Best mods for campaign/skirmish AI?

[Marmelizer]

I like Dawn of War 1 a lot; however I'm not very experienced with it and I'm finding the skirmish AI to be a bit unsatisfactory.

I've been reading about it online and it seems that it basically has two 'modes': hyper-aggressive and passive. So, it will weigh up how strong your force is compared to it's force (using it's full knowledge of the battlefield) - if it judges it's force to be stronger, then it will play very aggressive and hurl endless waves of stuff at you; if it judges your force to be stronger, then it will sit back and basically do nothing. So, it seems to be quite 'Jekyl and Hyde'. In addition, it doesn't respect the FOW and seems to know where your infiltrated units are at all times, which is a bit sucky.

I'm currently playing the Soulstorm campaign on normal difficulty as Tau and finding some of the Orc battles to be very challenging. The AI seems to rush hard and fast, right from the start, with powerful squads. If you can hold off those initial waves though, it seems to calm down and stand off a bit more.

So, I am wondering what are the best mods for improving the campaign/skirmish AI? I have seen one AI mod here (Dawn of Skirmish AI Mod); however, the file seems to be listed on moddb as part of another mod and the comments on that page all seem to be in Greek.

Does anyone know what that AI mod actually does, or if there are any others that might be worth trying? It would be really nice if there was an AI that was a bit less 'binary', with more nuanced 'modes' than just hyper-aggressive and passive.

[Gambit_DoW]

Hello brother Marmelizer.
Well, being Greek, as well as part of the AI team itself.... I was the one to blame - some of those "Greek" comments were mine!

Anyway, DoWAI is an UBER update to the Game AI.
It makes it more aggressive and challenging, especially on higher difficulties.
If you download it, it is very simple to use it. Just put in in your Soulstorm Installation directory, and then enable it from the IN GAME mod manager.

I have another suggestion to make: UNIFICATION.
It is our latest UBER mod. The improved AI is of course included - even better than DoWAI, because we have added more sneaky tricks! And not only that.
What you will get is MUCH MORE. No need to say anything else, the catalog of additions is immense - it exceeds the additions made in a NEW game.

BOTTOMLINE
If the AI is the only thing you need, then go for DoWAI
But if you want a really uber experience, go for Unification.

Happy 2022 brother :)

[Marmelizer]

Originally posted by Gambit_DoW:

Hello brother Marmelizer.
Well, being Greek, as well as part of the AI team itself.... I was the one to blame - some of those "Greek" comments were mine!

Anyway, DoWAI is an UBER update to the Game AI.
It makes it more aggressive and challenging, especially on higher difficulties.
If you download it, it is very simple to use it. Just put in in your Soulstorm Installation directory, and then enable it from the IN GAME mod manager.

I have another suggestion to make: UNIFICATION.
It is our latest UBER mod. The improved AI is of course included - even better than DoWAI, because we have added more sneaky tricks! And not only that.
What you will get is MUCH MORE. No need to say anything else, the catalog of additions is immense - it exceeds the additions made in a NEW game.

BOTTOMLINE
If the AI is the only thing you need, then go for DoWAI
But if you want a really uber experience, go for Unification.

Happy 2022 brother :)

Hi Gambit_DoW and thanks for your reply! That's awesome to hear that you're involved with the DoWAI and Unification mods. I actually was just today watching Poncha's video about Unification and it looks incredible. I will definitely be giving that one a try! Also, congrats on your hard work to help making such high-quality mods.

I am a little bit curious though, where you say that DoWAI has made the AI more aggressive and challenging. I am something of a novice to DOW and not a very experienced RTS player in general, so maybe it is a matter of perspective, but to me the standard vanilla AI already seems highly aggressive. It seems to often try to rush the player very early on and play in a very all-or-nothing 'attack-oriented' way. So, I find the thought of it being more aggressive quite terrifying! (lol)

Although, perhaps 'aggressive' could be replaced with 'reckless', if the right tactics are used to counter it? So, I can understand that from the point-of-view of a more experienced player, the standard AI might seem easy to beat. Perhaps I just need to practice more and get better.

Anyway, thanks again for your reply. I will certainly try out the Unification mod and try out the AI improvements :-)

Happy New Year to you too!

[Marmelizer]

Actually, I was playing around with the vanilla AI on skirmish some more today and something I realized is that it seems generally less aggressive if the 'assassination' objective is enabled. The reason it was seeming so aggressive without it is that it was throwing its commander forward early, which is very powerful and hard to stop. However, with assassination, that 'early rush' strategy of throwing the commander forward recklessly is a lot less effective. Throwing the commander forward is suicidal, but the rush isn't anywhere near as effective with just basic early-game infantry. So, assassination forces the AI to have to play more cautiously and think about defending their commander, which leads to a more patient and (imo) interesting game.

I think I'll be using assassination in AI skirmish games from now on!

[Gambit_DoW]

Well, regarding early attacks, the Assassinate win condition indeed poses a delay to the AI, so that to gain some strength before attacking - this way it ensures the primary commander is better guarded.

Regarding Unification, well YES, we made the AI even more challenging!
See, some player are really experienced - the game is already too old, and our experience is really uber :)
BUT, some new playerd did complain about that, so I included many options to "tone down" the AI. EVEN IN THE CAMPAIGN.

Since I mentioned it, I have added a feature where you can actually use Win Conditions in the Campaign itself - and there are many options that you will find handy. Specifically, the following are related to our topic (there are MORE of course!):
G_Campaign__Easier_AI: Make the CPU less durable (less HPs/Morale)
G_Campaign__AutoWIN_Button: If you are about to lose a battle... Press it!
G_Campaign__Softcore: All players get double HPs.
G_Campaign__AI_Advanced_Tactics: AI Uses all the tricks t has!
G_Campaign__AI_Advanced_Map_Pathing: The AI uses clever pathing
G_Campaign__Fortress: Turrets (and thus, defense) are x2 in HPs and Damage.
G_Campaign__Interval_Dump: You get resources at regular intervals,.
G_Campaign__Small_Battles: Cap drop to 10/10
G_Campaign__Massive_Battles: .. If you dare, Caps increase to 30/30.

As I said above, these are NOT all. Just a sample.
Ah... And some I coded recently, they are not in the latest build yet.

Anyway, point is that you will HAVE the chance to modify the game to suit your needs.

And if this is not enough for you...
The AI itself has a tool to actually put yourself the value of the TIME DELAY of its initial attack.

I hope this was helpful, brother.

P.S.: Our next build will be EVEN better. There are so many additions, that you will be amazed!

[AinzOoalGown]

Originally posted by Gambit_DoW:

I also have a question, I know in vanilla on campaign hard the ai gets 20% more hp than you i think it was(correct me if i'm wrong and if there are other advantages it gets) but i was wondering if the unification mod has an option to make the player and ai on equal footing regarding unit stat advantages being the same for both players. I prefer the ai having better pathing and tactics but no stat advantages for either of us.

[Marmelizer]

Originally posted by Gambit_DoW:

Thanks again for your reply. It seems like you've put in a lot of really cool customization features into the AI, to allow the player to tailor it to their experience level and the sort of opponent they want. I plan to give Unification a try within the next week or two (I'm a bit tied up with some other things atm).

I've been playing against the vanilla skirmish AI some more over the past few days and I'm getting the hang better of how it behaves. I can now beat it fairly reliably on hard with Tau (since I'm more familiar with how they work). It seems that with assassination, even on hard difficulty, the skirmish games invariably end with me winning after about 15 mins, because the vanilla AI still tends to expose their commander too much and rush it forward. Hopefully, your improved AI will protect it's commander a bit better ;-)

I guess that's part of the dilemma of the game though - the commander is too powerful to let them just sit back and hide in your base, but with assassination, there is always a risk of losing if you over-expose them.

Btw, I would like to say I really appreciate the efforts of people like yourself to improve game AI. Good AI makes such a big difference to a single-player game experience and it's such a shame to see how much AI is being neglected by AAA developers these days. It's quite sad.

Thanks for all the hard work that you do!

(btw, is this forum the main/best place to discuss DoW, or is there anywhere else you would recommend?)

[Gambit_DoW]

To brother AinzOoalGown:
It is true that the AI gets more HPs (and resources' income aswell), on Hard.
The G_Campaign__Easier_AI option I included above, fixes exactly that.
The thing is, it reverses the multiplies by a bit bigger margin...
There reason is that it is supposed to work on Easy, to make it even easier.
Using in in Hard though, will indeed bring in the "equal footing" factor you mentioned.


To brother Marmelizer:
Obviously, the more you play, the better you get!
But regarding Assassinate... The AI is just a bit better than vanilla, but not as much as I would like... But yeah, the dilemma mentioned is indeed as stated!
Anyway, I coded it to be more efficient in the Survival game mode (a new mode in Unification with new maps, where the enemy sends 10 waves against you and your allies).

Now, there are TWO places where we discuss everything!
First, we have a channel on Discord, but for some fast access, see here:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/unification-mod-dawn-of-war-soulstorm
ModDB is the ABSOLUTE place form modding and discussing!

[K84]

Originally posted by Gambit_DoW:

To brother AinzOoalGown:
It is true that the AI gets more HPs (and resources' income aswell), on Hard.

I thought Unification had it set up so that:

Easy = 150% Player, 100% AI
Normal = 125% Player, 100% AI
Hard = 100% Player, 100% AI

Or has it been changed again?

[Gambit_DoW]

Are you referring to the BASIC settings brother Kasrkin?
I was under the impression that we made no change in those areas - we kept Vanilla stats.
But let me check again.

[Gambit_DoW]

Yeah, just checked and for the campaign, we have it so - just as you said.
It seems it has been SOME TIME, since I last checked those values :)

[Marmelizer]

Originally posted by Gambit_DoW:

Hey, I installed and tried Unification a couple of days ago and I must say it is quite an incredible mod! So many new factions and options to try out/play with. Some of these new factions seem to play very differently to the vanilla ones and I'm sure would take a long time to master. The music and VA is also extremely good. I had a quick play with Emperor's Children and some of the lines are genius ("Whip me, I deserve it!", rofl).

I am already noticing that the AI is a lot better than vanilla as well. Even on 'easy', the AI seems a lot more competent. It actually builds up and contests for the points, whereas the vanilla easy AI often seems to make 2 squads and then just sit there, doing nothing. I played a game against the easy AI, me as Emperor's Children vs Chaos Daemons - at first I thought I was doing ok, then it suddenly rushed my base with a massive horde of daemons, lol!

One AI-related thing that I noticed though, was that some units, when I put them in the 'hold ground' stance, didn't seem to automatically attack enemies that were closing on them. I noticed that with the lesser daemonettes and the assault marines (Warp Talons?). It seemed like they would just stand there getting shot, and wouldn't engage in hand-to-hand unless I specifically ordered them to attack a target. Could that be a bug (or maybe some setting I have misconfigured)?

Otherwise, the AI improvements seem really awesome - thanks so much for your great work on this! :-D

[Marmelizer]

Originally posted by Marmelizer:

One AI-related thing that I noticed though, was that some units, when I put them in the 'hold ground' stance, didn't seem to automatically attack enemies that were closing on them. I noticed that with the lesser daemonettes and the assault marines (Warp Talons?). It seemed like they would just stand there getting shot, and wouldn't engage in hand-to-hand unless I specifically ordered them to attack a target. Could that be a bug (or maybe some setting I have misconfigured)?

Oh no, my bad, I had them set to the wrong stance - had the blue one enabled, rather than the yellow, which is why they weren't engaging hand-to-hand. You can see what sort of n00b I am, lol! XD

[Gambit_DoW]

Perfect!
I gave it some time and checked it, and it was OK for me, so I got a bit curious...
I am glad it is OK for you as well, brother.
All good then. :)