AI difficulty. Something wrong?

[Deride]

We have actually adressed the exact problem reported by Hidde with the 1.1. patch. His army was too elite, causing a major imbalance against the game's design. There is now an elite unit cap that keeps this from happening.

ravinhood, you should understand that developing the AI for a wargame is extremely difficult. There are a number of parts that go into this:

1) Level design -- you have to make the level itself fun to play and include things such as bottlenecks, strategically important areas, etc. Also, the objectives have to be challenging yet achievable.

2) Resource balancing -- does the AI have access to more things or less things? What about types of things? In our game, the player has cards, # of troops, troop training and commander bonuses. The AI army needs to be somewhat balanced against these features while, at the same time, responding the the dynamic nature of the player's choices.

3) AI scripting -- the AI opponent needs to know what it is trying to accomplish in the game. Making it go for objectives or defend them requires both the appropriate placement of troops at the beginning of the map as well as a general idea of how to achieve a victory.

4) AI programming -- something that is very hard to achieve without cheating since the solution space is usually so huge! Simply using a "slider" does not make the AI smarter (especially since the particular alrogithm that we developed does not really get better with time, per se.)

So, with that all said, let me just tell you that Koios Works (as well as most developers I assume) have little ulterior motive in designing/implementing the AI in a certain way. We are trying to make the game fun and challenging. If it is, we hope you enjoy it and consider buying our next game. If not, we hope you tell us why so we can address the issues and patch as quickly as we can.

Deride

[ravinhood]

Heh, I am telling you why. And even with all your description of what you have to do to program an AI, it is past my feasabilty to understand why you cannot put in some slider or option system where the player merely has the ability to adjust the AI combat STATS.

I'm not asking for a SMARTER AI, just an AI that I myself ME can make STRONGER in their STATS. Combat and Defensive, now explain to me why that is so hard to do.

Every unit has a combat stat correct? And a Defensive stat, why can't a slider or option be added that merely adjusts these stats up or down from -10 to +10?

Your AI would remain in tact as presented by the game, but, those of us who find the AI too easy or too hard just have that ability to change the COMBAT STATS, nothing else, just that. How does that affect all you descibed above?

Now I'm an old programmer of the olden days, but, even I could put in sub-commands for the AI to adjust to it's combat/defensive values. It's nothing more than an IF statement and a GOTO statement of the days of old.

What I see in todays AI programers is laziness, they don't want to program in those "sub routines" because they do take time, they want to build one single AI pattern and that's it, thus the AI grows old, easy and boring.

And you can't tell me it's not possible, Combat Mission, Steel Panthers and even Madden Football incorporate this system so the AI challenge is in the PLAYERS hands and not hard coded.

[Erik Rutins]

Ravinhood,

Have you tried a new campaign on the Hard level since v1.1 came out?

Regards,

- Erik

[Hidde]

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins
Have you tried a new campaign on the Hard level since v1.1 came out?

I have. It's changed for the better but not by very much I'm afraid. So far I have fought three battles. Major victory in all three but in both the Helvetii and the German scenarios I found myself 2-3 times in quite serious trouble that required both some thinking and a bit of luck to solve.

I also noticed that the German cavalry had a lot of veteran units(even a couple of infantry units were veterans).
I don't remember if that was the case the first time I played and I haven't read anything about a change with the patch.
As ravinhood said above the AI is fine(it put up a good fight in TSATG after all) but I really agree that there should be an option for the player to change the level of training(quality) of the AI army.

PS. Increasing the number of units for the AI maybe is'nt such a good idea since it could probably make the battlefield to cluttered. But what about reinforcements? Let's say the AI fight for a certain amount of turns without breaking then a fixed number of extra units(for the AI) appear somewhere on the field. DS.

[Deride]

ORIGINAL: Hidde

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins
Have you tried a new campaign on the Hard level since v1.1 came out?

I have. It's changed for the better but not by very much I'm afraid. So far I have fought three battles. Major victory in all three but in both the Helvetii and the German scenarios I found myself 2-3 times in quite serious trouble that required both some thinking and a bit of luck to solve.

Hidde,

Did you start a new campaign or continue playing with your old one? If your army already has a large number of elite units, the unit cap will not reduce them -- it will just no longer auto promote to elite at the end of a battle. Also, the AI settings will remain at a much easier level unless you start a new campaign.

Deride

[Hidde]

New campaign. The first one was victorious after seven battles.[:)]
I think the unit cap is good and it do make a difference that I hope will be even more noticable later on in the civil war campaign. But still...it's not enough to make the challenge comparable to what it was in TSATG I think.

[Hidde]

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins
Have you tried a new campaign on the Hard level since v1.1 came out?

I have

Oh boy! Am I confused now!?
It's possible I've played the 1.0.0 version the second time as well.[:o]
I just spotted those numbers when had finished the Alesia scenario. Shock and embarassment! The 1.1.0 "read me" was in the JC folder and when I reinstalled the patch I got a message that it was already installed.
I then started the game and now it said 1.1.0. What can I say? It seemed a little bit harder and I thought the elite unit cap was in place.
I appologise for any complaints that's not founded in reality.
I don't know much about the inner workings of computers and I'd be grateful if someone could explain what might have happend.
Thanks

[Erik Rutins]

Hidde,

Did you perhaps have your anti-virus software running when you applied the patch previously? That can cause odd results. Also, installing it as a user that does not have administrative rights can cause issues for some.

In any case, lets us know how your new v1.1 campaign works out. [8D]

Regards,

- Erik

[Hidde]

Erik
Thanks for your answer
Could be the anti-virus software I suppose. Had it on both times,though. But who knows how a computer reacts from one time to another?

Regards
Hidde

[hondo1375]

Hidde, I wonder if you got your version issue sorted and have had the opportunity to play against the updated AI? Have you found it significantly improved? Hondo

[Hidde]

Yes, I've played the whole campaign v1.1 through. I'm certain this time[:)]. Overall it's an improvment. When it comes to the AI specifically it is a bit harder to say. I'll try to summarize. The AI forces now have a lot more veteran units. In some battles it's entirely made up of veterans. Even a few elite units in some battles. It's much harder to keep your own units well trained since you suffer heavier losses than before.In the battles I fought(with two exceptions) the losses were roughly dubbled if I compare to before the patch.
Leading up to the Alesia scenario I had one minor and three major victories but my legions were in quite a bad shape: Elite-2units Veteran-7 Warrior-10 Poor-5. I was a bit worried. Unfortunatly,I think,the Alesia battle is the easiest of them all(and frankly, rather boring) and this made it possible for me to "restore" my legions to a big extend.With no bragging intended[:D] but just to show what I mean my points in that scenario where 2205. I lost about 11000,the AI 97000.
Anyhow, the civil war followed a similar pattern. Three major and one minor victory with rather heavy losses. The battle of Thapsus was special. At one point I was close to give it up and restart since my army overall morale were so much lower than the enemies.But I continued and managed to turn the table and win, albeit with huge losses:27000.By far the heaviest losses I endured in any battle.
Well, about the AI. It thinks a lot longer on hard difficulty thats for sure. If it moves and act that much better is more uncertain. I'm sorry if I can't give a clear answer but now that I have played 20+ battles it might very well be that I've learned how to beat the AI, more than any big flaws on it's part. I have a couple of observations,though.(One could perhaps be seen as a spoiler but I think it's something anyone would notice after a couple of battles).
I think the AI is to aggressive! Of course it have to attack when it's trying to take an objective(flag) from me,the player but it also happily attack when it's defending. I usually walk up to the defending troops but do not attack. The next turn the AI does so instead and that way lose more men than it would if it waited and forced me to do the attacking.
I think the AI is good at penetrate holes in the players line but when it's through and behind my men it often seems to act sort of confused.It will not use the advantage it created very well.
Pilums can be very effective at short range. The AI often uses pilums at ranges of 3-4 squares. I think it would be a good thing if the range where restricted to one or two squares.
OK,have to stop there. Maybe I come to think of more later.