How to improve bots in CS:GO

Have you ever think bots are too easy? I can help you improve them. Sadly "only" thier aim, their IQ remain the same :(

(If you have little or no idea, what to do, I will try to help you. If you know a lot, maybe you can point out something I miss :) )

[The bots have been updated few times since release of this guide, so it may contain outdated information. The file noted in the guide itself may also not be working properly. You can play with new options for additional various outcomes.]

Modification of file

Find files of Counter-Strike Global Offensive in your Steam folder. Go to csgo. Here find botprofiles.db . You have it, great the hardest part is behind you! :)

As first I strongly recommend to make backup! Now you can do whatever you want with this file and if you "break something" you can fix it.

Open this file in notepad.

First "table" (first lines after notes "//") have a lot of useful informations. Most of them are default and later do not have exact meaning. But last 6 lines cannot be changed later and applies for every bots the same - it make them slower in aiming. Here I have set:

LookAngleMaxAccelNormal = 10000
LookAngleStiffnessNormal = 700
LookAngleDampingNormal = 50
LookAngleMaxAccelAttacking = 10000
LookAngleStiffnessAttacking = 700
LookAngleDampingAttacking = 30

. After that improvement bots will more easily do 180 degree flicks, even if you make some noise (should do, their inteligence is questionable ... ). Only this slight improvement make easy bots almost like normals or hards.

When you scroll down, you can see what type of bots will use which weapons (riflers - M4s; snipers - AWP, etc.) If you want, you can make them use whatever weapon you want.

And after more scrolling there are skill levels of bots. First will be the best ones. Elites. If you want you can improve thir stats, or make extra classes. Here is example of additional template:

Template Master
Skill = 200
Rank = 3000
Aggression = 100
Reaciontime = 0
AttackDelay = 0
Teamwork = 100
Cost = 4
Difficulty = Expert
VoicePitch = 85
AimFocusInitial = 0
AimFocusDecay = 0.000001
AimFocusOffsetScale = 0
AimfocusInterval = 0
End

. Do not forget to End it at the end (or bots will not spawn).

Sadly more you try, bots cannot shoot headshots (some people in early days of CS:GO thought that easy bots are too hard, because they were not able to kill them within 5 seconds of combat). As a result, you have bots, which should (sadly do not want to sometimes) immediatelly when they see even 1 pixel of your body.

And if you made another class, you have to fill it with bots. Scroll down, after template of easy bots but above 1st bot - Cliffe. Here you can make new bots. How just say, how good he have to be (Master - in my case) + which weapons he will be using (sniper) space name of bot
On other lines you can write some extra specialities, which are not written in Master template (not needed) and End it. example :

Master+Sniper Jack
End

Save as .db, connect to your local server (do not work on online, when you are not host and must be loaded, so connect after saving - do not worry, game can run on background) and to console write "bot_add Jack". And now, bot Jack should be ready to kill some other bots, or even you! :D

Additional notes

Everything mentioned before helps a lot. But there is possibility that you will be still too good, for them, so they should try harder. That can be made by 2 simple commands.

bot_autodifficulty_threshold_high
bot_autodifficulty_threshold_low

Where to set them? In normal game you can write it in console, but who want to do it every single time. So, if oyu mostly play , for example, competetive matches against your bots, go to same folder as before, and now to folder cfg. Find file gamemode_competetive.cfg . Open it in Notepad. First two lines are those I just mentioned. Set them to 20. Both.

Do not worry this files matters ONLY in games, you are host - so you and your friends - if you are playing on ofitial Valve servers, everything will be default. Also, if oyu do not like something in game, you can change it by simply overwrite it. (If you are making more changes, backup is handy ... just in case.) For example you can set freeze time of every round to 1 second (or 1 minute = 60 seconds), and so on. Comands are easy to understand what they do in game.

One more note - after few months of silently watching YT and other souces - If you are still willing to find more information (including behaviour of bots), check 3kliksPhilip's chanel or filter his videos to find "bots" - there should be at least 2 of them.

And the last note - bots will play poorly even after you upgrade them to infinity and beyond - so if you want to train with them for online games when you are not able to use internet connection to train online - you may try to look for some training maps as well -> problem with poor awareness may be fixed by this. :)

EDIT few years later: This guide was originally made several year ago. In this timeframe there were several updates focused on bots' AI and how their "behaviour". I also happened to be playing less and less time with the bots myself - so it is likely that some changes may appear which are not mentioned in this guide .. or even that you can find better guide somewhere else on the internet.

Result

As I mentioned early, this applies only for making better aim - bots will still run and gun

And, that is what I can offer. If you learn something new, I am glad. If you know all of this or even more, please let me know, harder bots are better challenge!

If you have any question, let me know, I will try to answer it. :)

Also, I am sorry if I have written some mistakes (I am doing whatever I can).

And the last point, I am only gn2, so if some higher ranks test this and share their results, I will be grateful. If you want to test them, but do not have map, I made 2 maps for practise. Feel free to test them out, I will be only happy.

Good luck

[JenniferDarline]

You got a thumbs up, I appreciate your response.

[Jack]

@HeimQuadrik - ingame you can choose only from 4 options, which are "Easy" "Normal" "Hard" "Expert". No more, no less (there is even a console command called bot_difficulty, which has values 0, 1, 2, 3). While you can have unlimited amount of templates. But each template has to have their difficulty set -> Difficulty = Expert -> on 8th row of the setting in my example.

There are certain templates which you can later find in more than one difficulty. In default settings, I believe it is (or at least was) template called Fair, which was appearing for difficulties Easy and Normal. Accomplish this you type "Difficulty = Normal+Easy".

I am sad if I gave you false hopes of more possibilities :(

[JenniferDarline]

Waste of time, followed the instructions exactly, when practive with bots is chosen your new profile is not an option, neither is elites. Expert bots are dumb and I refuse to play with kids, im too old for that.

[xwxw]

I will be very grateful if you find it, just my bots have the only minus in this and another when laying a bomb or a defuse,they check nothing, but that’s another story :)but of course it’s a pity that the creators themselves didn’t add a specific command to the bots, which allows bots to react to the player’s model if it is in smoke (like reacting to a player’s model not surrounded by obstacles)

[Jack]

(2/2)

But cons of it are that you might estimate smokes to have larger radius or you would feel that you can push through the smoke while having advantage while in PvP it is the opposite.

Also games where are bots in regular csgo games increases. Not only mm when some players decided to leave but also guadian mode in the recent opetarion(s) (dont remember if only 1 or more operations back). Anyways - might be handy sometimes :)

But if you want to get rid of this feature for any reason, I can try to find if there is any way around it ... :)

[Jack]

@idzanagi, This is again related to some other topic, which is how bots react to different obsticles and when they can or cannot see you.

When you are inside the smoke the bot ignores you by the logic of you being hiden in the smoke. When you are on the edge (your POV), you are still interacting with the obsticle of the smoke (even if you are clearly visible by regular person outside the smoke). Unfortunatelly the bot has programmed that you are colliding with the smoke -> you are in area of the smoke -> you are invisible -> you will be ignored.

While on the other hand, my little enhances are only in a way of improving what already exists and boosting it to extremes.

Also, so far I was not wondering in any way how can I overcome this exploit. I was more interested to play around it. Pros of it may be that you can feel better that smoke can end its presence in certain time + you may get feeling for ways where might be handy to have a 1-way smoke in PvP environment.
(1/2)

[xwxw]

@Jack,i have one question, sometimes when you are in a smok and you see bots, they don’t see you or they see you, but they don’t shoot, is it possible to change this?

[Jack]

@XzeroS , as I was stating in mid september, I was trying to, but so far I was unable to find anything :/ if I find anything new regarding this topic I will post it in here immediately :)

[XSange]

@Jack,hello, could you find any plugin or another method that makes bots only shoot in the head(without mp_damage_headshot_only 1, ent_fire player addoutput....)

[Jack]

I do not know about any similar command not bot's ability. But by digging a bit on the interent I found there is possibility of finding some plug-ins .. dunno if they are working or not also if they are contaminated or not so thats why I am not linking here ... I may try find more tomorrow, we will see :)