The AI Cheats!!! (Details)

Over the past few weeks, I have heard a lot of people on Steam and the Official Wargame Forums complaining about the 'cheating AI' and that 'it gets more points'. As a modder, I know the actual bonus that the AI get, and the modding community learns little by little how the AI in Wargame Red Dragon works.

The AI Bonuses

Have you ever wondered what the difference between 'Easy', 'Medium', 'Hard', and 'Very Hard' AI is?

Easy:
x2 Unit Availability
+10% Money Income

Medium:
x4 Unit Availability
+1000 Initial Deployment Points
+20% Money Income

Hard:
x6 Unit Availability
+1500 Initial Deployment Points
+30% Money Income

Very Hard:
x8 Unit Availability
+2000 Initial Deployment Points
+40% Money Income

These facts have been stated by COMThing when W:RD was released, and I have seen for myself for confirmation. If you are a modder, this is in the file: NDF_Win.dat/pc/ndf/patchable/gfx/gdconstanteoriginal.ndfbin

How the AI works:

From what we know, every unit in the game comes with an 'AIStratModule' in the game files. These only contain some numbers and can be very similar or the same as another unit's. What these numbers actually mean - the modding community is unraveling it little-by-little.

There seems to be code that tells what the unit what type of unit it can attack. For instance, a tank can not target an aircraft, so if the AI spots an enemy aircraft, it will not spawn a tank in responce. However, it might deploy an AA vehicle or Air-Superiority Fighters. Many of the AI's actions are best off a Action-Reaction basis.

Also, the game files indicate some kind of priority system with each unit having a rank in priority.

[commissaire lachance🇫🇷]

is there a mod to disable ai bonus in availability/income?

[swatbot26]

Is this for campaign, skirmish or both?

[nizzemancer]

You can easily tell it cheats like this:
Game start - bring in one helicopter unit.
let the game run for a few seconds and the AI spawns in AA units for all it's points to counter that,

then you can cheese the AI's cheating by calling for reinforcements in the form of ground units that are suited for taking out AA. At least that's how you used to be able to do it, not sure if that's changed.
AI always cheat in game, it's impossible for it not to.

[Needles]

If you start the battle without deploying anything, then slow down time and deploy your units quickly, it really messes with the AI's ability to counter you. As far as its concerned it thinks you have a single command vehicle, so it only spawns what it thinks it needs to destroy it... at least until it starts making contact. At least in my experience it balances it out a little, because it's not spawning an entire battle group at once then charging forward. Now it's reacting to what it sees on the field a la cart.

[LtCdr T'Lyn]

Hello, I met some problems replacing flag files, need help..

[Brogham]

Not surprised at all, I can't think of many examples of RTS's where difficulty settings actually affect how good the AI is, one example I know is Halo Wars 2 funnily enough, where lower settings essentially disable certain macro and micro level tactics, where at the highest they have access to all of them.

[Scottish Daniel]

Thank you this is very interesting, it is always a shame when increasing the difficulty does not increase the skill of the opponent only giving them more "things" to attempt to deal with the player.

However I had suspected this as I imagine many others as the A.I mainly works in a reactionary way and spams without any real degree of tactics.

[Solomos]

Thank you for clarifying that the AI behavior does not change, just receives bonuses to availability, income and initial deployment points

[[★] Mopoloπ]

The AI cheats, yes. It has been a standard in solo modes of RTS games for decades.
However it is excellent that you share here the exact figures, thank you very much for that.

[bubba's real burgers 1776]

Finally some explanations