RTS with a good AI?

[Gazius]

Has anyone ever played a RTS game with a good AI? I admit my experience with the genre is pretty limited, but it seems like three relatively popular series in the genre (TW, Paradox, Civ) are all pretty limited in AI. It's pretty rare to see the AI make a good decision in TW, even if you wait for a century of AI development, the best they can do is throw stacks at you. Paradox has a scripted system that has some mild effectiveness, and some mods for it provide a decent AI, but it seems like they inherently rely on a modification of the players abilities, not the actual improvement of the AI. Civ seems like it just gives massive bonuses to the AI, so that your main route to victory is by sheer tech overwhelming.

So I was wondering, is there a good RTS where the enemy has tactically outmaneuvered you repeatedly, and can effectively counter human randomness without simply penalizing you?

[antisocialmunky]

The Civ 4 AI is actually fairly intellegent and also an opportunistic bastard. The diplomacy AI was also fairly strong in that game. Stardock''s Gal Civ II prides itself on the single player experience. It has a fairly good AI.

No AI is that good. AI programming is tough since your resources are so limitted and it takes time to make a good AI.

[Landwalker]

Well, neither Total War (in the campaign map) nor Civilization (or any version of it I've ever played) is a proper RTS. Probably the best RTS AIs I've seen are in Relic's games, like Company of Heroes or Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War. As for turn-based strategy games (TBS, or Turner Broadcasting System), it's hard to say--pretty much the only ones I've played are the Total War games, the Heroes of Might & Magic games, and the Age of Wonders games (and the Civilizations, but I haven't played any of those in forever and a week).

Incidentally, the AI in the original Battle for Middle-Earth wasn't too shabby. It wasn't great, but it wasn't moronic. If you walled yourself up, it broke out the catapults (and those were obnoxious pains in the behind), and the AI had no qualms about seeking out and then attacking your least-fortified/garrisoned positions. It was also pretty good about building the appropriate unit types (e.g. spears if you use a lot of cavalry). Nothing outstanding, but at least not idiotic.

Cheers.

[Lovejoy]

I recommend Advance Wars for the Nintendo DS (everybody should get one). :P

Reeeeeeeally fun turn-based game with a good AI.

Don't let the cute graphics scare you off. The game is really deep and increadably fun.

You will have to get damaged units off the front and back to base for repairs to change them with new once.

And always make sure to resupply your tanks and airplanes or the planes will crash and tanks get stuck.

always bring good artillery support!

best of all: play against your friend with only one Nintendo DS!

or do as I do and play it at the same time as you play EB! No more boring loading times!

Its one of my favorite games of all time!

[Sir Edward]

The original poster specifically asked for RTS not turned based like Advance Wars or Total War. I personally enjoy the Age of Empire series.

[Landwalker]

The original poster specifically asked for RTS not turned based like Advance Wars or Total War. I personally enjoy the Age of Empire series.

The poster did ask for RTS games, but then went on to use Total War and the quintessential turn-based strategy series, Civilization, as examples. So either he doesn't understand what "RTS" actually is, or he's soliciting any ideas regardless of system.

Either way, I have not played the most recent incarnation of Age of Empires, only the original and Age of Kings (and Age of Mythology). Perhaps Ensemble made a huge AI improvement in the transition to AoE III, but in all the other ones the AI was abysmal, tending to just hurl units at you with virtually no regard for tactics, planning, or organization. Set up a moderate defense at a choke point and you basically have unlimited time to build up your own army, and when it comes time to swoop in and eliminate the enemy, it's basically just a matter of steamrolling the opponent--there is no coherent or organized defense, nothing.

If Age of Empires III made an improvement on this, then that's great. But if not, then, as enjoyable as the series is, I wouldn't recommend it on the strength of its AI.

Cheers.

[bovi]

Age of Empires III AI is very good at getting up a quick army, but completely moronic once it gets smacked around a bit, and requires constant supervision to be of any use at all to a team. Playing MP with an odd number of people with similar strength makes it really hard to make a match, as on hard it's practically useless and on expert it gets double the resources of everyone else so is impossible to beat.

For good turn-based AI, I can vouch for Galactic Civilizations II. Give the AI a couple of percent more income than you and you'll have a good run for your money. I also like Civ4's AI, although it tends to be very unforgiving about the wars against me, which I didn't start I might add. There's also Igowin which is not entirely stupid.

[Elminster12]

Civ4 AI is very nice, especially since each leader behaves differently, and there is also an option for Random Personalties, which could lead to such madness as psychotic warmongerer Gandhi and peaceful builder Alexander. It is usually decently competent at war(and will actually pick on weaker AIs to good effect) and it is also capable of pursuing any victory in Beyond the Sword(people have actually witnessed AIs win domination victories.) They also pursue tech gambits(they are capable of, for example, setting up a Feudalism slingshot using the Oracle if conditions are favorable.) However, you won't find AI that is anything better than average when compared to humans.

[Bootsiuv]

Gal Civ II has an excellent A.I., but sometimes, the game is a little too abstract for my tastes.

You can design all of these cool-looking ships, but you never get to see them in battle a'la Imperium Galactica II. Also, the complete lack of any scientific related notes is also disappointing ie click on a star, and recieve a few facts would be nice, and the same goes for planets.

It's still a very good AI, although in Rome's defense, the creators really had to create TWO AI's....one for the campaign and one for the battle map. If they had stuck with one or the other, it's likely the final version would have been more polished, but also more limited.

Overall, though, if it's A.I your looking for, GalCivII is very good, albeit a little abstract.

[Pharnakes]

Hmm this galciz sounds intiguing,could you give a bit more detail on it please, also min specs?


Thanks

P.S. Bootsiuv, any luck with the Indo Hellenics yet?

[Bootsiuv]

No....but my girl has class tomorrow, and I'm going up there for an hour and a half while she is in class, so I'll have much longer to look through books.

And the min req for GalCiv II are very low....if you can play EB, I'd venture you could play GalCiv II....the planets and stars are very well rendered though, and they're is some cool stuff in the background, but that's about as intense as graphics get.

[Pharnakes]

Thanks, hope you get some good info

My pint is thought that I can't play eb, so I was rather looking around for something to fill the gap untill I get a new comp.

[bovi]

The only really good graphics in GalCiv2 are in the ship battles, which you'll probably disable after you've seen it played out about 100 times (and the ship designer where you make the nice ships, image below). The rest of the graphics are pretty functional, and I usually zoom out so it becomes sprites instead of the nice ship renderings anyway. You don't need much of fancy FPS-graphics in a TBS anyway.



A lot of other screenshots can be seen here: http://www.galciv2.com/Journals.aspx?p=5

[iwwtf_az]

total annihilation was pretty good. the reason is, there was no unit cap. so even if the ai was horrible, i never noticed since i was constantly under siege.

[Landwalker]

Wow, Total Annihilation--there's an old one I haven't played in a while. Such a shame that TA: Kingdoms never even came close to living up to the first game.

Cheers.

[antisocialmunky]

Its too bad but Supreme Commander is nice even though the late game is somewhat broken in its eco spammage. Strat Bombers FTW!

Now that I think about it, Master of Orion 2 has a pretty good AI. I wuvz that game so much. Shame about Moo3 though.

[Gazius]

My mistake on the RTS thing. I thought that was the name for these sort of strategy games in general. Turn based, real time, whatever, I just want an AI to outwit me, not mass outproduce, unless I can realisticly match that. It's one of the reasons I like the RTW/EB system of unit production. You could just as easily match theh AI stack for stack if you had the same income. It seems like in Civ4 BTS no matter if I have every city just make units, they can still outproduce to the point that it will negate my relatively small tech advantage. The Battle for Middle-Earth one sounds rather interesting.

[Landwalker]

I'd suggest downloading a demo for Battle for Middle Earth (be sure it's BME 1, not 2. The second one is pretty feh.) It's a pretty entertaining game, but it isn't very complex (which may be why the AI seems more competent--it doesn't have as much to deal with). Whereas a game like EB has literally hundreds of units, BME probably has, off the top of my head, no more than 40-45 spread out among the four factions. It's a fairly simplistic strategy game, but it's one that the AI can for the most part handle without completely humiliating itself. You still probably won't be losing any games to it, though.

On the note of losing games to the AI, you might take a look at Warcraft III. I haven't played it in a while (and I never played the Frozen Throne expansion), but I do remember that I was always convinced that the AI was going to tear me apart. I don't know if that's because it gets significant resource bonuses, or because it has some of the more successful "starting tactics" programed into its operation (to facilitate rushing and the like). Just some thoughts.

Cheers.

[Kurulham]

Now that I think about it, Master of Orion 2 has a pretty good AI. I wuvz that game so much. Shame about Moo3 though.

I thought MoO had better AI than MoO2 actually.

I haven't played GalCiv II but the original GalCiv had VICIOUS AI. Like, knife-fighter vicious. Stab-you-in-the-kidneys vicious. Carry-on-simultaneous-affairs-with-your-wife-and-daughter-and-sisters vicious.

Civ 4's is okay. Not spectacular, but decent.

[NightStar]

Yeah I agree that Civ 4 has okay A.I of course depending on the difficulty you play. If you play on Noble then the A.I is on the same lvl as you. If you go over that difficulty the A.I receives bonuses.

Yes Galciv has wicked A.I, I remember when I started my first game on normal and got trounced by the A.I. I was like oh...I must've made some mistakes and got trounced again, but luckily I learn from experience and got better :)

I must say that I love Stardock and if every publisher would take their example and support their product like they do I think the world be a better place.

And yeah, those who wish to know more about Galciv I&II, you can buy their games online and download and they support their games better than any publisher/developer I know of

http://galciv.com/

[dominique]

The problem with AI is twofold.

1) It cost a lot of man-hours-money to develop

2) It doesn't sell.

A cute animated Hatshepsut (like in civ4) sells and it doesn't meet problem 1.

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Why is it so difficult?

You need to have a solid pathfinding algorithm, and that cost you one of these nerdy-geeky sociopath team who will wreck your payroll and the work ambiance.

You need time, a lot of it, to tweak everything in place. I don't think most people can just imagine how many variables are to be checked and verified just to make a phalanx fight like a phalanx and a legion fight like a legion, + react correctly tactically (throwing javelins at the elephant and not at the skirmishers...). It's long, it's taxing, it gives good reviews (sometimes), please the geek god, but when christmas comes, people have to choose between DOA-like games (with da big balloons) and a CTS with a performing AI...



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I don't remember ever playing against a competitive and realistic AI. Either the computer cheats, or is too predictible. There are MOUNTAINS of exploits (like the diplomat and the fort thingy) and there are pathfinding problems, like you just have to stack yourself in an island and you're ok.

I take pleasure in nation building, ambiance, historicity. Like EB, like EU.

If I want competiveness, I'll play a strategy game at home and sweat it out against intelligent opponents!

[Antiochus V]

You might try looking at the paradox games - Europa Universalis series or Hearts of Iron. The AIs are reasonable and also fairly moddable, which means they are being regularly improved by fans.

Also as with total war the fan base is very active and there are many good mods out there still being worked on. Due to the lack of fancy graphics and the fact that most game files can be edited in wordpad the game is easy to tweak oneself.

[shlin28]

On the note of losing games to the AI, you might take a look at Warcraft III. I haven't played it in a while (and I never played the Frozen Throne expansion), but I do remember that I was always convinced that the AI was going to tear me apart. I don't know if that's because it gets significant resource bonuses, or because it has some of the more successful "starting tactics" programed into its operation (to facilitate rushing and the like). Just some thoughts.

Cheers.

Warcraft 3 is quite hard, even on easy it requires early rushes or some heavy recruiting to take the enemy base. Thats why when I play the AI I always have a computer ally to help out, if only to act as meatshield for me

[dominique]

Don't want to be picky, but I just started playing RomeTW and all because I was tired of EU's poor AI. If you want to win a campaign in EU, you play England. NOBODY will ever attack you, except Scotland...
And even there, the AI just blobs around, frequently at it's own expense (Austria annexing all her vassals even if they gave her a huge manpower and political bonus...).

Sorry for the rant.

[econ21]

My mistake on the RTS thing. I thought that was the name for these sort of strategy games in general. Turn based, real time, whatever, I just want an AI to outwit me, not mass outproduce, unless I can realisticly match that. It's one of the reasons I like the RTW/EB system of unit production. You could just as easily match theh AI stack for stack if you had the same income. It seems like in Civ4 BTS no matter if I have every city just make units, they can still outproduce to the point that it will negate my relatively small tech advantage.

What difficulty level are you playing Civ4 on? If it is noble, then I believe the AI does not get cheats. You should be able to reliably beat it, but still it does reasonably well considering the great complexity of the game. Personally, I find the level just above noble - prince - is my comfort zone. To me, that indicates very good AI (in Civ2, I could play on deity).

Usually I find Civ rather inept at the tactical issues of handling its units, but it can do very clever stuff. One of the best examples, was in an early war when the Japanese sent two small amphibious invasions. I swatted them easily, but when the dust settled, I realised they had just destroyed my two sources of copper - sabotaging my entire war economy.

Perhaps the best aspect of Civs AI is the way, when it wages war, it does so whole heartedly. It is awe-inspiring to be declared war on by a far distant faction and then see several full stacks emerging out of the fog of war, when your border cities have only a couple of units. Even more impressive, when you realise those stacks have been stalking towards you at one hex a turn for the last century or so.

Also on Civ, the issue of war vs development is a big issue for gameplay. Income for income, you could squash the AI by producing more stacks - because the AI is more geared to peace. But there is an option for aggressive AI that has the opposite effect - the AI may focus on units more than you would. Personally, I've always enjoyed Civ as a building game, not a wargame (too slow for the latter) and that is why I prefer Prince. At higher difficulty levels, I think you have to be militaristic and conquer some AI factions in order to offset their cheating advantages.

The Battle for Middle-Earth one sounds rather interesting.

My problem with BME is the game speed. The only ways I think you can get a computer to outsmart a human is either make the game very "simple" (e.g. chess) or to make it very fast paced (e.g. most RTSs). BME does the latter. It is just too frenetic for me - sort of RTW x3 speed. And my initial attraction to EB was that it slowed the movement and kill rates down to MTW levels. If the game could be modded to slow it down - as Dawn of War can - then it would very good. As it is, it just fails to keep my interest.

[bovi]

Don't want to be picky, but I just started playing RomeTW and all because I was tired of EU's poor AI. If you want to win a campaign in EU, you play England. NOBODY will ever attack you, except Scotland...
And even there, the AI just blobs around, frequently at it's own expense (Austria annexing all her vassals even if they gave her a huge manpower and political bonus...).

Sorry for the rant.

And if you want a tougher game, play any hemmed in landlocked nation. I play Novgorod currently, and have been allied to Muscovy pretty much all the game. I have near constant wars as there are 4 alliances that love to attack me: Sweden with the Teutonic order and the other distant allies (defeated those two, they're down to 2-3 provinces), Norway/Denmark/Scotland (defeated Norway, became my vassal), Poland/Lithuania, and finally Sibir with a bunch of allies further south, none of which I can attack any longer as I don't have maps. Lithuania is definitely the meanest of the bunch with lots more levels in land tech than me, I'm losing badly even with a superior general.

I also tried Brunei, quite a challenge to gain a foothold on the Asian mainland. And it all unravels really quickly when the Ming dynasty decides to punish the success. I think the AI has a problem staging really large naval invasions, and that's why it can't take England. It definitely is able to take Brunei when it sets its mind to it.

[Starforge]

Don't want to be picky, but I just started playing RomeTW and all because I was tired of EU's poor AI. If you want to win a campaign in EU, you play England. NOBODY will ever attack you, except Scotland...
And even there, the AI just blobs around, frequently at it's own expense (Austria annexing all her vassals even if they gave her a huge manpower and political bonus...).

Sorry for the rant.

Look, I buy Paradox games and enjoy them but I have to agree with this person here. Unless you roleplay it a bit and download something like the Magna Mundi Gold mod (or whatever the latest is) for it the AI is pretty weak in EU3. Is it a decent strategy game - yes but is it hard....nope.

I don't mind the lack of graphics for a game (well, short of going back to CGA or some such) if the game plays well but EU has some unfortunate warts in the AI that once you know what they are - it's just a tad too easy to exploit. Add to that the EU Total War changes that they made (if you're next to me - I'm going to attack you) makes the period feel wrong.

Sorry - wee bit of venting leaking in and I don't want to give the wrong impression. It's a good game - I've spent many hours on it, just object to it's AI being held up as good.

[Pharnakes]

From what I have found, EU2 Ai is pretty good, and I am a little vauge as to just what imporvements EU3 makes over EU2, excpet graphics, which don't interest me unless they are "close up" graphics, like RTW battles, for a campaign map a risk style board ala MTW or EU2 is just as good the kind in RTW or EU3.

[Starforge]

From what I have found, EU2 Ai is pretty good, and I am a little vauge as to just what imporvements EU3 makes over EU2, excpet graphics, which don't interest me unless they are "close up" graphics, like RTW battles, for a campaign map a risk style board ala MTW or EU2 is just as good the kind in RTW or EU3.

The graphics are mostly there to tart the game up. Not a bad thing IMO to move the graphics forward. The gameplay, however, is quite a bit different than EU2 since they removed the historical progression for nations. The Magna Mundi mod places those back in and reworks how some of the AI functions (like how it handles the Holy Roman Empire.) If you liked EU2 - I'd recommend not playing vanilla and installing the mod right off the bat. Magna Mundi also places restrictions on exploration and colonising to an extent and makes it harder for - say - the Tuetonic order or Venice to settle in North America (both seems to happen frequently for me in Vanilla.)

On the original topic - I'd have to agree with the posters above that Galciv probably had the best AI. Part of that was the "cheat" of it knowing from day 1 where all the good inhabitable planets and specials are but all-in-all certainly better than most AI's. I've found GalCiv2 to actually be easier but then that might just be experience from having played the original.

Edit: Well, not really the original (since that was an OS/2 game many years ago for those of you oldtimers who remember) but the first of the new ones :)

[bovi]

GalCiv2 was really easy in its first version, the AI was poor then and I could beat it on the hardest difficulty without too much sweat. During the countless updates it has been improved quite a lot, it will be a good match for most at whatever the level that gives them 25% extra income is called. I can't say I experienced the AI in GalCiv1 to be anything special, but then again I only downloaded a pirate copy to test it and see if it was going to be worth buying GalCiv2 (oh yes indeed it was), so it was probably the same "initial version can't think straight" going on there.