AI too sensitive. They resign way too early. Please fix

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
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I wonder if the AI can be tweaked to not resign so quickly. I always play Conquest… which, to me, means I want to destroy all of them (units, buildings, econ, etc.), but it feels like 90% of the time, they resign after they lose only 10%-50% of their buildings – where it’s clear they could keep playing if they really wanted to… or could let me play if I wanted to.

It’s really one of the last remaining incredibly weak points of this title.

We shouldn’t have to do the 104 chat command ever. We shouldn’t have to remember to do so, and shouldn’t have to scramble to do so if we forget in late-game. Just make it so they don’t resign so quickly, or if they do try, give us the option to say, “No, you’re not resigning. Keep playing.” And in the lobby, let us tick a “No AI Resigning” checkbox beforehand so we don’t have to worry about it mid-match.

As a player who likes to NOT attack early or be on the offensive from start to finish, it’s pretty annoying to spend an hour+ building up my econ and military, staving off multiple attacks, and then when I’m finally ready for a battle (sometimes after painstakingly rebuilding from scratch after near-defeat), they resign within minutes of me coming into their town. Pretty frustrating as it makes the entire match almost feel like a waste of time because I don’t get the satisfaction of wiping them out or their town completely.

I just finished a match (another one after a long list of them) where this happened. Me vs. 2 AI. Both resigned with a ton of buildings still left on the screen. Thank goodness I played on Fast and/or Turbo mode, or it truly would’ve been an immense waste of time

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Type 105 in the chat. It prevents the Ai from being allowed to resign. Type 104 if you want it to be able to resign again.

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You have it backwards:

image

Regardless, that’s a workaround, not a resolution. I said mid-way in my post that we shouldn’t have to do that. Plus, I’m not 100% convinced that command works 100% of the time, due to a long-standing bug I had where it didn’t always work.

I’m done worrying about 104, to be honest. It’s a pain to pause the game (or in MP matches, waste a pause or do it real-time) to go into AI Commands to enable it. I want to play the match once it starts and focus on my econ/the game; not deal with 104.

I’ll just play the game less and less if they keep resigning early and I don’t get an option to tell them ‘no’ when they try, or a lobby checkbox to disable resignations

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Oops. Never mind then. I think that having a checkbox would be reasonable.

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I agree, sometimes I had AI resigh with more than 40 vills left, a handful of military and literally dozens of buildings, this on extreme.

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Wow, that’s not good. On Extreme difficulty, too? Definitely not good. I usually play lower difficulties than Extreme, but they shouldn’t do it at all. If my suggestions are implemented it could be avoided.

Sometimes they’ve resigned on me after destroying just a few buildings of their immense town

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When I play vs AI I’m only playing extreme, 1v1 and team games.
I can tell you in very rare cases the AI is defeated by conquest, usually it just resigns when its villager count drops below some # and at the same time loses all/much of its army.
But it might have still 1-2 castles, 1-2 TCs and dozens of buildings left.
In one 4v4 game I clearly remember (according to the replay) the AI resigning with 40 vills, 10-15 military units left, 2 castles and 1 TC at least, plus the usual dozens of houses/barracks/archer ranges and so on.
On the other hand I think I’ve seen “XYZ has been defeated” way, way less often.

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Ouch, yeah, I hear ya. That’s a good point – I think if left to their own free will, they choose to resign the vast majority of the time (I’d guess 80%+ of the time) rather than let you defeat them entirely.

I don’t like using the “104” AI Command. It’s a pain to do every match… and has a questionable success rate in the past, too. (Not sure if that bug of it not always working ever got resolved or not.)

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This one is quite tricky as a lot of feedback from “both sides” has come in since the HD/2013 version days which can’t easily be satisfied at the same time.

There are a lot of players who want to be rewarded with a victory as soon as they feel that they’ve clearly won (even if the AI still has most of its base left, but lost most army and a significant part of the civilian population), as well as a lot of players who greatly enjoy destroying the AI’s base and rest of economy after the hard work of defeating its army.
As a sidenote: The AI is able to rebuild if left alone long enough, the current resign behavior assumes it wouldn’t be left alone.

The current behavior combined with the taunt to stop the AI from resigning is a solution that tries to accommodate both playstyles.

To help gather information to improve the behavior; Can you let me know a few of the settings you had been playing on when the AI resigned very early (or the opposite):

  1. Was the AI in a team?
  2. Population cap
  3. Difficulty Level
  4. Game Mode (If not Random Map/Empire Wars)
  5. Starting/Ending Age (If not Standard/Dark-Imperial)

Thank you!

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  1. Yes 4v4
  2. 200 or sometimes 300
  3. Extreme
  4. Random map with conquest victory mode
  5. Dark age-imperial age.

Usually the fastest resigning AI is the last one remaining, it’s a behaviour in line with human’s one, anyone would resign when their allies are all dead, even with 50 vills and some troops.
But sometimes it’s good to wipe the map clean :laughing:

The best solution would be implementing, if possible, a condition.
Disable AI resign? Y/N.

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Right on, thanks for the note, Chesqin! Sounds tricky, for sure… but I think that’s where a lobby option could maybe help, or a pop-up like I think AoE3 does to give the player an option at the moment the AI wants to resign, or some other thoughts expressed in the past regarding the “104” chat functionality

Interesting. Yeah, when games go long, I have a lot of time and energy invested. So, by the time I turn things around and get the upper-hand in the match, I sometimes enjoy giving them an area of land to work in (wall it off) and watch their attempts to come back. Unfortunately, they often end up wasting a lot of resources cranking out military one unit at a time, probably depleting what little resources they have, rather than purely focusing on building a robust economy first like they would at the start of a game. I also start mining all the mines, and harvesting a ton of resources, or build a bunch of wonders, castles, etc.

It’s actually also during this time where I’ve always wished I could decorate/customize my town (as alluded to in this thread here, but is an entirely different subject so just take that for what it’s worth if you read.)

Staying focused, to answer your questions, here were my settings last night, which is fairly typical; though sometimes it’s 2 human vs. 2 or 3 AI, and I think even 1 vs 1 AI

  • Was the AI in a team? - Yes
  • Population cap - 400. I always play 400
  • Difficulty Level - Moderate. I usually play Moderate or Hard
  • Game Mode: Random Map
  • Starting/Ending Age: Standard

And a screenshot exactly as appeared last night:

image
image1374×944 122 KB

I see. This, unfortunately, goes contrary to what I wish to do sometimes after I get control of the map and the enemies. I may just want to mess around for an additional 30-90 minutes after a game is, technically, over… but the AI will resign well before that as it assumes I won’t leave it alone, when, in fact, I will leave it alone for a while to watch it try to rebuild but with me keeping it under control so it doesn’t get too big.

I wonder if a randomization could be added to this script, to help give the AI personality. Some AI might be stubborn and not want to give up even if it assumes it won’t be left alone, others will be more scared, others will just lose hope but never give up… – rather than the assumption always being that they should resign because the humans won’t leave them alone

Thanks again! Hope this helps

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Thank you for the feedback everyone, I only have a few minutes so I can’t fully reply right now. I had one additional idea though, I can upload a mod with more conservative/slower resign behavior for the standard AI.

You’d just need to subscribe to the mod, otherwise you still select the standard “AI” as usual etc and don’t need to taunt anything in-game. It wouldn’t conflict with any future updates to the AI (unless resign behavior is updated, the mod would overwrite that) as it would only overwrite a very small part of the AI’s script.

That said we’re still looking into improving the consistency of the resign behavior further in general.

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That’s be awesome! If you make that mod and then the resign behavior is ever updated in the main game, maybe if the team can remember to mention in the patch notes that it was updated, it would be helpful.

I know they already do a great job detailing stuff in the patch notes, but I’d maybe just hate to keep using the mod if the main game has maybe been improved to be even better than the mod and I don’t hear about the change.

Ooh, your message does raise one additional variable, though. I forgot that I sometimes pick different AI. Like, sometimes standard, but other times the older classic AIs; sometimes a mix in the same game. If the game’s ultimate solution could apply to all and not just Standard AI, it would be ideal! :smiley:

Thanks for the thought, and I hope you’re able to do the mod someday

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AI does such a bad job of building back up after taking a huge raid/ push.

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The ideal solution would be what is done in AoE3. The AI says they are defeated and asks the player if they may surrender or not. It might be hard to make a UI for this in AoE2, but it would be possible to send a chat message and require a taunt to confirm defeat.

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The 104 command to stop them resigning does not work I made sure to send the message to all AI players but they still quit.

This is a very strange option anyway and not well sign posted. A checkbox in the game setup would be nice.

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Yes, exactly. I advocated the same a long while ago.

Ideally, we shouldn’t have to spend any time while trying to play the game to send 104 out; especially if you have to go to the trumpet icon to send to Everyone.

The last thing on my mind once match has started is to chat 104 to AI. And every second of gameplay is precious and counts. It should be a lobby option, and/or a global game menu setting. I never want AIs to resign for games I create.

When 104 kind’ve worked fairly reliably, I’d often forget until enemy was quarter- or half-destroyed, and then I’d think, “Oh no! I have to do 104!!” and AI would resign right that second :expressionless: Happened to me many times.

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Yes I think the AI has suffered from a philosophy that it should behave as efficiently as possible and like a human opponent in multiplayer rather than a flavourful fun opponent.

Perhaps it is good if you are using the AI as a sparring partner for PvP but its not been great for those who are only interested in playing Vs AI and want to enjoy ourselves fighting them.

But I will avoid going on a tangeant about my thoughts on AI design in AOE2:DE and lets just have an easy option to stop them quitting! :slight_smile:

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I don’t this is nearly as irrelevant as you think it is. Having AIs with different “personalities” can be quite useful in many ways, not just single player. Gives variety too, and whether you believe ir or not, there’s a proportionally big amount of players that prefer relaxing playing against the AI than bothering with multiplayer, which is totally acceptable.

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I agree I think part of the problem is when developers assume the AI is just a ‘stepping stone’ to playing versus other players when people like myself have absolutely no interest in PvP.

Which you could argue is flawed in the first place since the generally agreed wisdom to get better at fighting humans is to just fight humans and accept you will lose a lot and try to learn.

Its things like how they stopped the AI from building walls because they were not doing it 100% perfectly. I understand why they did it but the AI towns are not as fun to attack and there is no need for siege towers.