Any more AI updates planned for AoE3DE?

Dear devs,

Is there an AI update planned in the future? Some particular issues I’d like to see fixed are:

  1. AI should research Legendary natives in Imperial Age if it can spare resources.

  2. AI should be able to reserach Iron Horse at a TP. Currently AI upgrades trade route only once.

  3. Italy AI needs to use the architect and build a market to obtain more settlers early game. Italy AI Currently has a really bad start.

  4. Lakota AI should be encouraged to research the Community plaza BBT and build tepees near farms and estates to boost gathering.

  5. Someone has reported this already. But after the October patch, sometimes AI sends revolt cards. But military units that were once vils dont attack. They try to gather resources instead.

  6. AI should be able to garrison its attacked villagers in the closest defensive building available, and not only the main TC. Sometimes there will be outposts around and AI will still walk its vils back to the main TC.

  7. AI should eat its fully fattened livestock (if not India or Japan or African civs).

That’s all for now. Have a very happy new years eve and a good 2023. Thanks for your work on AoE3DE and hope to see some AoE3 news soon!

18 Likes
  1. AI should work on water maps.

Seriously, though. They aren’t in the competitive pool, and no one wants to play them in the lobby. I want to be able to skirmish against AI on full-on water maps and get into some gnarly ship battles.

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this is honestly the most important AI improvement to be made, the others are relatively small “plays inefficient” problems.

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Yes. I was mostly asking for small ones.

The water map efficienct AI is a little dream of mine. But I felt that making a post called “Please make AI good at water maps” was a really big ask that I was personally too shy to make.

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On a side note, would like to see a naval overhaul with a clear countersystem. Otherwise once the water AI of our dreams has 3 frigates, 2 monitors, 5 galleons and 5 caravels on the map, no one can take the water back.

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I’m not too shy to ask. It should have been in the game since the very beginning.

I would welcome some water changes also but I’m not sure exactly what. Right now it’s built more around good vs other ship and good vs buildings, which isn’t necessarily bad. Maybe lean into that - like a ship that’s taking fire unloads slowly so you would have to try and take out coastal defenses with ships before landing. Then we could also have more variety in defense, like coastal guns that are specialized for taking out ships, or long range coastal guns that trade with siege ships.

AI is maybe one of the biggest… well not sure what’s the best term, ‘tech debt’ isn’t quite it but I’ll go with it for now.
It was in a need of massive not even an update, but a rework, and if they could do that they’d probably have done it much earlier if not for the launch build.
Now chances for some ‘A.I. 2.0’ are IMHO very slim. The game received loads of new content and I guess there are some reasons why AI wasn’t the main focus. It’s still mostly the same 2005 game (developed ways before it) and now it’s just too late for some kind of AI revolution. It would be nice, but most people moved on, and even when it comes to the sequel, IV is ‘old’ enough that it’s not ridiculous to think about the future and what the next game would be.

When it comes to skirmish I only play land maps, sometimes mixed with lakes or some strip of coast. Adding water-related AI issues to things like lacking defenses (no walls, poor tower/ fort planning etc) is too much.

AI has come a long way since 2005 so…

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Well, they essentially did do that. I would say DE AI is a significant rewrite; it is AI 2.0 already.
The way AI handles economy, military, microing units… is all reworked.

As a result of reworking all the core logic, they haven’t had time to implement new logic for stuff like island maps or wall building (yet). From my point of view, they are correctly focusing on the core issues first.

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I’m digging through it right now. The water stuff is shockingly bare bones if I’m reading it right.

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Adding to the water AI stuff:

AI shouldn’t try to make docks in the same place as where their previous dock got destroyed, particularly if the enemy has boats there.

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Bumping this. So people can add more to the list of issues.

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This please, is so annoying to see the enemie send villagers to their death everytime trying to build a dock in the first place they chose

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A most excellent thread indeed.

AI explorers will go after treasures they have no business going after in age I. This happens in every game.

AI doesn’t properly utilize the native TP rework from months back

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Adding to this: ai won’t touch thee treasures near their base

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Aztec AI uses the warrior priest as a scout instead of making him socialize at the plaza. Aztecs have not been training more WP either.

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Some more issues:

AI does not use unique wagons (such as dock wagons or market wagons) in most games.

AI is too erratic when on the offensive, jumping between targets, sieging a building down to a 100 hp but not finishing it off before moving off to a different building. Samurai chase hussars around ignoring the skirmishers that are firing at them within melee distance. They could finish off the skirms easily, but nope, they would rather chase hussars.

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And very important.

When monopoly timer is counting down, AI should focus desperately on enemy TP.

Right now, it just acts like nothing happened, and does what it would normally do.

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AI also often walks past your army that is decimating them while walking to siege down your TP. The AI does not return fire in that case at all until it reaches the TP.

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Currently the AI checks its build queue to see if the wagon could build one of those, and then applies the wagon to it. I think the problem is that the queue is still the queue, so it sits there until its turn comes up. Otherwise it’ll just immediately make whatever the wagon is. I commented out the first part and they seem to almost always build now, except for the fixed gun wagons. Maybe I should make a bug report, idk. There’s so many “bugs” in the AI…