Patch 1.2 Campaign AI overpowerely broken

from AshesoftheSingularity Forums

Tried playing the campaign again today, seeing some improved campaign AI in the changelog, and here we go.....

Everything is played with normal difficulty settings


First 4 levels, seems more responsive, ok!


Then comes level 5.

The mission starts to become unbeatable after I start dropping builders behind enemy lines. After the first push to the resource point with unusually heavy resistance, the AI start to Orbital Drone and Orbital Death Ray my forward base, ok fine, I thought this was intentional, still going on.


Then they started to Quanta upgrade units, Cruisers with over 2k health, accompanied with 5-6 Dreadnoughts in an unstoppable force start rolling out from their base.

Now I found this to be truly broken. after you destroyed the power generator the Anti-air are offline right? The AI death ray my middle resource point, rebuilt everything with Annihilator Cannons and Even thicker Anti-air. The AI basically push me back after I hold 80% of the resource point because I have no way to upgrade and build dreadnoughts. I have over 60 bombers and tried to do a run to the AI base, they didn't even manage to damage the frontline Annihilator cannons and they are all dead within seconds. The Anti-Air game was too real.

I surrendered after 61 minutes of suffering, and check the scoreboard, the AI invested over 4k Quanta, and his base is full of Drone MRVs, Annihilator Cannons, Anti Air guns, 4 Dreadnoughts Factories, 5 Shield Boosters. WTF?

Change the difficulty back to easy, everything change back to normal. Won in 25 minutes.

Then comes mission 6 Oh boy. Again with normal difficulty

After the first section of the mission, which is normal just like you expected.

Then comes building a forward base. Guess what? The instant I bring my builder to capture the foward base, the Orbital Drone + Death Ray combo all over again. A whole army of dreadnoughts with 2k Cruisers drives through the map and killed my base. I managed to beat them back once and recapture one of the resource points, again the INSTANT I recapture the point, the Orbital Wombo Combo drops.

I got beat in 35 minutes, IN A CAMPAIGN GAME.


I think someone should check the campaign for bugs.

Also it only happens on" Norma"l difficulty, "easy", "even easier" doesn't have this strange behaviour, they build normal troops to fend you off, but not deathrays.

Anyone has the same behaviour?

2,936 views 2 replies
Reply #1 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

Extra:

I replayed mission 3, where Mac will help you to beat 3 dudes.

Mac is so badass that he won the mission by himself, the only thing I did was build follow the first objective and watch,  you ask me how?

Extreme Quanta upgrades and over 20 Dreads. He is so badass, he steamrolled the 3 Dudes within 40 minutes.

After the mission Mac revealed he invested over 6k of Quanta to upgrade units while everyone couldn't even do that.

There def. is something going on right now.

 

Reply #2 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

Hey there,

 

I've done extensive analysis of all the missions and played all of them on Much Harder so hopefully you feel my input is valuable.

 

It's quite hard for me to find out what mission numbers are actually used for your maps. I'll name the ones that I think you mean...

 

In the third mission that you're talking about (Yorkshire), there are three teams. You + Mac; Artix and Ventrix; and the Splinter.

 

The Splinter has the highest difficulty AI of all of them, but is on his own.

Artix and Ventrix will attack both you/mac and Splinter.

The AI never does the same thing twice (Aside from obvious openings like making a factory and getting metal nodes etc.)

 

 

This means that it could well be that Artix and Ventrix have severely weakened the Splinter while you and Mac have become powerhouses. The opposite is also true, if you and Artix fight a lot, it could mean the Splinter kills Ventrix, because he is the strongest AI.

 

There are a lot of variables and these are all true even on Much Harder difficulty. I've seen a streamer play Yorkshire on Much Harder too, he got killed like 4 times in a row and the next time he tried it, ventrix KILLED the Splinter while becoming severely weakened because of it. This allowed the streamer and mac to just steamroll the mission.

 

So in the worst case scenario, the splinter and Artix/Ventrix do not attack eachother and only you/mac. This then becomes almost impossible to beat (If at all, considering you barely have any tech and orbital abilities).

 

 

 

For mission 5 (Decanus), you can decide not to drop the engineer. The AI does not take the points where you are supposed to drop the Engineer nor the point below it. Only when you drop the Engineer, will the AI suddenly become aggressive and try to kill your outpost.

This means a few things, the later you trigger the event, the easier the mission becomes. You can build bombers and AA way before that and just power up all the way.

 

 

 

For Mission 6 (Noctus) (And pretty much any other map from here on out) you have to use orbital nullifiers. The enemy AI will exploit their orbital abilities to the maximum extend that they can. Saving up dreadnoughts and leveling them up is very important to remain cost effective. "Creeping" forward with orbital nullifiers is the way to go once you start encountering Agethon. Before that, you can spend your resources elsewhere.

 

Now with the Refinery, you can use that into a late-game advantage. On the easier difficulties, the AI actually gets nerfed; from Normal to Intermediate to Easy respectively. The opposite is also true, the AI will be a powerhouse on Much Harder and you will have to use orbital nullifiers and a ton of anti air to keep your nullifiers safe. The second you lose one, you're likely to get an orbital bombardment.

 

 

 

I hope it helps, let me know if you'd like some more info.

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