For some reason, the AI seem to be insanely aggressive in random map games, after the update. I’d usually play against 3 Hardest AI and do just fine, but now they seem to be just throwing everything they’ve got at me as soon as they possibly can, rushing me in Tool Age and I can’t even do anything because they have a massive resource advantage. I tried bumping down to just two AI, but the same thing happens. I’m just getting to Tool Age and they’re already in Bronze and rushing me with cavalry/short swordsmen.
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So, that’s a good thing, right?
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I experience the same on hard, even with all the new enhancements it’s hard to keep it up (not impossible), but it depends too on the randomly selected AI of your opponents. Some are just much more aggressive, other focus more on economy boost. About if it’s good or not is difficult to say. Very unique for this version is all the different kinds of AI you can meet playing randomly, even for water maps there are some dedicated AI’s. But it does make it a little bit unbalanced as you don’t know what to expect. You even can’t see which map type you are playing. Please correct me if I’m wrong. Also I noticed that if you do not build an army or defence yet some AI’s will not attack and just go wander around so you can stall some more time to buffer before going castle. Adding one AI in your team does help too. But from hard on you can expect to see onagers at your base at castle age. And of course it’s very difficult to win against any reasonable AI with 3 times as much population capabilities. That should be difficult on moderate already.
Having AI be hyper-aggressive and Tool Age rush you is not a good thing when they have a massive resource advantage that you have no way of overcoming. (Hardest AI get tons of extra resources)
Good because before update, very hard looked like medium gameplay… Now it looks more fun against computers I might try.
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“fun” ? I can’t even do anything, the AI just swarm the ■■■■ out of me due to their giant resource advantage.
The only way I can possibly win is by going Roman and spamming towers; anything else and I just can’t do anything. I’m barely getting to Bronze Age and they’re already flooding me with 30+ military units.
How does 1v1 go for you?
The AI recently received quite a lot of improvements, that might indeed mean that the bonus resources on the hardest resource level could be reduced.
Having a better AI is an improvement. If it is too much, you could play it on moderate. Is there a way to adjust the resources the AI gets at the beginning?
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1v1 against Hardest AI is actually not too hard at all, because of less units attacking me. I can get enough towers up to defend myself by the time they start attacking.
I’ve also noticed that sometimes the AI is super aggressive and rushes me with archers/scouts in tool age, but other times they just don’t even attempt to touch me at all until iron age. It’s weird.
I’m pretty sure changing the AI level doesn’t actually change how the AI behaves, it just sets the amount of extra resources that they start with.
At least, that’s how it worked in AoE 2, as far as I was told.
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Random does mean random here and there are a lot of different AI’s in this version. Some are designed to be very aggressive (++), while other AI stay home at their base and respond on first attack. You can check and test them out using the scenario editor. So it really depends a lot on which AI randomly got chosen for your opponent(s). So even a 1v1 could feel easy or hard on hardest at two different random games, and the same against multiple AI opponents. But if there’s one aggressive ++ there on hard or hardest it gets very difficult I noticed.
Yep, if one AI started attacking me, the other AI would join in very soon after, every time.
Is there a way to choose the AI in Random maps ? We can get very different games, from very boring to insane, I would want to choose the AI best suited to me.
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I agree there is still some need to balance there, but it’s a little bit part of this version too. There is no way to select that while playing custom games at the moment, but I guess choosing the difficulty does change it some. Not only the amount of resources but also the amount units that are send and when they come with heavy gear. At least it does make a difference with the missions. Also there you will notice different AI performance. I think if you play on moderate you will not encounter too much priests and onagers. From hard on it gets nastier.
Just played one custom random game against four and myself as ? to join as team with one of them. Not fair, but good to test AI behavior. Strange thing my team mate came in wandering my base all the time. The reason was I noticed later because he was next to aggressive AI who pestered him with longbow archers from the start. I was lucky to draw Egyptian and could boom and dominate later that game so I won easily. I was almost last in castle age but first in imperial. 
I had one game with one ally against two enemies. The two enemies ganged up on and took out my ally. Then I had to face two enemies already with good resources. That’s nasty, lol.
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Let’s just pretend your ally really sucked. 
Seriously, it’s a little bit unpredictable. But fighting against it does make you better. Sometimes you win, sometimes you loose. The last one I tried on hardest. I had really a very slow start this time (on map Oasis, could not find berries close by so had to hunt which is recommended for Palmyrans anyway). The map was not the reason of the slow start. It was because I messed up placing the granary building and had to destroy it (a lot of wood just gone). In the beginning I was keeping up until that mistake and you can’t make mistakes on hardest. It took me long time to get to castle and got stuck a while in tool age while being rushed by first axeman and a few archers and then chariots and swordsmen. I managed to survive placing a lot of towers around my base together with a group of diverse units of archers combined with slingers and later some axeman to draw the enemy shooting at my towers from a distance into the center which was surrounded by towers. This all was very costly of course as villagers were killed too sometimes, but I managed to get to castle and my ally (Egyptian, strong civ) had already destroyed one opponent. Before reaching Imperial he defeated them all. So that was quite a boring game regarding attacking too, but not regarding defending your base while using some micro to sustain.
So not only the AI does matter, the civ the AI team mate uses does make some kind of difference too it seems. At certain point I even noticed that the AI helped me a few times to defend. Yet his priests refuse to heal my heavily injured slinger when he passed my base. They were following some other units.
I do like sophisticated and differentiated AI, because it makes playing random games less boring and pass the age of time. Playing the same game and winning all the time is not nice too imho.
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