Battlefield AI still incomprehensible

[Red Harvest]

From the initial release of RTW (including the demo) there has been a stupifying tendency of the AI to rearrange its battle line just before it reaches the "charge zone" at 30 yards/meters (probably at range of 50 to 70 yards/meters.) It is a major fundamental flaw in the AI's structure. I can understand having some localized reaction in this zone, but major crossing of ones own lines directly under the nose of the enemy is a recipe for disaster. By this point the battle line is essentially "committed."

With cavalry and some fast units the blunder can be survivable for the AI, but with phalangites and most other infantry it is catastrophic. The only time it turns out well for the AI is when they player issues individual attack orders too soon. The lead computing will then cause the player's units to do a similar criss crossing. This is why I learned to "march through" with a grouped battle line. I issue my attack orders in the last few seconds as rapidly as I can, hitting the AI's most vulneralbe units first, and allowing my other units (that I don't have time to command) to walk into the fight.

I am very skeptical of the AI being fixed in an expansion pack this year.

[_Aetius_]

CA will do what they always seem to do, get rid of the annoying petty bugs and paper over the cracks of the real problems.

I have seen this reforming there lines just before a charge, infact I think it might be a tactic that has a use, i attacked a roman army with my greeks, I had as you can expect mostly armoured phalanxs etc.

The roman army had the usual threes line of infantry, just as i was getting to attack range i chose the target units for my phalanxs and they started turning slightly towards their targets. The roman did this reforming manoevre which looked like suicide but it sent my phalanxs going in a million different directions trying to follow there assigned targets, this confused me so much as i couldnt tell which unit id told to attack which roman unit and when they reformed my centre was wide open praetorian cohorts piled through and well my army wasmostly destroyed.

It was incredibly dissorientating, as i was tyring to reform my line the roman had already reformed and attacked, I think it has a geniune use in specific circumstances but perhaps the AI just doesnt realise that 1 tactics isnt useful in every situation.

[Crazed Rabbit]

I've heard that (In Duke John's AI thread in his Japan mod) the AI may be extra stupid in custom battle mode because they need a certain amount of stars to not be total morons in their tactics. And since no generals get stars in custom battle mode...

Of course, even the most moronic general wouldn't run his archers into hvy inf or other such things.

And why, for the love of goodness, couldn't they make KILL SPEEDS ADJUSTABLE!?!?!?

I'M SICK OF IT!!! I'm not going to buy the expansion when the best they can do with RTW is totally ruin the feel and gameplay by having super sped up battles!! I mean, the SPEED ADJUSTER is there for people who WANT it to go faster!!!

Ok, rant over. I'll admit I had fun with RTW for a week or two, but now I've seen the depths of its gameplay, and it is shallow.

Crazed Rabbit

[HogDog]

I thought some guy made a kill speed mod and a movement speed mod?

[Louis de la Ferte Ste Colombe]

I play quite often MP games, and I got to say human tactics are also quite baffling

Everyday, online, you can see players doing all kind of crazy stuff! Including me!

Sometimes one wonder if playing online does not make the AI look better.

By the way; in MP games, AI got no star general too (you can play with bots in MP), however, gives the AI 30% more money and a decent rush army, and it's quite apt. However, AI really got issues with missile troops, and is subpar when compared to human players on that regard.

Louis,

[HicRic]

The AI wouldn't be nearly annoying as it is if it wasn't for the fact that it was much better in both Shogun and Medieval. Why go backwards?

It isn't because the battles have suddenly become more in-depth and complex or anything. They're just the same old battles we fought over good old Japan but with 3D people instead of 2D people. (Although of course STW gave the 'suicidal diamyo" bug it's name, so it wasn't perfect.)

I don't recall playing MTW and seeing archers charge men-at-arms, generals impale themselves on spearmen, or the entire AI battle line collapsing before I've made contact.

[drone]

I thought some guy made a kill speed mod and a movement speed mod?

I'm sure somebody out there has one. I'd be curious to see if the AI tactics work a little better with it. If the AI adjusts it's line at 50-70 meters, and the run speeds are reduced to a realistic rate, will the AI have time to finish before a player can charge the confused mass? Does the AI take into account distances between opposing units (bad), or the time to cover the distance (good). The AI should only use absolute distance for missile fire, all other distance decisions should be normalized by unit speed. This should give the AI a huge advantage (to compensate for programmed inflexibility), since the computer knows the exact distances and time needed to complete a maneuver.

Hopefully, there is an overall tactic chosen for the battle (based on terrain, stack strength, stack composition, leadership, etc.), then the individual units have some leeway within the chosen tactic. If AI captains don't get enough stars to qualify for a sensible battle plan, this would explain some of the insanity (every unit for themselves). This would make the AI's family members even more important. Assassinate/bribe/kill a few family members, and the faction is essentially neutered (exacerbated by the suicidal leader effect).

I assume the AI uses a weighting scale for it's decision making. It would be nice if we could adjust these weights, but that would probably be giving away too many AI secrets.

[Oaty]

Well on the campaign the senate army seems to be the best. 1 it has elite troops, all have 3 exp points for the most part almost always led by a general. Why do I always beat the senate army? Because it's a slugfest with bothsides having good troops but the A.I. is the first 1 to use up all it's reserves. It is then I can start making maneivers behind there line, plug a thin part of the line. Basically because they have no reserves I have complete control of the battlefield.

Magical moment. I had the Britons completely suround my army, yea surprised me a bit, unfortanately the comp did not get a trigger in all of it's glory of micro management to close the gaps and come crashing down on my army. It let me make piecemeal of the circle they had around me.

On huge units the comp does not understand depth, a few things usually happens. 1 it's long clanky line get's battered by 3 units routing it quickly and even though they outstretched your lines by a mile they don't get to the main conflict in time. Or it's long line causes it to rap a unit quickly and at this moment the unit is extremely vulnerable and gets sandwiched on a flank and with the kill rates the part that got sandwiched is dead instantly.

The pile driver method. For some reason the A.I. will gangbag a flank with 10 units all at once. Unfortanately it's 10 guys on 1 but that also means I have 1 unit tying up 10 units sure almost everytime either that unit gets decimaed or routed but it gave me enough time to manuever on a mass of troops to flank or double flank that maneuver because they get crowded in.

Your hole line on guard mode is pretty nasty to the comp. The whole scheme of the A.I. is to go in 1 at a time and turn the flanks of your battle line. and then the comp rushes in on those flanks. With no flanks being turned it results in the comp sending in 1 unit at a time. Right there I think that is the number 1 reason the A.I. is so poor.

Battlelines A.I. has no concept there. And I usually do'nt do funky setups, 10 units or so all in a row and nothing funny about it. The A.I. makes very poor decisions on determining my line.

Rock paper scissors is'nt too much of a factor anymore. Cavalry starts dropping as soon as the charge dies. and phalanxes facing cavalry will massacre the cavalry. I very rarely see the opportunity in the beginning stage of the battle to get a free shot on skirmshers with cavalry because the cavalry will just get mobbed, so why does the A.I. always do a suicidal charge wasting there cavalry right away. If the comp actually saved there cavalry for last or tried to win the flank they'd be deadly......... and and and maybe with this concept they would have a real reason to reduce the killing rates to give the humans a chance

Phalanx VS phalanx. Did a custom battle with both armies matching exactly with militia hoplites. Everytime the comp loses. The comp will march in a straight line and I did the same exact thing so fatigue would be equal. As soon as the lines clash the comp ends up with exposed flanks. What the A.I. tries to do is not hit the unit in front of them but the unit next to the one in front of it.

[Red Harvest]

Phalanx VS phalanx. Did a custom battle with both armies matching exactly with militia hoplites. Everytime the comp loses. The comp will march in a straight line and I did the same exact thing so fatigue would be equal. As soon as the lines clash the comp ends up with exposed flanks. What the A.I. tries to do is not hit the unit in front of them but the unit next to the one in front of it.

It seems to be trying to flank at the last moment...forgetting that it also has flanks... It also tries to do a leader on leader match up from what I've seen, but it waits until the lines have nearly closed to attempt this. Probably some of both aspects in play here.

[Duke John]

Lately I have also been researching the battlefield AI and for the sake of keeping my sanity I decided to just leave it alone and start scripting my own battles.

My foundings were:

AI archers storm your battlelines without regard of having a large body of AI combat troops left behind. Sometimes this doesn't happen, but I still don't know why; higher ground, numerical advantage...?

Cavalry is used by the AI to attack your skirmishers and not to guard the AI flank (as it should be). If it has cavalry units besides the general it will first attack with the normal cavalry before using the general. This all happens before the combat troops have reached your battleline.

Infantry moves up ordered as a single line towards your line. When they come within a certain distance some kind of algorithm starts to work. To me it seems that each unit works out individually if it can beat a certain unit. The first run it almost always refuses to charge, and retreats, then tries again and again and again, until at one point the odds are good and the AI unit charges... all alone.

As a result I can win defense battles without using my mouse even once. I just set up my battle line, make my flanks angled and let the AI do its dancing and charging.

[screwtype]

Rock paper scissors is'nt too much of a factor anymore.

No, it's not. In the previous games, infantry played a much bigger role because they trashed any spear unit they came into contact with. In RTW it's the other way around, infantry units are a bit lame against spears. Unfortunately, if you're playing as the Romans you don't have a decent spear unit - or a decent missile unit either - which kind of cuts down on your options. So you have to rely on cav as your decisive arm instead. At least, that's how it's been for me.

[screwtype]

From the initial release of RTW (including the demo) there has been a stupifying tendency of the AI to rearrange its battle line just before it reaches the "charge zone" at 30 yards/meters (probably at range of 50 to 70 yards/meters.) It is a major fundamental flaw in the AI's structure. I can understand having some localized reaction in this zone, but major crossing of ones own lines directly under the nose of the enemy is a recipe for disaster. By this point the battle line is essentially "committed."

Hmm you may be onto something there Red. I have also noticed that phalanxes which are attacking me often seem to start overlapping and bunching up as they approach my line. Which is kind of weird.

I was thinking the other day that one of the problems with the AI seems to be that individual AI controlled units each select a unit to attack, and then carry out that attack regardless of the rest of the army. Essentially, instead of one big, coordinated attack, you get lots of little individual attacks, which are often quite easy to beat.

I think they need to add some sort of routine that enables AI armies to mount more coordinated attacks, at least when the AI is commanded by a reasonable general.

It would be a bit of a challenge to accomplish this, I'm sure, but surely not impossible. I've noticed for example that when as the human player you group units, they stay in exactly the same formation as when you first grouped them.

All that would be required to have the AI mount well coordinated attacks, then, would be for the AI to group its units and then, say aim its line of grouped units at the most centrally located enemy unit, or aim it at the area where the majority of enemy units are located.

Then you could have, for example, a majestic and perfectly coordinated line of AI phalanxes marching up to trash your army!

Of course there would be problems writing such routines. For example, at some point the AI would have to decide to decoordinate its line so that unengaged units would not just stand there doing nothing. Working out exactly when to decoordinate would be tricky, but not I think impossible.

I am very skeptical of the AI being fixed in an expansion pack this year.

I am sceptical of the AI EVER being fixed, since after all this is the fifth game in the series and it's still not noticeably better than in the first game. But we can always live in hope I guess...