Let's talk about the AI

[ostendadler]

Hey Lads,


I wanted to discuss with you lot the AI reactions during battles. I come from a modded and non-modded Rome 2 (didn't touch Attila) and I have a strong feeling that the battle AI is a much bigger threat than it used to be. I'll lay out my observations below please do share and discuss your own findings.


ROME 2:

the AI army would run towards you with the cavalry and the general ahead of the pack charging head on into a random part of your line. You'd either hold them at bay or rear charge them with your own cavalry and that would be it for the AI's cavalry and general.

The AI foot soldiers would then arrive exhausted and pack itself on most of your line leaving one or both of your wings free to surround them. Their archers would lay slightly behind and would be killed by your cavalry. You'd end up rear charging them creating a chain route. Mop up the runners and that's it!

You'd be in real danger in 3 cases:

a smaller army facing a much bigger AI Foe

a AI cavalry archer heavy army vs an infantry army

a top tier AI army versus a low tier army

That's what I got used to in Rome 2.

WARHAMMER:

The AI seems to be a lot more inventive with its archers and cavalry units. I've had numerous occasions where the AI rear charged me or flank charged me. Same with the archers they would flank and pepper my ranks. The General tends to walk the front line and buff its troops engaging only versus a weakened unit of mine. The infantry always tries to angle its attack trying to break one of my flank by over taking it.

Perhaps the Race variety makes it even more obvious.

I find that for the first time in a long long long long long time the Battle AI is not completely predictable.

It does have a few brain farts once in a while but overall I feel like the AI is actively trying to destabilize my army set up.

Please share your observation and discuss.

[Incontinenta Buttox]

Battles can be challenging now.

If the AI has cavalry, it WILL flank and I often find my infantry being charged in the rear.
AI builds well balanced stacks
AI missile units and artillery are very effective at choosing targets

Without a doubt the BAI and the CAI is far better than any other TW game

[OfficerJohn]

Without a doubt the BAI and the CAI is far better than any other TW game

Definitely. If CA transfer this AI to the historical titles, the non-Warhammer crowd also has some great games to look forward to.

EDIT: (Which they'll definitely aim to do, duh. I mean if they don't accidentally mess it up somehow.)

[KAM 2150]

Yes, this BAI is the best that CA gave us so far. Finally I do not feel like the AI is dead. Obiously it will sometimes do random stupid stuff, but overal I do enjoy the battles as AI is constantly doing something.

[Megalos]

Multiplayer camp Chaos is extremely broken. The main event spawns double the stacks SP camp does seemingly, and the ai just cannot afford the upkeep of the armies, so it disbands all the units. The mighty Tilea defeated Chaos in the last MP camp I did, with a single stack of spearmen and crossbows... lol

[Emperor Arcturus Mengsk]

THe most annoying thing I've ever faced in a TW game is TW:W Chaos Chariots, Orc Chariots, Marauder Skirmishers, because the AI is very annoying with them, I assume it's doing something right

During my VC campaign the only way I had to actually kill Marauder skirmishers was to curse each unit twi​ce with curse of Bjuna, the Bats die to them or never catch them, the rest of the fliers have no chance in hell to outrun them 92-102 speed depending on tech.

And they do that thing where they outflank your lines WAAAAY too much and you have to constantly turn your camera around to see where the heck they are.

But you can tell it's almost scripted to do that because if you replay the same battle and camp in a corner the ai tries so hard to do that and it ends up squishing all it's chariots and skimishers in the border line of the map trying to reach you

I also noticed sometimes the AI will actually camp in a corner, not quite how a player would do it in a perfectly closed box but close, I wonder if it's using random terrain features that happen to be right at the corner or if they actually programmed the AI to do that sometimes when outnumbered!

[Dorkus_Malorkus]

THe most annoying thing I've ever faced in a TW game is TW:W Chaos Chariots, Orc Chariots, Marauder Skirmishers, because the AI is very annoying with them, I assume it's doing something right

During my VC campaign the only way I had to actually kill Marauder skirmishers was to curse each unit twi​ce with curse of Bjuna, the Bats die to them or never catch them, the rest of the fliers have no chance in hell to outrun them 92-102 speed depending on tech.

And they do that thing where they outflank your lines WAAAAY too much and you have to constantly turn your camera around to see where the heck they are.

But you can tell it's almost scripted to do that because if you replay the same battle and camp in a corner the ai tries so hard to do that and it ends up squishing all it's chariots and skimishers in the border line of the map trying to reach you

I also noticed sometimes the AI will actually camp in a corner, not quite how a player would do it in a perfectly closed box but close, I wonder if it's using random terrain features that happen to be right at the corner or if they actually programmed the AI to do that sometimes when outnumbered!

I always loathe that about Total War. This risk that they have a load of weak cavalry left that you cannot catch, so you end up chasing them around the battlefield until they tire or you get bored.

[Frost, colonel]

I always loathe that about Total War. This risk that they have a load of weak cavalry left that you cannot catch, so you end up chasing them around the battlefield until they tire or you get bored.

I don't know exactly who has the cannot move hex spells(it's not just the Empires light wizard's net spell) but I use this to fix them, just need to make sure my own heavy cavalry or flying units are at the right spot before the spells cast.
Certainly the net spell can fix up to 3 units in one go, on several occasions I have taken out a whole enemy flank of mtd skirmish troops, very satisfying it is to.

[ostendadler]

I did find that on a few occasions AI army compositions are a bit weird especially for the dwarves. I saw thurin raid sylvania with a full stack of catapults ... Not sure whats the logic in that.

I didn't notice that the AI smashed itself on the borders of the map trying to drive around my army yet since your front line can be completely obliterated by a timely charge of monsters or cavalry not much interest in camping because you find yourself boxed in and when your unit routs you don't give them much space to return. Its a double edged sword which I found didn't pay off in mid late game.

I did find that enemy armies in Chaos, Vampire and Orcs tend to go by pair.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Strangely and awesomely enough when the second Chaos invasion started all 3 stacks just stayed together and started pounding the crap out of Kislev and the nothern territories. The two norscan tribes even stayed close and I eventually had a one massive 5 vs 4 stack battle which ended up in a pyrrhic victory for me.

If I had to point out several points the BAI consistently does well its:


A. The BAI uses those archer cavalry units with extreme efficiency on my rear or flanks.
B. The BAI uses war chariots like a boss. I cannot remember how many times I saw the AI just cycle charge my lines front back and flank bringing absolute chaos to my line.
C. The BAI uses its heroes and lords nicely to buff up his troops and help out on the front
D. The BAI always attempts to flank your army with his forces.

I'm still on the fence on the battle duration. KAM had done an amazing job lengthening battle times in DEI ROME 2 making the experience a bit more durable but so far in Warhammer I don't have the feeling that battles are too rushed. I'm still too few hours into the game to decide that though.

Overall so far I feel like the BAI has stepped up is game. Has anyone faced weird dwarves armies?

[Emperor Arcturus Mengsk]

I did find that on a few occasions AI army compositions are a bit weird especially for the dwarves. I saw thurin raid sylvania with a full stack of catapults ... Not sure whats the logic in that.

He has a lot of grudges to throw

[Incontinenta Buttox]

Massive credit to CA for finally giving us much better AI than in other TW games. Terrible AI was always the Achilles heel of all TW games.

[ostendadler]

Well that's the rules of war ... without any archers they are bound to piss you off.

[Garensterz]

Interesting topic.


I really hope they stick with this kind of formula, and by that they'll just keep on improving it every new releases. Well I haven't got the game yet so I don't really know what's going on with the new AI mechanics. But I really hope that CA would do something where the BAI would use it's reserves if it has enough units on the battlefield, and will only use them if really needed or been flanked. This typical cluster battles are getting repetitive and unimmersive to be honest.

[Humble Warrior]

Interesting topic.


I really hope they stick with this kind of formula, and by that they'll just keep on improving it every new releases. Well I haven't got the game yet so I don't really know what's going on with the new AI mechanics. But I really hope that CA would do something where the BAI would use it's reserves if it has enough units on the battlefield, and will only use them if really needed or been flanked. This typical cluster battles are getting repetitive and unimmersive to be honest.

The news on the AI certainly sounds positive, but I still think many are talking from a skewed perspective. I`ve seen the AI do this kind of thing even in the original Medieval. Shogun 2 was pretty good with AI as well.

I thought that the AI using the border corner to defend in was interesting, though, because I used to use this trick in previous games and the AI never did that. Likely accidental. Also, I suspect the speed of the battles to be too fast, though a Mod would likely fix it.

Overall, I suspect it`s simply due to the starkly different Races why there is a real difference to how units act. I suspect present day CA crew were more excited by the fantasy Orcs, goblins, etc than `boring` Humans and so made a real effort to get them to actually be different in combat.

[Celtik]

I don't have Attila but I've played Rome 2 a lot and the BAI is definitively an improvement in Warhammer. Of course it's not perfect but it's quite decent.

- good use of lords and heroes abilities
- good use of magic buffs and debuffs
- good use of chariots and missile cav
- it's better now with melee units, it's still a big cluster but more spread out, making it harder to flank with melee units
- bad use of AOE spells, it's sad to see the AI uses all its power reserve to cast a comet that doesn't hit anyone because it didn't take into account that the target unit is moving... (same with low tier metal and fire AOE spells)
- bad protection of missile infantry and artillery, the AI should keep a spear unit near its range units when you have some melee cav and it doesn't. The best example is when playing Karl Franz you have a Reiksguard unit at the beginning and the rebels won't have any cav and won't defend its crossbowmen. Even in Rome it was harder because the AI often kept at least its general unit at the rear.
- still bad use of cavalry, the AI keeps charging front through its own melee units already engaged like it did in Rome. It's better now as it's less frequent but you will see this often enough. Surprisingly it does well with units like chariots and hounds, with rear and flank charges. But with heavy cav it's still bad imo.

But overall it's pretty decent and I'm glad to see the BAI much improved.

Now the biggest issue is the CAI, especially the AI army recruitment. It's so bad I want to cry when I see its army composition. There are some mods that change the army ratio and I know how to do it myself but it won't work well because of the building system. I saw a lot of people complaining about dwarfs army with only grudge towers or undead army with only bats and wolves. That's not because of the army composition, that's because of the buildings.

The way it is designed you will never see AI armies with high tier units even after 200 turns. The AI simply doesn't know how to efficiently build its towns to have access to a wide range of units. It will prioritize growth, wealth and public order over any military buildings. Just see how many weaving houses or tap rooms the AI will build in its regions! In Rome you have the issue with army full of levies because there are a lot of factions with only 1 town and the AI prioritize temples and whatever. But the issue is very easy to fix: just change the priority ratio for buildings to force the AI to make 1 military building in each town, tweak a little bit the army ratio and done you'll quickly see a lot of good armies. But all you need to have access to all units is 2 military buildings per province (barrack and auxiliary for example), and you can build them in minor settlements it doesn't matter. In Warhammer you have a lot of different building chains for recruitment and prerequisite (blacksmith, foundry...) and the tier system (tier 3 for minor settlements). It's very good for players (I like it anyway) but just imagine the nightmare for an AI.

I don't know how to adress this issue. I'm tired to see empire factions with full stacks of swordsmen, spearmen and crossbowmen after 200 turns because the only military building the AI builds is a barrack, with no gunsmith or blacksmith. I saw Wissenland, after losing Pfeildorf and Wissenburg, incapable of recruiting a single unit because in their tier 4 Nuln there was a tap room, a wall, a weaving house and the special artillery building I don't remember the name. So the AI couldn't even recruit a single unit! I saw a tier 4 Marienbourg with the port, the dye building, a tap room and a livery. They had 1 and a half stack only made of pistoliers (they lost Gorssel dozens of turns before)! Or dwarfs with full stacks of grudge towers because they only have the building to recruit grudge towers, but they have taverns...

Anybody has an idea?

[xambo]

I have found that the AI has become more aggressive and actually a bit more smart. One time the Greenskins made a great battle plan that really destroyed me. First they flanked from both sides while there main forces is facing me in the middle. Then what surprised me is that they had missile infantry from both flanks firing at my men. I just didn't know where to defend. I think flanking is very important in Warhammer. Here is a nice video that helped a lot about flanking. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2Q8G1AI_oo

[senna505]

the ai flanks really well and the battles are just fun again overall total war warhammer is a very good base.
the animations are the worst they have ever been i hope they can patch that up.

[Nuellafürst]

The ai is really good. Fighting against chaos, those goddamn hounds always find a way to your archers. Oartially because they always have 6 minimum of them