Slitherine

That the AI is too timid is a well known fact. I'll leave it with the devs to deal with it in future patches.

I do, however, have one request/suggestion:

Make a new AI unit setting "Aggressive/berserk/whatnot" to complement Attacker/passive/shooty defense etc.

Basically it makes the unit completely disregard kill/loss ration and attack until dead.

Why this is needed?

Orks aren't acting orky at all. Grots, basic boys etc. are completely expendable, a green tide that cares nothing for its own security. Experienced boyz, nobz, etc are a different story I suppose. Hence the need for a new AI setting.

An example:

I played the Act 1 Mission 4: Def Minos Crossing, where you defend the river crossing. Even at VH I was able to bottle-neck the majority of the ork force, just by NOT killing the grots that tried to cross over first. This grot-cork completely halted the ork offense at the topmost bridge (will feature it in my next ARR update). The grots didn't fire at me, I didn't kill them: the quality ork unit at the rear got hammered by my long-range fire. Not until the (late) arrival of fliers, rang 4 tanks and superheavies did I take any return fire.

With the aggressive AI in effect, the grots would at least have killed themselves off trying to kill by Demolisher Russ w/mortar backup.

I really can't say anything about what we have in development but...

Why can't you at least tell us you are improving the AI, and fixing the bug that makes the AI very passive? What is the big secret? The game is broken, and you can't talk about it?

[edit] Sorry . . . I think I've been hanging out in Steam forums too long. But, my questions and concerns still stand . . .

I wasn't aware anything was broken. If you have a bug report to submit, we will gladly take a look at it though!

Kerensky wrote:I wasn't aware anything was broken. If you have a bug report to submit, we will gladly take a look at it though!

I would not call it broken. Far from it. But the ai's reluctance to attack w/o good odds makes it a tad easy to prevent the ai from hurting you.

On the other hand, some of the missions if they had ultra-aggressive AI I might be unable to beat within the timelimit provided. The scenarios as is are based around the AI.

Some of you may have cake-walked every scenario, but more than a few I had to get the hang of it to press on. On my second playthrough now and usually winning the first time through- but not always!

Rmarsden wrote:On the other hand, some of the missions if they had ultra-aggressive AI I might be unable to beat within the timelimit provided. The scenarios as is are based around the AI.

Some of you may have cake-walked every scenario, but more than a few I had to get the hang of it to press on. On my second playthrough now and usually winning the first time through- but not always!

Indeed. Which is why an all-over-the-board more aggressive AI might not be a good idea. As an alternative I suggest more varied unit AI settings (check the scenario editor and you'll see what I mean).

Relatedly: after having playing a certain beta test scenario (can I talk about it a VERY vague fashion like this?) I got the impression that the AI handles elite units better than poorer quality units. Probably because the odds are more in its favor. Made the whole fighting the AI experience quite credible!

Kerensky wrote:I wasn't aware anything was broken. If you have a bug report to submit, we will gladly take a look at it though!

Ok Kerensky, broken was the wrong word. But, you know as well as everyone else that the A.I. is way too passive in many circumstances. That's all I meant. It needs work, and I am just hoping that work is being done to improve this aspect of the game.

Onwards!

I just ran through mission 8 (Act 1). On VH. I lost 1 Str point of Salamander and 1 Str point of Destroyer. That's it. Won on turn 11 of 16, so I wasn't being very cautious either. Mission 7 was almost as bad, but there the bridges were better defended, so I took a few more points of damage. SO yeah, me things that the AI needs to improvements (and probably the scenario designs as well).

I think part of the problem is that the early-on AI is set to be highly passive in the tutorial and early missions. I'd actually go as far as to agree that its too passive. I totally get making the opening and tutorial easier to get into (esp for new players) and I'd not call myself an expert in TBS but I'd say the AI needs a little punch in it.

At the very least I think that when you can see something of the AI's in those missions it needs to start striking at you - having it do nothing for a couple of missions really makes a new player go "ok sooo is the AI working at all? Is my game broken".

Looking forward to seeing what AI improvements are in store

Overread wrote:I think part of the problem is that the early-on AI is set to be highly passive in the tutorial and early missions. I'd actually go as far as to agree that its too passive. I totally get making the opening and tutorial easier to get into (esp for new players) and I'd not call myself an expert in TBS but I'd say the AI needs a little punch in it.

At the very least I think that when you can see something of the AI's in those missions it needs to start striking at you - having it do nothing for a couple of missions really makes a new player go "ok sooo is the AI working at all? Is my game broken".

Looking forward to seeing what AI improvements are in store

We are testing a BIG AI change in the testing section right now... and let me tell you even the mighty Space Marines have a good fight ahead of them when we unleash what we are cooking!

As a hint for future content: Support units are going to be hugely important against a much more savage and Ork-like aggressive AI!

That sounds great Kerensky

Whilst I'm no great player it will be good to see the AI being more attack focused; just played a bit of a game and the ork AI was clearly "rushing" me but I was more times than not driving them back, mostly because its charging forward as its told to in the mission, but then wimping out of actually attacking me because the odds are in my favour. Of course those odd change if the same unit gets hit several times. Plus it makes it all far more fun!

A welcome upgrade.

Perhaps this will be the end of my string of near-zero causalities on VH battles? I hope so.

I think part of the problem is that unless the AI has a hard counter unit to yours it won't attack. It needs to some-how view all units within range (or range +1 turn) as adding up their total threat potential. Because that is how you take most things down in this game - you either have a hard counter or two that blast the unit to bits and take very little damage; or you have a handful of units that gang up; generally attacking so that units which take the most damage go last balanced against doing as much damage as possible early on (weaker the unit the less threat).

If the AI can get the idea of joint attacks I think it would be a big step forward.