LH AI

Well said. I have made the same point several times but perhaps have been a bit too vitriolic for the message to be heard or heeded!

The truth of the matter is that LH is now a good game but the AI still does too many stupid things. I wrote a whole post about this somewhere, it isn't that the AI is bad, it plays a reasonable game when it is playing well. The problem is that there are too many occasions where the AI goes off the rails and does something completely stupid. I suspect the core AI coding is pretty good now but there must still be some big bugs in some of the helper routines. It runs into these bugs and then just falls apart doing the sort of braindead things you mentioned above.

Send me that saved game!

Ok, I reinstalled dropbox, figured that's the easiest way...

Save game is named "1v1 NoXpSplit 16.EleSav"

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/5475789/1v1%20NoXpSplit%2016.EleSav

Champion Buddy unit (based off of Odinlowbane's 'Duke the Wolflord')

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/5475789/Champion_Buddy.xml

Spell to summon champion buddy (sorry, can't remember offhand who provided this -- my apologies to you)

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/5475789/SummonBuddyBlueKia.xml

Not sure you need champion buddy and the spell, but just in case they're provided.

Remember I have CoS (updated) mod running, and LH 1.3 (most current off steam).

Be nice to Buddy, Blue, and Kia.  Especially Kia as she was just diagnosed with Jugular Phlebectasia -- apparently the only dog ever so honored/diagnosed (and the vet specialist said there's only ~100 people world-wide also affected by this).  She's pictured in my forum icon thingie.

If you want earlier saves to compare progress/building/etc of the Skeleton King let me know, I save frequently as I was having crashes (likely due to BitDefender 2013, now removed and crashes seem to have halted).

Thanks Mr. Froggy for looking into this!

And again, this isn't a complaint/criticism/etc.  LH is truly a great game.  Kudos to you and your band of merry coders/artists/etc.!

hmm, funny, looks like AI doesnt know what are his priorities (like crushing human opponent!).

Can we get editable start positions in scenario random generator and saving of maps from it?

I would dearly like to share some of the maps I played with friends...

It's easy to mod. Give war the highest priority. Add more hatred between kingdoms and empires. Choose Insane difficulty... And die. I didn't hear any complains on Insane AI, did you?

Second, I play Insane, this thread is about an Insane game.  I've been playing Insane for quite a while.  While the 1.3 AI is much improved, I still see AI being good at declaring but if they're at a distance (for example, players's zone of influence not visible from AI's zone of influence) the AI is not so good at delivering an attack.

In the saved game submitted it's gone something like the following:

-AI decs me, never arrives and I don't go after him.

-after a while AI sues for peace, I accept.

-AI decs me a short time later

-A while later AI sov arrives with 1 stack, he dies (I barely survive) -- so AI is capable of traversing the distance.

-A while later AI sov sues for peace, I accept.

-A short while later AI sov decs me

-A very very long time later no attacks from AI, I check him out (the fixed-in-1.4 bug where AI casts the 'see the map' spell and I could then see the entire map) and notice his super army stack just sitting there

When AIs are nearby they are ok at delivering attacks.  When at a distance, as in my current game, not-so-good.

Difficulty level seems to not be part of this.  I noticed the same thing on lower difficulty levels, tho that was many many months and several versions ago.

I'm not interested in DLC that adds items/units so much as I would be in one that adds this.  Something like Civ4 where one can take a new game and edit that map then save it then play or share it.

It would also better enable the ability to run Games of the Month a la Civ4.  That adds a lot to the community and longevity of a game.  LH is such a good game that it merits it.

I started this thread a month ago to report stacked, unmoving AI armies.  The following screenshot is from a current game, updated LH, no mods, with the new undeal DLC:

It's my custom undead faction vs Pariden and Capitar.  Huge random map, all Insane AI/NPCs -- my usual game settings as previously described.  Both AI declared on me several times each, and on each other.  No AI armies have approached me (their territory is kinda distant so it's kinda understandable).  I'm currently 'at war' with Capitar but not Pariden, and the 2 AIs are at war with each other and have been for a number of turns.  Capitar and Pariden are somewhat distant from each other too, which may explain the lack of progress in prosecuting their war.  They obviously know of each other tho (as that's required to declare).

AI armies are still massing and just sitting.  Tweny-seven armies in the screenshot!

I've also seen the AI in tactical battles successfully terrorize one of my units, then a second AI unit uses terrorize on my already terrorized unit.  Either there's no check to see if a target is already affected by the about-to-be-cast spell/effect, or the check occurs only at certain intervals (to speed up the game as checking every possible time would slow things down too much?).

I'm really enjoying the undead DLC (terrorize is likely a bit too powerful, perhaps it shouldn't be chained successively?  Maybe a turn of immunity after a turn of being terrorized?).  Good job to all at Stardock!

And again, the artwork in this game is stunning.  Gameplay is a lot of fun.  Things are getting fixed/improved/added to, which means a lot.  My time played in LH is 356 hours so far (and counting!).  The game is continually improving.

This isn't a complaint, it's just data.

A lot of times I have seen lots of enemy groups occupying the same space before.

It's kinda sad that it makes Starfall and the like able to easily kill or seriously mutilate an uber huge portion of their entire force in one cast.

If it happens in your territory then you can freeze them and starfalls will kill 100% of their force before they are unfrozen.

There should be some check that says if they already sent a group to that space then it is unavailable to the next group that gets processed.

I'm sure Stardock would like to get that savegame...

So the AI is STILL basically broken and no challenge at all? If they are just sitting in one spot and not building anything then this is just another game of delay until the inevitable happens. The human player wins.

I'm not saying the AI is no challenge at all.  I am saying that under certain circumstances the AI armies get sent to a rally point and then don't move out and instead accumulate there.

My guess is that this occurs when the AI's territory is at some distance to my territory and the AI pathfinding can't route its units to my territory.  Either the AI doesn't know where my territory is (if so -- how do they know of me to declare war on me?), or the AI doesn't know of a relatively uncircuitous route to me.

I'm playing huge maps with 1 or 2 AI so when we start out fairly distant to each other I see this.  Whether this also occurs on smaller maps and/or with more AI, I don't know.  If it was common I'd expect to see more reports of this, which suggests...

Willie your post reminds me of Oddball from Kelly's Heroes -- "Always with the negative waves, Moriarty, always with the negative waves."

LH is a great game.  Lots of things work great.  And for things that don't work as well as we'd all like, that's due in large part to Stardock having such an ambitious goal for the game.  Consider all the features/goals/etc. for Elemental.  It's an AAA title from a relatively small company.  They didn't put out a game with limited goals, they shot for the moon and are pretty much nailing it.

I almost only play on the tiniest maps and I have still seen similar phenomena even when the AI and I had borders touching each other.

Mind you with me it is more like 5 or 6 groups instead of 27, but that is where math size comes in.  

In tiny maps they don't have 500 cities and 30+ groups.  

With a handful of cities they are limited to a smaller number of groups, but they still get stuck the same way regardless.

Well, I'm sorry you think that way but we all can't be genius's. I bought this game wihen it was Elemtal:War of Magic. I expect by now for the game to be FIXED and the AI to be in AAA performace. What you're telling me shows that it's not. I paid good money for a piece of crap and I see it 's still a piece of crap and the devs aren't doing anything to FIX it but put out more DLC and stuff we have to pay for. Who cares about crappy maps when the game is still BROKEN. I'll continue to be NEGATIVE like MORIORITY until they FIX it.

AFAIK, Stardock isn't a AAA studio.  Why would they really be expected to make AAA games?

Who exactly does have this AI with  AAA performance? Civilization on release doesn't. Total War on release doesn't. And those are studios which I am sure have many, many times the resources Stardock do. I was certainly among those calling for the AI to be improved a few months ago, because a lot of the time it did seem to play in a rather brain dead manner, but they have made significant improvements in the last few versions; one of the most impressive things to me with this game is the amount of continuous improvement. Have you actually played the game recently?

I'm not saying the AI is faultless, and it can be beaten fairly easily unless given a large amount of bonuses, but it's massively improved. I've personally not seen the "27 armies in one tile" problem. This may reflect the way I play, I don't tend to play long enough for the armies to get that large. I have seen the AI turn up with three Deadly stacks when I only had one Strong stack, and completely crush me.

Calling it "crap" is not going to encourage anyone to work harder on it. I'd imagine it would make them more likely to ignore your posts, if anything.

Well said merlinme.

I actually agree with some of what willie said in that I think the AI still lags behind the quality of the rest of the game, but there is no doubt that Stardock have made significant progress and also little question that willie is being too vitriolic to be taken seriously by Stardock.

I'm curious as to what AAA Ai I'm supposed to aspire to. Which fantasy strategy game has better AI and why?

Best AI was in first Warlords. The easier rules - the better for AI. But players demand more. Yes. FELH is a good game with average AI but it has great potential for modding. I've been busy modding for 2 months and while testing, I see how strong AI could be. BTW AOW:SM was also raw. AI could not use lots of features, it even could not build pioneers and wizard towers in original game.

So I invite everybody who thinks that AI is stupid to my new mod next week to test the new powers of AI (diplomacy, unit building, expansion, and battles). The name is Patchwork Mod - for comfortable and challenging gameplay. All suggestions may be written here: https://forums.elementalgame.com/448780/page/1/#3417600

The AI and the number of difficuly levels in Gal Civ II. I've always enjoyed playing that game because of all the choices. I don't see that in Elemental. I don't feel that in Elemental. Elemental feels 2nd grade compared to Gal Civ II's ai performance.

But, other AAA AI's that are not triple A games would be, Centurian Defender of Rome (one of the best ai's in the history of gaming) War of the Lance (another one of the great AI's done by Dave Landrey) Norbsoft's Civilwar series, Sid Meier's Civilwar Series,  Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri,  Medieval Conquest, Battle Academy, Command OPS, Spartan, of course Civilization, but a lil program called CEVO is better and a much tougher ai. I would never include any of the Total War AI's because they are pitiful as well. When one can walk all over and march in on an AI, the games are crap. I remember good AI's back in the 80's and early 90's, ever since Win95 things have gotten progressively WORSE because graphics became more important than AI. I can say I've lived through the development of computer games and I know what I've seen and today's computer programs aren't anything in quality like the computer games of yesterday.

As far as just fantasy AI's, HOMM II & III had pretty good ai's, very challenging and fun to play. The only thing about those games is everything got repetitive, much like this game does. You build the same crap in the same order pretty much every game and the ai does the same stupid chit every game. I've said it before an I'll say it again stop with the SEEN and SPECIFIC research. Blind research and breakthru's are more fun. Knowing what I'm going to research and get gets boring. Sid Meier did it in Alpha Centauri, really great and fun game. Combat ai of that game left something to be desired but the blind research in that game was awesome. Players can pick a catagory of research, but, not the specific thing. Like I might pick weapon technololy but might not get the same upgrade every single game. Not knowing is the fun part. Randomness is your friend.

I disagree with most of the games you listed here. Other then the fact that most of these are not AAA games even though some come from AAA studios. The thing to remember is most of these games have scripted encounters, enemy units tuned so well that an illusion is created that the AI is competent, or have a small number of units with a very limited number of actions (i.e. Chess). GalCiv2 and, with each iteration of the game, Elemental are a couple rare examples of decent AI in a procedurally generated game. When I say decent that is like 9/10 most games I would give a 3/10 in this area. 

The other games...there maybe a bit of nostalgia going on here. I used to think Master of Magic had a pretty good AI. The AI in HOMM2/3 was not that great. It just received enough bonuses that it forced you on the defensive until you learned what made it tick.  I will admit I never played much of Alpha Centauri.  I've heard very good things about it. The Civilization AI has always been pretty poor in general. If you don't believe me play on Prince which is the best AI with no bonuses to the computer. The AI have always stupidly chosen to continue a futile path unless the rules of the game forced it to do otherwise. 

Graphics are not the reason why most games suffer in the AI department. The AI is generally not programmed by the game artists. This is a myth created on an assumption rather than fact. Randomness, the power of choice, and hardware limitations are some of thing things I see that is wrong with AI. 

Randomness is not AI. Randomness in AI is used to force errors into the decision making or to add personality to the AI. It does make the AI less predictable but it also can cause the AI to do some very dumb things. These decisions are the ones that will generally end up on forums like this because a random number generator forced the AI to pick plan C over the simply obvious plan A. At best randomness is a tool that can either help or hurt the AI. Generally it is the later. 

Most well made games are designed in a way to give the player a variety of options to play with.  AI does not have the ability to choose what would be fun without the assistance of an RNG, which again is not AI. It can only be given clue in the form of mathematical functions to make the right choice. Which is the root of it's predictable behavior since math is predictable. 

AI also suffers from hardware limitations. This is what excites me about GalCiv3 is some of the biggest hurdles will disappear with the forced DX10+ and 64-bit OS. Also, most players don't want to wait 5 minutes a turn for the AI to analyze every movement option it can make and the ramifications of each option over the coarse of 10 turns. The more you are not playing the game the more you likely will abandon the game. With the new hardware requirements the AI can be given more actions without impacting.

What I would do, which is what made GalCiv2 so successful, is to do a write up on anything the AI is doing wrong or how you can exploit the AI and post it on the forums. Not everything is easy to implement but it is a well known fact with any game that the AI will do things the developer did not think of or expect to happen.

Finally, my AI request. I see the AI does pull it's injured units back but can the code be looked at to see when it's appropriate to use that injured unit to finish off one of my units. In the current state the AI will forever run away unless it is the last unit standing even if most of my units can be dispatched with 1 more hit.

A good A.I's job is too roleplay the theme and add enough threat to make good game stories.I think no matter how much dev time is spent on A.I people are gonna moan.FE issues was the A.I empires threat was non existent until a few patches back.

Yep

I think War of Magic had the funniest moments at release. This is not intended to pick a scab, but I remember the AI used to march it's sovereign into your territory without an army. In that game, if the sovereign died in enemy territory it was game over for that faction.

It's not roleplay or faction it's how well the ai performs in that particular game. The games I listed had exceptional AI's whether scripted or not. They were challenging and made me think, that's the importance of an ai that it makes you think about what to do. Too many of these games you can build the same template every single game and you win. All you are doing is just playing against the ai a DELAYING activity. That's no fun. I want some worry and fear when I play like when I get when I play another human player that is near my expertise of gaming. Those are fun games too. But, they are few and far between as well because just like finding a good ai game you have to search around for good pbem opponents or tcp/ip ones.

Centurian Defender of Rome gave me headaches trying to beat it and that was just on normal difficulty. I eventually beat it on that difficulty but it took many games and repetive answers in diplomacy. Those Parthian armies were hell to pay. lol Try it if you've never played it. My god it has an excellent ai. Higher levels I couldn't even get started before the ai walked all over me. As far as civ as I said a program or mod called CEVO is the best. Prince level even on that one will kick your butt. But, then if you beat it and you played on small maps with just one ai opponent then you didn't beat it you just exploited it and used some grunt rush method. Play with max ai opponents on large or huge maps and beat it. I doubt you will.

For me it's not the lack of an 'upper' level of AI (ie smart AI) but the presence of a lower limit of AI (ie dumb things the AI still does).

Examples of 'dumb' things that I still see in 1.4 (have not played the 1.5 beta yet) in tactical battles:

-spiders (black widows IIRC) still are webbing previously webbed units.  This seems to occur in the same AI 'turn' -- if there's a check to see if potential target already is webbed does the check occur for each unit each time said unit is acting (in which case unit shouldn't web an already webbed unit), or is the check at the start of a 'turn' and applies to all that AI's units actions that 'turn' (in which case the second spider stills sees its target as not webbed)?  If the former then somethings amiss as the check isn't catching the target being already webbed, if the latter then this isn't fixable without significant redoing of the check procedure (and attendant slowing down of the tactical battles I'm guessing).

-undead casting terror on terrorized units

-units making physical attacks on Diamondskinned units (both melee and ranged attacks continue for the entire 3 turns of the diamondskin)

From strategic realm:

-stacks of armies just sitting there (as shown in this thread)

-AI declares, doesn't do anything, proposed peace, declares, etc.

-Capitar has been declaring/peacing me a number of times (I have not initiated any diplomatic actions).  Currently at war.   I have a scout sitting immediately outside Capitar territory with a Capitar city 4 road tiles away.  Scout is close enough that I can see the units in said city (and obviously Capitar can see my scout), and I'm on the road so the Capitar units could reach me in 1 movement point, leaving them enough movement to attack that same turn.  No enemy forces have come out to attack, even tho Capitar's overall strength is roughly 4x mine (~1200 to ~300) and the Capitar force in said city can easily crush my scout.  I have a city on the other side of this Capitar city, within Capitar view range, no Capitar troops have moved towards this city.  I've taken 2 outposts from Capitar and one abuts a second Capitar city, again no response from Capitar even tho Capatar declared on me (several times) and is much stronger.  This isn't a 'AI is too far away' issue as we have abutting borders/units.\

Generally, my issue is not that LH AI isn't smart but that it still does 'dumb' things -- things that it's been doing for many many versions (such as webbing webbed units).  It's the old 'do 9 things smart and 1 thing dumb and be rated as a 5 instead of a 9' thing.  By 'fixing' the dumb stuff the overall AI assessment will be greatly improved.

I understand that because you've put so many options (spells/items/etc.) in LH, and that they interact in so many ways, you've made AI very complicated, plus you need to keep turns brief so have to consider that is deploying processing power, that you've got a tough task regarding AI.  Few games attempt as much as LH has -- that's why LH is an AAA title!  I'd rather LH be complex and wait for AI to eventually be fleshed out than have a simple game with 'perfected' AI from the start.

And yeah, if this stuff was an easy fix it would have been addressed long ago...

I love the artwork in this game.  Watching the undead climb up out of the ground, or the way some of the skeletons 'lever' up off the ground -- brilliant!  So many 'little' touches added, it really shows the love invested in this game.