Promising news about the ai

[Lusted]

This has got to be the best news about the ai EVER!!!!!!

[danfda]

^^^
Agreed. Terrific post, and I commend him on his willingness to post something like that. Shows they do care.

This thread just got me really psyched for Nov. the 16th.

[shifty157]

Thats some really good stuff to hear. Perhaps our constant complaining has finally gotten to them? Though i dont think we're placing such a high bar for CA. I think CA is placing it for themselves. When you create such an amazing game with such tactical potential to be explored and exploited, average mediocre RTS AI just wont cut it. You need AI that is above and beyond.

Like Palamedes said. Up until now the AI was purely calculated on an individual unit basis without any real concern for the overall strategy. This sufficed for STW and MTW because tactics in these periods were generally much less rigid and much more based around charging disorganized mobs of men (obviously there are some exceptions but on the whole they are rather few and far between). In RTW however the weakness of this type of AI became extremely apparent because tactics and formations in the ancient were very complex and very rigid and the units themselves were very specialized for a single particular task within the larger whole of the army. The army had to work together as it was meant to otherwise the battle would be lost. This fact was most noticeable with the phalanx armies that absolutely required the entire army to hold one solid battleline. The AI's inability to work together to this extent simply made such extremely specialized and rigid tactics impossible.

From what ive seen of the AI in custom battles on the first demo it has improved very well in working as a single army. When my army placed on a defensive position with a cliff (or other impassable terrain) in front of it the AI will now attack up one side of the cliff with the majority of its force while sending a smaller flanking force around the other way. ANother instance that i was rather impressed with was a setup where the AI was attacking me. The majority of its force began in front of me but two units started to my flank beyond a small town. The town had a single intersection and was directly along the AI's path to my position so i sent two units to the town and set them up to either side of the intersection. In RTW the AI unit would have marched straight down the center of street and into the intersection allowing me to flank him from either side. In this case however the AI went out of its way around the town and completely bypassed my little trap. By the time i realized that there was no chance of the AI marching into the town as i had hoped it was too late and the main force of the AI had already come up and cut my ambushing units off from the rest of my army. In an effort to reconnect them with my battleline i sent them to attack the AI flank so that they could fight their way through, extend my battleline, and roll the AI flank at the same time. Unfortunately for me the AI intercepted them in mid charge with a reserve unit and proceeded to surround and overwhelm them. I must say that i was very surprised and very impressed with this classic blitzkreig maneuvre.



Overall im very happy with the developers being more open about what theyre doing. Its not like theyre releasing coding secrets that other developers can take advantage of. I really cant think of any negative impact that most may have had. Quite the contrary everyone has nothing but praises and happiness. I hope CA is seeing the very large benefit of having open and informative relations with theyre community. It seems theyre finally coming out of their shell and seeing the light.

I have to be honest and say that six months ago i was so disappointed with RTW that i decided not to but MTW2 until after i started getting everyone's impressions on the forums. I didnt want to buy another game that i would only play through to completion twice. But since then i have to say that because CA has been a bit more open about its developement ive been won over. I preordered the game a couple weeks ago and now i cant wait for it to come. Itll be like christmas came early this year.

Keep up the tireless improvement CA. Its makinga real impact.