… I think there are multiple things that need to be improved with the game AI which this thread can discuss.
My first point is the overall difficultly when playing against AI isn’t hard enough to beat most experienced players even when on “expert” settings. This needs to be increased to make single player playing more stimulating, and when using AI allies in multiplayer games, make them more useful.
A big problem I’ve seen AI have is on island maps, such as danish straits or Ceylon or Scotland when playing free-for-all game settings. The AI never seem to expand their settlement further than their own little island and therefore not be able to exploit the greater resources and space on the larger land mass.
It would also be good if you could actually coordinate group attacks with AI teammates by messaging the in game chat, rather then constantly being told “I have no army at the moment” most of the time.
The AI is smart enough to send an explorer or villager across water to build a trade post but that seems to be it for building on different islands. It’s such a shame because it’s tough to find humans who want to play those weird maps like Ceylon, so you effectively can’t play them at all.
I have so many ideas I want to work on with the AI:
Further develop the naval AI
Change the attack/retreat conditions
Develop a new attack model
Change the formations to mimic historical formations
Do something with the military that normally just stages under the TC
Create multiple armies/attack plans
Create a raiding force
Rework the forward base
Add defensive fortifications and walls
…
Then of course there’s the boring stuff like optimizing the decision making so the AI doesn’t waste and float so many resources.
I really enjoy the concept of naval maps but agree with you that very few people seem to want play on these during multiplayer games. It would be nice if people would start using water booms more often in competitive matches as well. But when you try to practice this with a single player skirmish, the AI just stays on their own little island where all you got to do is bombard them with your ships and don’t even need to land troops.
Going back to the AI on land - I’ve never seen the AI, even on expert level, build wall to protect their base, which makes mid-game raiding very easy. It would be cool to see the AI have a go at using a turtle strategy when playing civs like Malta or Inca.
I’d like to see the AI also perform better at early game raiding parties with more than just one unit. Like see the AI play Germany and use their early game Uhlans to try and take a few of my vils gathering form huntables.
It would be better if the AI would use their forward bases to pump out more units whilst their doing a big push as most of the time they just use one big army and when that’s gone they wait back at their home base before attempting another attack. They need to keep up the constant pressure.
I’d like there to be a general game mechanic that allows for your army to to create a really long line of only two men deep, as when massing a big bulk of musk units, half the time their just pushing up against each other try to get in range to fire, which leaves them very vonerable to canon fire. I’m aware you can (kind of) get this effect grouping 30 or more units with “stagger mode” but I’d like these two stances be completely separate from one another.
That’s correct. It’s in the files but works very poorly so it’s been disabled.
Those aren’t raiding parties, they’re exploration parties.
Agreed. There’s a bit of an over reliance on time buffers IMO, at least on the harder difficulties.
For the formations all I was going to do was tell the AI to use the existing formations more just for aesthetic purposes. I like the musk boxes and skirmisher staggering for a more “realistic” feel.
actually, there’s a mod that adds a script thats actually pretty decent on water maps
like, it has its quirks, but its still a substantial improvement based on few games i played in skirmish with it
as in, it will actually react to your water play and go for water where it makes sense
was first non human amazon game i had to actually contest for water
Ohh really, I wasn’t aware. Do you think it is something the devs will fix in a future patch/update??
This seems to be the only noticeable mechanic that significantly differentiates the difficulty levels. Although to be fair to the devs, I have seen the AI use hit-and-run tactics significantly more in the DE than in the original game. More tactical advances like this would be brilliant when making the AI more difficult to play against.
An error the AI has, that I didn’t mention earlier, is that in late-game treaty matches, the AI will often send out a massive army, get all the way to your base and then decide to retreat before actually really engaging in any action. It then normally gets picked off by cavalry on its retreat and seems to be a great waste of units and resources. Maybe to improve this, the AI should be able to create a kind of “rearguard” to snare the chasing troops so at least some of their military can escape (cost effectively).
Ohh cool, could you please tag it in this thread. I’d love to give it a go
