Will the AI be capable of winning custom Battles?

Do you think the AI will be capable of winning custom battles in NTW? For those of you who are unaware, in ETW if you leave all settings on default, start a battle, unlimber your cannons and deploy your army in battle formation... then go eat a sandwich and come back 30 minutes later, you'll find that you've won the custom battle without issuing orders of any kind or even being present during the fight. for me i considered this game breaking, to be able to win a custom battle without making any mouse clicks or pressing any hot-keys. Now what's done is done, but one of the things i will be looking to see is if the BAI is still incapable of winning against an army that just sits there. If so, i don't see how I can have any fun with the campaign (or anything that involves the BAI)...again. what do you guys think? will the AI be sufficiently competent to defeat an equal sized player controlled army if the player doesn't issue any orders to it?

Originally Posted by dmcheatw

Do you think the AI will be capable of winning custom battles in NTW? For those of you who are unaware, in ETW if you leave all settings on default, start a battle, unlimber your cannons and deploy your army in battle formation... then go eat a sandwich and come back 30 minutes later, you'll find that you've won the custom battle without issuing orders of any kind or even being present during the fight. for me i considered this game breaking, to be able to win a custom battle without making any mouse clicks or pressing any hot-keys. Now what's done is done, but one of the things i will be looking to see is if the BAI is still incapable of winning against an army that just sits there. If so, i don't see how I can have any fun with the campaign (or anything that involves the BAI)...again.

I hope this is not grassy flatlands but seriously what setup did you/the ai use and how did the ai manage to lose? And I definetly don't think the ai will manage to lose against a not moving army

Its true try it for yourself. Kinda funny in a sad sort of way.

you can test it yourself right now, start up empire and play a custom land battle, take all default settings, you don't have to adjust the armies but you can if you want to. in the deployment phase turn on things like fire at will and unlimber your cannons. line everything up in a line or similarly competent battle array, turn the game to 3x speed, and begin. Watch the AI slaughter itself against your army haha. it isn't grassy flatlands, just whatever map the computer generates for custom battles, but you DON'T need to camp on a hill to witness this, any old flat expanse of land will work. anyway, i'm just hoping that the AI will be able to win such a scenario in NTW. If it can't, then in my view that is proof that the AI hasn't improved, and, by extension, the game won't be fun...again. (just my opinion on that last sentence)

sigh. That`s always the Litmus test of any tactical game. If it can`t beat you if you do absolutely nothing then something`s not right with the AI.

Probably not, unless they make some drastic changes to the BAI. I didn't vote because I don't know yet.

Can't vote since I haven't played N:TW.

Edit: And all who did vote, you must've played the game to be able to know that.

the question is speculative. the operative word is "think;" IOW it's your prediction. if the game was released i wouldn't have made this thread because there would be no point, the answer would be known.

I don't know if I should cry, laugh or be happy that I'm using Darthmod

Originally Posted by dmcheatw

the question is speculative. the operative word is "think;" IOW it's your prediction. if the game was released i wouldn't have made this thread because there would be no point, the answer would be known.

Can`t argue with that logic.

I almost never play custom battles so I didn`t know this otherwise I`d be really annoyed. In early ETW CAI could not win, but I didn`t suspect BAI until much later. The thing is in every most other games like combat mission 1\2\3 and Gal civ 2 and Civ 4 i never needed to test since the AI would beat me sometimes.

I think CA`s` illusion ` with games now comes down to making players think they are winning against a good Ai that is actually is crap. I think they don`t seriously care about any kind of good AI.

Originally Posted by Greve Af Göteborg

Can't vote since I haven't played N:TW.

Edit: And all who did vote, you must've played the game to be able to know that.

I voted and I've not played the game.

darth mod will make the AI beat the human in this situation? if so i think you should rejoice Ulan. and maybe i should resintall empire and add DM commander edition .

Originally Posted by dmcheatw

darth mod will make the AI beat the human in this situation? if so i think you should rejoice Ulan. and maybe i should resintall empire and add DM commander edition .

Well, I thought I'd run a test. Due to me being stupid I picked France and GB as the factions. Well, France has line infantry of 350 men in DM and GB has 300 men. The difference in the amount of men was around 700 I think. I won, yes, but the GB inflicted more casualties on me than I on them (Numbers being 2100 vs 2200. I obviously had more firepower in that game, so I think the AI would have won if the amount of troops was equal

Originally Posted by dmcheatw

darth mod will make the AI beat the human in this situation? if so i think you should rejoice Ulan. and maybe i should resintall empire and add DM commander edition .

Just tested this kind of situation using DM lite 5.1 three times. Normal, Hard and Expert difficulties. GB x GB using game's default armies.

Normal: complete slaughter. The whole AI army attacked the centre of my army just to be killed/routed.

Hard: another slaughter, but I can point two positive things. One AI cav unit flanked my general managing to rout his unit. The other one was the presence of less melee and more exchanging fire, but nothing too special.

Expert: the AI managed to rout my whole army. No special tatics applied, they acted like hard difficulty, random squares and everything we already know, with the exception that everything they "touched", routed.

Originally Posted by Gen. Uziel

Just tested this kind of situation using DM lite 5.1 three times. Normal, Hard and Expert difficulties. GB x GB using game's default armies.

Normal: complete slaughter. The whole AI army attacked the centre of my army just to be killed/routed.

Hard: another slaughter, but I can point two positive things. One AI cav unit flanked my general managing to rout his unit. The other one was the presence of less melee and more exchanging fire, but nothing too special.

Expert: the AI managed to rout my whole army. No special tatics applied, they acted like hard difficulty, random squares and everything we already know, with the exception that everything they "touched", routed.

I don't think you installed DM properly as what you describe is the BAI vanilla behaviour. Moreover, it seems that DM's BAI never forms squares (at least in my campaign battles), while you report weird square formations in your tests.

Originally Posted by Leoben

I don't think you installed DM properly as what you describe is the BAI vanilla behaviour. Moreover, it seems that DM's BAI never forms squares (at least in my campaign battles), while you report weird square formations in your tests.

custom battles are different than campaign battles though. it is demonstratably proven that the BAI handles itself much better in campaign battles than custom battles, because most campaign battles are 5 units vs 5 units and relatively homogenous armies. a custom battle involves 12-20 units, and they aren't all line infantry.

if you come to a late point in your campaign where the AI has to control a full stack composed of skirmishers, cavalry, line, and artillery, you'll see it is incapable. It's sad because in theory these are the biggest and most important battles in the game that the AI is the most inept at managing.

Originally Posted by Leoben

I don't think you installed DM properly as what you describe is the BAI vanilla behaviour. Moreover, it seems that DM's BAI never forms squares (at least in my campaign battles), while you report weird square formations in your tests.

CAI battles are often smaller and the armies are composed of different units. The AI can handle them better than when you set up a custom battle with the default stacks the game provides. Those "random squares behaviour" are probably hardcoded, it's no fault of DM.

Edit: Sorry, I didn't read all the posts and dmcheatw had already made a good explanation about the subject.

Originally Posted by dmcheatw

in ETW if you leave all settings on default, start a battle, unlimber your cannons and deploy your army in battle formation... then go eat a sandwich and come back 30 minutes later

30 minutes to eat a sandwitch?

I want one of your sandwitches....

Everything being equal (that is: with identical armies, no morale/damage bonuses, and on a flat battlefield) the AI will never defeat a human who knows how to play the game. The BAI in ETW (and all TW games) could be better, I mean way better, but I think people dreaming of a day when the AI will actually out think and destroy you are kidding themselves. It's never going to happen.

Other RTS games have AIs that can defeat you by cheating economically and/or having exact precision and timing. TW battles are different. There's no economy, there's no build orders, there's no meta-game. There's just a bunch of units, and for the AI to beat you it has to actually be smarter than you, and that's impossible (unless you're an inbred from Mississippi, or the royal family).

The most even the best developer could do with BAI is to make it play along well and put on an entertaining show (which current ETW BAI can't even do, sadly). So I see where they're going with the drop-in battle feature and I welcome it.

Originally Posted by Graphic

Everything being equal (that is: with identical armies, no morale/damage bonuses, and on a flat battlefield) the AI will never defeat a human who knows how to play the game. The BAI in ETW (and all TW games) could be better, I mean way better, but I think people dreaming of a day when the AI will actually out think and destroy you are kidding themselves. It's never going to happen.

Other RTS games have AIs that can defeat you by cheating economically and/or having exact precision and timing. TW battles are different. There's no economy, there's no build orders, there's no meta-game. There's just a bunch of units, and for the AI to beat you it has to actually be smarter than you, and that's impossible (unless you're an inbred from Mississippi, or the royal family).

The most even the best developer could do with BAI is to make it play along well and put on an entertaining show (which current ETW BAI can't even do, sadly). So I see where they're going with the drop-in battle feature and I welcome it.

No but I expect the AI to at least have a basic understanding of tactics, not the forming blob, charging without firing a shot, forming squares at silly times, and sending a single unit of unsupported cavalry for a flank attack AI we have now. At least the MTW2 and RTW AIs understood basic tactics, sure they almost never flanked or they had no peripheral vision to counter yours, but I did actually have to think on occasion to beat them.