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Thread: Battle AI too easy

  1. #81

    Default Re: Battle AI too easy

    It's pretty amazing that we can program a computer to win at chess or go, but not to use its units effectively in a TW battle. EB battles are too easy because the AI still does the same stupid . Probably the #1 issue is the misuse of cavalry and generals. The AI loves to use its cavalry in melee combat with spearmen.

    You can nerf the player's units all you want, or buff the AI's units, the same issue will always be there: bad tactical algorithms.

  2. #82

    Default Re: Battle AI too easy

    Quote Originally Posted by QuintusSertorius View Post
    Watch charlieh's excellent Let's Play, in which you see battle after battle that aren't "30-second insta-routs" (he's playing on H/H). As just one easily obtained example that proves the charge to be nonsense.
    This question arise on a regular basis and that this very post had more than 70 answers.
    Calling it nonsense is a not subtle way to dodge an issue you are not confortable with.

  3. #83

    Default Re: Battle AI too easy

    Quote Originally Posted by Neuchatel View Post
    This question arise on a regular basis and that this very post had more than 70 answers.
    Calling it nonsense is a not subtle way to dodge an issue you are not confortable with.
    All the posts in this thread before you necro'd it relate to pre-2.3.

    Tell us what faction you have been playing in 2.3, what army composition you're using, what you've been fighting against, and what tactics you've been using.

  4. #84

    Default Re: Battle AI too easy

    Quote Originally Posted by Thuycidides View Post
    It's pretty amazing that we can program a computer to win at chess or go, but not to use its units effectively in a TW battle. EB battles are too easy because the AI still does the same stupid . Probably the #1 issue is the misuse of cavalry and generals. The AI loves to use its cavalry in melee combat with spearmen.

    You can nerf the player's units all you want, or buff the AI's units, the same issue will always be there: bad tactical algorithms.
    What's amazing is that the AI level hasn't changed since Shogun 1 to Napoleon Total War (the last game i still played). Basically TW games are released as broken from the start giving the player unfair advantage and making it way too easy and unrealistic

  5. #85

    Default Re: Battle AI too easy

    Quote Originally Posted by Neuchatel View Post
    This question arise on a regular basis and that this very post had more than 70 answers.
    Calling it nonsense is a not subtle way to dodge an issue you are not confortable with.
    Modders spend great part of their free time working in a project for FREE. Their modding skills are very limited due to EULA copyright (can't legally modify .exe files in order to fix CA engine and bad design non-sense). Hence, I can't understand why some people are more incisive and even aggresive towards altruist modding efforts than to CA, which has been working for decades with their TW engines and still can't even fix their crappy AI in recent games (R2TW, etc). Well, if the owning company (Creative Assembly) of TW games is releasing unpolished games with crappy AI, why do you blame EBII modding team? They're doing their best to solve CA's inconsistencies, but still you're complaining... how ungrateful.

    Focus your hating energy on the culprit (CA) for which you need modders to enjoy their empty games, but don't blame modders for CA incompetency...

  6. #86

    Default Re: Battle AI too easy

    Quote Originally Posted by Anubis88 View Post
    What's amazing is that the AI level hasn't changed since Shogun 1 to Napoleon Total War (the last game i still played). Basically TW games are released as broken from the start giving the player unfair advantage and making it way too easy and unrealistic
    I mostly agree with this.

    Although I'd like to add one caveat on the EBII BAI which I've found can be quite devastating and not so easy to deal with. I would even argue the AI performs better at this task, that of using large masses of horse archers. Man can it be a pain to fight those battles even on 6X speed sometimes, because it can be so hard to catch these units.

  7. #87
    z3n's Avatar State of Mind
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    Default Re: Battle AI too easy

    My most memorabale battle was in Broken Crescent (I've played all major mods).
    I was incidentally using my own files (CAI & BAI).

    The lead up to the battle was a failure on my own part, I sent out a nicely composed army with a family member (8 medium/heavy infantry, 4 heavy cavalry, 2 medium archer units, 2 light horse archer units), I was about to march them entirely through the region to attack a rebel town when they themselves turned rebel.

    Having planned to use a second army to attack a seperate town further north of Antioch, I sent that army to deal with the traitors in an epic battle of unparalleled proportions (I was at a slight 2:1 disadvantage, where the odds calculator was roughly around half but it suggested 2:1 odds), after the home rebel army in the area and my traitorous stack attacked me at once in an open field battle.

    The battle went back and forth with desperate hand to hand fighting on all fronts, my archers lacking ammo and myself being unable to outflank on my right where their cavalry was attacking my own arm of templar heavies and general.

    I broke the left flank and charged in my hospitaliers to attack their rear and eventually after a long hard fought encounter managed to rout 2 units. I barely won the battle.

    The moral of the story is that the unexpected backfire of my own plan was the most fun I've had in years of playing the TW games. This likely won't change in the future; the exe can't be modified. What has been done is the most that will be done in my opinion. Nobody is going to reverse engineer the exe just to modify a few variables and how the functions execute - potentially causing instability while the source code is a blackbox unit test to them. The few who have looked at it gave up, and nobody seems interested. I know I sure am not!
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  8. #88

    Default Re: Battle AI too easy

    Quote Originally Posted by z3n View Post
    The moral of the story is that the unexpected backfire of my own plan was the most fun I've had in years of playing the TW games.
    Similar thing happened to me as well. The most fun I had was when things didn't go according to plan. There are 2 battles in my 2.2 Carthage campaign that I will always remember.

    1. I used to keep two roughly equal field armies who did most of the fighting and conquering. They were active for most of the duration of my campaign and saw a lot of action. Naturally, the composition of those armies changed with time, but there was a sense of continuity, a feeling of tradition.

    One day, one of those armies rebelled. It was at peak strength, with experienced troops and an awesome commander. That army fought in many battles across many lands, and I grew quite attached to it. I was as heartbroken as one could get while playing a video game.

    The worst thing was that it rebelled in friendly territory and had started to cause a lot of trouble. Someone had to put them down.
    The only force capable of doing that was my other field army, who fought equally long, equally bravely, often alongside their now traitorous brothers. Truly, a sad situation. The two forces met at the slope of a mountain in Greece, with neither side having the terrain advantage. The ensuing battle was titanic, to say the least. I won, at great cost.

    Even though I was sad for having to fight that battle, I was left with the feeling of HELL YESS! That's what a campaign is supposed to be like! That's a story worth remembering! There should be loss, tragedy, misfortune! Otherwise, what are we left with? Bashing the AI until it can no longer keep up?


    2. I think this was before my mini Horus heresy-like event. No longer sure, though.
    I was duking it out against Macedonia. Basically, the Macedonians got really annoying by breaking peace all the time, and I decided to put them out for good. So, all their cities and armies were fair game.

    I spotted 2 stacks up north of my position and I sent spies to see what was there. The agents made their way into the enemy camp and reported that the Macedonians have a roughly 1.5 to 1 numerical advantage against me, but were lacking in armor. Since my army was well equipped, experienced and properly led, and I THOUGHT I would have the terrain advantage, I decided to go against my usual rule of not attacking more numerous enemies. I moved my field army and engaged both Macedonian armies at the same time.

    As soon as battle commenced, I saw I made a huge mistake.

    Instead of having the terrain advantage, I was the one left in the foot of a quite a steep hill.
    Since the AI had more units than me and covered more ground, I could not wiggle my way to better terrain without making contact with the enemy. The only thing I could do was go up fighting. So, my troops had the difficult task of climbing up the hill, all the while being peppered with rocks, arrows and javelins. When they got to the enemy, they were already tired and weakened by the missile shower.

    Most of my advantages were completely negated. What happened next was a massacre, for both sides. I wasn't able to quickly break the enemy, so the fight turned into a slogging match. I had the armor, they had the numbers... and the damn hill. Only a miracle saved me from mass rout, and I barely won the battle.
    Thankfully, my general had a surgeon in his retinue, so I was able to treat many casualties, but I still ended up with a bloody nose... and broken ribs, missing teeth etc.

    Lesson learned.
    Last edited by Rad; December 03, 2017 at 08:26 AM.

  9. #89

    Default Re: Battle AI too easy

    Quote Originally Posted by Kull View Post
    5) Accordingly, if the human player wants interesting and/or exciting Battles, they need to impose handicaps on their own play:
    - Use the general cam
    - No green triangles
    - No banners
    - Unit count/quality at 75-80% that of the AI
    Adding difficulty often involves compromising realism. If I play with general cam and a cavalry unit I can't see gets ran down and hacked to pieces by some spearmen that's just dumb because even the most tactically ignorant officer would have prevented that from hapenning (unless there was VERY poor visibility). Similiarly, if an infantry unit doesn't counter-charge attacking enemy infantry.

    And in general, units outside the main commander's field of vision wouldn't be inactive, the officers would be carrying out the plan that was made beforehand. Any adjustments or changes of plan would be communicated via a messenger, it's ridiculous that the main commander has to gallop around to give orders in general cam. In regular cam, you are simply acting as both the commander and his officers. The ideal solution would be to leave a portion of your units under AI control, but who trusts the AI?

  10. #90

    Default Re: Battle AI too easy

    Quote Originally Posted by Genghis Skahn View Post
    I mostly agree with this.

    Although I'd like to add one caveat on the EBII BAI which I've found can be quite devastating and not so easy to deal with. I would even argue the AI performs better at this task, that of using large masses of horse archers. Man can it be a pain to fight those battles even on 6X speed sometimes, because it can be so hard to catch these units.
    Just line up a ton of foot missile units and have them fire at the HAs, and have some spearmen in loose formation behind them ready to jump in if they try to charge those missile units. Afaik foot archers tend to outrange HAs so a shootout like this favours the foot army.

    Quote Originally Posted by z3n View Post
    The moral of the story is that the unexpected backfire of my own plan was the most fun I've had in years of playing the TW games.
    No way to architect that.

  11. #91

    Default Re: Battle AI too easy

    General cam is an abomination to strategy games.

  12. #92
    z3n's Avatar State of Mind
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    Default Re: Battle AI too easy

    No way to architect that.
    That's exactly my point, you're not going to have any sort of 'architecture' happening on the AI end.
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  13. #93

    Default Re: Battle AI too easy

    Quote Originally Posted by Rad View Post
    General cam is an abomination to strategy games.
    i've tried using it but found command options are lacking and units being unrealistically unresponsive when under fire/attack. at the very least there needs to be an option for a simple 'charge/attack' order that would not require a right click on a hostile unit, so that you click on a unit icon and then issue 'charge'. clearly battles werent designed with gen camera in mind.

  14. #94

    Default Re: Battle AI too easy

    My biggest gripe with Medieval 2 and, by extension, all its mods is that the AI can never assault a walled settlement properly, and there's nothing you can do to help. Not using elite armies, decreasing number of men, general cam... do not work, as the problem is pathfinding. After an exhausting siege battle as the Makedonians against Epirus, I'm starting to be drawn to the dark thought that Warhammer sieges are superior...

    The above is just joking, historical TW games are the best (and I'm not wearing rose-tinted glasses... well, may be ). But seriously, that battle took me the whole afternoon, and for all the wrong reasons.

    Pyrrhus was attacking Korinthos. At the outset, everything goes smoothly (except that he put his elephants in the front and my skirmishers were able to make short work of them, and they trampled a tenth of his army running amok). Rams, ladders and siege towers were pushed forward, so far so good. Then the problem starts, and boy disasters don't strike once. The Peltastai Makedones, after putting ladders against my wall, decided that scaling them would be too tiring and instead sat in the shades of the wall to chill out, letting their fellow Apeirotes do all the hard work. Oh well, the ram and siege tower still worked properly. But after getting on the rampart and cutting down 200 of my men with virtually no losses, the Hypaspistai also called it a day and placed their faith on the men that would break through the city gate, led by none other than the great warrior king Pyrrhus himself. It could have worked, if he and his heir Ptolemaios hadn't lead their men straight in the spearwall of my defenders. Though only militia, they were still able to drag the Apeirotan king from his horse and slit his throat. Such is the end of the great Pyrrhus. His firstborn son soon followed his father.

    Their head cut off, the attackers didn't know what to do next... literally. They just stood still completely, probably shocked at the sight of their king's body trampled over by Macedonian farmers. No attempts were made to carry on the assault, as they got stuck trying to funnel themselves onto the siege tower and ladders. And as the AI desperately tried to make its troops to move, my computer experienced the worst stuttering ever, even worse than when I tried to run Attila at high settings Well, I didn't want the brave efforts of my Macedonians to go to waste, so I decided to sit out the 60-minute time limit... in 2 and a half hours, thanks to the lag. At least I threw Epirus off my back... only to be greeted by a KH army filled with hoplites Thank god this time Antigonos was able to ride to Korinthos' aid and I crushed the flimsy Hellenic League in a pitched battle

  15. #95
    Jurand of Cracow's Avatar History and gameplay!
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    Default Re: Battle AI too easy

    I'd like to necro this thread because there was a lot talking here about how easy the battles are. One more issue's came to my mind: the easiness is related also to a good intelligence. If the player can know in advance where the enemy is and what kind of forces he's facing, then he can prepare beforehand.
    So my thought is: we should make the player more ignorant of the forces, their compositi, n and location. I've started a thread on this topic, there's some information gathered. I wonder if you EBII guys elaborated on this topic and what is your opinion?
    cheers
    JoC

  16. #96

    Default Re: Battle AI too easy

    You can always make battles much harder for yourself by putting them on "general cam' thereby giving yourself the vantage point of historical generals. You could also put some units you can't then see under AI control.

  17. #97
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    Default Re: Battle AI too easy

    You can always make battles much harder for yourself by putting them on "general cam' thereby giving yourself the vantage point of historical generals. You could also put some units you can't then see under AI control.
    That won't fix the AI routing in seconds.
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  18. #98

    Default Re: Battle AI too easy

    Quote Originally Posted by Sint View Post
    That won't fix the AI routing in seconds.
    When was the last time you saw this in 2.3?

  19. #99

    Default Re: Battle AI too easy

    I'm pretty happy with 2.3's AI morale. I play on VH/VH, though.

    I might try a VH/H campaign in the next version, because I am getting a bit annoyed by the fact that the AI units get morale and stamina bonuses instead of actually fighting smarter like they should. If VH/H proves to be too easy, I'll drop the campaign.
    Last edited by Rad; April 26, 2018 at 01:20 PM.

  20. #100

    Default Re: Battle AI too easy

    The Ai is not too bad. you are just too good! lol. Trust me i have this problem also. If you are veteran Total war Player. YOU are always win. The way to mitigate this. Use Hard or VH battle AI. and give yourself Mostly Peasant Armies (cheat) and fight the battle. the AI will show it is not really bad. They actually will not send their entire army to fight 1 army, and leave themselves vulnerable. They actually use their cavalry to harass, and have the army cover their rear.

    I have been having great time this way. Its not too OP for me to just push AI, but its not OP for AI because i have a half stack or more of peasant infantry that do little damage, but do help by tiring enemy.

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