIs. The problem is only with water maps like "isle", "archipelago" (if players are divided by water) and so on.

That is why I had hope to fix it with AI mods, but "AI pack" fails even in "hard" difficulty as the creator recommends.

I have tested "The SuperVillain AI" in isle maps, results:
- Corleone as Koreans: they do not build docks nor boats, just idle terrain units on their island.
- Grausamer Guenther as Goths (creator recommendation): same, but causes lot of lag, the FPS counter drops at 15 or 20 after several minutes.
- The SuperVillain as Saracens: they laugh at beginning and then spam this message every second:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3478079087


I have tested "BlackPower AI" with 300 population as the creator recommends and all versions (Force, Liberation, Power and Resistance) generate this error:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3478079673


If I can't play water maps against AI in this game after 25 years, the devs are giving me another reason to write a negative review.

Cheers

PS: Retroarch netplay is crap, better to use Remote play Together and that way you do not need to own the ROM

[Marco]

Originally posted by Gequi:

I see no problem in Arabia with default AIs. The problem is only with water maps like "isle", "archipelago" (if players are divided by water) and so on.

That is why I had hope to fix it with AI mods, but "AI pack" fails even in "hard" difficulty as the creator recommends.

I have tested "The SuperVillain AI" in isle maps, results:
- Corleone as Koreans: they do not build docks nor boats, just idle terrain units on their island.
- Grausamer Guenther as Goths (creator recommendation): same, but causes lot of lag, the FPS counter drops at 15 or 20 after several minutes.
- The SuperVillain as Saracens: they laugh at beginning and then spam this message every second:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3478079087


I have tested "BlackPower AI" with 300 population as the creator recommends and all versions (Force, Liberation, Power and Resistance) generate this error:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3478079673


If I can't play water maps against AI in this game after 25 years, the devs are giving me another reason to write a negative review.

Cheers

PS: Retroarch netplay is crap, better to use Remote play Together and that way you do not need to own the ROM

When SuperVillain is selected, the laugh and the message ("It is me who am the super villain!") are always shown at the start of every game, regardless the personality it selects (in the case of your screenshot it selected Corleone). I think the loading random messages are shown on purpose. Grausamer Guenther also spams lots of "fight back using attack move" or "building optimal lumber site". Charlotte AI also writes messages. If you set it as player 1 vs another AI, it will post several messages during the game, like "Research level LOW" or replacing LOW with MEDIUM or CRITICAL. The author says Charlotte is in between Moderate and Hard difficulty. From my experience: if it is rushed in the early game it will lose most likely. But if it manages to spam endless scouts or eagle warriors while you are still booming it can be a pain on land maps. If it spams endless men-at-arms (playing as Inca for example) the only way is to have some archers and luring the men-at-arms.

AI Pack and Black Force are a shame they no longer work since April's patch. Before that patch tribal warrior and Yggdrasil also wrote messages at the start.

Tribal warrior said something like "I am the tribal warrior and I'm going to rape your ass", while Yggdrasil said "I am Yggdrasil the tree. Play me in 3vs3 maps to see me slinging". I assume Yggdrasil could play Saracens and feed allies with tributes, but before I could find it out the patch came and broke it. I also wanted to see how it played Sicilians, because it can tower rush on Arabia (I mentioned that in the first post) as it did when it played as Franks.

These AIs like AI Pack and Black Force are also causing some black screens during the game. I have to press ESC to get rid of it and the options menu becomes a chessboard then (but the red buttons are not affected). They also can break default AI, causing it to behave the way I described in the first post. Disabling them restores the correct behavior of default AI.
As far as I know, some of these modded AIs were made to be good on water maps, but the new patch destroyed all their capabilities.

EDIT. One more thing: these custom AIs ignore the 104 taunt, so they will always resign.

[Gequi]

Originally posted by Marco:

When SuperVillain is selected, the laugh and the message ("It is me who am the super villain!") are always shown at the start of every game, regardless the personality it selects (in the case of your screenshot it selected Corleone). I think the loading random messages are shown on purpose. Grausamer Guenther also spams lots of "fight back using attack move" or "building optimal lumber site". Charlotte AI also writes messages. If you set it as player 1 vs another AI, it will post several messages during the game, like "Research level LOW" or replacing LOW with MEDIUM or CRITICAL. The author says Charlotte is in between Moderate and Hard difficulty. From my experience: if it is rushed in the early game it will lose most likely. But if it manages to spam endless scouts or eagle warriors while you are still booming it can be a pain on land maps. If it spams endless men-at-arms (playing as Inca for example) the only way is to have some archers and luring the men-at-arms.

Tribal warrior said something like "I am the tribal warrior and I'm going to rape your ass", while Yggdrasil said "I am Yggdrasil the tree. Play me in 3vs3 maps to see me slinging". I assume Yggdrasil could play Saracens and feed allies with tributes, but before I could find it out the patch came and broke it. I also wanted to see how it played Sicilians, because it can tower rush on Arabia (I mentioned that in the first post) as it did when it played as Franks.

I know other AIs also send messages, but not spamming every second without stopping, that is the difference.

Originally posted by Marco:

AI Pack and Black Force are a shame they no longer work since April's patch. Before that patch tribal warrior and Yggdrasil also wrote messages at the start.

AI Pack works fine in some cases as I described in previous posts.

Originally posted by Marco:

These AIs like AI Pack and Black Force are also causing some black screens during the game. I have to press ESC to get rid of it and the options menu becomes a chessboard then (but the red buttons are not affected). They also can break default AI, causing it to behave the way I described in the first post. Disabling them restores the correct behavior of default AI.

No black screens for me yet.

Originally posted by Marco:

As far as I know, some of these modded AIs were made to be good on water maps, but the new patch destroyed all their capabilities.

As I said, new patch destroyed all AIs in water maps, even default AIs. Everyone, even devs, can check out this by setting a match between DE and HD AI, or DE VS DE AI, and you will see that they do not use transport boats for terrain units, sometime they even not build docks nor boats.

Originally posted by Marco:

EDIT. One more thing: these custom AIs ignore the 104 taunt, so they will always resign.

always? or just after the last patch? So strange, is that a stupid bug? or AI creators can't fix it?

[Marco]

Originally posted by Gequi:

I know other AIs also send messages, but not spamming every second without stopping, that is the difference.

AI Pack works fine in some cases as I described in previous posts.

No black screens for me yet.

As I said, new patch destroyed all AIs in water maps, even default AIs. Everyone, even devs, can check out this by setting a match between DE and HD AI, or DE VS DE AI, and you will see that they do not use transport boats for terrain units, sometime they even not build docks nor boats.

always? or just after the last patch? So strange, is that a stupid bug? or AI creators can't fix it?

It is possible there are mods conflicting with each other. I'll try to enable one mod at a time for AI and disable cosmetic mods to see if it helps with black screen. Sometimes the game also crashes.

Yes, modded AIs also resigned even before the patch. Tribal warrior or another AI said something like "WTF? Is my programmer kidding me?" if you were winning and most of them typed gg wp before resigning.

[Gequi]

yeah you try that, black screen should not exist
I hope devs fix the problem, another user reported the bug here:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/813780/discussions/2/597400361006798509/

[Marco]

Originally posted by Gequi:

yeah you try that, black screen should not exist
I hope devs fix the problem, another user reported the bug here:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/813780/discussions/2/597400361006798509/

Hello Gequi, look at what I've found so far. Regarding the AI pack I browsed Yggdrasil's location and took a look at the ".per" files. Basically, AIs from the AI pack use a ".per" file that then loads scripts from additional ".per" files located on their subfolders. This is because I've read carefully the error message, that it is similar to the one you encountered with Unknown AI, the ERR2005.

I took note of the ".per" script giving the error and also the line. In the case of Yggdrasil it is 3-imperial-age escrow.per returning such an error and the line containing the invalid identifier is 6215. That line, along with a few others, contains this:

eagle-counter-unit

Looks like this parameter doesn't exist anywhere. Then I googled for ERR2005 and I found a link that provides a workaround by using numeric values from customConstants.per:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/813780/discussions/0/2963894618453189959/

Unfortunately, as I fixed the lines containing that eagle counter parameter (I replaced with 384, which on customConstants.per is ri-eagle-warrior), I got ERR2005 again on another line (6300) using the identifier spearman-counter-unit.

I also tried to delete some lines, and I got another error saying "missing arrow" where the arrow is this symbol:

=>

Either the devs have renamed certain parameters (these mods are basically from 2019-20) or removed them all within April's patch. But if other AIs from the same pack are still working, then it really could depend from maps, like they were saying in the thread I linked above. But I still have to investigate the code of other AIs.

As per the black screen when using AI pack, disabling cosmetic mods or playing with only the Confetti mod seems to fix the issue. What I have to do now is enabling other mods to find which one is causing black screen after 35 minutes ingame.

[Gequi]

Originally posted by Marco:

Either the devs have renamed certain parameters (these mods are basically from 2019-20) or removed them all within April's patch. But if other AIs from the same pack are still working, then it really could depend from maps, like they were saying in the thread I linked above. But I still have to investigate the code of other AIs.

Probably true

Originally posted by Marco:

As per the black screen when using AI pack, disabling cosmetic mods or playing with only the Confetti mod seems to fix the issue. What I have to do now is enabling other mods to find which one is causing black screen after 35 minutes ingame.

Nice

After the last patch today, default AIs in water maps still fail. They only attack with naval units, the transport boat is not used for the idle terrain units.

[KingKickAss]

The website is currently down by the looks of it, but there's this website where people actually work on the AIs and update them, rather than what's in the workshop, and there's an incredible AI called "Immortal" that you might be interested in playing. You just have to drag its file into the right place though. There are a bunch of others too.
I think the website was AIscripters?

Can confirm this one seems to be broken too since the new update.

[Gequi]

Originally posted by KingKickAss:

The website is currently down by the looks of it, but there's this website where people actually work on the AIs and update them, rather than what's in the workshop, and there's an incredible AI called "Immortal" that you might be interested in playing. You just have to drag its file into the right place though. There are a bunch of others too.
I think the website was AIscripters?

The website was down a few days ago, now it's working, in a post they share a list where the "inmortal" and other AIs are present:

https://aoeaidatabase.pythonanywhere.com/list

So I download and unzip the file, but there is a data error with the .per file ... still I test and this is the error at the beginning of the match:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3482440733

If you watch this last recording, you will see that villagers are idle, walking or dying... and the scouts are idle too. In 25 min they do not build anything

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nzSX8Y6gOCQkYILBVJBvhIklFk98yiIf/view?usp=sharing

Originally posted by KingKickAss:

Can confirm this one seems to be broken too since the new update.

Of course it's broken, no matter what other fanboys or trolls say without presenting any evidence. Here you have the irrefutable evidence, recordings made with different civs and difficulty levels:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1VQqffBdiBwSQuYo_bWKZevHh70geFnht

Other users exposing the same problem:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/813780/discussions/0/4513254889543167993/
https://steamcommunity.com/app/813780/discussions/0/599641161950351999/
https://steamcommunity.com/app/813780/discussions/0/3594464960494314414/
https://steamcommunity.com/app/813780/discussions/0/4629233379372534451/
https://steamcommunity.com/app/813780/discussions/2/1660069015246017245/
https://steamcommunity.com/app/813780/discussions/2/4695658272798154823/
https://steamcommunity.com/app/813780/discussions/0/597387624656666683/
https://steamcommunity.com/app/813780/discussions/0/4633734370401765810/
https://steamcommunity.com/app/813780/discussions/0/3681064390585680079/

[Gequi]

Not sure if devs are reading here, so I revived a 2019 post on their forums:

https://forums.ageofempires.com/t/ai-has-problems-using-transport-ships/65377/3

You can login with your steam profile.

[Gequi]

Jester and Forthwind AIs were updated last time on Jan 29, 2025 3:48 pm[forums.aiscripters.com] and they still don't work with the last patches, see the error codes:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3482971498

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3483644012

Recordings where villagers are idle, walking or dying... and the scouts are idle too. They do not build anything, just like "Inmortal" AI:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Xv9OuSoLzKhFQKG-iMzKbTZJL83Enw1i/view?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Faj6uYAQ5jRSsh68xv9JQ8Tln5Xq7Eeb/view?usp=sharing

Originally posted by Gequi:

The website was down a few days ago, now it's working, in a post they share a list where the "inmortal" and other AIs are present:

https://aoeaidatabase.pythonanywhere.com/list

So I download and unzip the file, but there is a data error with the .per file ...

Another user already reported that bug on the forum:

https://www.aiscripters.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=75511#p75511

I hope the creator fixes it.

I will test other updated AIs meanwhile.

Cheers