Simple changes by CA that would improve the AI

[econ21]

This is probably an old question, but perhaps worth a new thread. What simple coding changes do people think CA could implement to improve the AI?

To start the ball rolling here are some that strike me immediately:

Strategic AI:

(1) Do not attack when outnumbered. I regularly get attacked by AI armies that are weaker than my own and there seems no strategic reason for a desperate assault.

(2) "Double team" armies. Sometimes the AI will have three full stacks and attack me with them sequentially, losing one each time. Instead, they should put two in "contact" and then attacked with the third, so that the first two could reinforce. That would be a challenge (even if only one army was on the field at a time, I would have lost my ammo by the time the second arrived).

(3) Stack fleets. The naval war is a joke - unlike MTW, the AI builds enough ships but loses now them piecemeal because they seldom stack.

(4) Keep armies out of reach of stronger armies (ie keep inferior armies out of the movement range of stronger armies). The AI in Heroes of Might and Magic III did this very well - it makes it frustrating to bring the AI to battle, but greatly increases the chalenge.

(5) Put good generals in command of large armies. Most large AI armies are led by strutting fools and mewling infants (captains), yet there is the occaisional high starred AI generals sometimes left alone in towns.

Tactical AI:

(1) Do not attack piecemeal. It is fun to fight Seleucids in RTR v6.0, as they combine phalanxes with fiercesome sword units. But what happens is that the non-phalanx stuff charges in, gets defeated and then the phalanxes arrive. If the phalanxes hit at the same time as the other stuff flanked me, I'd be in trouble.

(2) Keep phalanxes in a line and march forward into combat - stop them veering off to make piecemeal unit to unit match ups. In vanilla, a phalanx can crush most other infantry if kept in a solid wall (my German spears could overrun massed armies of hastati with virtually no loss). But the AI can't pull this off and so phalanxes become very weak units for the AI.

(3) Do not open combat by charging in missile or skirmisher units! (Really bizarre behaviour). When attacking the AI does not seem to use ranged superiority if it has it.

(4) Do not open combat by charging generals into battle (suicide Daimyos are sometimes back in RTW).

(5) Do not stand on the defence if getting shot to death. Better try to take some of the enemy with you, than just step into the position of a unit wiped out to enemy missile fire.

(6) Do not parade up and down in front of missile fire when defending wooden walls. (Again very wierd behaviour).

(7) Do not reposition to lower ground when the player tries to maneouvre you off a hill. (This refers to Puzz3Ds observation in the recent MTW AI vs RTW AI thread.

Pretty much all the above should be easy for CA to code and would make the game much more fun. Modders can do a lot - I'm enjoying RTR v6.0 as much as I did MTW - but not everything.

[Kor Khan]

This is probably an old question, but perhaps worth a new thread. What simple coding changes do people think CA could implement to improve the AI?

To start the ball rolling here are some that strike me immediately:

Strategic AI:

(1) Do not attack when outnumbered. I regularly get attacked by AI armies that are weaker than my own and there seems no strategic reason for a desperate assault.

(2) "Double team" armies. Sometimes the AI will have three full stacks and attack me with them sequentially, losing one each time. Instead, they should put two in "contact" and then attacked with the third, so that the first two could reinforce. That would be a challenge (even if only one army was on the field at a time, I would have lost my ammo by the time the second arrived).

(3) Stack fleets. The naval war is a joke - unlike MTW, the AI builds enough ships but loses now them piecemeal because they seldom stack.

(4) Keep armies out of reach of stronger armies (ie keep inferior armies out of the movement range of stronger armies). The AI in Heroes of Might and Magic III did this very well - it makes it frustrating to bring the AI to battle, but greatly increases the chalenge.

(5) Put good generals in command of large armies. Most large AI armies are led by strutting fools and mewling infants (captains), yet there is the occaisional high starred AI generals sometimes left alone in towns.

Tactical AI:

(1) Do not attack piecemeal. It is fun to fight Seleucids in RTR v6.0, as they combine phalanxes with fiercesome sword units. But what happens is that the non-phalanx stuff charges in, gets defeated and then the phalanxes arrive. If the phalanxes hit at the same time as the other stuff flanked me, I'd be in trouble.

(2) Keep phalanxes in a line and march forward into combat - stop them veering off to make piecemeal unit to unit match ups. In vanilla, a phalanx can crush most other infantry if kept in a solid wall (my German spears could overrun massed armies of hastati with virtually no loss). But the AI can't pull this off and so phalanxes become very weak units for the AI.

(3) Do not open combat by charging in missile or skirmisher units! (Really bizarre behaviour). When attacking the AI does not seem to use ranged superiority if it has it.

(4) Do not open combat by charging generals into battle (suicide Daimyos are sometimes back in RTW).

(5) Do not stand on the defence if getting shot to death. Better try to take some of the enemy with you, than just step into the position of a unit wiped out to enemy missile fire.

(6) Do not parade up and down in front of missile fire when defending wooden walls. (Again very wierd behaviour).

(7) Do not reposition to lower ground when the player tries to maneouvre you off a hill. (This refers to Puzz3Ds observation in the recent MTW AI vs RTW AI thread.

Pretty much all the above should be easy for CA to code and would make the game much more fun. Modders can do a lot - I'm enjoying RTR v6.0 as much as I did MTW - but not everything.

I agree with all of those, I've just got one to add:

When fighting an army with a battleline consisting entirely of phalanx unit, and your line is made out of non-phalanx units, don't engage the enemy head. Stretch your line out far, so as to hopefully envelope the phalanx, and keep a few units (make sure some of these are cavalry) in reserve to flank the enemy. Make sure that the units attacking the front of the phalanx are cheap and discardable ones. NEVER CHARGE A PHALANX HEAD ON WITH CAVALRY!

[CBR]

Yes and some of does seem to be very easy to implement...at least the outnumbered bit, double team and putting good generals in big stacks.

I have also had fun with RTR last week but the AI is very stupid sometimes and it just feels so easy to correct some of the worst stuff.


CBR

[Mongoose]

RTR is great. Sadly, the AI kinda ruins it a little.


phhyrus(sp?!), in my game as Rome, left his army and went to manage a small town. I fought 2 battles where he could have easily commanded an army but no....he would rather manage croton.

[CBR]

phhyrus(sp?!), in my game as Rome, left his army and went to manage a small town. I fought 2 battles that he could have easily commanded an army but no....he would rather manage croton.

In my campaign he stayed at Tarentum while his huge army stayed in Croton...sigh.


CBR

[Red Harvest]

Good list Simon. On the high ground thing...a big problem is not just the pivot. The AI won't slide laterally with its forces to block the player attempting to gain its flank via a parallel march.

mongoose brings up another point, while I was editing the strategic map to make it more challenging, I found that the AI inherently likes to split its forces for no apparent reason. If I put a nice stack of rebels in a city, the AI would take all but a handful out of the city and march them off to the hinterland to stand alone. The AI would be defeated in detail, even by other AI.

[The Stranger]

I agree with all of those, I've just got one to add:

When fighting an army with a battleline consisting entirely of phalanx unit, and your line is made out of non-phalanx units, don't engage the enemy head. Stretch your line out far, so as to hopefully envelope the phalanx, and keep a few units (make sure some of these are cavalry) in reserve to flank the enemy. Make sure that the units attacking the front of the phalanx are cheap and discardable ones. NEVER CHARGE A PHALANX HEAD ON WITH CAVALRY!

why not it works friggin brilliant, the companions blow a hole in it and pushes the line back until its seperated in two, with only a tiny amount of casualties. now thats bizarre, how can horses that are unarmoured (i dont think armour really matters thaT much in real) push a phalanx line (phalanx pikemen) back till it seperates and suffer minimal losses. what is that?????

[Oaty]

[Strategic AI:








Tactical AI:









(
Pretty much all the above should be easy for CA to code and would make the game much more fun. Modders can do a lot - I'm enjoying RTR v6.0 as much as I did MTW - but not everything.[/QUOTE]


(1)First of all the only difference between dificulty levels seems to be the A.I. has more money and more troops and with more experience. I'd say the A.I. is pretty decent for normal difficulty, but lacks any good improvements on very hard.

To solve the weaker army issue, small stacks are ok in the beginning phase but the A.I. starts making peicemeal of itself later on as it does not always make it a goal to get a full stack.

What the A.I. needs to do is assemble a big army in it's core cities and then head towards the enemy. Instead it sends half a stack and hopes for reenforcements in rout, wich occasionally does work in the A.I.'s favour(rarely).

(2) This probably has an easy solution with how the A.I. works. What the A.I. does is target a stack, if it gets there and does'nt attack because of odds, a second stack may come along like the odds and attack. Then after you beat those 2 off a 3rd stack or more comes alomg and dies too. Easy way around this is to see if there are nearby reenforcements that can reenforce before attacking and then attack.

(3) Ships MTW the A.I. was concerned with protecting it's coasts. RTW the A.I. tries to string out it's ships. Besides protecting thier coasts thier only purpose is to harass and blocakde the enemy. Also A.I. needs to blocakde for more than 1 turn with the only deterrent being a bigger meaner stack is nearby. Quite annoying when you see Pontus or Egypt blocking sea passages around Iberia, especially when it's a nice big stack.

(4) A coward lives to fight another day.

(5) Yes quite a shame the A.I. does'nt use a general for it's biggest battles. Perhaps the hiring of a general in BI was a fix for this.

(1) More combined efforts would definately be nice perhaps even putting it's center in guard mode so it's harder to break the A.I. into 2.

(2) quite simple there I always march phalanxes forward and hope they hit something.

(3) 2 good ones there. The tactic in itsef is not bad but needs to learn to pull back if melee units are close by. Archers are the worst on city assaults, the A.I. is in the city wreaking havoc and then suddenly decide to run around if they get hit even if I have missile superiority it is well worth it to them. They also need to sit back with missile superiority and force the human to come to them even if they are the attacker. Same goes for defending, where the better option is to attack the human instead of getting shot up.

(4) What's a suicidal general?

(5) I said it in 3

(6) quite obvious there stand back and wait for so many troops to come in then charge home.

(7) Well at least in RTW the A.I only gets to reposition itself(to a new location) once. was quite annoying in MTW to watch the A.I. run from hill to hill. Where the problem comes is that most hills have peaks that are across the red line wich I believe makes it hard for the A.I. to find the right position to defend from the highest ground possible.

[Veresov]

I would suggest that the AI be required to use generals to move units. I see too many no general armies with the general sit in city.

[pezhetairoi]

I think that is a good idea. But that would give factions an overkill of money due to there being too few armies, a too-quick faction destruction rate since their generals tend to die in battle, and makes it a tad boring. Lots of other things'll have to change also to give this one a chance.

[Red Harvest]

I think that is a good idea. But that would give factions an overkill of money due to there being too few armies, a too-quick faction destruction rate since their generals tend to die in battle, and makes it a tad boring. Lots of other things'll have to change also to give this one a chance.

Heir count is based on territory count. While you can be short or have an excess, their are various aspects of deaths, births, adoptions that are driven by the difference between the "perfect" 1.0 ratio.

It is very difficult to kill off the AI factions in battle, unless they put all their heirs in one stack...they do this at times unfortunately. The game's built in adoption system keeps adding new family members when it is short.

The AI needs some routines to end suiciding generals, true, but having a general in charge of most battles would be a positive (especially assuming they fix this.)