AI: Testing Difficulty Levels

Note about tactical battles: For debugging, I only have 1 tactical battle map.

So lots of brown.

Interesting stuff! The second vid is bugged, btw.

It's also important to make sure that rushing the nearest opponent doesn't give you as much benefit against the other remaining kingdoms as you would get if you just focused on building up your empire. In some Civ games, you should always capture the closest opponent's cities as fast as you can to get a definitive edge over everyone else. It's boring if that's the tactic you have to use every time.

I'm aiming to make players pay for doing it.

Not saying that it shouldn't be a strategy players can choose. But it needs to carry some serious risk.

Glad to see champions can die.  I'd like to see a retire champion option that gives you a choice of retiring a champion, to gain their heir some turns laters, who would be lvl 1, but with benefits from their adventurer parent.

That said, I think one of the fundamental things with AI is the ability of humans to save and reload means humans will be more reckless.  They really do get an advantage against the AI in that sense.  I'm generally ok with optional AI players get benefits vs some AI monsters to compensate.  (at least in terms of luck).

Maybe give AI's the ability to replay battles a few times per game in player AI vs world AI battles?

I don't like the hit point boost given to ai units, it just doesn't seem fair/realistic (I couldn't enjoy playing higher lvl difficulties at all in E:wom because of this), I would like to play on higher difficulties but want it to be that they have an extra node/gold mine/iron mine/ food resources/ lvl 2 techs starting off - something that makes 'since' in the game world rather than these goblins are 10' tall now instead of 4' (24 hit points instead of normall goblin health of 6)

"AI still casting stupid strategic spells."

I thought there were no stupid spells in EFE.

Thanks for the great journal!

Awesome post. Much joy in reading, thanks Frogboy!

I gotta agree here that I prefer more natural bonuses so silly hp bonuses.

Luck vs the environment would be the best buff- players don't see it, and unlucky AIs are often too gimped to be fun to play against.

I agree.  Luck versus the environment seems to be worth considering for the AI, to compensate for its inability to reload, with minimal interruption or noticeability to the player.

I'm going to pay you guys the highest compliment I know.  That tactical battle looked just like Master of Magic.  Only better.

What if the ai got an additional so many points to spend on traits/bonuses at the creation setup depending on difficulty lvl?  This way a hard or elit ai would recieve an additional 10 or 20 points to make the faction stronger off the start, allowing them to have additional 'defaulted' bonuses.  I would like the ability to spend points during creation to start with a library/gold mine/iron mine (like in E:wom)/magic node of choice/barracks/and so on.  This would add alot of options for specific strategies while allowing for the more difficult ai's to have the additional starting bonuses.  The 'Circle of Magi' Kingdom would be able to start with an additional node or three & a library, ensuring they're considered to be regarded as a powerfull Magic based Kingdom for instance or 'Tha Legion' could start off with the barracks, iron mine, food resources, 'Troy' could start with walls, militia, market, and so on pretty much like in E:wom but a few more options to allow for even greater diversity.

I also much prefer more hidden bonuses like a resource boost to higher level AIs over a hp advantage.

Good stuff.

Good feedback and ideas here. I'll nix the hp bonus and setithe effect.

I agree that better starting locations and increased amount of perks per faction would be really nice AI difficulty modifiers. It would be nice if the premade factions had different versions for each difficulty, so that it's not a blanket bonus for all AI players, but rather that the difference between Normal and Challenging Altar AI is different than that of Normal and Challenging Kraxis AI. It would allow for more flavor for each faction.

"Oh you beat Altar at Insane? Well, have you tried against Kraxis at insane, it's a completely different game."

This would be fun thing to mod too; it would be fun to be able to create your own faction and make different setups for each difficulty.

Maybe this could go the other way too? If you take an easier difficulty than normal, you get to use the factions with more bonuses instead of the AI. Or maybe you want to play the game at custom difficulty, giving each player the most souped up versions of the factions.

PS. Not mentioned here yet, stuff like increased sight radius / no fog of war for AI are invisible cheats I wouldn't mind either. I don't really know how much increased sight actually helps the AI, though.

The other thing you might consider as a disincentive to the save/reload is a "hardcore" mode; where saving is limited to exiting the game only.  Give a score bonus (or a resource or luck bonus, as discussed above) if you're playing in hardcore mode.

Yes a hardcore mode would be a nice addition. Needs to be shielded against crashes though.

That's good because if/when you give the AI a bonus you want it to be as subtle as possible. HP point is right in your face because it so obviously different from what you have. OTOH things like small production bonuses or better starting locations people tend to dismiss as luck or attribute to the AI's superior playing since they can't see it directly. 

On the harder difficulties I think the AI should have visibility to the entire map (or scale with the difficulty). This should help ensure optimum placing of new settlements and best strategic movement of armies. Basically what I'm striving for is the AI to exploit any player weaknesses (undefended or weakly defended settlements, overstretching of a supply line to allow flanking, etc). I remember EWOM games where all the AI had to do was exploit my weaknesses and it was game over - instead, they would send numerous small armies (instead of a big one) and also commit sovereign suicide. Frustrating.

If you can create an AI that acts really smart (by giving it all the information it needs and also subtle to the player) it would be much better than a stupid AI with a bunch of % modifier handicaps. I'm picturing normal difficulty on the same level as the player - fog of war, etc. Higher up you go, the "smarter" it gets strategically (by giving it more info to make decisions).

For tactical combat, unsure how to make the AI "smarter". Maybe the default is as smart as can be but lower levels you add some randomness of AI making less than ideal choices? For example, smart AI decides first option is to focus fire on archers or weak units. However, if on normal difficulty, randomness calc (maybe 50% chance of doing a lower priority action) tells a unit to do priority #2 or #3 which is to attack the heavily armored melee unit.

In short I could care less if the AI on hardest difficulty knows the optimal settlement locations, knows my weaknesses, etc. I want a "smart" challenge vs. a dumb "brute" challenge. Maybe the sweet spot is a mixture of the two. I got that feeling from GalCivII and would love to feel it FE.

I don't think giving the AI traits would work very well. It would homogenize all the teams. Instead a blanket resource multiplier or starting bonus would work better.

Giving the AI a good starting location could work but you would still have to watch out that the bonus is not always the same, ie a gold mine. Giving them a extra random resource tile, or a boost to food could work.

A hidden combat multiplier or ability to redo/undo combat in PvE would also work very well I think.That way you wouldn't have to worry about them getting unlucky in combat versus monsters.

I agree but really this should be because factions play different period, even at low difficulties, not because of a artificial boost at high difficulties. 

If it is possible to ramp up the difficulty just by letting the AI to see more of the map, that would be optimal.

I don't get how giving more traits to higher level AIs would make them more homogenous than giving a blanket resource bonus. A blanket resource bonus is identical to all the factions getting the same extra trait. If you would give each AI different extra traits depending on their faction, it would make them more diverse, not the other way around.

So I still think that if the factions have additional bonuses at tougher difficulty levels, I would like them to be different for each faction. It would be nice if you actually saw what the additional bonuses each faction gets at a higher difficulty level as well.

I don't think it should be nixed, but should be a seperate difficulty option, if the UI can handle it.  Or maybe AI should be a tab all its own in options

How I'd like to see difficulty, this is a new idea, but it's something that could be implemented in the beta without radical changes.

Difficulty level caps at the max AI (and add a use full resource AI like you had in GC2 so we can trade a slower game for a smarter AI)

Then, have various AI cheats which can be turned on or off, such as some of the things suggested here.  (hp bonus, AI can "re-roll" battles, and so on)

I think this would provide the most varied experience, so everyone could find what they want.  Balance around max AI and no cheats though.

On the game select: you'd select world difficulty, and individual AI difficulty, which would default to the difficulty set in options.  AI Cheats would only be set in options