It is getting frustrating - still nothing is resolved

[coodav]

Seems like you might be terminally stubborn on assigning credit to people not deserving of it. I'm going to try this.

triumph.net |

triumph.net

Age of Wonders: Planetfall - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Paradox in this specific case is one of a publisher, they have no hand in developing the game whatsoever. Beyond providing a platform + forum for triumph studios to make the game/communicate on. If it was developed by paradox it will look completely different. It hasn't been said anywhere whatsoever that paradox has a hand in development for planetfall. If they did, triumph studios would've had to mention it long time ago.

I struggle to find any data anywhere on the internet that says that paradox sends their devs over to develop the AI and make the game for triumph studios. So I think the extent of what paradox does is help provide some help to make truimph studio able to release their game to several platforms at same time to PC, PS4, Xbox etc. Maybe? Even then, I have my doubts.

You... that... what? I am terminally incapable of using Triumph's name in this forum, but I don't think either of us said Paradox...

Was this delayed-reaction? Help me out man, what is the thought here?

 

[Ericridge]

You... that... what? I am terminally incapable of using Triumph's name in this forum, but I don't think either of us said Paradox...

Was this delayed-reaction? Help me out man, what is the thought here?

nothing, I was just busy in real life and couldn't get back to the forum for like a week or so.

 

[HousePet]

That still leaves the core issue. The AI does not manage the quests and demands of the factions at all. This still seems impactful even when the NPCs are turned to passive, so there are no consequences to quests. There is some sort of barrier to them completing the quests as a priority, and probably accepting their demands. Even with 3 NPCs, they will still be at war if the quests aren't satisfied and the demands aren't accepted. So what do you do?

I don't think you read their suggestion correctly.
They said that the AI would only accept Quests from one Faction, and would fulfil all NPC Demands. So how are they going to be at War with any NPC Factions? (Well I know of some Covert Ops... )
The AI is quite good at managing Quests, if they aren't too distracted. (Sometimes the AI completes my Quests for me...) They should have no trouble completing the Quests from a single NPC Faction, except when they are in a tough War. And failing Quests doesn't do anything.

 

[coodav]

I don't think you read their suggestion correctly.
They said that the AI would only accept Quests from one Faction, and would fulfil all NPC Demands. So how are they going to be at War with any NPC Factions? (Well I know of some Covert Ops... )

No no, I get it, the idea is to limit the number of factions that the AI will attempt to satisfy. The problem is that that doesn't resolve the issue. Even if they only do 1 faction, or 2-3 factions, things will not work out. Those 1-3 quests will not be satisfied, as they are not now. I know you think they will, but they won't. Further, they still have negative faction pressure on all of the other factions, but now with no offset for quest rewards. It doesn't change anything. It only slightly reduces the speed at which things happen.

And it simply can't fulfill all requests. I think it tries to do that now, but they probably all hit at once, and it can't. Something deeper in the programming has to change. Not sure how deep, but it will need to be bigger than 'just deal with 1 faction.'

The AI is quite good at managing Quests, if they aren't too distracted. (Sometimes the AI completes my Quests for me...) They should have no trouble completing the Quests from a single NPC Faction, except when they are in a tough War. And failing Quests doesn't do anything.

No, it really, really isn't. I am going to pop open the map at in a new game, and watch. We will see the vast majority of quests not even attempted, even quests that seem like they would require nearly no effort.

And if they complete your quests for you, your quest fails. You get no credit.

And failing quests means that you get no influence, and no faction relations. Both of those things are almost mandatory. Low relation demands, particularly near endgame, are for sectors. You can't keep up with that. The AI would be giving a huge number of sectors away, and that would be worse than war.

No, it is really bad. There are some fundamental issues here.

 

[HousePet]

Oh, I guess I must be imagining all those AI Commanders completing Empire Task: The Emissary then.

 

[Sinsling]

Oh, I guess I must be imagining all those AI Commanders completing Empire Task: The Emissary then.

Emissary is fairly easy. Past that they start floundering. When the ai has 3-4 quest stacks right next to an army that can knock them over and the ai just... doesn't... well. =/

 

[Kelben]

Emissary is fairly easy. Past that they start floundering. When the ai has 3-4 quest stacks right next to an army that can knock them over and the ai just... doesn't... well. =/

In the scenario I propose, there would be 2 stacks max. If they get the emissary before they get overwhelmed, key word being before, it seems to indicate the AI can handle doing questsp to a certain degree. If it was not drowned under so many, maybe they could continue?

Actually giving away sectors towards the end would just cost the AI a bit of influence to take it back. And AI gets bonus income, so no biggie. And then you get a few ressource and a weapon or mod doing that.

I am not sure what is more complicated between teaching the AI to play the game or create a new ruleset for the AI (coodav proposition).

 

[Sinsling]

In the scenario I propose, there would be 2 stacks max. If they get the emissary before they get overwhelmed, key word being before, it seems to indicate the AI can handle doing questsp to a certain degree. If it was not drowned under so many, maybe they could continue?

Actually giving away sectors towards the end would just cost the AI a bit of influence to take it back. And AI gets bonus income, so no biggie. And then you get a few ressource and a weapon or mod doing that.

I am not sure what is more complicated between teaching the AI to play the game or create a new ruleset for the AI (coodav proposition).

Giving away sectors would cripple the ai's already terrible economy though, and it's pretty easy to foresee the ai not being intelligent enough to go reclaim those sectors. I think I agree with coodav that a fix like that would just be delaying the inevitable. As-is the ai already sometimes doesn't have the resources to meet demands.

 

[Kelben]

Okay then, simple solution: NPCs do not make demands from AIs anymore, only from human playerd. Plus AIs only entertain 1 NPC faction.
Then let's see how that goes, pretty sure that would be a step in the right direction.

Next thing is to tweak the AI to clear quest stacks. And I'm pretty sure that links to clearing landmarks as well.

Can we agree we would like to see that implemented? This way we can move onto another topic (sector development, late game unit production and modding, stack compositions, etc...). Then maybe coodav can list proposed solutions (or ideas, let's keep modest) in the OP for easy pick up from the devs after the summer holidays.

 

[Ericridge]

I have to make this post because I'm seeing some misconceptions about sector demands.

I have given sectors away to the independents. You see, typically the NPC faction demands your mostly recently acquired sector, it could be a sector that's connected or unconnected to a city or a forward base sector. Then I buy the sector back with influence or I let them retain control of the sector for awhile and I buy it back at later date because my influence points is too busy elsewhere.

Giving a recently annexed sector away is very very very cheap bargain in exchange for keeping an really angry npc faction off your back. In exchange you are basically acknowledging that the NPC faction is really strong.

It'd be one thing if they demanded my gold spaceport but they don't. Its hard to demand a sector if you've had control of it for a long time.

Any of potential damage to the AI's economy is nonexistent. Can't damage the economy if the AI forfeits the undeveloped sector to the npc faction.

The actual damage is rightfully and mostly limited to the Player's pride/ego. HOW DARE THOSE PUNY TINY NPCS DEMAND STUFF FROM ME! -type of that kind of thing.

Anyways the best fix would be what I stated earlier in different thread is to grant AI vision to nearest NPC faction's dwelling. That way, the Ai is limited to just 1-3 npc faction's quests/demands instead of every single npc faction on the map.

If the AI successfully expands to meet six NPC factions, it simply means that the AI has sufficient military strength to meet NPC's quests and thus is now capable of handling six npc faction quests.

 

[Sinsling]

I have to make this post because I'm seeing some misconceptions about sector demands.

I have given sectors away to the independents. You see, typically the NPC faction demands your mostly recently acquired sector, it could be a sector that's connected or unconnected to a city or a forward base sector. Then I buy the sector back with influence or I let them retain control of the sector for awhile and I buy it back at later date because my influence points is too busy elsewhere.

Giving a recently annexed sector away is very very very cheap bargain in exchange for keeping an really angry npc faction off your back. In exchange you are basically acknowledging that the NPC faction is really strong.

It'd be one thing if they demanded my gold spaceport but they don't. Its hard to demand a sector if you've had control of it for a long time.

Any of potential damage to the AI's economy is nonexistent. Can't damage the economy if the AI forfeits the undeveloped sector to the npc faction.

The actual damage is rightfully and mostly limited to the Player's pride/ego. HOW DARE THOSE PUNY TINY NPCS DEMAND STUFF FROM ME! -type of that kind of thing.

Anyways the best fix would be what I stated earlier in different thread is to grant AI vision to nearest NPC faction's dwelling. That way, the Ai is limited to just 1-3 npc faction's quests/demands instead of every single npc faction on the map.

If the AI successfully expands to meet six NPC factions, it simply means that the AI has sufficient military strength to meet NPC's quests and thus is now capable of handling six npc faction quests.

That isn't how it works out though. The ai having the military/economic capacity to meet ai quests/demands is very different from the ai actually meeting those demands. If the ai started giving away sectors left and right, it would never get around to buying those sectors back, slowly letting the npcs eat it alive either way.

Kelben's suggestion of just removing npc demands for the ai sounds like it would work though. Let it clear quests and if it stops doing them at some point, they don't suddenly get murdered.

 

[coodav]

That isn't how it works out though. The ai having the military/economic capacity to meet ai quests/demands is very different from the ai actually meeting those demands. If the ai started giving away sectors left and right, it would never get around to buying those sectors back, slowly letting the npcs eat it alive either way.

Kelben's suggestion of just removing npc demands for the ai sounds like it would work though. Let it clear quests and if it stops doing them at some point, they don't suddenly get murdered.

It almost has to come down to this. The only thing I propose is that the computer can do its quests, or not, and either way gets credit for them when they complete the task or the timer runs out. If they human player reaches it first, they can snipe the quest and steal part of the rewards. Basically, you could still bring an AI to war with a player with a combination of operations and quest sniping.

Or better yet, you get to pick which way the computer gets to work. Either normal (now), they are treated as if playing passive (but not the player - like you suggest), or they always get rewards, whether or not completed.

Trust me though, the middle way currently won't cut it.

 

[MunkyMagnet]

I guess AI can also cheat with the 'NPC dwelling mode' setting for planet generation. The settings will only impact human players and for higher level AI it cannot be more than normal or even passive.

 

[Sartarius]

I found custom games to be very easy esp when you set NPCs to max. AI cant deal with them properly so 11 AI VS you doesnt mean much. [SPOILERS] Tbh invasion campaign on max difficulty is the most hard thing I encountered in PvE. Beating both AIs in 1st mission if your cover is blown early is quite challenging. And on 2nd mission you are at war (thanks to your ally) with 4 AIs from turn, say 10-20 and they have pretty strong units from start (about 100 units each AI by turn 20) including t3-t4 ones. Though AI does not mod high tiers early. If you are unlucky with RMG you will have hard times.

I can agree that you can kill all AI stacks splitting them and playing smart in TC, modding your units proper but you wont have a chance to defend everything with just 3 stacks. Also we all know some stack combos AI cant simply deal with (while human player can). So it is a more strategy-wise playing to beat em.

Ofc in the end descent AoW player will win but still you will have a good challenge for the first 40 turns.


And a bit of offtopic - you cant name even one TBS game where AI is hard to beat. Everyone knows that 4x games shine in PvP but still most people prefer to play solo. Not that I want to say - "go play PvP", I also play PvE for hundreds of hours but sadly you wont find any "super" challenge vs AI for obvious reason.