Multiplayer AI Completely Useless

Age of Empires: DE I - Report a Bug
1

Game Version:

  • Build: 38862
  • Platform: Steam
  • Operating System: Windows 10

Issue:

When playing Multiplayer (and only Multiplayer) Random Map, the AI by and large does nothing. The after-game stats (which I can try and post the next time I play) show that they tend to:

  1. Make less than 10 villagers
  2. If on a team with other AI, often tributing a single teammate a tremendous amount of resources, though that teammate doesn’t tend to fare much better
  3. Barely makes units or attacks, and even when they do not with more than a few units at a time
  4. Tends to make it to Tool Age in reasonable time, but takes forever to get Bronze and often never makes it to Iron

I’ve observed this behavior on every game I’ve played with a buddy of mine. We’ve tried changing the following variables and none have resulted in competent AI:

  • Changing the difficulty (standard and moderate both are terrible, and standard is notably competent in single player)
  • Changing the number of AI (2-6)
  • Changing the teaming arrangements (AI on multiple teams, one single team, AI FFA w/ humans on team)
  • Changing the map size in relation to the AI (recommended for number of players, and biggger)
  • Changing resources (Default, Medium, High)
  • Changing maps (Small Islands, Narrows, Large Islands, Mediterranean, Oasis, etc.)

None of these variables, alone or in tandem, have resulted in AI that puts up any kind of fight or even acts remotely like it does in single player. I’m aware this is something people have been talking about for a while, but I haven’t seen a particularly recent topic on it and it’s crazy it’s still a thing.

Reproduction Steps:

Here’s how to reproduce the problem:

  1. Start an online multiplayer game with just about any settings with one other human and an arbitrary number of AI and settings (not sure about LAN)
  2. Play normally and crush the AI and observe the behavior
  3. Look at the stats to back up the conclusions

This all may stem from the fact that they’re not producing villagers and thus can’t do much without resources, but either way it’s no fun.

3 Likes
2

I posted this six weeks ago and nobody has responded to it. Is this not the official place to report issues for the game? I’ve so many other issues posted after mine get at least some acknowledgement. It seems like multiplayer-related issues are a lower priority or something, but that seems absurd, since this is a hugely multiplayer game.

1 Like
3

I hate to bump this, but it’s been over two years since I’ve played because of this issue, and just played again yesterday, and it still seems to be relevant. Two of us versus three AI, and they just kind of weren’t particularly challenging. In contrast to the same level AI on single player, I really don’t get it.

1 Like
4

im just here to bump the issue, even at the highest difficulty the AI struggles to build units

5

Aoe1 is no longer maintained, and will not get updates on this anymore.
They will only update the game, when needed for online compatibility

6

Also confirming this is still a thing, my friend and I want to play against AI and its pointless. He just bought the game too, really pathetic this was never acknowledged or fixed. Does anyone have a work around?

7

I think the only workaround is copy the contents of SUPER AGGRESSIVE.PER file inside CP_AI folder and paste the codes to the rest of the .PER files (make sure to maintain the files original names, example: DEFAULT.PER), except for the immobile files. If you want a challenging game this would make them BE super aggressive. Because in the unmodified game, when you do a custom play: those behaviour/scripts like passive, aggressive, super aggressive are set at random to the AI. So this would solve the passiveness of the AI.

This should make the single player more enjoyable, but beware this will be super difficult. Now the only problem I am experiencing is the AI does not prioritize/or neve raze the buildings of the other AI - this problem does not exist on AOE: ROR. They just stand on the AI base and kill the new unit produced, but does not harm the villagers or the buildings - this makes it unrealistic and not my cup of tea.

8

It’s a whole thing to test this out with another person, so before I give it a go, I wonder a few things, since you seem to know about how the game works…

  1. If this behavior has seemed consistent, is because of these profiles, and they’re chosen at random, have we really just gotten that unlucky that all games have been that way?
  2. Can I just delete some of these files? Will that break things?
  3. I see a “RANDOM MAP.PER” – is that to imply that that’s the only one used for Random Map mode?

I still don’t understand why this would only happen with other people…