Yes AI should be improved or at least package a mod AI with the base game so that people use it. Normal AI is notoriously dumb and it’s not even a fun mode for co-op like on AoE2.
You mean normal difficulty? Cause I’m my experience higher difficulty AI is broken and kinda cheats by always knowing immediately where my hidden units or marketplaces are lol
Good AI should be a challenge without having to cheat.
Old AoE2 AI loses against the new AoE2DE AI despite cheating.
Also there are obviously differences in skill. The majority of players can’t beat the hardest AI but that doesn’t mean it there shouldn’t be even harder AI.
But “good” AI should act the way you want it to act.
AoE4 had the worst AI. Easy AI was super aggressive but never Aged up past Feudal Age.
Making it very annoying to play against as an inexperienced player while also not being interesting to play against.
The easier AI levels should be more passive but still provide a challenge in late game because all inexperienced players will eventually have a large army in the late game.
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Only ‘Titan’ which is ‘Hard’, but speeds up various things 2x for them (100% handicap).
It doesn’t change the AI’s stupid default behavior.
So beating AI usually is a guarantee for any player once they have learned a few games and the so called build order (start stuff to do).
Beating Titan AI plays totally differently against AI than against humans- because you just make towers, and walls. They will aimlessly run into them and attack wall segments. They are sped up, so they will always get improvements, units, and things faster. It is just repetitive catch-up game and then the AI will glitch out or will always lose after you do catch up.
For example I used AoMod AI years ago, and was surprised to see that an AI used Ragnarok and totally #### a player because it just decided to try it that game.
In the same way, even some players that think they ar qualified in a usual team game with like ~1700 ELO may not be qualified to even beat the best custom AIs, which may play really like 1800-2000 play at times if they can build successfully. It is not really integrated well into the game. Many of the players lose against it anyway afaik and also only the worst players try to play against it when really you would need like some 1800+ players to beat it at some levels. (and oddly, using 50% handicap, or 1.5x sped up, the custom AIs still advance and play at basically the ‘rate’ of a human player, yet many players lost against it; and again worse players joined and waste time, because they thought they can beat it).
Still, the scripting system showed how versatile it can be to mod new AI and I think the devs also knew this.
The modded AI just like AoE2 has a lot of improvements just by scripting. However Ensembles default AI is bad and always had bugs. It also cheats to add speed and resources, to compensate for how bad it is.
In contrast to the very old AI scripts in AoE2 that they now packaged in the game, and possibly copied to make their own, their AI no longer has to do things like be given resources/sped up like the standard AIs.
It just collects and plays like a higher rated player based on difficulty.
When playing default AI, the fact that you will almost always play differently, means it teaches no real lesson how to play to new players. It does not play like ‘any’ type of player, and also sort of is terrible.
Only a player who struggles with start concepts like not to farm in the archaic age will struggle vs a ‘hard’ AI that is not modded, and once they win a few games they should basically be able to beat Titan AIs, but again it teaches you to play in a way that is not at all how you’d open a game against a human.
Then custom AI with the right settings can really play at a level of a top player, if it builds up properly and also teaches you how to micro and safe things that AI should do; if you don’t do it, you will just spend forever or lose.
The reason for that is pretty simple.
People had 20 years to learn the game and optimise the build orders, AI has not changed in those 20 years (EE did not do much).
Good AI has to constantly be improved to keep up with the meta.
A good AI should be able to easily beat a player without cheating since the AI has some inherent advantages:
- Perfect execution of build orders without any delay
- Perfect micro of many units at once
- The ability to always micro units while simultaneously manage the economy
Theoretically the AI would be able to dodge almost every projectile by constantly moving the direction of units according to incoming arrows.
I don’t think Ensemble were unaware of build orders. Otherwise, civs would not all have similar advance times. There would have been no balance at all.
Even if people were slow to learn, the AI just was never that good. However the fact the script system is there… well… before AoE2 was re-released and same with AoM, there have been pretty good AI Scripts made that make the AI play better, without cheating, and more resemble playing vs players.
AoE2DE just realized that and put it in the game again. e.g. ‘old’ scripts like Barbarian, The Horde, etc. that are still one of the best AI scripts. The thing is it was just not known much; because aoe2 was kind of hard to run since they were ~10+ years old. However in that time they had AI vs AI competitions, which produced a variety of different ones. This happened way before they re-released aoe2 on steam and started packing it back into the game;
I hardly doubt any hardcoded changes needed to be made. I remember I redownloaded AOE2 and 3 of us had much fun on virtual lan, just plugging in AI scripts and playing vs them on all these custom maps a few yrs before that. It is always fun to play vs a weird AI script too like the aztec ones that tried to spam monks.
It is not that hard to just reuse that concept and improve the computer behavior using just the base level scripting. However AoM definitely has less of it but a few custom ones like AoMod and admiral do exist.
That is really all they have to do is package that with the game. Or even better, remake one that is ‘improved’.
The reality seems to be they do not have to change anything in the game, just basically do what modders already did for free. The base AIs just sucked and miraculously (with aoe2 as the main example) simply adding the .per and .ai script files that made them do a lot of rules, timings, and things, makes it a lot better.
As for the other parts I don’t know, I agree with the other things that are not the first 2 sentences.
However it ‘does not need’ to dodge arrows, but it would be amusing to see an AI script that tries to do it and wins.
AIs are essentially just a written down build order.
So they obviously did know about build orders, but they didn’t know good build orders.
The build orders the game ships with is with whatever strategies some people in the dev team thought were good before the game was even released.
The Meta of the game has changed a lot since then.
Likely the AI was never updated to get better build orders or nor where the build orders adjusted for balance patches in a significant way.
It was just not considered important enough back then.
I would love to see some well made maps like Erebus / River Styx.
AoM allows different unique “atmosphere” but these maps have a lot of problems on EE and TT.
We made a “Champion of Erebus” tournament in Brazil only for fun purpose because River Styx is totally broken map lol
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More civilizations obviously i think native american mythology would be awesome. But also more unique technologies/minor god choices for all.
And please,please, make the AI actually work on water maps!!! Would be nice to have water maps in ranked aswell instead of the same handfull of land maps. Can always have more maps!
Thank you!
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Have you checked out the Divine Edition mod
there’s the Lakota there
You are seeing a problem where there is none. There is no such thing as the curvature you are talking about. Even irregular relief does not cause buildings to lean.
Yeah?
I thought about it more, and this is what is causing the ‘curvature of earth’ feeling. Note the square I highlighted at bottom of screen vs. the one at top of screen. This is in AoE4, but AoE3 has the same thing going on:
Source: https://youtu.be/ICRuSQ3Ilkk?si=GZaoaSpvCbNPyrVf
Here’s a closer, isolated view of the squares. Notice the squares get flatter the higher up the screen you go.
What acts like that in real life? You guessed it…
So, as you pan the map up and down in AoE3/AoE4 you watch buildings, terrain, units, and everything else go off in the distance as if they’re on a sphere.
Yes, it’s just perspective, but it’s not my favorite camera thing going on. You can enjoy it… I don’t.
There is no such curvature. Not even as an optical illusion.
Thanks mom, or dad, for telling me what I see. Feels like you’re troll-splaining here
There is much yes curvature even optical illusion
That’s true, most likely (it’s certain they will) they will improve the AI both on land and in water (Titans can now walk in water)…This is what we know about the game so far:
General changes:
Myth unit abilities can be activated by players at will, rather than cast by the unit automatically.
As per an interview, god powers are now generally multi-use with cooldown.
Population limit is increased.
Addition of ray tracing.
Hotkey buttons are displayed on icons in the command panel.
Crush armor, reload time, and attack multipliers are displayed next to the other unit/building attributes in the information panel.
The Scenario Editor has a text filter option to find objects faster.
Specific changes:
Titans can move over water and are stronger against buildings.
The Son of Osiris has more hit points, more attack, and damages more targets.
Nidhogg has more hit points and more attacks.
The Colossus has more hack attack.
The Wadjet can spray through the poisonous to enemy units.
The Scarab has more hack attacks.
The Mummy has more pierce attack and add the poison to their attack.
Plague of Serpents has more attacks.
The Mountain Giant can instantly kill soldier units with its smash ability.
The Behemoth has a special ability and increased hack attack.
Kronos: Manors have a Temporal Scaffolding passive ability which speeds up nearby construction.
And then you have the Ancient of the gods mod that has the Aztecs…
Well, they are 3D games…AoE 1/2 have straight frames because they are 2D games; AoM, AoE 3 and AoE 4 seek a more realistic geography and 3D vision/camera, which is why when you zoom out the camera you notice the curvature of the Earth/map; also applies to campaigns, not just multiplayer…
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How could a flat surface have curvature?
When a geometrically perfect surface is viewed from an inclined angle (assuming there are no reliefs), if we were to draw squares on said surface we would see trapesios and triangles, both figures with straight lines.
Squares, despite being geometric figures with parallel lines, to simulate a shape or scenario with 3 Dimensions, the square would not be good at this, while triangles and trapezoids would be. They will give the sensation of depth and distance/closeness, but not “curvature”.
Here more examples:
2d chess board
3d chess board
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You know what happens when flat surface grids like that extend out really wide and wrap around a giant sphere? You get things like a round Earth, if you believe in that sort of thing. I don’t need to see the left and right extents or see horizon line curvature to have the dramatic perspective difference between bottom and top of screen give me the feeling of playing on a small, round field. AoE2 perspective for the win!
I appreciate you being more informative with your post. Valid reasoning and examples. It’s just an agree to disagree, then, I suppose
I’m sorry, if you believe in what
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For that it would have to have a very slight curvature. If it is perfectly flat it would extend to infinity without forming a sphere.