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[Shadowlord]

I once tried modding Civ IV to take away the AI's cheats, but the Ai couldn't handle playing without them. Their standard strategy appeared to be to recruit troops constantly without regard to how many they already had, or to the upkeep cost. So it broke down even more obviously when they had the full costs imposed and such - their troops were disbanding as fast as they were training them, so they had no income and most of their cities were throwing away their production.

[TripJack]

can't you play on noble difficulty to take away the ai's cheats

[Sergarr]

can't you play on noble difficulty to take away the ai's cheats

pretty sure that doesn't take all of their cheats.

They can still see through the fog of war.

[Graknorke]

I also strongly dislike game developers that call stupid AI as a "feature".

Examples?

[Sergarr]

I also strongly dislike game developers that call stupid AI as a "feature".

Examples?

I remember there being one from the developers of Heroes 5 saying in one of the interviews that "AI should not actually try to fight the player, but "beautifully lose" instead", because apparently the players do not want to actually fight AI, but instead subconsciously want to always win against it.

It was bullshit.

[Shadowlord]

can't you play on noble difficulty to take away the ai's cheats

You should be able to check fairly easily. It's one file which contains the definitions for every difficulty, iirc. I never bought the civ IV expansions*, so I wouldn't know if they might have improved the Ai in them, but in vanilla civ IV the Ai still cheated on noble.

[Mech#4]

I also strongly dislike game developers that call stupid AI as a "feature".

Examples?

I remember there being one from the developers of Heroes 5 saying in one of the interviews that "AI should not actually try to fight the player, but "beautifully lose" instead", because apparently the players do not want to actually fight AI, but instead subconsciously want to always win against it.

It was bullshit.

I do agree with his statement to a degree. When I'm playing "Dawn of War: Ultimate Apocalypse" I'm more looking for an overall narrative rather than just beating the A.I. I know the A.I could beat me if I played on harder because it can perform many more actions than I can, also the A.I doesn't get tired of doing the same things.

When I play I look for a narrative. The brave stand off of the Blood Angels vs Tyranids; an endless wave of termagaunts breaking against the walls, turrets and devastators. Something that I can keep going for an hour or so before pushing forwards through the tide to take out the Tyranid base and defeat them. The map speaking of battles that took place at certain locations through the piles of bodies "I remember when those scout snipers got taken out by Lictors", "Those terminators were launched into the middle of the attacking force and held out just long enough to deploy a new beachhead".

The last game I played was me and an A.I as Eldar vs Tyranids. My A.I ally wasn't much help (actually managed to destroy his own base using a massive physic storm) but I held off the endless horde myself with a large wall of turrets, artillery and titans. Sometime into the battle I started teleporting builders onto buildings that were around the enemy base and I began building a webway and turrets there to work as a launching point for a strike team to take out their base.

If the A.I rushes to build carnifexes and then trygons then sure, it will win but I'll be left without a satisfying narrative after only 10-20 minutes, and in this mod it takes about 30-40 minutes to get all the really fun titans and relic units.

[Darkmere]

Eh while we're on the topic, my single biggest beef with Warlock: Master of the Arcane was how pitiful the AI was. None of the AI's ever upgraded a single unit, so regardless of difficulty setting, every game was your units outmaneuvering the enemy weenies, leveling up, then slaughtering dozens more completely un-leveled and un-upgraded enemy trash.

http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198013830700/screenshot/541879079243602366

My 5 units there will kill 3X the number of teal troops on the screen without ever being in real danger. All teal will do for the entire war is churn out or summon garbage level 1 units at 3 or 4 per turn to feed my troops experience. For the whole game. Fun.

[Bohandas]

I once tried modding Civ IV to take away the AI's cheats, but the Ai couldn't handle playing without them. Their standard strategy appeared to be to recruit troops constantly without regard to how many they already had, or to the upkeep cost. So it broke down even more obviously when they had the full costs imposed and such - their troops were disbanding as fast as they were training them, so they had no income and most of their cities were throwing away their production.

What if you gave the AI's cheats to the player? That would hypothetically make the game symmetrical without breaking the AI's design.

[Shadowlord]

Sure, that would work. If your unit upkeep was reduced, and you took advantage of it, you'd end up managing a lot more troops. I don't remember what the other things were that were different for the AI.

But bear in mind that the AI has cheats not just because it can't play without them, but because the developers likely decided that it needed them to pose a challenge to you (because they didn't have the time or expertise to make it smart enough - or they didn't want to make it too clever so that players couldn't out-think it).

[Mech#4]

I remember reading about the A.I in Age of Empires 1 and how it had a very strict build order. It would choose which building to make next based on a list and where it would place it also based on a list. If something was in the way it wouldn't place the building and end up stalling because it couldn't do anything else other than follow it's list. The easiest ways to mess up the A.I was to play on small island maps or start as nomads with your villages scattered.

A.I's in other games tend to have things like extra resources, lowered costs for things, jumping pre-requisites and the like. The A.I in "Sins of a Solar Empire" can have unique research topics that boost the health and other stats of it's ships as well as resource generation.

I think one of the aids in Civilisation IV was the A.I would sometimes finish building a wonder just before you would complete it. Or was that Civilisation III?

[Sergarr]

I also strongly dislike game developers that call stupid AI as a "feature".

Examples?

I remember there being one from the developers of Heroes 5 saying in one of the interviews that "AI should not actually try to fight the player, but "beautifully lose" instead", because apparently the players do not want to actually fight AI, but instead subconsciously want to always win against it.

It was bullshit.

I do agree with his statement to a degree. When I'm playing "Dawn of War: Ultimate Apocalypse" I'm more looking for an overall narrative rather than just beating the A.I. I know the A.I could beat me if I played on harder because it can perform many more actions than I can, also the A.I doesn't get tired of doing the same things.

When I play I look for a narrative. The brave stand off of the Blood Angels vs Tyranids; an endless wave of termagaunts breaking against the walls, turrets and devastators. Something that I can keep going for an hour or so before pushing forwards through the tide to take out the Tyranid base and defeat them. The map speaking of battles that took place at certain locations through the piles of bodies "I remember when those scout snipers got taken out by Lictors", "Those terminators were launched into the middle of the attacking force and held out just long enough to deploy a new beachhead".

The last game I played was me and an A.I as Eldar vs Tyranids. My A.I ally wasn't much help (actually managed to destroy his own base using a massive physic storm) but I held off the endless horde myself with a large wall of turrets, artillery and titans. Sometime into the battle I started teleporting builders onto buildings that were around the enemy base and I began building a webway and turrets there to work as a launching point for a strike team to take out their base.

If the A.I rushes to build carnifexes and then trygons then sure, it will win but I'll be left without a satisfying narrative after only 10-20 minutes, and in this mod it takes about 30-40 minutes to get all the really fun titans and relic units.

Old games had cheats for helping you doing that. That way you can have both smart AI and narrative.

Sure, that would work. If your unit upkeep was reduced, and you took advantage of it, you'd end up managing a lot more troops. I don't remember what the other things were that were different for the AI.

But bear in mind that the AI has cheats not just because it can't play without them, but because the developers likely decided that it needed them to pose a challenge to you (because they didn't have the time or expertise to make it smart enough - or they didn't want to make it too clever so that players couldn't out-think it).

It's the first one. There are not many companies in the world capable of creating a good strategy AI. I remember Galactic Civilizations had a pretty good AI, according to reviews. But it's much more primitive than Civilization, so creating a good AI for Civ would be still hard.

[Mech#4]

Old games had cheats for helping you doing that. That way you can have both smart AI and narrative.

Certainly I could cheat. It would make the initial build up much easier and get to the action in a shorter amount of time.

However, even as someone who has no problem with using cheats whenever I feel like it, they do cheapen a good narrative. The build up to the main event is just as important as the main event itself. The epic battle wouldn't have as much impact without the calm before, waiting for the enemy to attack, wondering whether the defences will be enough and where they'll attack from. Building turrets with brittle techpriest engineers while swarms die all around, basilisks dropping earthshaker rounds to help stymie the horde just enough. The edge between victory and defeat is a thin one but very satisfying while also being quite tense.

Though I will counter that last bit by saying I have outright quit if the A.I managed to overcome my defences. Once the advantage has been lost it is very difficult to regain it, and I have little wish to continue a game against the A.I. if it is clear I'm going to lose.

[Shadowlord]

There are some games where you can still win when it looks like you're going to lose, and that's always satisfying, and sometimes it's fun to stay in the game just to see what happens.

[Bohandas]

Sure, that would work. If your unit upkeep was reduced, and you took advantage of it, you'd end up managing a lot more troops.

...plus, unit upkeep is excessive anyway.