AI Horror Stories

[Darkgreen]

As the bloke from CA said:

"it'd be interesting to read a thread of 'ai horror stories' actually, the ai behaviours which people exploit the most to gain easy wins."

I think this is a great idea for a thread and I love the idea that CA is interested in this, because I think there are some key instances in which the AI needs to be tweeked and improved.

Playing England, the Danes keep on besieging Antwerp. Before I had mortars I made a few bombards. The Danes usually attacked with heavy infantry of some sort (4-6 units), sometimes peasant archers I think, and sometimes a general. They just stood in place while I wheeled my 3 bombards and some cavalry out the side gate and came around the corner to face the Dane army. I just pounded them until they retreated. Why didn’t they attack my bombards? They could probably have taken my 3-4 cavalry units and my bombards wouldn’t be able to retreat fast enough.

This is just the most recent problem I have seen.

I hope other folks contribute here, especially since CA is giving an ear.

[RickooClan]

As the bloke from CA said:

"it'd be interesting to read a thread of 'ai horror stories' actually, the ai behaviours which people exploit the most to gain easy wins."

I think this is a great idea for a thread and I love the idea that CA is interested in this, because I think there are some key instances in which the AI needs to be tweeked and improved.

Playing England, the Danes keep on besieging Antwerp. Before I had mortars I made a few bombards. The Danes usually attacked with heavy infantry of some sort (4-6 units), sometimes peasant archers I think, and sometimes a general. They just stood in place while I wheeled my 3 bombards and some cavalry out the side gate and came around the corner to face the Dane army. I just pounded them until they retreated. Why didn’t they attack my bombards? They could probably have taken my 3-4 cavalry units and my bombards wouldn’t be able to retreat fast enough.

This is just the most recent problem I have seen.

I hope other folks contribute here, especially since CA is giving an ear.

This is a very well known passive AI bug post 1.2 leaked patch. Actually they will holding their sieging equipment til die too.

[FactionHeir]

Outnumbered AI without artillery is dead passive, especially if also lacking missile units. You can walk up right behind them and they won't react. Is usually funny if you set all your cav to wedge and charge say their bodyguard from every direction simultaneously :D

OTOH, if you are outnumbered but the attacker, the AI will attack you even though it is the defender. Allows you to wait on a hill and shoot them from there.

If you got missile/artillery with higher range than the AI's you can just shoot them down.

AI always sends its missile units before its main bulk and over time over several army distances. Allows easy pickings with light cav.

In village sieges, you can have all your missile units lined up outside and send a cheap unit towards the town center. This triggers several AI units to pursue it and once your unit moves away a certain small distance, the AI will slowly walk back to town center while in range of your missiles. Really exploitable walk forward one step, back one step.

If sallying against AI defenders they tend to be passive without missile units. They become semi active attacking you with missile units only if you move a unit out the front gate. Artillery sometimes/rarely fires at your troops on the walls, but negligible. You can also use a long range unit on the wall to shoot a standing AI army (they will stand at about 170 distance from the walls, but if you had modded your units to have 170 range for example, the AI won't move further than 170 but still stand and take the fire.)
Similarly, you can move say a peasant out your gate to entice all AI missiles to come closer to shoot it while they in turn get ripped apart by your towers and archers

[Zpartan]

Usually happens early when I assault a small town with no walls. I set up one unit of mercenaries to the side a bit my archers just to the back a little where they funnel through the town. Then they send one unit at a time to my mercenaries while my archers (peasant) shred them apart as they are coming forward, even as they turn toward my mercs and then in the back till they retreat. Then the next group comes.(Tried to draw a pic) They follow the stars one at a time till they retreat with 5 men left.




|Town Square|
| * |
| | | * |
| | | * |
| M | | * |
| r*| | * |
* * * *

Archers

[Zpartan]

sorry dont know how to edit but pic didn't work lol

[Gaius Terentius Varro]

AI hides it's forces in the forest to protect them from my archers. I march my line towards them and envelop while rounding with my general to deliver the death blow... BUT I march past 3 hidden feudal knight units that charge as soon as the infantry is engaged and pulverise first my infantry then the arches and my general dies in a blaze of glory. Past 1.2 patch. Still laughing

[Dracula(Romanian Vlad Tepes)]

The AI is very very poor so this thread is useless.

[Darkgreen]

The AI is very very poor so this thread is useless.

“Useless”?
The use of this thread is to help improve the AI.
Seriously, are you even reading the posts you reply to before you post? I don’t know what you are trying to accomplish here.

Anyway folks, don’t let this guy get ya down. I think it would be great if more people posted their “AI Horror Stories” or instances of dumb/silly AI decisions/indecisions that can be easily exploited for a win.

[Quickening]

The AI only ever made one mistake in all my M2TW playing time... GOING UP AGAINST ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! BWAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :yes:


But seriously, it's actually quite rare for me that the AI does anything that I would consider a horror story. I think it's just general stupidity.
Here's a weird thing. Whenever I play a custom battle on Very Hard, if the AI puts its cavalry up against a regiment of my spearmen in the schiltrom formation, it will charge, withdraw, charge and so on. This is good because charges are devastating.
However, I rarely ever see the AI do this in a campaign with Very Hard battles. Instead they just fight out the melee and thus get slaughtered. Odd.

[GoongaGaloonga]

Not sure this is a true horror story, but I would consider it something that could be improved.

I've been using this technique for some time and it makes it way too easy to take almost any territory.

The AI is infamous for leaving low military numbers in their cities/castles, rather they use the roaming army technique, which is probably the best use of their forces, however their cities/castles are rarely protected with spies so it is easy for my spies to infiltrate.

I take four spies along with my army, infiltrate the city/castle with all four and I almost always have a 100%+ chance of them opening the gates. I attack with my army on the same turn so they have no chance to retaliate. No need for siege equipment and very low losses since their army is so small. I've actually taken two Egyptian cities with the same four spies and same army in the same turn using this technique. This is on VH.

[detroitmechworks]

Well, this one's just kinda goofy, but I do it a lot.

Quack Suicide SQUAD!

When I've successfully made my crusade against Jerusalem/Acre, the Mongols ALWAYS come for me...

So, I've got my Anti-mongol tactic, which the AI ALWAYS falls for.

Usually the AI's pretty good about sitting outside the range of my ballista turrets/cannon turrets. This is when the Quack suicide squad comes into play.

Works best with a cheapo unit with shields. Open the gate sit a unit right outside it. Without fail, up charge the mongol horse archers, to kill the ONE unit sitting outside the walls.

Cue "Quack Suicide Squad, ATTACK!"

Until the unit dies, to the LAST MAN, or routs, the ai will continue to sit in range of every piece of ranged weaponry I've got, taking hideous casualties. (Maybe they suggested something about their mother?)

[Didz]

Thats a similar expliot to the one Im use except I usually deploy a ballista or bombard just outside the gate. I've also acheived the same thing by running a fast cavalry unit out one side gate them round under the walls of the castle and in the front gate, resulting in everyone chasing them to their doom.

Mind you still not a patch of the CIV4 catapult expliot, still laughing my socks off at that bit of stupidity.

There is a general tendency for the AI to still within range of long ranged missile troops and not attack, withdraw or try to close its own missile troops to with range. I expliot that a lot in battles usually killing 25% of their army before they even begin to attack.

Catapult crews don't run away....or if they do then they tend to come back before they leave the map so they nearly always get slaughtered.

[chickenhawk]

There are two VERY basic AI mistakes that I think the programming to fix should be doable, in addition to the vast number of specific issues that are, in many cases very difficult.

The first is the strength calculator that the AI uses to assess whether it can accomplish a given goal. The A.I. should be far more conservative about how many troops it needs to conduct a given operation, whether it is attack, defend, or siege against the the player controlled faction. It is my understanding that not only is this portion of the AI less than brilliant to put it mildly, but that it is almost inaccessible to modders. If CA can't fix it, at least let the community try. Sending a stack with less combat power than the garrison to attempt a siege is only the most obvious of these errors.

Second, and this is related to the passive AI bug. the AI should be able to assess whether it is winning or losing the missile fight based on overall missile casualties per minute. Again this is not complicated programming, just missile casualties inflicted vs. missile casualties received per unit time. If it is losing badly in this comparison it should do SOMETHING, either charge or retreat or something. Standing there and letting Retinue Long-bowmen empty their quivers at you is not a strategy, it is suicide. Staying in range of the wall towers is even worse for any goal except a reasonable chance of breaching or seizing those walls is even worse than suicide, it makes for a boring game.

The idea that a sally can be conducted against a completely unprepared force in daytime is also just silly. The AI does it badly and the player does it far too effectively. This just needs to be completely rethought.

For that matter the whole concept of siege engines needs to be completely rethought. Except for the very highest tech cannon they simply had no battlefield application in this period. The rate of fire and the time it took to aim/move them was completely prohibitive. Sieges should be conducted on a points system where the siege engines simply give more points per turn. A given level of walls/towers would then take a certain number of points to break down. The more points a besieging army accumulated the more breaches it would have when assaulting on the battle map. this would also increase the level strategic decision making in terms of waiting to lift a siege as the chance of a successful assault would keep going up due to the gradual degradation of the defenses. Finally if their were no siege engines on the battle map the AI could not do silly/suicidal things with them.

Good Lord make me stop.....

[Gaius Terentius Varro]

Weird seems like the same people that complain about the AI failures are unable to stop using the exploits. Then again pretending that Kasparov is on the other side of the chess board is a bit unrealistic. It's just never gonna happen... The passive missile bug is still present in RTW after all the patches, the very same game we all loved to put down in comparison to MTW's AI and now look fondly upon... So is this a worse game? Hell, not for me. It's way more immersive and the true challenge of being pitted against a 10 star general is right there just try the multiplayer.

[Darkgreen]

I can’t stop people from posting here, and there has been some good stuff here and some stuff related to the original topic, but for the guys at CA it might be easier for them to sift through this stuff if we stick to the original topic. I started this thread because one of the guys from CA said:

"it'd be interesting to read a thread of 'ai horror stories' actually, the ai behaviours which people exploit the most to gain easy wins."

If you have other comments not related to this, I would suggest (I know I can only suggest) you put them in a different thread. It would probably make things easier for everyone.

[TevashSzat]

This has happened four times now in Baghdad. I am Venice in a migration campaign and have a nice garrison in Baghdad due to the nearby citadel, but I am constantly besieged by the mongols. Every time, they send a ram and it breaks down the gate so their whole army charges in, but I have 6-7 silver chevron venetian infantry standing right near the gate which holds their charge so I send my feudal knights and my general out back and charge them in the ass causing insta rout. I have a general and 4 feudal knights all with full exp due to this, it really is pretty sad.

[Crazy Larry]

There are two big flaws the A.I. has when sieging the town that need to be fixed (at least they are present in 1.1). First, a very small army can defend a settlement against an A.I. siege if the A.I. has not brought siege equipment that can batter down the walls (i.e. Ballista, Catapults, etc.), as long as the settlement has walls that they can walk on. This is because once the A.I. has ladders at the wall, if you can engage the units pushing the rams and seige towers, the A.I. will forget that they have them and try to send everyone up the ladders, where you can rout their army very easily due to the huge disadvantage units scaling walls via ladders are at. While I've never been in the exact situation, I would not find it surprising that a garrison of 4 or 5 Town Militia could beat an entire stack this way. All you have to do is send one or two units outside the wall, wait until the ladders are up, and then attack the rams and/or towers. After that unit routs or dies the entire enemy army will try to go up the ladders. I've racked up some amazing victories this way, with minimal loss on my part (often beating the enemy by more than a 10:1 ratio).

Secondly, when an A.I. spy successfully opens the gates for an enemy army, the A.I. ignores this except as a last resort. They still try to send towers and ladders to the walls, and will wait until you've killed 50%+ of their army before they walk through the gates. This is somewhat offset by the fact that certain city layouts consider the "main" gate different for attackers and defenders. Thus, I've had a few times where the enemy has had a spy in a settlement and no time to prepare and ended up with 90% of my army on the opposite side of the city. Now, I understand that a spy is supposed to be part of a sneak attack, but it seems odd that a single spy could cause my entire army to camp out at one gate when the army is building towers and rams 500 feet from a different gate.

[Slaists]

Passive AI "Fix"

Here is a minimalistic horror story, which, unfortunately, is rather common after the passive AI "fix".

I am the attacker;
My army: two hobilar units;
AI's army: one unit of armored swordsmen;
Terrain: steep hills, a flat valley and deep woods;
The AI starts in the woods (makes perfect sense in this scenario);
My army starts in the open.

Instead of sitting in the woods, which would give the AI the forest advantage + disadvantage to my already weak cavalry, the AI starts chasing my hobilar units in the open; get's charged from two sides (after running for some time chasing my cavalry) and runs...

If the AI was just sitting in the woods and waiting for my cavalry to approach, I would stand no chance.

:wall:

[FactionHeir]

The AI would do that in 1.1 too. Basically because it thinks that it outnumbers you (in terms of battle odds)

[Atalus]

I love when i have Sudanese Gunners firing at the enemy and they make that little charge ..... and then stop and go back to their first position.... then charge and go back.


Another one is that they still fire their ballistic weapons when their generals and expensive troops are in combat.... more often that not resulting in their own generals loss.

[Slaists]

The AI would do that in 1.1 too. Basically because it thinks that it outnumbers you (in terms of battle odds)

I know, the AI was doing it in 1.1 too. The point is, it is still doing it in 1.2.

And, it would still make sense the AI to take advantage of the fact it is defending and can choose the battle terrain even even if the AI was outnumbering the player attacker.

[Anti-TotalWar]

The only AI horror is fighting me.

[Ciaran]

One strange instance I´ve encounered on the strategic map, using the unofficial 1.2 patch. Playing as England, I was at war with Milan and besieged its last three cities, Mailand, Genoa and Florence. Milan still had strong armies, however, they didn´t attempt to lift any of the sieges, instead they faced off against the French (also at war with Milan and allied to me), who also had some stacks onn Milanese territory.

[edyzmedieval]

The Passive AI is a killer completely.

Playing as English, sieged Edinburgh. Prince Edward of the Scots came forward to attack him. I killed his entire army of 450 men with 4 units of Archers and 1 of Crossbowmen(mercs). Then I moved on to the second army, and killed half of it. (1 Spear Militia, 2 Generals)

I killed 850, lost 120. This is stupid.

[Empirate]

Strategy: What happens to me a lot is that the AI doesn't even try to lift a siege before the last possible turn, even if it has a full stack army standing around doing nothing at all. I can't really say what this behaviour is dependent on, but I seem to remember that I saw this most when I didn't build any siege equipment, preferring to wait out the siege.
The most recent example was in a Hungarian campaign. After the HRE stupidly attacked me (allied since turn one, HRE was excommed and at war with five other factions already...) I sieged Vienna with a pure horse archer army. This was mainly intended as a bait to draw some field armies there. I was planning to decimate some half stacks coming to relieve Vienna in order to cut the risks on my western front. What happened was that the HRE let a couple of turns pass without action, then they brought up a full stack army led by their heir. It contained six crossbow variants plus a load of experienced Armored Sarges as well as a few Feudal Knights. This army sat literally two squares away from my besieging army and waited out the siege. On the very last turn of the siege, it finally attacked. The garrison, which had been sizable in the beginning, was down to about one-third of its original strength and was easily annihilated without being able to help the German prince at all. Horrible! If they were going to attack anyway, why wait for the last possible moment? Even if I had beaten them, I was bound to take some losses, and the large Vienna garrison could have helped, too! After that, there would still have been time to bring up a new army to challenge me again!

Tactics: Another, related point nearly made me quit my Hungarian campaign. The AI obviously doesn't have the first idea what to do about Horse Archer heavy armies. I've pulled off win after win even against enemy armies that could have put up a real challenge. Take the German prince's army mentioned above, for instance: If they had just sat tight in a corner of the map, on a hill or on the eaves of a wood, I couldn't have done much. Crossbows outrange and outgun horse archers easily. I couldn't charge their massive rows of Armored Sergeants. And I couldn't even feign charges against their missile foot, as their knights might have countercharged. This, of course, requires the AI to just sit tight, concentrate fire on one HA unit at a time, soak up the arrows, keep its troops together, and most of all friggin' stop moving those Crossbowmen! They can't shoot while on the move!
What happened was of course that the Germans came after me, moving in a big bulk at first, then splitting up more and more. Armored Sergeants tried to outrun my horsemen (catching up), Crossbowmen tried to outrun my horsemen (running away), and Knights charged and charged only to charge into empty space because I microed whatever unit they charged at the time.
Some very basic AI tactics might do a much better job than the current system of seeking good melee matchups and running around a lot: Stick together; see if you can fare well in a missile duel; protect your flanks; let missile foot actually take a shot once in a while; don't suicide melee cav. Basic.

[Hochmeister]

I think the AI in bridge battles could use some work particularly if they have reinforcements.

Scenario: I am defending with a mixed single stack (no artillery). I rout the first AI army easily with schiltrons at the bridgehead and flaming arrows behind. The reinforcements include catapults but instead of pummeling me from a distance they try and push their catapults across to my side of the bridge:wall: :wall:
Needless to say they were routed along with the rest of their mates:no:

This happened on several occasions but maybe someone else could verify?

[FactionHeir]

1.2 AI is kind of funny.

I was attacking a bunch of Byzantines (1 catapult, 1 vardariotai, 5 town militia, 3 spear militia, 4 archer militia) with my French army (4 french mounted archers, 2 crossbowmen, 2 catalans, 2 scots guard, 2 voulgier militia, 2 dismounted feudal knights, 1 general). I placed my units on the hill with the enemy starting in a small valley below (not steep at all). Being outnumbered but having artillery, they first advanced towards my line to shoot me with their catapult, which was relatively smart as they stood out of the way of my missiles.

I then advanced on their right flank with my mounted archers, firing away at thei militia and then targeting their catapult. Once I took out the catapult crew (in the meantime their archer militia got too close to my ranged units and got fired upon) by standing my mounted archers right behind the enemy, the byzantines moved onto a hill to the left of my starting position which was quite a bit taller than mine. While they did that, I ran my mounted archers further along their right flank and harassed them. Once they stood on the hill (not on top of it but close) their archers fired a volley against my mounted archers, but instead of standing on their flank, I again moved right behind them (note the AI at no time tried to attack me properly while maneuvering). Once my mounted archers got on top of the hill (a few meters behind the enemy line) the entire byzantine army moved down the hill towards my starting hill where they were standing just inches away from my ranged units, taking fire without using their melee units to attack at all. At the same time my mounted archesrwere still shooting them from the back. Eventually the enemy routed.

While I applaud the AI for now moving when you outmaneuver them, they certain don't do it very smartly moving from one hill to the next even if they can force your small harassing force away and they shouldn't be moving towards the hill you are standing on and then stopping, but at least attack (even if they are the defender) or just move to another corner of the map and force you to follow them.

[Whacker]

Apart from the known passive AI bugs, I can't really offer anything too specific. I can state that I've observed wierd behavior in terms of where the AI will defend when I siege it, and when it decides to pull back and abandon the walls and gates. The behavior is inconsistent, and sometimes it will pull back when in my view, it has a better chance of holding me off at the breach itself, based on my previous experiences.

Sadly, I've taken to autoresolving all of my v1.2unofficial battles due to the unit cohesion problems. (Yes I will try other unit sizes later)

Cheers
:balloon2:

PS:

Demoted <-- LOL

[hrvojej]

I also agree that the failings of tactical AI are mostly due to the failings of strategic AI, i.e. army recruitment and the AI not developing its generals. Apart from the often mentioned passive AI, and the overall poor handling of missile duels, I think the AI performs rather well.

With missile duels, the AI is not only passive when outgunned, but it often fails to react when you start shooting its melee troops while ignoring its archers. The melee troops just stand there, allowing themselves to be shot to pieces, instead of e.g. pulling back or taking cover from the fire. This would widen the gap between the AI's missile troops and its main line, but it would also mean that if I want to shoot its melee troops I would have to get much closer to his archers, therefore exposing my own ranged units to heavier casualties.

Another thing is using the terrain better. I don't have any concrete suggestions regarding this, but I really liked how the AI used the terrain to its advantage in STW. Some players may not like the long positioning struggle between the player and AI to see who will get the best terrain, which in STW often meant that troops could become tired while maneuvering around the map, but IMO it adds to the challenge.

With regard to the strategic AI, some of it can be offset by changing the recruitment pools, so that more good troops are recruited while the rabble is unavailable at higher levels of buildings, but I guess improving the AI recruitment priorities would help immensely in this. As for the generals, I don't know how to solve that without the AI cheating (which I hate, and therefore would hate to see the AI getting free troops to "fix" the recruitment), but I do know that facing a high dread/chivalry AI general is much much more fun than facing a captain.

[RickooClan]

Another thing is using the terrain better. I don't have any concrete suggestions regarding this, but I really liked how the AI used the terrain to its advantage in STW. Some players may not like the long positioning struggle between the player and AI to see who will get the best terrain, which in STW often meant that troops could become tired while maneuvering around the map, but IMO it adds to the challenge.



I missed that part of TW game badly!! :no:

[Empirate]

Got another one, already well known, but just the same:
Why does the AI entrust its biggest armies to mere captains? Why do family members get left behind? This happens so often, it annoys the hell out of me - AI armies have no staying power this way, their fighting spirit leaks out of them the second they start taking casualties.

[Foz]

I had one particularly horrific encounter with problematic AI in 1.1. I had a far undermanned town that the enemy laid siege to. None of my other forces were close enough to help in the fight, and the enemy assaulted right away. Having some artillery along with it, the enemy army made the seemingly intelligent decision to clear some of my towers before breaching the wall. I decided to send a lone squad of mailed knights out a side gate, which accounted for 1/3 of my defenses, along with 2 lowly militias of some sort. I planned to try to wipe out the 2 catapult squads, rendering the enemy unable to breach the walls and thus ending the assault.

Boy was I in for a surprise. I began by lining the knights up behind the end unit of the enemy line because I had to clear a way to the catapults in the center of the line. It was a heavy unit, DFK I think. The MKs charged, while the DFKs remained glued to the show their catapults were putting on. End result: DFK pincushions. They were wiped out almost immediately, and never looked to even see my cavalry. Rinse and repeat with many more units. After 2 or 3 units were gone, the enemy finally started reacting. It didn't really matter: the reactions were ineffective and poorly executed. The MKs continued riding in and out of the enemy at will, simply butchering them with formed charges. In the end my mailed knights had run down about 4 squads of DFKs, a few spear units, an enemy cavalry squad, 3 enemy archer squads, and of course the 2 catapult teams. It was like the AI had no idea how to attack a squad of knights or even defend itself at all, and most of the time no interest in even doing so.

I realize this was more than likely due to the now-known issue with units that exit the side gate of a town... but even so, it was definitely the most disturbed I've been by anything the AI has done. Far worse than passive AI - more like... comatose.

[FactionHeir]

Friendly AI reinforcements when you assault a city are rather dumb.
I assaulted a huge city from my side, took the walls and captured the gate, but my AI ally on the other side who had brought 1 ballista was trying to shoot down a huge city wall on the other end and leaving all its units as far away from the city as possible. I think it goes without saying that I took the city (which was defended by a full stack) before the AI could even break down that wall (I think it would have needed some 100 or so ballistae shots).

Really, they should come to my side instead of using the ballista to break down the wall or at least aim at the gate...

[Didz]

Well I suppose you could have gone round to their side.:)