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How to fix the AI with minimal effort.

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unmerged(510496)

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Jun 18, 2012
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  • Warlock 2: The Exiled
I think most will agree that the AI has serious issues- it can't beat monsters, it can't win wars, it can't expand, it can't deal with the sea or terraforming, it can't deal with buffed up units.

Minor tweaks aren't going to fix it. The developers have dlc to make and content to make so they don't have the time for a big overhaul of the AI. What is needed then, is revolution, not evolution.

I suggest three simple to implement fixes.

1. Add strategic casting and tactical perks. The AI can't handle water, mountains, and buffed units. As such, it needs to get regular spell aid to make it functional. Every turn every non main character gets an extra power, to cast a spell from a small select list. I suggest in turns 0-20 frost weapon and elemental resistance and lower the land (set to be used only on terrain <1), 20-40 weakness and water walking and dispel, 40-60 Haste and Levitation and Elemental Regeneration, 60-80 Vampire Weapon Enchant and True Sight and invisibility 80-100 Volcano and global dispel and create greater artifact. It would be set to cast one random spell from the ever increasing list of effective spells at a random target. This would vastly increase the effectiveness of the AI. Perhaps in the lowest difficulty only the first set of spells would be available, and so on and so forth. In future updates the spell list could be made controllable by the player. Add a similar list of perks granted each level, and two extra perk slots for each unit.

2. Increase the probability of NPCs declaring war on players and allying with NPCs in higher difficulties.

3. Grant each NPC side a random low level lord to help them handle enemies nearby at low levels.

With these fixes, the AI should be able to actually threaten some enemies. None of them should take much time to implement and they should improve reviews and player experiences. The AI isn't smart enough unaided. It needs a boost.
 
This is all fine, but all these things you proposed is a classic "Cheating-AI-solution".

There already are many mods, which increase AI "toughness" by giving it ultimate unit/money/spells handicap.
This makes game harder...but NOT more interesting. What interest in playing with an opponent who is cheating, but at same time - completely uncomprehending even in what happening around him?
Grant them unlimited money, grant all instant-cast spells - how do you think it may help know issues, if, e.g. - sometimes NPC's just cant find portal out of their home shard?

What "quantity improvements" you talking about, what "more spells" - if AI don't have strategies, don't analyse anything around it, and sometimes can't trivially find path!

This can be only fixed by major core AI code upgrade, half-measures won't help, unfortinately, not in this game.

p.s. The only thing i completely agree with you - until balance if completely fixed, every AI should have free lord from the start. Or better - initially full-equipper mid-grade ranged lord.
 
Actually AI now should be fine with mountains and water and other terrain problems. Also it now compares a monster power to the power of his units before attacking it. And we are constantly improving it. Unfortunately simple solutions do not work here.
 
Rather than start a new thread, as this one is about AI, thought I'd post here.

I've just started a new game with the latest patch, and I'd agree AI is definitely better at movement, although they did seem to get bottled up when there was one of my fortresses next to a mountain (there was a path through but they didn't seem to take it)

What I've noticed from one set of battles against an AI opponent is two things that could be addressed to improve their strategy

1. The AI attacked a fortress instead of my army. Almost never the right choice as the fortresses have sooo many HP that attacking them with standard units (they used some shaman and a hero) isn't a good idea, it just weakened their main attack. I'd set the AI not to touch fortresses unless there's nothing else anywhere nearby or the fortress is completely blocking them in.

2. Still a lack of high-end units. I'm playing on challenging turn 100+ and against a monster race AI I didn't run into any werewolves or trolls which I would have definitely expected to. Heroes were present definitely but they could really have used some higher end units (which should easily be available after turn 100)

Overall though really happy to see the AI improving :)
 
Alexey Kozyrev said:
Actually AI now should be fine with mountains and water and other terrain problems. Also it now compares a monster power to the power of his units before attacking it. And we are constantly improving it. Unfortunately simple solutions do not work here.
Click to expand...


"For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong." - H. L. Mencken


Ahem, anyway... That said, I think there would be some solutions that would be fairly simple, as I've mentioned before.

One of them would be to put in an option in the map preferences to have NO water at all.

Another option would be to move some of the terraforming spells farther up the tech tree (as has been done in the Legendary AI mod). That would make it harder for the player to mess up the AI in the early and mid-game.

Lastly, I'd look at diplomacy. Make an option to turn it off all together, for one. That sounds simple enough. For a more complex solution, re-work the system with some priorities. Like, if the AI is winning, and the player is suing for peace, make sure that a demand for gold follows for the AI to agree and accept peace.
 
I'm playing a game on the second highest difficulty right now, and I'm quite pleased with the improved AI. I was attacked first by galleones, then the AI sent troups after my defense was weakened. The diplomatics are better, the AI acts in my view quite reasonable. And it attacked with higher tier units. So far it's a challenging game (but I'm no master strategist). In my opinion it's an improvement so far.
 
Yep no longer wandering ships in lakes, diplomacy is better. AI need to be more focus when declare war. Sometimes the AI begins attack then in the middle of the war began to retreat.Maybe need little more "help" / gold, mana ... , but overall good job on AI. Thanks!
 
This is advice for AI in general, not specific for this game, but whole 4x genre.

AI needs to be aware of its actual military power and what can it do. Either against other AI player or human player.


For example, let's see what should be taken into account when AI wants to declare war against other AI.

It needs higher military power. Right?

Wrong, it needs to factor its military power compared to defenders advantages in his defenses.
For example, defender is on other continent, do not even dare to attack without significantly higher military power, with higher value on water walking, flying and ship units.

If defender has its capital close to war zone, count quality units with lots of hp and elemental resistance as having higher military power and units with low health and elemental damage as having minor or no military power at all.


What about AI vs human relations?

Ai (at least on higher difficulties) needs to be aware that he is indeed stupid general compared to human player, and needs to account that when comparing his military power to human player.

Would that make AI less aggressive on higher difficulties against human. Well yes, but that means he will preserve more military power, instead giving XP to human player.

Also, AIs in case of having low military power against neighbor human or other AI, could ally with 3rd AI, and if combined they have higher military power then threatening neighbor could together declare war.

.

Anyway, to sum up, even when tactical AI is bad, AI can be made more aware of how bad they are against other AI or human and then use this information in order to strategically perform better (no suicide wars, for example).
 
Nice points, agreed totally. However in my opinion warlock's AI(both 1st and 2nd) main flaw is inability to play both on strategic and tactical levels at same time. I mean - who sends settlers in middle of war? Who starts 2nd war when is hardly living out one going already? Who splits it's units across whole board instead of strategically clustering them and taking objectives?
Also AI does pretty well in tactics usually maxing out possible damage. Well that's good. But what point of it, if it leaves all enemy units alive(nearly dead, but still alive)?
 
Another potentially useful suggestion for the AI is put a work-around in place for situations where the AI finds itself out of resources (something like a floor level of 500GP/Mana in the bank at all times).

At the moment if, for whatever reason, the AI finds itself without gold and in a negative income situation it'll just sit there with no units forever. In the game I'm playing at the moment I watched an AI player sit without units and a single monster unit of vampires took out his capital city, which definitely isn't a desirable outcome.
 
the AI still has trouble with traffic jams, especially on boat. I was allied with an AI in my last game, and it kept sending units in transport doing nothing against a spawn of giants :

0 = water
x = shore
G = giants :
xxxxxx
x0000
x0000
x000G
It was on a map corner :
There were zero spots for the units to land (as the giants were on a mini island in the corner, so it was not possible to land at all, and I had to endure the AI sending units on boat on this lake for no good reason.
There would be two ways around it :
either have the AI find an acceptable landing spot before embarking
either allow invasion from sea (units melee out of their boat, with their normal value, the defender gets a very strong bonus, but has to deal with the unit, and not the boat. If the defender is not killed, the unit immediately remebarks).

AI should really favor casting waterwalking, or at least magic flight under such circumstances.
 
Galdred said:
allow invasion from sea (units melee out of their boat, with their normal value, the defender gets a very strong bonus, but has to deal with the unit, and not the boat. If the defender is not killed, the unit immediately remebarks
Click to expand...

That's a great idea - it would be more fun, plus it would solve the AI's problem with water. Could it be done?
 
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