AI is terribly stupid

[Michael the Great]

Ok,I just hate it when the AI controlled army behaves sooo stupidly.
First I hate this idiotic behaviour when it's defending...sometimes instead of staying and defending,it marches towards me so I can easily encircle it.
Why did the devs include such stupid(numberless) tactics for teh AI?
In Shogun,the AI managed to be quite good and surprised me on a number of occasions....this dosn't happen anymore in MTW.
I read somewhere that there are 4 times as many battleplans for MTW AI than STW,I DON'T see them.
It doesn't use it's cav too good either,after it gets past my flank it just stays there instead of charging.
Also,I see no real difference between Normal Hard or Expert difficulty for the battle AI,only that in Hard & Expert,it will try more to flank u with it's entire force,and avoid taking a direct route to ur army(when attacking).
Any comments?

[BDC]

I think you just play too much, I still get raped by the ai regularly - but then again I'm just a bad general http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/frown.gif I need 3d polygon soldiers now dammit.

[Exile]

The AI in some of my games: "This player is very stupid..."

I suppose the AI is not infallable either. I am reminded of the time I took up a defending position on a hill and when the battle started, the AI was right on top of my position and uphill http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/confused.gif There's been others, but I won't embarass myself with the details.

I've never had an AI defender approach my attacking army except the GH, which does it regularly. Otherwise, the AI almost always holds the best ground it can and makes me attack. I've found it harder to lure them out post-patch.

I've had similar experince with the AI getting its calvary around my flank and just sitting there, but they usally launch those calvary at me after their main force engages my front, meaning I have to split my force to deal with the calvary. If the calvary came first, I would have wiped them out then been able to face the rest of the AI force with all my troops.

[Michael the Great]

Quote[/b] (Exile @ Feb. 23 2003,11:43)]The AI in some of my games: "This player is very stupid..."

I suppose the AI is not infallable either. I am reminded of the time I took up a defending position on a hill and when the battle started, the AI was right on top of my position and uphill http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/confused.gif There's been others, but I won't embarass myself with the details.

I've never had an AI defender approach my attacking army except the GH, which does it regularly. Otherwise, the AI almost always holds the best ground it can and makes me attack. I've found it harder to lure them out post-patch.

I've had similar experince with the AI getting its calvary around my flank and just sitting there, but they usally launch those calvary at me after their main force engages my front, meaning I have to split my force to deal with the calvary. If the calvary came first, I would have wiped them out then been able to face the rest of the AI force with all my troops.
Yes,I've had teh AI in many occasions behave very offensively..to it's doom http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif

[Michael the Great]

Quote[/b] (BDC @ Feb. 23 2003,11:39)]I think you just play too much, I still get raped by the ai regularly - but then again I'm just a bad general http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/frown.gif I need 3d polygon soldiers now dammit.
I think it depends on every1's skill and teh difficulty level u play it on.
Well I didn't play MTW that much,I've learned what I had to I Shogun(great game).
Another thing I dislike is this default hold formation for spears,I should decide when to put them on hold,but anyway,is there any real difference in their attack when on engage at will(except from loosing rank bonus),I mean is there any reason why should I put them on engage at will??
I think they will make a better charge when on engage because every man will break and charge towards an enemy,while on hold they just stop in front of teh enemy and fight them...

[burma_mtw]

"Ok,I just hate it when the AI controlled army behaves sooo stupidly.
First I hate this idiotic behaviour when it's defending...sometimes instead of staying and defending,it marches towards me so I can easily encircle it.
Why did the devs include such stupid(numberless) tactics for teh AI?" as per Michael the Great.

The game is made so that you can adjust parameters to make it as easy or difficult as you wish. You can change things to the point where you have no chance whatsoever of winning. In that case regardless of how "stupid" the collection of AI routines are, they are still smart enough to easily defeat you. The "out of the box" settings favor the player. No need to assume that winning with those settings deserves applause.

[Kraxis]

Quote[/b] (Michael the Great @ Feb. 23 2003,11:59)]Another thing I dislike is this default hold formation for spears,I should decide when to put them on hold,but anyway,is there any real difference in their attack when on engage at will(except from loosing rank bonus),I mean is there any reason why should I put them on engage at will??
I think they will make a better charge when on engage because every man will break and charge towards an enemy,while on hold they just stop in front of teh enemy and fight them...
A unit in Hold Formation gets -2 attack and +2 defense as well as the men does hold formation. The ranksbonus is much easier attained here, but in Engage the unit will still get the bonus if there are guys behind the guys fighting, you can see this by the fighting animations.
And yes, the charge is better in Engage simply because the units gets a +2 to attack (or rather not the -2 to attack).

About the stupidity of the AI it also depends on the general you fight. A rank 8-9 Byzantine prince will deploy quite effectively while a rotten Rank 0 general will be more prone to do something stupid. I have suffered massive losses at the hand of the AI and I'm not a bad MP player, granted they are few but often the AI does pull out beautiful tricks.

To me the AI is definately better than in STW (i get surprised more often now).

[Spino]

Quote[/b] ]About the stupidity of the AI it also depends on the general you fight. A rank 8-9 Byzantine prince will deploy quite effectively while a rotten Rank 0 general will be more prone to do something stupid. I have suffered massive losses at the hand of the AI and I'm not a bad MP player, granted they are few but often the AI does pull out beautiful tricks.

I could swear one of the devs said that there was no correlation between the AI's skill on the battlefield and a general's Command rating. Sure, it would be great if Command rating actually had some effect on the AI's tactics but given the spotty performance of the AI in the TW series I'd prefer to not see them handicapped in the slightest.

I am still amazed at the competency of the AI in some older games I play. Does anyone remember Sid Meier's Gettysburg? While SMG wasn't nearly as complicated as MTW I can still remember my jaw dropping the very first time I played the game. I set my two Union regiments up all nice and neat in a small wooded area on a hill, thinking there was no way the AI was going to get the best of me. Sure enough a few regiments of Confederates marching in column formation made a direct line for my position, stopped and deployed into line and then shifted their position so the weight of their attack would fall on my right flank I couldn't believe my eyes because for the first time in a computer wargame it actually seemed as if the AI was thinking. Needless to say I got hammered. In SMG the AI had several modes and levels of aggression; Direct, Indirect and Flexible along with Aggressive, Passive and Prudent. You could either rely on the settings in the historical scenarios, set it yourself or randomize it during the game with the touch of a key (the game never told you what settings were changed after hitting the randomize key so you never knew what to expect). If the AI was set to Aggressive and Indirect, you could be damn sure your flanks were going to be hammered and charged repeatedly.

It would be really neat if RTW adopted this AI approach for the AI generals or even based its tactics on the troops it has at its disposal. What a kick that would be to face one enemy general that always went straight for your jugular and another that preferred the subtle, more indirect approach.

If there's one thing about the AI in SMG that MTW's seems to lack is overall decisiveness and cohesion with respect to its reinforcements. I've won too many battles in MTW simply because the AI couldn't make up its mind and/or because it failed to keep its forces and reinforcements in sensible formations.

[A.Saturnus]

On hard, I usually win due to a better army. When I attack I usually have a larger force or more advanced troops. In defence I take a position on a hill and have usually many ranged weapons. When I have to fight with reserve troops that were meant as a garrison instead of a fighting force I often have some problems against the AI. I think the main problem of the AI is that it uses so much peasants and other crap. But this is more a strategic problem than a tactical one. It has a lot to do with the money. Since the AI doesn`t use trade routes, it hasn`t enough money for better troops. In modded peasants to be more expansive, raised the preference of advanced troops and ships, now the AI hardly uses any peasants at all if it has some money. In my recent campaign the Spanish have the highest income (and I`m Egyptian&#33http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif and have full stack armies without a single peasant. They use feu-sgts, FMAA and Jinettes mainly now. This` gonna be a though fight http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

[econ21]

Saturnus- have you tried WesW's mod? I've got only limited experience with it, but he seems to have gone a long way to dealing with the AIs inability to trade.

[Puzz3D]

I've played SMG, and those variable AI settings are really nice to have. Would be nice to have them in the Total War series. Right now going to hard difficulty confers about a 15% combat advantage to the AI, and going to expert it's a about a 30% advantage and +4 morale.

One thing I noticed about the AI in MTW is that it makes good unit matchups in battle, but, since the AI evaluates its unit's combat parameters vs your unit, it can become indecisive if your unit has higher morale. One thing I tried to emphasis the AI's strong point of good matchups was to turn morale off. This doesn't actually turn it off. What it does is add +12 to morale for all units. That is a big addition and reduces the importance of the general's command rating, but it makes the AI come right at you. It's still possible to rout units, but you have to really beat them down to do it. I have yet to win a big battle where I was outnumbered more then 3:1. The reason I went to this +12 morale is that I go tired of the AI bringing on reinforcements only to turn around and walk back off the map, and keep on doing that for 1000's of men. If you mod the morale yourself, you could pick something lower than +12, and possibly get a better challenge from the AI while bringing the importance of the general back into the battle.

[Mori Gabriel Syme]

To me, the AI seems to have some real tricks up its sleeve. In one particular river battle, both armies lines had fallen apart due to routing & pursuing by both parties. I noticed in the middle of the field two enemy spear units with two units of my archers one on each side. The AI sent each spear unit after the closest archer unit, so I had each archer unit fire at its attacker so that my units would skirmish back. The AI then switched its attack around The spear units passed through each other, drawing my archers after them & toward toward the unit which had, just before, been attacking the other.

Sometimes the AI does stupid things. For that matter, sometimes I do stupid things. It seems to even out.

[A.Saturnus]

Puzz3D, that about morale sounds interesting. Maybe I try to give every unit +2 to morale to see what that changes. If you turn up AI preference for ships the problem with trade routes... well, isn`t solved, but some factions really care now about sea dominance. In my German campaign, the English had ships all down to Sicily and I even didn`t get the North-Sea-trade-GA. In my new Egyptian campaign I fear very much war with the Byz cause they got ships everywhere.
The AI acts in battle reasonable most of the time (but not on strategic map - it consitently attacks unbeatable foes). The reason why it seems so very stupid sometimes is that it`s a machine and if the given rules don`t work, the greatest nonsense can come out.

Only 50 more posts to go http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/cool.gif

[econ21]

Saturnus - when does the AI attack unbeatable foes? I generally find it attacks when it should win on an autoresolve, but I can best it by my brilliant human generaliship http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/rolleyes.gif

Have you detected up a pattern to the AIs over-optimistic attacks?

[Spino]

Sounds like CA gave enemy morale checking too high a priority on the tactical AI's list. For more evenly matched battles I can see this making sense but enemy morale should not be such an issue when the AI enjoys a considerable advantage in numbers. I've said it before but there were so many times I should have been overwhelmed by a numerically superior AI force but wasn't simply because the AI refused to properly attack my troops either with its initial set up troops or with its reinforcements. When you're outnumbered 3 to 1 or more the AI should be allowed to resort to relying upon a slow battle of attrition to win the day.

[A.Saturnus]

Simon, I meant strategic decisions, like 'attack the mightiest empire you can find only because a province is unguarded' or 'wrack your trade routes by starting a war you can`t win'. But I allready had some cases were the AI attacked and lost in auto-resolve.

[Michael the Great]

I wonder if the battle AI will be improved in VI,well,maybe just a little,huh?

[Portuguese Rebel]

Quote[/b] (Michael the Great @ Feb. 23 2003,11:13)]In Shogun,the AI managed to be quite good and surprised me on a number of occasions....this dosn't happen anymore in MTW.
Maybe this is because you play better now?
Shogun's AI was not better at all. It allways seemed to straight at you and got eaten away by archers. As far as surprise goes i got a lot more from MTW than from Shogun. And it's tactics will depend on the type of terrain also.
Anyway, all AIs are stupid, they just seems brighter in the beguining because you don't yet learned what they are going to do. AI also handles large numbers better than a human but it can't beat an experienced human.
But consider they did built an AI that could learn from mistakes and eventually beat you. Then you would be crying this game is too hard and the developers should do that and this... Bottom line, computer games are supposed to make you feel good and by the thread you iniciated i presume you are feeling good and proud of yourself... http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

[cugel]

"But consider they did built an AI that could learn from mistakes and eventually beat you. Then you would be crying this game is too hard and the developers should do that and this... Bottom line, computer games are supposed to make you feel good "

That would be totally ideal I dream of the day CA would do that. Of course they won't ever do it, but I dream of the day. It wouldn't be a turn-off for players either, because CA could vary it depending on the difficulty setting. On easy or normal, the AI wouldn't learn anything on hard it could have a moderate learning routine, and on expert, it could be programmed to copy the tactics used by the player. In SP this could result in AI that, after many battles would learn to defeat the playing style of the player. No-one could complain about that. If you play on "expert" you can't complain the game is too hard That's what expert should mean They could say "if the game is too hard on hard or expert, play on normal and the AI won't pick on your limited ability." http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/joker.gif