(POLL) The new AI vs the walls - do you like/dislike it? Cast your votes here!

Age of Mythology: Retold Discussion
1

You can select 1 poll option.

  • I like the new (AoM Retold) AI vs the walls behavior
  • I like the old/original AoM behavior of the AI vs the walls
  • I would like to ask the devs to give us some middle ground - if that’s possible…
0 voters

Original (old) AoM AI behavior

Video: AI vs walls - original AoM
In the old/original AoM, the AI always looked for a hole to get through and attacked the walls only if it didn’t find any.

AoM Retold (current) AI behavior

Video: AI vs walls - AoM Retold
In Retold, if the AI spots a wall somewhere, it actively sends an army to destroy it at the closest opportunity and keeps doing it if we rebuilt it. Not possible to make any kind of funnels anymore.

Middle ground - difficulty system expansion (to include Extreme and Legendary)

Middle ground could be whatever, but what exactly could I have in mind for instance?
Honestly, I would add both the new difficulty levels to the campaigns too - move the current titan to Expert, I would change the difficulty levels somehow like this:

  • Story mode - the original AoM’s easy level moved here
    …
  • Standard - the original AoM’s moderate level moved here
  • Moderate - the original AoM’s hard level moved here
  • Hard - the original AoM’s titan level moved here
  • Titan - armies large something between the Retold’s titan and the original AoM’s titan level
    …
  • Extreme - the current titan with the current (new) AI vs walls behavior
  • Legendary - the above suggested extreme +allow the AI to rebuild the lost production buildings on all the campaign levels

Story mode, Standard, Moderate and Titan would use the original old AoM’s AI vs walls bahavior.

Honestly, I believe this would bring the best balance and possibilities and options even for those who liked the old AI vs the walls behavior.

In my opinion, something rly needs to change or go back to the original AoM AI vs walls behavior. Maybe the Retold’s AI behavior towards our walls is more challenging as a positive thing, but despite that it is still extremely too aggressive and the walls are like non-existent because wherever the AI wants to go, it gets there. And in campaigns we are often fighting multiple AIs with our usually smaller force, so we just can’t afford divide it well enough to cover all the possible AI’s access points. And without the working walls we can’t make any kind of funnel to ease the defense. The walls now work just as beacons of the enemy attack report and nothing more.

Apart of this and because of this, the campaign missions got generally harder as the AI armies are now larger and/or better upgraded than in the original AoM. It’s almost useless to even try to build a wall because one knows it will go down immediately as the AI shows up because of it. And the AI won’t leave out even a single bit of wall unless we have units on that very spot. If we have units very close but not right there, the AI still chooses to attack the wall instead of pushing on to the units - they have to be right there.

This is mostly the only way how the walls are in Retold somewhat useful now in the mission from the video - it’s annoying to be required to do this many wall layers, it’s stupid and very bad to look at. And yet the AI chooses that way :smiley: .

walls AoM Retold
walls AoM Retold1395×1142 176 KB

2 Likes
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The AI completely ignoring any walls as long as there is a path is pretty bad tbh.
The new behaviour is not better either. Hunting down every pice of it.

Walls should delay attacks and not completely prevent them. But if there a relatively short path to get around the AI should use that.

Another question is if walls just don’t have enough HP/Armour.
And is are the campaign missions balanced for the current unit stats and AI intelligence?

1 Like
3

Old is bad, they don’t go shortest path, but look for holes that leads them to trap. They should go around only if the distance is reasonable, otherwise they should kill the wall.

New behavior is better, it just need few tweaks, so AI recalculates command after wall blocking path is destroyed, instead of chasing the walls. And obviously ignore walls that aren’t blocking path too much

2 Likes
4

To make the campaigns playable on release they should maybe temporary revert the AI. It would take too much time to rebalance all the campaign missions for the new AI.
The game releases in 2 days and if the campaign is broken on release that would be very bad.
Broken skirmisher AI is fine, most people will play the campaign first.

1 Like
5

I just finished that mission on titan and tbh this behaviour is better in the context of that mission considering how fast the attack hits. they attack with enough agression that you need a decent delay tactic.

in addition they still have priority for vils and other military units cause more than once they slipped past gaps in my walls to go directly for the eco. so they wall plays the job its supposed to, delay the enemy army while you go back and forth to clear breaches.

Without this behavior, the level of agression on titan would be insane, especially once they get
Gastraphetes and heliopolis out and they melt through your buildings like butter

this behaviour might also just be for walls when they are alone cause i played mission 16 using walls as like trenches to funnel in attacks and the waves didnt go after the walls so while they go after the walls when they are alone they might not be the highest priority targets

1 Like
6

Age of Empires 3 AI was like this too, used to exploit the AI’s hatred of walls by just placing them purely to bait their rage haha.

7

I disagree, the campaign AI is not broken. Maybe needs some tweaking so as not to prioritise ever segment of wall, but being much harder does not make it broken.
Several people on here have already done the campaign on Titan - I have too. While certainly much harder this proves it’s not impossible or broken, just needs some serious focus, strategy and in some cases cheese.
For those unable to handle Titan, hard difficult offers a good challenge without being ridiculous.
Again, I disagree that the AI is broken - in the campaign it’s programmed on harder difficulties to make the players life hell, which it certainly does. It IS meant to be the toughest difficulty after all so if it was too easy it defies the objective. Going after eco and smashing through walls are viable strategies.
Tweaks yes, but not revamp. Having said that, I do agree that walls could be stronger to offer a bit more of a challenge and a bit more of a delay. But it does make building upgrades more of a priority than in Legacy, which I like

8

The problem is that the campaign missions are balanced around older version of the campaign and pre beta unit balance.

I’m not even playing on Titan, I’m playing on Hard. I plan to try it again on Titan once I beat all of it on Hard though.

The problem is that different mission have massive differences in difficulty.
Most people do not want to have to lower the difficulty or be forced to use cheats to get past a certain mission.
It feels very bad and like a major defeat to have to do that. Many people will just drop the campaign instead and if the campaign was the major reason they bought the game they might never come back to it.

Having plot stoppers like this on release is a major issue and will lead to a a lot less long term success for the game.
It would be better to make the campaign a little easier for like the first month after release so the majority of more casual players can beat all of it in one run without having to lower the difficulty or use cheats.
After that the difficulty can be increased by investing more time in balancing all the mission. Then the higher difficulties can offer the long term replayability that they should.

tl;dr
The current AI causes extreme difficulty spikes that make people drop the campaign.
The campaign is the most important thing in the first month after release.
After that mulitplayer and other things become more important.

9

Just from my experience of the Titan difficulty alone, I respectfully disagree. I think dropping the difficulty just so people can complete the campaign is a cop out. While I agree that there ARE certainly still some balancing issues to iron out, the new mechanics of Retold also favour the player once the player figures out the new strategies to use. For example, with the new unit rebalancing, certain myth units thrive on certain missions, BUT a mistake I envisage players (as I did on my first few attempts of some missions), was spamming MU’s without support. The new play encourages a myth focused army surrounded by supporting units to take out heroes and other strong units. While there may be balancing issues to iron out, this is a new game to an extent with new strategies to uncover. This is part and parcel of making and playing new games, and as myself and others have discovered, it’s certainly doable.

I haven’t played on lower difficulties so I can’t comment on the difficulty “spike”. But I will reiterate that simply because people are finding a new game difficult doesn’t - in my opinion - warrant them lowering the difficulty. That takes from those who like the challenge. A fair compromise I think would be to look at Hard and lower, but leave Titan as is for those who want the hardest challenge they can get. This caters to all departments.

10

Although I will caveat all the above with the notion that I would like to see the unit spamming tweaked in favour of more of an eco focused enemy on many of the missions

1 Like
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This I agree with - the AI spams big waves way too endlessly, it often doesn’t have or need the economy. In the original AoM it wasn’t a problem as the attacks were most often smaller or/and less upgraded, but here it’s pretty annoying.

For example… when I destroy some or all the campaign AI’s houses, I expect the incoming armies to become smaller and smaller with each destroyed house. Doesn’t seem to be the thing in at least majority of the missions (if in any).

But thank God that the AI at least doesn’t re-build the lost production buildings otherwise it would have been a straightforward “campaign killer” AI :smiley: .

12

Honestly, I would add both the new difficulty levels to the campaigns too - move the current titan to Expert, I would change the difficulty levels somehow like this:

  • Story mode - the original AoM’s easy level moved here
    …
  • Standard - the original AoM’s moderate level moved here
  • Moderate - the original AoM’s hard level moved here
  • Hard - the original AoM’s titan level moved here
  • Titan - armies large something between the Retold’s titan and the original AoM’s titan level
    …
  • Extreme - the current titan with the current (new) AI vs walls behavior
  • Legendary - the above suggested extreme +allow the AI to rebuild the lost production buildings

Story mode, Standard, Moderate and Titan would use the original old AoM’s AI vs walls bahavior.

I believe this would bring the best balance and possibilities and options even for those who liked the old AI vs the walls behavior.

13

A good compromise solution. Afford the majority a fair chance whilst still retaining the new insane difficulty for those who want the challenge

14

Yep, we wouldn’t need to treat the new AI vs walls as something that is broken or annoying or something that needs to be tweaked… let’s make it a difficulty feature for the top difficulties.

No need for tweaks, just be there along with the old AI for the lower/old difficulty levels.

I guess I will make a separate thread and poll for that eventually. But in any case, I believe it would make everybody happy.

15

If they do implement it, I hope our current “progress ticks” that show we’ve done it on Titan get upgraded to reflect the new difficulty completed because, tbh, some of those missions I do not want to be doing again just to get that tick :joy::joy:

1 Like
16

Hehehh :smiley: :smiley: , yup I hope so too because I wouldn’t want to play certain missions 2nd time on such a difficulty ever neither. :smiley: Was hell enough even for 1 time.

17

I haven’t tried any mission on Titan yet so we are not really talking about the same thing.

The problem is that the game officially releases tomorrow. If the game campaign is in an unplayable state for many it will have a huge negative impact on player retention.

I don’t know how hard the game is on Medium or lower difficulties, since I have not tested them but I assume there are many difficulty spikes there too.
I don’t have any numbers on how many people play on what difficulty but I assume that the middle ones like Medium and Hard are the ones most people play in at last on their first run.
As far as I remember you had to beat the original game on hard to unlock Titan back in the day.

I agree with that but I think the best short term solution would be to revert the lower difficulties to their state before the last patch as an emergency fix. Titan can stay as challenging as it currently is.

I agree with that too. I think they should even patch in higher difficulties later for people that enjoy tackling those challenges.

The issue seems to be mostly the Egyptian section of the campaign.
Not sure what it is that makes Egyptians harder to play in the campaign compared to the other civs.

It does though. I remember it doing so in the new Mythical Mission. Maybe it doesn’t do it in the old campaign.

18

Yeah in some certain missions it does it (Cerberus in The New Atlantis campaign that caught my eye), but only in a very few ones I believe. And I haven’t played the mythical battle yet but wouldn’t be too much surprised.

21

Because all mission can be created in AOM editor…Houses for population ? oh come on :smiley:

watch this,this is just simple map you can download full version somewhere on internet i cant remember name of the map, with heroes spells and whole map like Dota but without items…
How To Make A MOBA In Age of Mythology (youtube.com)