I have played about 80 hrs of aoe 4 mostly against hardest ai. Usually 1 vs 2 hardest and sometimes 2 humans vs 4 hardest. I play only open land maps like Lipany.
The good:
Hardest raids pretty well in age2
Has generally good villager amount. Even with 10 000 population mod I have seen them making 200 villagers
Does counter units
Micros escaping villagers pretty well. Does try to fight against single man at arms of knights which is not a good idea
The problems:
-Lack of military upgrades. I have seen age 4 armies lacking all but age 2 upgrades. I guess this extends to economic upgrades also but this is harder to see
Tendency to walk and not use attack move. It is very common for AI mangonels to just walk to their death
Not decisive enough with engagements. AI does not want to fight if they dont have way bigger army than enemys. This usually means that they start retreating in the middle of battle and get killed. I think this may be also caused by the lack of upgrades and therefore worse army.
Passivity from age 3 forwards. AI usually sits under their tc waiting for enemy to attack.
Walling. If player attack them in early age 2 they wall. Otherwise they never do.
Creating siege towers every game. I have seen them using it 1 time
Civ specific problems:
HRE puts relics to monastery even when they have Regnitz Cathedral
mongols have 100 mangudais always camping under the ovoo
the ai has some really good moments - and some games later it plays like a total noob.
me and my friends play as coop against hardest ai´s and we see this:
good:
ai attacking different locations, with pretty good mixed armies.
ai doing some good attacks in age 2, to disturbe our villagers and resource gatering.
ai build landmarks not on the same position, so you have to search for them sometimes and have to attack on different spots.
ai is using often larger armies, instead of small groups to attack. this leads to epic battles, which i like very much.
problems:
ai some times let canons and trebuchets roll to wall and into the wall without attacking them. i think its the problem with the ai not using the attack move, like written in a threat above me.
ai can´t build secure castles. mostly there are gaps in the walls, so you can enter with your army and infiltrate all the base
i wouldn´t say the ai is completly broken, but it have some weak moments.
compared with other rts, the ai works and i don´t have the feeling the ai is cheating or playing unfair. this happens often in other rts-games and i think, cheating ai is more annoying.
compared with the ai in aoe2de i like that the ai in aoe4 is using larger armies and the battles feeling more epic - especially in the mid- and endgame.
I agree with your points. The hardest AI is pretty impressive with lot of the actions it can do. I think if some minor adjustments like fixing upgrade priorities and using attack move with siege it could really shine
It’s difficult to compliment an AI that cannot defeat an average player and cannot even challenge a competent player.
They’ve made it interesting, but it needs many adjustments to how it prepares for and executes attacks. There ought to be some way to get the AI to recognize good and bad engagements with some degree of consistency. At present the poor thing doesn’t seem to understand that running away from a small micro job is a terrible idea.
I find its play extremely random. I’ve played against the easy AI and had it rush me with wave after wave from 6 minutes on. I’ve played against the hardest AI and had it never attack me at all, so I just mass an army and attack move to where its landmarks are and win.
Yup, especially if you layer them. I’ve experienced this with layering a wall over their wall closely, or double stone walling off sections. They get confused with the pathing and terrain once they break through the first one.
