Hello All !
I want to let you know that the AI after the last update behaves much better 
If you find AI bugs, be sure to report them on the forum !
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I disagree, itās just as bad if not worse in some ways.
AI armies completely ignore traders it passes on the way to targets. It never sets the trade line as a target.
You can taunt the AI villagers into indefinitely following your unit.
Villagers run from scouts even tho scouts are weak now.
When cornered, the AI will occasionally just ball up villagers and idle them.
They will stream villagers one by one past towers trying to get to a target build site.
They still canāt build walls completely, they leave gaps that make the wall useless.
They donāt have good target priority. In a mixed battle they donāt prioritize monks, mehters, or scouts.
This is AI they should be able to program them to micro like crazy - never overkilling, adjusting position and targets, etc. Instead they micro worse than me and Iām basically inebriated. I donāt think they micro at all, they just seem to attack-move blindly.
They barely ever make springalds anymore, they used to make a lot and be somewhat good at countering siege.
I meant that compared to the previous version of the AI works much better BUT has a lot of bugs.
For the developers to fix the AI errors, please create a thread with the errors of the AI on the forum.
Itās obvious plain as day in every game how poor the AI behaviors are. I shouldnāt have to make posts about it, itās their game theyāve had it out for over a year
Hereās a clip of replay from a game I just played where I rushed an English AI with two spearmen. They ran into the TC, which is kind of strange because usually AI villagers will chase and attack the spearmen. Especially since english villagers can shoot. But I stood ground with a spear near the unfinished feudal landmark. This caused the AI to garrison all of its villagers for over 10 minutes.
Its ally sent a spearman over to kill mine, and it would have won the fight but it backed way at low hp. Then it ignored the weak spearman for over 5 minutes. The AI could have ungarrisoned and killed it easily but they sat in the TC.
This is a sign to me the AI still has a LONG way to go. Itās been a year and itās still BROKEN.
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I agree with you. There is still a lot of work to be done on fixing AI behavior.
Well itās nice to see this thread still going. Will be very interesting to see what happens when/if the devs ever start putting a lot of focus on the AI. Iām sure they can make it good. Right now, itās just crazy easy to beat on every difficulty so kinda useless to play against
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Yeah it seems to receive a couple small fixes or improvements each patch, but so far nothing thatās actually made it difficult to beat. Itās still super easy even on the hardest AI.
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The issue is that the AI will repeatedly commit illogical actions all game.
Just to name a few only:
- Resource drop off points can be built further away from resources than needed causing more walk time and less efficient eco
- Army wonāt fight half the time as units alternate between attacking and retreating. Results in AI army standing there letting you kill them sometimes.
- Sends army into defensive structures like keeps to die to boiling oil. Also, cannons and other siege a lot of the time walks into attack range of keeps unnecessarily
- AI wonāt know what to do if you attack them, sometimes fighting knights with villagers and other times trying to wall infront of your army.
- AI will also always pick the same landmarks each game. Never seen french go School of Cavalry and make knights
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As someone who almost exclusively plays against AI in RTS games, I agree. I can easily beat the hardest AI in AoE4 and not even rush doing it. Iām not sure how exactly the development of this game worked, but I think Relic made the game. The same people who made Company of Heroes. And CoH AI is way better than AoE4 AI. In CoH against the hardest AI, I actually felt a need to rush a little to get the upper hand, or else they will come to destroy me. In AoE4, however, the AI does not seem to know exactly how to destroy an opponent.
I played a skirmish with an easy ally AI, against the hardest enemy ally, just to mix things up a little. The easy AI started next to the hardest AI on the map. I just played SimCity with my town basically. The hardest AI attacked the easy AI, but could never seem to beat them for some reason. In the end, they just let them be and started attacking me instead. And the AI on water maps is unfortunately borderline useless as a challenge.
There is an AI mod that supposedly makes them much better, but I have not played around with it enough yet since it also then disables achievements. And the developer of the mod borderline disabled AI wall building, something I like when the AI actually tries to do it, which is not that often anyway. I suspect itās simply the rise of Esports/ multiplayer that made AI development stagnate through the years. Like AI is basically seen as practice these days to make you ready for the ārealā game. Itās sad as I enjoy playing on my own time and not having to worry about actions per minute and all that stuff.
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I canāt solve AI logic, very inconsistent.
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I think itās just another symptom of the overall rushed and unfinished nature of the game. They seem to have leaned on āmachine learningā to develop a majority of AI behaviors autonomously with minimal human programming. They put AI on the back burner and released a āgood enoughā version until they maybe get time to improve it. But they already made their pre-sale money so thereās no real pressure to make it good for few thousand people.
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Beastyqtās AI world championship highlights the poor play of the AI:
It would be super cool if you provided an API and let the community build a strong AI, like GitHub - Blizzard/s2client-proto: StarCraft II Client - protocol definitions used to communicate with StarCraft II. did.
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No, I think they think AI is good enough as it is in general. After all the AI is just there for you to practice against to help prepare you for multiplayer. Itās not 1998 anymore when trying to make a single-player experience THE GAME itself.
Iām not living in the past. They advertised that they would have an āimpossibleā to beat AI.
That the AI that learns from players and gets better over time? Thatās obviously not in the game, I wonder if they plan to include it at some point? When last did they mention it? But having an impossible-to-beat AI would not be great either though. But they could then maybe use it and back paddle from there to limit the AI in some ways for each difficulty level. So that would be great.
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Thank you for the continued feedback here. The team is definitely aware. I think it might have even been mentioned in the latest small patch. Working on it!
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Please watch this playlist (AI World Championship) Video about the behavior and problems of the AI video from the channel BeastyqtSC2 !
I think it might help you to correct the behavior of the AI.
Every video shows tons bugs and very dumb AI behavior.
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That was hilarious to watch
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