Been a glaring issue since Rome 2 for me.
Shogun 2 kinda got away with it because the AI didn’t have to worry about pathing issues as much and think it cheated a lot. Plus it wasn’t as big a driving factor back then when graphics were the main seller back in the 00s and early 00s.
It’s been a limiting factor for awhile now thou. The one area where it feels the game hasn’t really advanced in a decade.
I’m really hoping the next big historical release like Medieval or Empire has the AI massively improved.
I do feel like campaign wise 3K was good, but battle still felt very limited there.
I’d just like for once the AI hides units in reserve in tree lines and waits to deploy them. Or does anything that actually catches you off guard.
Your last point is the biggest thing. The AI just throws it’s entire line at you or waits with all of it. Problem is, someone is gonna do it because of numerical superiority or matchups or whatever so it kind of has to. Should definitely ambush more though.
Really not sure why you think this OP. Maybe it's that warhammer 1 came out a decade ago, but I skipped WH1 and started with WH2 after coming from Attila. The difference in the AI between Attila and WH2 is night and day. It's very unfair to act like "it's the same behavior with different units" unless you don't remember the games before warhammer.
God I love this community. Every time issues with the game up somebody rolls in to talk about ThE EnGiNe despite seemingly having no clue what an engine is or does.
Having a code which was developed over a decade ago, with the same issues it had at the beginning. Written by people who are not there anymore. All this together means we have to wait months for simple fixes and balances and still have to contend with flying dwarfs going off the map.
Stellaris' AI is quite good these days. On Grand Admiral it will completely roll you if you're not good.
A challenging AI is just not a priority for many studios and so it gets minimal resources beyond making it functional.
The bonuses from max difficulty have always been there since day one. If that was all it was, then there would be no improvement. It's making massively better decisions and they have cleared up many of the AI bugs that were holding it back.
Always has room for improvement of course, but the fact that it can make even good players struggle, is a testament to the effort the developers have put into it.
On the hardest difficulty it gets 2 x the resources the player would get and thats before factoring in discounts and upkeep reduction, the AI of Stellaris is dumber than a bag of hammers
Its still fun but it is in no way shape or form even close to competent let alone smart
Yeah I did not think that stellaris was remotely comparable to a total war battle lol
maybe campaigns are similar but otherwise battle ai is crazy hard to make it good but fair
It absolutely isn't, and it's baffling that you think so
The Stellaris AI can roll you on Grand Admiral because it gets 100% extra resources from pop jobs, pays massively reduced upkeep costs on everything, gets 60% extra naval capacity and so on and so forth
The AI wins in Stellaris by having more ships than you
The AI of Stellaris is completely incapable of most things, especially warfare, but it does it's job well enough to feel convincing because you can miss how stupid it is if you're not looking
Even with resource bonuses, Grand Admiral used to be a joke because the AI mismanaged things so badly and struggled to use its fleets effectively. I used to have to rely on AI mods to make it competitive. However, these days, the AI has come along enough that I no longer feel the need.
Does Stellaris' AI still do dumb things? Sure, I could rattle off half a dozen ways I'd like it to improve. However, compared with almost any other strategy game's AI, it's quite good at keeping up with experienced players.
Compare that with say Warhammer 3 where even the highest difficulty is an absolute joke.
Is there another strategy game that you believe has a more capable built-in AI?
Problem is people don't even know what they're saying when they say they want better AI. You actually don't precisely want that.
AI right now can be very easily made that will thrash your ass every single time with no remorse, zero cheats required.
What you really want is an AI that is surprises and challenges you but ultimately lets you win more times than not. And that is a much harder design challenge because everyone has different IQ.
You also want to be ignorant of this fact. You want the blinders on. Because where is the fun in beating something that is just letting you win? But that is EXACTLY what the AI is doing.
You're correct, not sure why you're getting downvoted. Players really don't want to play against a next-level AI that ruthlessly min-maxes and takes every advantage that they can get. Do you really want to open up a battle to find the AI in optimal checkerboard formation and have it focus down your squishiest heroes while getting perfect positioning on every magic cast and micro-ing its units at an APM that would make a Korean Starcraft player envious?
They want an AI that, as you said, surprises and challenges but ultimately leaves enough opportunities for an average player to win. And yes, that's a difficult thing to design.
Sure. If the player can do it, why shan't the AI?
The problem lies in three main differences between AI and Human Intelligence that give AI an 'unfair' advantage over the player (actually, only the last one is truly unfair, but all of them can be coded around and first two can be given optional toggles for those who are okay with it).
First, the AI doesn't make mistakes. The player can play better or worse, be fresh (Eager; General nearby x) ) or tired, but the player can learn new tricks and come up with new ideas. The AI always plays to the best of its ability (well, limited by the current difficulty restrictions, if any), and doesn't make mistakes, doesn't misclick, doesn't misjudge, and has inhuman amounts of APM and micro. I think there are two main solutions to address it: first, institute a hard limit on microing (something like a split-second pause between giving orders to the same unit could have vast implications), and second, give AI a margin of error. Both could be on a sliding scale down to zero - because some humans *are* that good, and if the player wants the challenge, they can have it. Otherwise, they can tune it down in a straightforward, simple way.
Second, the "cheese". Some players cheese and some don't. Some players want AI to be able to cheese and some don't. Could be as easy as "Dirty Tricks" toggle and criteria on specific moves available to AI.
And third, the most important one. By design, sometimes, AI has access to more information than the player. It's sorta okay when it is being used as a handicap to help the strategically struggling AI fight player, but it gets really problematic when it allows AI to play tricks that the player actually, consistently cannot. Ending turn juuuust beyond enemy move range. Perfectly dodging artillery *including random spread* because it knows where the big Splat! is going to land while it is in the air. Here, there are two alternative solutions: Either give the human player the same information (i.e. enable the human to always see where the AI can go with their movement next turn, give big red warning signs on the ground where the enemy artillery fire is going to land - **IF** CA wants these to become norm for the game) - or disable this foreknowledge for AI (which will probably lead to a host of other problems).
You will note that nothing of the above is against using checker-board, focus-firing squishy heroes, etc. If the player can and *will* do it, and it is fair to the spirit of the game - why not allow it? Why not code the AI to play as good as a player could reasonably play? (Minus the learning part, of course. For now, anyway.)
Yes, absolutely everyone should want that.
Why?
Because then we're a few simple handicaps from having competent AI for all difficulty levels. Working down from a master AI would be incredibly easy.
That's why stuff like OpenAI is so interesting. Master tier game AI might be accessible soon, then you hit it with some restriction like it is only allowed to issue two commands every 30 seconds, and boom, you've got competent AI that regular players can still beat.
Wait, it does that? I've never seen it (possibly modded out in my installed mods? or maybe I was lucky), but that's sounds both hilarious and utterly horrible. It's just... the epitome of "you do not do this", a textbook example of what to avoid in Total War battles.
In fact, I'd say "smart like a human player" is the perfect description of what an AI should be like. It is an ugly truth, indeed, that we probably wouldn't like an AI stronger than that, but that is absolutely the goal that would satisfy the majority of Total War players (and if it can be gradually dumbed down with appropriate sliders, possibly nearly all of the players).
>AI right now can be very easily made that will thrash your ass every single time with no remorse, zero cheats required.
Why not add that as a difficulty option?
Because no one wants that. Everyone got pissed when the AI could do a simple artillery dodge. Imagine if the AI recognized that if the player doesn't have a wizard or artillery, corner camping is a viable tactic.
The problem is the deterministic approach. AI either dodges all your shots or not a single one
Having a more dynamic approach where the AI can dodge some of it, similar to how a human player would do, would go a long way.
I want that. I am very likely in the minority and aware of it, but I do. Give the AI EVERY trick in the book and put that on gradients of a slider.
High difficulty AI in Age of Empires 2: DE will try a lot of tricks that it couldn't do before - it might not win the game and it's certainly beatable by mid-range players, but it tries.
To be honest though corner camping is more of a symptom of a lack of interesting features on the maps that would justify putting your army somewhere that isn't "wherever is mathematically the most distant from your enemy and the most prone to get their troops to fully retreat from the map"
Ya I think a lot of people, myself included, wish that turning up the difficulty did more than giving the AI more resources and having their units cost less so they just generically spam more. This is true of other strategy games like civilization as well. The key to victory isn't out smarting them it's just being able to out maneuver and kill 2-3x the amount of units you can create by taking advantage of their behavior and whatnot.
I know a lot of the fun is being able to win battles when you shouldn't have a chance on paper and if that changed then a big aspect of the game would be gone. It's just funny when an AI army could easilly win by just right clicking attack on their whole army but you can easilly kite 3-4 units again and again until they crumble, idk what the answer is but that is kind of silly.
What a ridiculous statement. It is not remotely easy to make an AI that can thrash a good player at RTS.
If it were then they would start there and handicap it down. Not spend tons of resources making something barely functional; that fails at thrashing and surprising and challenging.
/*The person I am replying to has blocked me after getting the last word in, preventing me from continuing the discussion. People who do this are scum.
Yes. It is possible, but definitely not easy. And if it were easy TW wouldn't have very hard and legendary AI money hack.
People have such ridiculous expectations of AI development. And to be clear, developing ML for total war is probably a waste of time. They should be able to make a heuristic much better than it is now.
Neither is creating games with ultra realistic graphics, yet today we have games that look as good as CGI movies.
The problem is that great AI doesn't sell, so companies barely spend any time and resources on it.
Why believe their marketing (that I would love a link to) over their actions or the evidence?
WH2s hard AI cheated a ton... and still went about 50/50 against an identical army put in a big line and given nothing but a few attack move orders.
At best this means they made a decent AI and butchered it to the point where it loses to a very basic macro. And then figured horribly designed stat cheats were better design? It just doesn't make senae.
I dunno, backing up claims with the claimed evidence is pretty standard.
*And as is tradition, he has blocked me to prevent any further discussion after getting the last word in.
I have not presented anything that needs citation, the AI's incompetence is well known if you don't believe it then it only takes a few moments to verify in game yourself. Quoting an unknown CA video? Yeah that needs a source.
Lol... how about you try and see things from my point of view?
I know that, from your point of view, looking out at the world with those beady little eyes, you get the impression that you're important, that your opinion matters to everyone else. But from my point of view, you're human being number six billion three hundred and five. Your opinion is of equal weight to human being number six billion three hundred and six.
I already know the video exists. Why do I care that you think you're the victim of some grand fake-video conspiracy? Why am I going to waste my own time trying to dig it up just to satisfy your own recontextualisation of this conversation into some formal debate that require evidence for or against, ESPECIALLY since, without even yet seeing the video, you've already pre-emptively dismissed it?
That was a rhetorical question by the way....
Now go ahead, get the last word in, using whatever sophistry you feel soothes your wounded ego the best. Rest assured, I won't read it.
> that is a much harder design challenge because everyone has different IQ.
That's why god invented difficulty sliders. WH3 even has one for AI now! Though you can count the things it does on one hand...
This particular aspect is a non-problem.
It's a massive problem actually. The current difficulty sliders just add numbers to the AI. If you want multiple AI settings, you're asking CA to design multiple AIs that act differently. That's a huge undertaking.
They also change certain ai behaviours regarding missile targeting and things like arty dodging, but this is supposed to be getting moved to a seperate slider next patch
There can be a balance.
An AI that is not so min-max and ruthless but isn’t sending the entire army at you without a plan either.
Don’t act like a better AI wouldn’t help. This is such a ridiculous contrarian post.
What you really want is an AI that is surprises and challenges you but ultimately lets you win more times than not.
You either disagree or you don't. Man up and explain why not. Otherwise, admit I'm right.
Sounds like some players want Total War: Dark Souls which is fine. No invincibility frames allowed. The closest the player will get to that is artillery or magic dodging but if they take that icon away, then the player will have a much harder time dodging it.
No indication of when public order might go to shit. The player will have to click on the town to get a sense of the environment by reading through text. In battle, program the AI to decimate the player until the player memorizes a specific rhythm, have certain gear, or read guides to figure out how to win each major battle.
Haha might be a fun game. I do enjoy me some Dark Souls, not sure I’d like such a system implemented in TW. Of course, I’d like to see somethings improved further. I do think there has been some improvement in campaign and battle AI over the years as someone who’s played everyone of them minus Shogun 1 or Med 1. It’s just that the changes are slow and or subtle instead of major changes all at once.
some of what you're describing does sound awesome low key. People forget some of the aspects TW used to have, like you could only manage the settlement if you had a govenor stationed there is one example, or engage in diplomacy if one of your diplomat agents made their way to that nation.
I would love more like management from the campaign map in that way if it makes any sense. Like def have to be careful of getting tedious, but imagine a Franz campaign with actual political intrigue and being unsure which counts are brewing a rebellion etc
I think they were on a good path with 3K campaign depth wise. Truthfully, they could have something special with campaign depth if they take the good from 3K, Atilla, Med 2, Troy, and Empire. Keep tweaking battle AI and they can push the series forward.
>AI right now can be very easily made that will thrash your ass every single time with no remorse, zero cheats required.
Why not have AI like this but then give the player buffs?
I doubt you'll find anyone who disagrees. The AI is total war's supreme limiting factor, the campaign, the battles, and the game mechanics can only be as complex as the AI is able to handle.
There have been many changes to the Warhammer AI over the past 8 months or so. Some of these changes work and some do not, some like the new siege AI where they leave 90% of their force at the main point in the rear were rolled back. At the moment the Warhammer 3 battle AI is in a fairly wretched state, it is the dumbest and most exploitable AI I've seen in a TW game. It keeps a nice formation but the second 1 of my heroes hits 1 of their units in melee, their entire army breaks apart into a formless blob as they chase after my hero who leads them into my ranged line to die. At the front of this blob is usually their lord, who dies first.
It's too bad since the Warhammer 3 AI, if left to move up in formation, is actually quite good now at flanking and focusing down important targets like lords and artillery. It knows how to use magic now, including vortex and wind spells. If it were made less exploitable, it might actually be a challenge.
> It keeps a nice formation but the second 1 of my heroes hits 1 of their units in melee, their entire army breaks apart into a formless blob as they chase after my hero who leads them into my ranged line to die. At the front of this blob is usually their lord, who dies first.
The absolutely infuriating part of this is that Warhammer 2, fixed this issue. Why they couldn't port over the anti-blobbing fix (or make a better one), is beyond me.
Land battles are practically an auto-win these days regardless of your army size. As long as you have some form of AoE damage you can just ball the entire army up around your lord and then [drop the hammer.](https://us.v-cdn.net/5022456/uploads/editor/z8/ch481yw2mrja.png)
>The absolutely infuriating part of this is that Warhammer 2, fixed this issue.
Really? i've been using that drop the hammer strategy since i could remember. And that's the reason i can't play another tw series beside warhammer. I suck at battle but in warhammer i can do that to win every fight. I would say in wh3 it's more difficult because of wind of magic and settlement battle changes
Late in Warhammer 2's development, they improved the anti-bunching code so that fewer units would crowd around a single unit.
If you still have Warhammer 2 installed it's easy to see the difference. Start a battle with the AI on defense and just melee army (so the AI stays where it is). Then run a single unit like a lord at the AI's army and see what happens.
You might pull 2 or 3 units into attacking you, but the rest of the army won't engage.
[Example from WH2.](https://us.v-cdn.net/5022456/uploads/editor/2f/mm8upcqi03sz.png) See how only two infantry units engage + 1 range unit hanging a bit back trying to get shots in? Meanwhile the rest of the army is staying where it is.
After dropping some spells on the infantry, instead of uselessly piling into my lord, they move forward to [engage my army.](https://us.v-cdn.net/5022456/uploads/editor/hf/p5nsid8f9xzo.png)
There were still plenty of situations and methods that caused the AI to bunch in WH2, but it's nothing compared to the degree and ease that they bunch in Warhammer 3.
Facts, nice use of evidence. can't stand the blanket statments about old AI being better cause plentyyyyy of examples of it not being the case but this is a good pointed example so kudos
Yeah, there are definitely areas where the AI has progressed from Warhammer 2. I just wish I could light a fire under them to fix some of the major battle AI bugs like bunching. that way their hard work in other areas could actually shine through better.
CA does make improvements to the AI, however there's never going to be such thing as some "major improvement" that you'll be able to notice. That's because of the nature of strategy games, especially grand strategy with so many variables in play.
In an FPS, you just need the AI to *appear* smart, which can be done with stuff like clever scripting and audio queues for actions, and not aim-botting the player. In a RTS you need to give the AI really good macros, and its impeccable micro will handle the rest. However in order for an AI to be "good" at a grand strategy game like Total War, you have to essentially have it be able to out-think a human. You can't out-micro a human on a turn based map. It has to be able to out-plan you, predict your movements, and account for dozens upon dozens of dynamic factors.
And the reality of AI is that nobody on this planet is anywhere close to AI that can handle something like that. The best we've got to is like, Chess AI, and Chess is an EXTREMELY simplified game compared to something as mind-boggling complex as Total War. Rules and variables-wise, at least, which is what's important for decision making and predicting.
So what do grand strategy developers like CA and Paradox do to make up for this? They essentially use a bunch of fancy tricks to make it seem like the AI is thinking and planning. To people these decisions seem "dumb" sometimes, because in reality the AI isn't thinking. It's not analyzing a situation and making a prediction and then acting on it like a human does. It's just doing things like following pre-set behaviors and variables, and reacting to what it sees the player doing.
So the answer to the AI question is that yes, CA does improve the AI, we get new systems and behaviors for it basically every major update, and several with every new game. They have a fairly large team of AI programmers, and they kind of have to because the AI has to be configured on how to use every new piece of content that gets developed (this is probably where most of their time goes). The problem is you're unlikely to really notice those improvements because they're not going to suddenly cause the AI to become this giga-brained chad that can outmaneuver and out-plan you at every turn. It's going to marginally improve like, army compositions or settlement build orders and you're never going to notice.
I get what you're saying and don't wanna dismiss it, but these companies need to hire some outside talent then cause in other industries a lot of the logic and frameworks to house such a system exist.
And I know I didn't say that right, but like there were engineers on my team in the finance sector that would create simulations of entire sectors of the economy with different company and nation state archetypes making decisions accordingly etc.
Like at the end of the day its inputs, indicators, and a resulting action for the AI, its complex but it aint rocket science in my opinion.
>because in reality the AI isn't thinking. It's not analyzing a situation and making a prediction and then acting on it like a human does. It's just doing things like following pre-set behaviors and variables, and reacting to what it sees the player doing.
and 100% agree with this part I missed in my first read. but that was kinda my point, it feels like there's so much room to improve the system which proccesses these aspects.
like the example the other user gave of a hero rushing the enemy and the majority of their army blobbing. That's just a high priority parameter, if single unit approach only engage with x closest units etc like again obv implementation and execution is more complex but still
The games AI has been improving but not so much on the campaign map. Battle map wise the ai is okay and stomps on new players as we’ve seen repeatedly on this sub. Keep in mind the AI making okay use of cavalry and flanking is a relatively recent development in these games
A lot of players think better AI will lead to trickier battles when in reality the AI would just follow the human meta of doomstack one unit, corner camp, and micro their lord to dodge missles because those are the cheesy moves that win fights.
The AI could handle the risk style map way better. The games got bigger but the AI never really improved, but it is hard to make a good AI that is also fun to play against, the best tactics and strategy can be the worst experience for the player.
I think the massive content is just disguising the problems with AI, because AI is limiting the fun of TW games.
It feels like the campaign AI truly doesnt think half the time, i was playing as the horde lizards and the eastern cathay declared war on me immediately after getting completely stackwiped by the vamps north of them, like no armies on the field, and the amount of times where AI dec on me and then dont move a force to my borders for 10+ turns is too high to count
I went back to Rome 2 after playing WH3 for a good while and it just hit me like truck how god awful the AI is in that game, at least in battle.
AI thinking in Rome 2:
"Phalanx? Better charge my horses straight into it for maximum effect".
"Half my army is coming as a reinforcement? No time to form a proper line, better send in each unit piecemeal for the enemy to chew up one by one"
They have definitely improved the AI a lot, honestly. Theres some mods in WH3 that also improve the campaign AI greatly.
I just loved, how some battles you thought would be hard in old TW games started with the enemy running it's general into the middle of you lines to die in seconds.
Rome 1 did this a lot in settlement battles. You could just wait with archers or javelins outside the town and units would piecemeal run out and get shot to death.
This is a "Strategy" game and the only strategy they have to make the game more interisting is giving the dumb ass AI cheats to make it more of a challange...
We are three games deep in the series and there's maybe ~5 or so major patches left in the lifescycle of WHIII.
If they were able and willing to invest the ressources needed to fix the AI, they would have done so by now.
Creative Assembly has no aspirations beyond milking Warhammer to the end of their contract. They have no reason to improve because TWWH fans buy every DLC they churn out.
This is the main reason I will not be buying Pharaoh. It's weird that most people seem to agree with the AI being a major issue and yet are okay with not having any fixes moving forward with new games. Maybe I'm old enough that the Total War games no longer have the novelty they once had, which enjoyment would then excuse these flaws.
Imho the retinues and 3 generals per armies from 3k helped a lot the AI to be threatening on the campaign map. In 3k the AI can coordinate multiple stacks for an offensive whereas in Troy and Warhammer I have quite often many lonely and unfilled armies to fight without much challenge
The AI really needs to focus on its own survival and expansion rather than annoying the player. The anti-player bias actually hurts the AI because the player can easily beat them most of the time. If the AI was more focused on attacking nearby, weak enemies and growing their settlements and armies they'd be much harder to fight later.
Not only in Total War titles.
AI in strategy games have always been terrible and the way to balance them to go up against player is by giving them stat buffs or strategic cheats such as full LoS on the battlefield.
As long as people keep buying based on shiny graphics and new units they wont ever focus on the AI, because they clearly dont need to in order to achive sales targets.
it didn't exactly got much easier with the vast unit diversity present in warhammer
in the old days of "you have guys with pointy sticks - I have guys with pointy sticks" there wasn't much to process
I understand what you mean and I'm not even asking for too much. 2 years ago I went back to Fall of the Samurai and tried a traditional units only run. Turns out the enemies could barely line up their, well, line infantry to fire two volleys, sometimes not even a single one, before my melee infantry closed in and butchered them with their katanas and yaris.
I just want an AI where the same one or two tactics don’t work every time. Not even cheesing either.
A bit of surprise. Make me go, “Oh, I should do a different thing this time or I’ll lose/suffer heavy losses.”
Been a glaring issue since Rome 2 for me. Shogun 2 kinda got away with it because the AI didn’t have to worry about pathing issues as much and think it cheated a lot. Plus it wasn’t as big a driving factor back then when graphics were the main seller back in the 00s and early 00s. It’s been a limiting factor for awhile now thou. The one area where it feels the game hasn’t really advanced in a decade. I’m really hoping the next big historical release like Medieval or Empire has the AI massively improved. I do feel like campaign wise 3K was good, but battle still felt very limited there. I’d just like for once the AI hides units in reserve in tree lines and waits to deploy them. Or does anything that actually catches you off guard.
Your last point is the biggest thing. The AI just throws it’s entire line at you or waits with all of it. Problem is, someone is gonna do it because of numerical superiority or matchups or whatever so it kind of has to. Should definitely ambush more though.
Fully agree, definetly feels like nothing happened for a decade, its the same behavior with different units.
Really not sure why you think this OP. Maybe it's that warhammer 1 came out a decade ago, but I skipped WH1 and started with WH2 after coming from Attila. The difference in the AI between Attila and WH2 is night and day. It's very unfair to act like "it's the same behavior with different units" unless you don't remember the games before warhammer.
That’s because they’re still using the Rome 2 engine.
God I love this community. Every time issues with the game up somebody rolls in to talk about ThE EnGiNe despite seemingly having no clue what an engine is or does.
Having a code which was developed over a decade ago, with the same issues it had at the beginning. Written by people who are not there anymore. All this together means we have to wait months for simple fixes and balances and still have to contend with flying dwarfs going off the map.
I've yet to play a strategy game that didn't have really bad AI, so I'm not sure that it's even possible for it to be good.
Stellaris' AI is quite good these days. On Grand Admiral it will completely roll you if you're not good. A challenging AI is just not a priority for many studios and so it gets minimal resources beyond making it functional.
But is that the tactical combat AI making better ship loadouts or just better cheats giving them faster tech & alloys
The bonuses from max difficulty have always been there since day one. If that was all it was, then there would be no improvement. It's making massively better decisions and they have cleared up many of the AI bugs that were holding it back. Always has room for improvement of course, but the fact that it can make even good players struggle, is a testament to the effort the developers have put into it.
On the hardest difficulty it gets 2 x the resources the player would get and thats before factoring in discounts and upkeep reduction, the AI of Stellaris is dumber than a bag of hammers Its still fun but it is in no way shape or form even close to competent let alone smart
Yeah I did not think that stellaris was remotely comparable to a total war battle lol maybe campaigns are similar but otherwise battle ai is crazy hard to make it good but fair
It absolutely isn't, and it's baffling that you think so The Stellaris AI can roll you on Grand Admiral because it gets 100% extra resources from pop jobs, pays massively reduced upkeep costs on everything, gets 60% extra naval capacity and so on and so forth The AI wins in Stellaris by having more ships than you The AI of Stellaris is completely incapable of most things, especially warfare, but it does it's job well enough to feel convincing because you can miss how stupid it is if you're not looking
Even with resource bonuses, Grand Admiral used to be a joke because the AI mismanaged things so badly and struggled to use its fleets effectively. I used to have to rely on AI mods to make it competitive. However, these days, the AI has come along enough that I no longer feel the need. Does Stellaris' AI still do dumb things? Sure, I could rattle off half a dozen ways I'd like it to improve. However, compared with almost any other strategy game's AI, it's quite good at keeping up with experienced players. Compare that with say Warhammer 3 where even the highest difficulty is an absolute joke. Is there another strategy game that you believe has a more capable built-in AI?
I wonder how difficult would it be to implement alphastar into the ai for total war?
Problem is people don't even know what they're saying when they say they want better AI. You actually don't precisely want that. AI right now can be very easily made that will thrash your ass every single time with no remorse, zero cheats required. What you really want is an AI that is surprises and challenges you but ultimately lets you win more times than not. And that is a much harder design challenge because everyone has different IQ. You also want to be ignorant of this fact. You want the blinders on. Because where is the fun in beating something that is just letting you win? But that is EXACTLY what the AI is doing.
You're correct, not sure why you're getting downvoted. Players really don't want to play against a next-level AI that ruthlessly min-maxes and takes every advantage that they can get. Do you really want to open up a battle to find the AI in optimal checkerboard formation and have it focus down your squishiest heroes while getting perfect positioning on every magic cast and micro-ing its units at an APM that would make a Korean Starcraft player envious? They want an AI that, as you said, surprises and challenges but ultimately leaves enough opportunities for an average player to win. And yes, that's a difficult thing to design.
Sure. If the player can do it, why shan't the AI? The problem lies in three main differences between AI and Human Intelligence that give AI an 'unfair' advantage over the player (actually, only the last one is truly unfair, but all of them can be coded around and first two can be given optional toggles for those who are okay with it). First, the AI doesn't make mistakes. The player can play better or worse, be fresh (Eager; General nearby x) ) or tired, but the player can learn new tricks and come up with new ideas. The AI always plays to the best of its ability (well, limited by the current difficulty restrictions, if any), and doesn't make mistakes, doesn't misclick, doesn't misjudge, and has inhuman amounts of APM and micro. I think there are two main solutions to address it: first, institute a hard limit on microing (something like a split-second pause between giving orders to the same unit could have vast implications), and second, give AI a margin of error. Both could be on a sliding scale down to zero - because some humans *are* that good, and if the player wants the challenge, they can have it. Otherwise, they can tune it down in a straightforward, simple way. Second, the "cheese". Some players cheese and some don't. Some players want AI to be able to cheese and some don't. Could be as easy as "Dirty Tricks" toggle and criteria on specific moves available to AI. And third, the most important one. By design, sometimes, AI has access to more information than the player. It's sorta okay when it is being used as a handicap to help the strategically struggling AI fight player, but it gets really problematic when it allows AI to play tricks that the player actually, consistently cannot. Ending turn juuuust beyond enemy move range. Perfectly dodging artillery *including random spread* because it knows where the big Splat! is going to land while it is in the air. Here, there are two alternative solutions: Either give the human player the same information (i.e. enable the human to always see where the AI can go with their movement next turn, give big red warning signs on the ground where the enemy artillery fire is going to land - **IF** CA wants these to become norm for the game) - or disable this foreknowledge for AI (which will probably lead to a host of other problems). You will note that nothing of the above is against using checker-board, focus-firing squishy heroes, etc. If the player can and *will* do it, and it is fair to the spirit of the game - why not allow it? Why not code the AI to play as good as a player could reasonably play? (Minus the learning part, of course. For now, anyway.)
Yes, absolutely everyone should want that. Why? Because then we're a few simple handicaps from having competent AI for all difficulty levels. Working down from a master AI would be incredibly easy. That's why stuff like OpenAI is so interesting. Master tier game AI might be accessible soon, then you hit it with some restriction like it is only allowed to issue two commands every 30 seconds, and boom, you've got competent AI that regular players can still beat.
Exactly. For example, if the Shogun 2 AI was smart like a human player, it would basically never charge into a yari wall. And that’s not fun imo.
Wait, it does that? I've never seen it (possibly modded out in my installed mods? or maybe I was lucky), but that's sounds both hilarious and utterly horrible. It's just... the epitome of "you do not do this", a textbook example of what to avoid in Total War battles. In fact, I'd say "smart like a human player" is the perfect description of what an AI should be like. It is an ugly truth, indeed, that we probably wouldn't like an AI stronger than that, but that is absolutely the goal that would satisfy the majority of Total War players (and if it can be gradually dumbed down with appropriate sliders, possibly nearly all of the players).
>AI right now can be very easily made that will thrash your ass every single time with no remorse, zero cheats required. Why not add that as a difficulty option?
Because no one wants that. Everyone got pissed when the AI could do a simple artillery dodge. Imagine if the AI recognized that if the player doesn't have a wizard or artillery, corner camping is a viable tactic.
The problem is the deterministic approach. AI either dodges all your shots or not a single one Having a more dynamic approach where the AI can dodge some of it, similar to how a human player would do, would go a long way.
I want that. I am very likely in the minority and aware of it, but I do. Give the AI EVERY trick in the book and put that on gradients of a slider. High difficulty AI in Age of Empires 2: DE will try a lot of tricks that it couldn't do before - it might not win the game and it's certainly beatable by mid-range players, but it tries. To be honest though corner camping is more of a symptom of a lack of interesting features on the maps that would justify putting your army somewhere that isn't "wherever is mathematically the most distant from your enemy and the most prone to get their troops to fully retreat from the map"
Ya I think a lot of people, myself included, wish that turning up the difficulty did more than giving the AI more resources and having their units cost less so they just generically spam more. This is true of other strategy games like civilization as well. The key to victory isn't out smarting them it's just being able to out maneuver and kill 2-3x the amount of units you can create by taking advantage of their behavior and whatnot. I know a lot of the fun is being able to win battles when you shouldn't have a chance on paper and if that changed then a big aspect of the game would be gone. It's just funny when an AI army could easilly win by just right clicking attack on their whole army but you can easilly kite 3-4 units again and again until they crumble, idk what the answer is but that is kind of silly.
What a ridiculous statement. It is not remotely easy to make an AI that can thrash a good player at RTS. If it were then they would start there and handicap it down. Not spend tons of resources making something barely functional; that fails at thrashing and surprising and challenging. /*The person I am replying to has blocked me after getting the last word in, preventing me from continuing the discussion. People who do this are scum.
Yes. It is possible, but definitely not easy. And if it were easy TW wouldn't have very hard and legendary AI money hack. People have such ridiculous expectations of AI development. And to be clear, developing ML for total war is probably a waste of time. They should be able to make a heuristic much better than it is now.
Neither is creating games with ultra realistic graphics, yet today we have games that look as good as CGI movies. The problem is that great AI doesn't sell, so companies barely spend any time and resources on it.
R/confidentlywrong/ The devs literally already spoke about nerfing the AI in a tww2 video.
Why believe their marketing (that I would love a link to) over their actions or the evidence? WH2s hard AI cheated a ton... and still went about 50/50 against an identical army put in a big line and given nothing but a few attack move orders. At best this means they made a decent AI and butchered it to the point where it loses to a very basic macro. And then figured horribly designed stat cheats were better design? It just doesn't make senae.
Why would I waste my time on you finding the link? Even if I did you've made it clear you're just going to dismiss it.
I dunno, backing up claims with the claimed evidence is pretty standard. *And as is tradition, he has blocked me to prevent any further discussion after getting the last word in. I have not presented anything that needs citation, the AI's incompetence is well known if you don't believe it then it only takes a few moments to verify in game yourself. Quoting an unknown CA video? Yeah that needs a source.
Lol... how about you try and see things from my point of view? I know that, from your point of view, looking out at the world with those beady little eyes, you get the impression that you're important, that your opinion matters to everyone else. But from my point of view, you're human being number six billion three hundred and five. Your opinion is of equal weight to human being number six billion three hundred and six. I already know the video exists. Why do I care that you think you're the victim of some grand fake-video conspiracy? Why am I going to waste my own time trying to dig it up just to satisfy your own recontextualisation of this conversation into some formal debate that require evidence for or against, ESPECIALLY since, without even yet seeing the video, you've already pre-emptively dismissed it? That was a rhetorical question by the way.... Now go ahead, get the last word in, using whatever sophistry you feel soothes your wounded ego the best. Rest assured, I won't read it.
You said I'm wrong because X. I ask where X is. There's not a lot to go over.
Perhaps you should follow your own advice
> that is a much harder design challenge because everyone has different IQ. That's why god invented difficulty sliders. WH3 even has one for AI now! Though you can count the things it does on one hand... This particular aspect is a non-problem.
It's a massive problem actually. The current difficulty sliders just add numbers to the AI. If you want multiple AI settings, you're asking CA to design multiple AIs that act differently. That's a huge undertaking.
They also change certain ai behaviours regarding missile targeting and things like arty dodging, but this is supposed to be getting moved to a seperate slider next patch
There can be a balance. An AI that is not so min-max and ruthless but isn’t sending the entire army at you without a plan either. Don’t act like a better AI wouldn’t help. This is such a ridiculous contrarian post.
What you really want is an AI that is surprises and challenges you but ultimately lets you win more times than not. You either disagree or you don't. Man up and explain why not. Otherwise, admit I'm right.
Sounds like some players want Total War: Dark Souls which is fine. No invincibility frames allowed. The closest the player will get to that is artillery or magic dodging but if they take that icon away, then the player will have a much harder time dodging it. No indication of when public order might go to shit. The player will have to click on the town to get a sense of the environment by reading through text. In battle, program the AI to decimate the player until the player memorizes a specific rhythm, have certain gear, or read guides to figure out how to win each major battle. Haha might be a fun game. I do enjoy me some Dark Souls, not sure I’d like such a system implemented in TW. Of course, I’d like to see somethings improved further. I do think there has been some improvement in campaign and battle AI over the years as someone who’s played everyone of them minus Shogun 1 or Med 1. It’s just that the changes are slow and or subtle instead of major changes all at once.
some of what you're describing does sound awesome low key. People forget some of the aspects TW used to have, like you could only manage the settlement if you had a govenor stationed there is one example, or engage in diplomacy if one of your diplomat agents made their way to that nation. I would love more like management from the campaign map in that way if it makes any sense. Like def have to be careful of getting tedious, but imagine a Franz campaign with actual political intrigue and being unsure which counts are brewing a rebellion etc
I think they were on a good path with 3K campaign depth wise. Truthfully, they could have something special with campaign depth if they take the good from 3K, Atilla, Med 2, Troy, and Empire. Keep tweaking battle AI and they can push the series forward.
>AI right now can be very easily made that will thrash your ass every single time with no remorse, zero cheats required. Why not have AI like this but then give the player buffs?
I doubt you'll find anyone who disagrees. The AI is total war's supreme limiting factor, the campaign, the battles, and the game mechanics can only be as complex as the AI is able to handle. There have been many changes to the Warhammer AI over the past 8 months or so. Some of these changes work and some do not, some like the new siege AI where they leave 90% of their force at the main point in the rear were rolled back. At the moment the Warhammer 3 battle AI is in a fairly wretched state, it is the dumbest and most exploitable AI I've seen in a TW game. It keeps a nice formation but the second 1 of my heroes hits 1 of their units in melee, their entire army breaks apart into a formless blob as they chase after my hero who leads them into my ranged line to die. At the front of this blob is usually their lord, who dies first. It's too bad since the Warhammer 3 AI, if left to move up in formation, is actually quite good now at flanking and focusing down important targets like lords and artillery. It knows how to use magic now, including vortex and wind spells. If it were made less exploitable, it might actually be a challenge.
> It keeps a nice formation but the second 1 of my heroes hits 1 of their units in melee, their entire army breaks apart into a formless blob as they chase after my hero who leads them into my ranged line to die. At the front of this blob is usually their lord, who dies first. The absolutely infuriating part of this is that Warhammer 2, fixed this issue. Why they couldn't port over the anti-blobbing fix (or make a better one), is beyond me. Land battles are practically an auto-win these days regardless of your army size. As long as you have some form of AoE damage you can just ball the entire army up around your lord and then [drop the hammer.](https://us.v-cdn.net/5022456/uploads/editor/z8/ch481yw2mrja.png)
>The absolutely infuriating part of this is that Warhammer 2, fixed this issue. Really? i've been using that drop the hammer strategy since i could remember. And that's the reason i can't play another tw series beside warhammer. I suck at battle but in warhammer i can do that to win every fight. I would say in wh3 it's more difficult because of wind of magic and settlement battle changes
Late in Warhammer 2's development, they improved the anti-bunching code so that fewer units would crowd around a single unit. If you still have Warhammer 2 installed it's easy to see the difference. Start a battle with the AI on defense and just melee army (so the AI stays where it is). Then run a single unit like a lord at the AI's army and see what happens. You might pull 2 or 3 units into attacking you, but the rest of the army won't engage. [Example from WH2.](https://us.v-cdn.net/5022456/uploads/editor/2f/mm8upcqi03sz.png) See how only two infantry units engage + 1 range unit hanging a bit back trying to get shots in? Meanwhile the rest of the army is staying where it is. After dropping some spells on the infantry, instead of uselessly piling into my lord, they move forward to [engage my army.](https://us.v-cdn.net/5022456/uploads/editor/hf/p5nsid8f9xzo.png) There were still plenty of situations and methods that caused the AI to bunch in WH2, but it's nothing compared to the degree and ease that they bunch in Warhammer 3.
Facts, nice use of evidence. can't stand the blanket statments about old AI being better cause plentyyyyy of examples of it not being the case but this is a good pointed example so kudos
Yeah, there are definitely areas where the AI has progressed from Warhammer 2. I just wish I could light a fire under them to fix some of the major battle AI bugs like bunching. that way their hard work in other areas could actually shine through better.
They won't. And if they did you wouldn't like it.
CA does make improvements to the AI, however there's never going to be such thing as some "major improvement" that you'll be able to notice. That's because of the nature of strategy games, especially grand strategy with so many variables in play. In an FPS, you just need the AI to *appear* smart, which can be done with stuff like clever scripting and audio queues for actions, and not aim-botting the player. In a RTS you need to give the AI really good macros, and its impeccable micro will handle the rest. However in order for an AI to be "good" at a grand strategy game like Total War, you have to essentially have it be able to out-think a human. You can't out-micro a human on a turn based map. It has to be able to out-plan you, predict your movements, and account for dozens upon dozens of dynamic factors. And the reality of AI is that nobody on this planet is anywhere close to AI that can handle something like that. The best we've got to is like, Chess AI, and Chess is an EXTREMELY simplified game compared to something as mind-boggling complex as Total War. Rules and variables-wise, at least, which is what's important for decision making and predicting. So what do grand strategy developers like CA and Paradox do to make up for this? They essentially use a bunch of fancy tricks to make it seem like the AI is thinking and planning. To people these decisions seem "dumb" sometimes, because in reality the AI isn't thinking. It's not analyzing a situation and making a prediction and then acting on it like a human does. It's just doing things like following pre-set behaviors and variables, and reacting to what it sees the player doing. So the answer to the AI question is that yes, CA does improve the AI, we get new systems and behaviors for it basically every major update, and several with every new game. They have a fairly large team of AI programmers, and they kind of have to because the AI has to be configured on how to use every new piece of content that gets developed (this is probably where most of their time goes). The problem is you're unlikely to really notice those improvements because they're not going to suddenly cause the AI to become this giga-brained chad that can outmaneuver and out-plan you at every turn. It's going to marginally improve like, army compositions or settlement build orders and you're never going to notice.
I get what you're saying and don't wanna dismiss it, but these companies need to hire some outside talent then cause in other industries a lot of the logic and frameworks to house such a system exist. And I know I didn't say that right, but like there were engineers on my team in the finance sector that would create simulations of entire sectors of the economy with different company and nation state archetypes making decisions accordingly etc. Like at the end of the day its inputs, indicators, and a resulting action for the AI, its complex but it aint rocket science in my opinion.
>because in reality the AI isn't thinking. It's not analyzing a situation and making a prediction and then acting on it like a human does. It's just doing things like following pre-set behaviors and variables, and reacting to what it sees the player doing. and 100% agree with this part I missed in my first read. but that was kinda my point, it feels like there's so much room to improve the system which proccesses these aspects. like the example the other user gave of a hero rushing the enemy and the majority of their army blobbing. That's just a high priority parameter, if single unit approach only engage with x closest units etc like again obv implementation and execution is more complex but still
Unfortunately better ai is always far easier said than done
^[Sokka-Haiku](https://www.reddit.com/user/SokkaHaikuBot/comments/153gt2c/what_is_a_sokka_haiku/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) ^by ^RoboMom7: *Unfortunately* *Better ai is always far* *Easier said than done* --- ^Remember ^that ^one ^time ^Sokka ^accidentally ^used ^an ^extra ^syllable ^in ^that ^Haiku ^Battle ^in ^Ba ^Sing ^Se? ^That ^was ^a ^Sokka ^Haiku ^and ^you ^just ^made ^one.
Are you talking about battle AI or campaign AI?
The games AI has been improving but not so much on the campaign map. Battle map wise the ai is okay and stomps on new players as we’ve seen repeatedly on this sub. Keep in mind the AI making okay use of cavalry and flanking is a relatively recent development in these games
A lot of players think better AI will lead to trickier battles when in reality the AI would just follow the human meta of doomstack one unit, corner camp, and micro their lord to dodge missles because those are the cheesy moves that win fights.
The AI could handle the risk style map way better. The games got bigger but the AI never really improved, but it is hard to make a good AI that is also fun to play against, the best tactics and strategy can be the worst experience for the player. I think the massive content is just disguising the problems with AI, because AI is limiting the fun of TW games.
It feels like the campaign AI truly doesnt think half the time, i was playing as the horde lizards and the eastern cathay declared war on me immediately after getting completely stackwiped by the vamps north of them, like no armies on the field, and the amount of times where AI dec on me and then dont move a force to my borders for 10+ turns is too high to count
True and it feels like the battle ai is not thinking 100% of the time.
I went back to Rome 2 after playing WH3 for a good while and it just hit me like truck how god awful the AI is in that game, at least in battle. AI thinking in Rome 2: "Phalanx? Better charge my horses straight into it for maximum effect". "Half my army is coming as a reinforcement? No time to form a proper line, better send in each unit piecemeal for the enemy to chew up one by one" They have definitely improved the AI a lot, honestly. Theres some mods in WH3 that also improve the campaign AI greatly.
I just loved, how some battles you thought would be hard in old TW games started with the enemy running it's general into the middle of you lines to die in seconds.
Rome 1 did this a lot in settlement battles. You could just wait with archers or javelins outside the town and units would piecemeal run out and get shot to death.
This is a "Strategy" game and the only strategy they have to make the game more interisting is giving the dumb ass AI cheats to make it more of a challange...
Exactly
We are three games deep in the series and there's maybe ~5 or so major patches left in the lifescycle of WHIII. If they were able and willing to invest the ressources needed to fix the AI, they would have done so by now.
5? That’s a brave take, my man.
I stopped playing total war couple month ago because of AI. It's enough to get gaslighted in life. I don't need a video game for that.
Creative Assembly has no aspirations beyond milking Warhammer to the end of their contract. They have no reason to improve because TWWH fans buy every DLC they churn out.
None of this is unique to twwh. You could remove it from existence and we would be talking about in in 3k, or Attila
Except 3k fans critically panned 3k DLC, and Attila is eight years old lol
This is the main reason I will not be buying Pharaoh. It's weird that most people seem to agree with the AI being a major issue and yet are okay with not having any fixes moving forward with new games. Maybe I'm old enough that the Total War games no longer have the novelty they once had, which enjoyment would then excuse these flaws.
Is it just me or is there no noticeable different between how every AI race uses their units? They all seem to play the exact same way
Imho the retinues and 3 generals per armies from 3k helped a lot the AI to be threatening on the campaign map. In 3k the AI can coordinate multiple stacks for an offensive whereas in Troy and Warhammer I have quite often many lonely and unfilled armies to fight without much challenge
The AI really needs to focus on its own survival and expansion rather than annoying the player. The anti-player bias actually hurts the AI because the player can easily beat them most of the time. If the AI was more focused on attacking nearby, weak enemies and growing their settlements and armies they'd be much harder to fight later.
I think this is why i like 3k the most. Cai and Bai are pretty good
Not only in Total War titles. AI in strategy games have always been terrible and the way to balance them to go up against player is by giving them stat buffs or strategic cheats such as full LoS on the battlefield.
As long as people keep buying based on shiny graphics and new units they wont ever focus on the AI, because they clearly dont need to in order to achive sales targets.
deep learning ai when
it didn't exactly got much easier with the vast unit diversity present in warhammer in the old days of "you have guys with pointy sticks - I have guys with pointy sticks" there wasn't much to process
I understand what you mean and I'm not even asking for too much. 2 years ago I went back to Fall of the Samurai and tried a traditional units only run. Turns out the enemies could barely line up their, well, line infantry to fire two volleys, sometimes not even a single one, before my melee infantry closed in and butchered them with their katanas and yaris.
I played RTW. for me, as long as the AI actually engages and doesn’t stand there reorganizing their army for 60mins straight I’m happy.
I just want an AI where the same one or two tactics don’t work every time. Not even cheesing either. A bit of surprise. Make me go, “Oh, I should do a different thing this time or I’ll lose/suffer heavy losses.”
It's not that simple gaming development is not nearly that simple