difficulty in campaign broken?

[ppakur]

what's the deal with difficulty here? On easy and normal enemy is idle, and on hard is super agressive, full of resources and all enemy units are 2 or 4 times stronger than usual. Necro lord can solo kill 2 wraithlords + some dark reapers squads, when in skimrish on hard difficuty it just dies from 2 squads shooting to him. Is it me, or AI in capmaign is utterly broken?

[BrendyBear]

The AIs aggressiveness is very much dependent on how much resources it has. It guages the strength of your army (yeah this is basically AI cheating by knowing things it shouldn't) and if its is stronger than it attacks. On easy you have stronger troops and more resources, so you almost always have a stronger army so it doesn't attack and acts very passively. Similarly with normal, but to a lesser extent.
On Hard the AI gets more resources and its units are stronger (not 2x or 4x stronger than yours though, its like 30% more HP or something), thus it will more often gauge its army being stronger than yours and hence attacks more. This does result in in the hard AI being significantly more difficult than normal difficulty AI.
The way you overcome the hard AI is by using tactics and micromanaging your units so that you can overcome the enemy army that the AI has guaged as being stronger than yours. I find Tau to be the best at this. The Tau race is a powerhouse against the AI, especially in the campaign.
Lastly, yes, the Necron Lord is overpowered, as is the Orks Big Mech in the early game. Remember in the campaign the enemy commanders will be stonger than in the skirmish game too, just as yours will be after you get a bunch of wargear.

[qrosa]

what he said!

also, the unit HP scaling in soulstorm (according to the link below) is:
Easy = 250% player health, 60% AI health
Normal = 200% player health, 100% AI health
Hard = 100% player health, 120% AI health
source: http://warhammer-game.narod.ru/wiki/Dawn_of_War_Campaign.html
as you can see, the differences are quite drastic.

and yeah, it looks like enemy commanders also acquire wargear during the campaign, which would explain the powerful necron lord.
however, if you kill an enemy "honor guard commander" during a mission, then it will spawn as a "regular commander" when it gets rebuilt, and thus will be significantly less powerful. so at the most, you only have to deal with a tough commander once per mission. luckily, this is not the case when you rebuild your own commander. :-)

imo it's kinda lame that the AI cheats the way they do, though it's not an uncommon thing in RTS games. they have no FoW it seems, and also know where your infiltrated units are (which is particularly annoying when playing against IG).

on missions where their commander is present, they usually rush you right at the start, which can be rather troublesome on missions where they have two bases.


@BrendyBear

i couldn't find any specifics on enemy resources. do they get a higher starting amount, or do they get an increased income rate? i browsed the files for a bit, but couldn't find where it's set..

the only difference in player resources that i've noticed in-game is that you start with less or more planetary requisition, depending on the difficulty (700 -> 800 -> 900). pretty insignificant, really.
in actual missions i started with 1000r / 100p on all difficulties, so perhaps there are no differences there?

[ppakur]

I know AI doesn't make suicide moves. But on easy and standard it's too lazy to even capture the points around or train units. So there is no way for AI to be challanging and there is 0 fun on those difficulty levels.

Thanks for responses, I played a skimrish as the necron yesterday, and noticed they have very slow unit production rate. So now i just rush base and generators with all my honor guard units on the start. Usually it's instant win. Doing it I've also discovered origins of my overreaction. They have built in, or build very fast their equivalent of armory. I assume as soon as they have it they get all upgrades researched (or research them pretty fast).

Anyway I still think it's just weird how different is AI from campaign compared with one with skimrish, which is just copy-pasted from dark crusade

[BrendyBear]

I'm not certain about the AI resources in the campaign. I know the strategic level AI doesn't play by the same rules as the player, it often has far more honour guard units that it should. As in it is getting honour guard that it most likely couldn't afford (hard to say for sure on that though), and also that it doesn't control enough territories to have that many (or ever has in the game).
For the tactical level AI, I think the hard difficulty gets a resource rate bonus, similar to the higher levels of skirmish mode. I am not 100% certain about this though. For the skirmish, the higher level AI gets resource rate bonuses as follows:
"
Easy - Braindead AI (seriously, if you lose against an easy comp you should burn your CD)
Normal - Standard AI
Hard - Advanced AI (usually up to par with a moderately skilled human player)
Very Hard - Advanced AI +20% AI resource rate
Insane - Advanced AI +40% AI resource rate
"
Source: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/943419-warhammer-40000-dawn-of-war-soulstorm/41864030
I can confirm that the Insane AI in skirmish gets substantially more resources than the player, so I think the above is accurate. I believe the campaign 'hard' difficulty would probably be at the Very Hard level in skirmish. It does seem to get some more stuff when you fight in low level battles at the start of the campaign, but this could be due to it already having some structures so making some save some resources building and getting more units.

As for the AI FOW cheating, its most noticeable when you have infiltrated units and they use jump units to constantly jump directly to them. Or a builder unit and they just jump in for way outside their possible vision range and ambush it. Or IG randomly sensor scanning infiltrated units, even when they are just standing around nowhere near the battle.

[qrosa]

@ppakur

yeah, similar to how the player can reinforce provinces that he owns, the enemy will do it as well. i believe that they have a set reinforcement order, so depending on their strength, you will or will not see them already having a summoning core (or equivalent).
non-stronghold missions can end up being a lot more difficult than stronghold missions, if their strength is high enough. especially if the enemy commander is also there.


many agree that there's plenty wrong with the AI, even on hard, and it's the reason that mods were made to improve it. i'm not sure if the mods affect campaign AI at all, perhaps they affect at least the non-stronghold provinces. ("Dawn of Skirmish 3.20" in case you're interested in checking it out.)

though, i wouldn't play the campaign on Standard even if the AI was better. that boost in player HP is just way too big.

but in the end, i enjoy the gameplay enough to suffer through the weak AI :-P


@BrendyBear

yeah you're definitely right about the AI not playing by the same rules. i have no clue how their planetary requisition income works, but it's obvious that they have different, or no restrictions when it comes to availability of honor guard units. i agree the skirmish AI gets higher income rates, but i didn't necessarily get the same impression in the campaign.

lol when enemies jump your infiltrated troops. it's so blatant and so stupid. ;D honestly it's not acceptable to develop an RTS game and have AI this lame, but.. oh well.

[BrendyBear]

Yeah it is a bit lame, although sometimes the AI does put up a good fight. I think the AI must have 'personalities', or some randomised settings or something similiar in the skirmish to account for the large differences in the behaviour. Sometimes its just lame, like IG spamming guardsmen and nothing more, or trying to tech up while you are actively destroying their base. But sometimes it really does give you hell. I think Tau AI probably does the best, although maybe just because Tau is pretty good at just spamming random units XD.

TBH I think the Hard difficulty in the campaign is at a pretty good level considering its supposed to be 'hard', but normal probably should have been increased a bit so there isn't as big of a jump. IMO normal should have put the player on an even footing with the AI. But its not getting changed now, so have to just put up with it I suppose. I do find the hard difficulty campaign a decent challenge, at least for races other than Tau and IG lol. I will also point out that while the races are decently balanced for multiplayer, some are definitely stronger against the AI. I found Tau to be the easiest in the campaign, as the Tau commander with wargear is just godly, and the Tau honour guard are really strong. IG is good also, as they are ridiculously strong at full tech and a well micromanaged full tech IG army is pretty much an unstoppable steamroller (even in PvP :P). I found the other races to be a fair bit harder for the campaign though.

[qrosa]

i agree! with everything! :-P


i'm still busy doing my space marines playthrough, and i haven't completed chaos or sisters of battle yet either. (not sure i'll ever do SoB, i just do not like them. especifically the missionary's responses just annoy me too much, lol.)
chaos doesn't look too inviting after checking out their available honor guard units. can't say i'm a fan of the commander's final wargear piece either (i mean, you upgrade the commander 9 times, and then you strip all the upgrades..? lame!)


my experience so far has been that dark eldar is the worst for the campaign, while ork second worst, mainly because of their fondness of melee, and overall poor (sight) range. though, the ork campaign didn't give me too much trouble except for the IG stronghold, iirc. (i think the IG stronghold was also the toughest mission for me as DE.)

i'd say tau is indeed the easiest/strongest. (fire warrior honor guard teams, oh man..) can't say i didn't enjoy the power. ;D
i had an absolute blast playing as eldar as well: awesome honor guard, and a very enjoyable balance of speed, utility, fire-power and squishiness.
as SM i've only done the ork stronghold so far, but i'm already getting the impression that this playthrough will have very few obstacles. in Dark Crusade the SM campaign was relatively easy, since SM as a race is just such a powerhouse once they're fully tech'd up. i've grown very fond of their (in-mission) deep strike mechanic. :-)
the necrons let me down a little bit, tbh. i expected/wanted to see the powerhouse playstyle that i actually experienced as SM, but in stead found myself getting headaches over the enemy's long-ranged units, particularly artillery. plenty of missions ultimately came down to building 3 fully upgraded monoliths and then constantly summoning flayed ones. it made the campaign very easy, while not at all satisfying. particularly the SoB stronghold mission, where they like to mass infantry, spamming flayed ones vaporized their morale, tied them up, and the damage wasn't bad either.

can't remember much of my IG playthrough as it was years ago. i think i'll do one again after my SM playthough. :-)

[ppakur]

lol, I didn't notice I can reinforce provinces with buildings too. I thought enemy just has more buildings, because of hard difficulty. Anyway AI really sucks here. It has significant boost on the very beginning, but lacks design for mid and late game. Necrons, in example, don't build second base to increase generator limit, they don't even build those giant generators if it's possible in the given map.

[qrosa]

i agree that that's dumb, but them not building thermo plasma generators is not at all the worst of everything that's wrong. :-P
it definitely would've been fun if necron made more monoliths, but mainly to buff their flayed ones and necron lord, and to be able to spam units quicker.


in take and hold maps (ancient gates), the AI doesn't do anything to contest the critical locations, but rather sticks to the same logic that BrendyBear described. so if they consider your force to be too strong, they'll simply stay in their base as time is ticking away. you can win those maps without even seeing an enemy, it's ridiculous. they should rush those points at the start, or/and try to de-cap them despite "feeling" weaker. but as far as the AI's concerned, those critical locations are not of special importance in take-and-hold scenarios.


there are plenty of abilities that the AI never seems to use, which would otherwise completely change how you have to fight enemies: all grenades, big mek's tank zappa, warlock's embolden and entanglement, vespid's destabilization, etc. i think eldar doesn't even use fleet of foot.
as for necron, i'm pretty sure that the only time the deceiver is summoned by the AI is when you approach the relic during the stronghold mission. (not sure about nightbringer, perhaps the AI does summon that one in non-stronghold missions, and in skirmish?)
at this point i'm just glad that there are a few abilities that they do use, lol.


it's also way too easy to tie up ranged enemies. they never "dance", or even flee, but at best will retreat together with everyone else if the battle is decidedly lost.


there are also triggers in most stronghold missions that you can avoid, manipulate or even break.
the silliest one is during the SoB stronghold mission: once the confessor is spawned after they reach 600 faith, you can just save + load the game, and it will completely break the confessor's AI. he'll just stand still. their faith will continue to climb, but it will just go past 600 without anything happening, because they won't spawn a second confessor.


the list of problems goes on and on!

[BrendyBear]

Yeah, its funny that the AI will use some abilities, and sometimes really well, but then just never use others. Also, it doesn't seem like there's really much pattern with what abilities it will use and which it won't. It has no issues using abilities like commisars execute (and often quite well, although sometimes it spams it and kills soldiers pointlessly), but won't use basilisk earthshaker rounds. It doesn't use most of the heavy commander attack abilities (like SMs orbital strike), but happily uses dark eldar attack abilities, and IG pyscher ones. I think its mostly AOE abilities it doesn't use, but then does use others. Its really odd. I think THQ might have taken some shortcuts with the AI development. Some aspects are well developed (like personalities giving skirmish replayability and unit control where it will try to defend important points sometimes), but some are really obviously bad and I suspect that they simply didn't completely finish it and just went "it'll do".

The necron AI will sometimes spawn the Nightbringer in skirmish, its pretty rare though. I don't think I've ever seen it use the Deceiver.

The AI in this game does well against inexperienced players on an even footing, but against experienced players the AI really needs some serious advantages to be a challenge, like the resource rate boost the high level AI gets in skirmish or the HP boost in the campaign.

[BrendyBear]

*Ammendment: Space Marine AI most certainly does use its orbital bombardment lol and deepstrikes. Sometimes insane level AI really does put on its stomping boots and turns what should be a straightforward comp stomp into a player stomp lol. Its really obvious in 4v4 games when 1 of the AIs is really going harder than the others as is often performing better than a good player (due to its resource bonus).

[qrosa]

Originally posted by BrendyBear:

I think THQ might have taken some shortcuts with the AI development. Some aspects are well developed (like personalities giving skirmish replayability and unit control where it will try to defend important points sometimes), but some are really obviously bad and I suspect that they simply didn't completely finish it and just went "it'll do".

it certainly looks like it. i suppose it takes quite a bit of time to build good code for every single ability, and they probably just cut a bunch of them to save time. budget / time constraints have been a very real thing in gamedev pretty much since the start of it.

Originally posted by BrendyBear:

The AI in this game does well against inexperienced players on an even footing, but against experienced players the AI really needs some serious advantages to be a challenge, like the resource rate boost the high level AI gets in skirmish or the HP boost in the campaign.

i suppose that was their "fix", to just give the top difficulties the resource bonus to make up for how poor the AI really is. arguably better than nothing, but it's not exactly ideal. ;D


i'm fairly sure i have never seen SM use orbital bombardment or deep strike in skirmish, so if you have then it's probably a very situational thing. the OB ability is available right from the start for the force commander, so it's not a matter of teching. perhaps some personalities are more complete than others, giving you a tougher battle? i do usually just play against Hard, so perhaps there's an AI difference between Insane / Harder and Hard after all. :-/

edit: nope, i'm very wrong. orbital relay is needed to use OB, which is the latest available building. well, that might explain then. :-) i guess my games just don't reach that tier very often.