Battle AI Blog

[Peasant Phill]

Since then we’ve had our most talented programmers pick up where the deserter left off

I hope he means this humourously, otherwise we're playing the blame game again.

[Martok]

That's indeed most unfortunate. Especially the part about the upgraded battle AI not being integrated into Empire.

I hope he means this humourously, otherwise we're playing the blame game again.

I concur. To be fair, I *do* believe he said that with his tongue planted firmly in his cheek, but he probably should've placed quotes around it ("deserter") or otherwise worded it better to reduce ambiguity.

[antisocialmunky]

That's some good insight. Never thought about that happening but I guess those are the risks you take when you hire a specialist like that. Maybe NTW will have some of the bugs worked out...

I do disagree about the 'canned reactions' part. All game AIs use a deductive process to narrow down a set of possible actions to a single action that the AI has been scripted to do. It doesn't make them up as they go. I guess if you had some sort of crazy evolutionary algorithm for an adaptive AI like everyone wants to see it would be different but ETW is just as canned as everything else.

At the end of the day, I rather see CA produce a game as great as they market it than another total failure of a game.

[peacemaker]

will be there for Napoleon but we’re not sure yet whether we’ll be able to reverse them back in to Empire in a future update - the code has moved on. If we can we will.

Heh. I knew it. Try to convince people to buy NTW because of the 'fixed' BAI which UNFORTUNATELY can't make it into empire.

we’re not sure yet whether we’ll be able to reverse them back in to Empire in a future update - the code has moved on. If we can we will.


None of these have a fixed finish line - it’s a process of continual improvement, and each game will get AI better than the last one. Including Napoleon.

Seems a little contradictory, no?

Since then we’ve had our most talented programmers pick up where the deserter left off

The second they mentioned the lead programmer leaving, I knew they were playing the blame game again. CA has proved to entertain me though nowadays...

[Zenicetus]

CA could make an immediate, major improvement to the BAI just by eliminating the ability for the AI and the player to garrison buildings. In a more realistic game, both the AI and the player could choose to garrison any building or structure on the battlefield, which would keep the army together. Instead, (and probably due to 3D graphics limitations), only a few scattered buildings can be garrisoned, and they're never close together. The player is smart enough to choose one building to put troops in, with supporting troops nearby, using surrounding buildings to protect the flanks. The AI never does that. It just occupied all possible buildings with single units, while the rest of the army remains somewhere off in the distance. This allows the human player to pick off units one by one. Even when driven out of a building by artillery fire, the AI unit never rejoins the rest of the army, and the rest of the army never provides support. They're sitting ducks.

I know there's a lot more that could be improved in the BAI, and this doesn't happen all the time because not all battles included buildings that can be occupied. But this is such a failure of a game "feature" that they should really just remove it. Sometimes simplifying the design is the right answer to improving it, instead of piling on more features that just become player exploits. I doubt that CA would ever do this, but it would immediately improve at least some of the battles.