I would like to talk about the new AI in this game.
I have been playing AoE games for some times, and I like to play against the AI, alone or with some friends. I remember the Expert AI at the release of AoE III, and I found it to be quite decent. Obviously, It was decent because it cheated quite a lot (with a boost to gathering speed). Then, I was very impressed by the AI of the definitive editions (II and III). In AoE2, I found the exteme AI to be a decent opponent (If you let it alone fro a while). I think that what impressed me the most was that the AI in AoE2:DE did not cheat (in terms of ressource gathering). I find the AI in AoEIII:DE quite decent too, and I find it difficult to win against two extreme AI (1vs2) without cheese, which is, for me, a sign that it’s quite good.
I played 5-6 games against the hardest AI in AoE4, and I found it to be a huge embarassement for the developement team, and more broadly for a tech company like Microsoft. The AI does not know what it’s doing, it’s army wander arround in the center of the map while you are destroying its city. It does not make a lot of army, and It don’t really bother you. I think I will be forced to play online, because it’s not even fun. I don’t understand why the development team did not capitalize on the progress they made in the definitive edition AI. Honestly, it just reminds me of the conquerors AI 20 years ago.
The worst, is that the development team gloss in the press how good the AI is, how it found bugs that the human did not found, how it learns (https://www.kotaku.com.au/2021/08/age-of-empires-4-ai-machine-learning-difficulty/). The truth is, for now, they should be ashmed to release a game without a proper working AI.
I know that it will eventually improve,and I respect the work they did on the DE AI. But but for a AAA games, what an embarrassment…
