AI extremely ineffective at engaging treasures

:arrow_forward: GAME INFORMATION

  • GAME BUILD #: 100.12.24632.0
  • GAME PLATFORM: Steam
  • OPERATING SYSTEM: Windows 10

:arrow_forward: ISSUE EXPERIENCED

AI players are extremely ineffective at gathering treasures on the map, often misjudging the strength of treasure guardians or becoming “indecisive” after engaging a treasure, either leaving the treasure entirely or re-engaging over and over again until their hero unit dies.

The current logic for engaging treasures is in fact so bad, I would argue it is detrimental for the AI to attempt gathering treasures at all. It would be better if their treasure-gathering was disabled entirely, to prevent them from continually suiciding their starting units.

:arrow_forward: FREQUENCY OF ISSUE

  • 75% of the time / matches I play (VERY FREQUENTLY)

:arrow_forward: REPRODUCTION STEPS

Here’s the steps to reproduce the issue:

  1. Play with AI players on any map with treasures in it. Best observed on AI players with multiple starting units, such as Spain / Queen Isabella.
  2. Observe them suiciding their starting units to treasure guardians. Best done by watching the recorded game back afterwards.

:arrow_forward: EXPECTED RESULT

I would expect either a much smarter logic for engaging treasures, or at least remove the AI’s ability to gather treasure entirely — to improve the AI’s general performance in games.

:arrow_forward: IMAGE

AI giving up on treasure mid-fight instead of finishing it:

AI engaging a 3-cougar treasure with only 10% hitpoints left on Explorer (obvious suicide):

:arrow_forward: GAME FILES (SAVE / RECORDING)

7 Likes

The AI does a lot of things like this I’ve noticed- sometimes it will siege an enemy TC till it has like 100/6500 hp left and then just suddenly give up and attack something else close to the TC.

I don’t have a recording to show this. But it happens too many times when I play against it - the AI sieged a stable of mine till it had 100ish hp left and suddenly changed its plan and decided to burn down the outpost next to the stable. Ultimately it could destroy neither.

2 Likes

Also related to how the AI uses his explorer - often times they use the explorer to attack your TC or villies alone, usually upon advancing to age2, resulting in 100% certain loss of the explorer.

1 Like

There is another issue /exploit. If the AI explorer is attacked just before taking the treasure, he will not pick up the treasure, but will return fire instead. (allowing the players to steal the treasure).

2 Likes

Attacking the treasure guardians that the AI is attacking will also prevent AI from getting the treasure.

AI will not steal treasures that human players cleared, but not claimed yet.

1 Like

It happens sometimes. I was twice dumb enough to let the AI steal my Treasury ^^’

With the latest PUP, treasure gathering techniques have been improved. Ranged explorers will use advanced techniques to kill guardians.

But the AI explorer will still try attacking treasures with many outlaws or strong guardians like elephants/hippos/colonial swashbucklers in exploration age. I don’t think they should engage treasure guardians beyond a certain strength.

Like wolves, cougar, monkeys, honey badgers or even a couple of lions/tigers/outlaws is fine if the Hp is high enough. But definitely not stronger guardians unless they can be one-shot with the ability.

1 Like