Tactical battle: Pure AI

Published on February 21, 2012 By Draginol In FE Sneak Peeks

I’m one of those people who have traditionally disliked tactical battles because I hate having to fight all of them out.

In FE, my goal is to make it so that the AI does a pretty good job of fighting the battle for you. You’ll still want to fight it out if it’s a close thing or if there are particular units you want to spare. But overall, it does a decent job.

Right now, I’m still toying with the concept of having units retreat from battle to let others take their place. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not in *this* game given the game mechanics.

Here’s a battle where my side lost but in 0.77 would have been a walk over because the tactical AI sucked so badly.

http://screencast.com/t/Uj0Wp0DAU

Also, fun tactical battles:

[Warning: Explicit]

One of the big changes in FE beta 2 that wasn’t in GalCiv II was the concept of army groups.

Who here is a WW2 history nut? If so, you know what army groups are.

Well, I put in army groups to fix a different flaw in the AI but I didn’t recognize the issue they created. The AI is now really good at having armies from different cities converge on a single city on the same turn (the AI treats army groups as a single unit).

I’ll await feedback but I’m thinking normal is too hard now.

Comments (Page 2)

Gandhialf

on Feb 21, 2012

Sir_Linque

reply 8

Before reading this I actually thought about making a pre-emptive BETA 2 UI problem report thread saying that the path indication system you are going to implement doesn't have turn labels for each square in the path. As a human I need this information displayed on the screen, there is really very little use of the path estimation system without the turn information.

This.

Frogboy

on Feb 21, 2012

Screw this.

I was playing well.

It's not me.

It's math.

The UI needs more features.

I would have won if I had rally points and could coordinate like that.

Tasunke

on Feb 21, 2012

Path (turn time) estimation would be nice.

Rally points would be a good stop-gap, when not wanting to recalculate unit moves each turn. (alternatively a unit could stop auto-pathing once an enemy unit comes in site)

And ... CHALLENGE ACCEPTED

Frogboy

on Feb 21, 2012

I didn't lose.

The AI cheated.

I just want that for the record.

If I had the same tools as the AI. i would have won.

DsRaider

on Feb 21, 2012

Gandhialf

on Feb 21, 2012

Frogboy

reply 19

I had this game won.

The AI cheated.

Really.

If you think about it, it was cheating. Mathematically plotting when units would converge from across the map is cheating. It's BS.

Mastermind with a very high computing power always wins. Watch this. He is not cheating (he cannot see through walls, or see the future). He is just coordinating. In a very subtle way. (I love Fringe.)

Frogboy

on Feb 21, 2012

I'm going to have to come up with some stuff here because I can't have regular people getting creamed at normal.

Challenging is supposed to be the level where experienced players lose 50% of the time. Not normal.

I didn't realize the impact of the army group code at the time.

Plus, in 0.77, the tactical battle AI is a total joke. Did you guys even realize that the monsters have special abilities? It's amazing how much of MOM would change if the monsters and opponents didn't use their abilities.

Alstein

on Feb 21, 2012

Frogboy

reply 3

They always did.

Just a reminder: The tacitcal AI in your build doesn't exist.

I'm really getting pissed off at some of our AI stuff.

Some of it is ridiculous that we may have to tone down.

A human being wouldn't be able to coordinate 4 different armies arriving at a target city in the same turn.

Game sucks.

Screw this!

Instead of toning it down, can it be made optional?

The idea of units retreating/being replaced- I'm all for it, I think it's likely to become a needed mechanic- the 9 unit limitation may become cumbersome (please make that moddable).

That said, monsters, especially animals , should have a dumbed down AI, they're dumb animals.

seanw3

on Feb 21, 2012

I still have a few loopholes I never reported. Just for this kind of situation.

Trojasmic

on Feb 21, 2012

The gauntlet has been thrown down. I will put my EWOM 37-0 record on the line against the EFE Beta 2.

Hawawaa

on Feb 21, 2012

Hey keep some of that crazy ai for Suicidal difficulty!

Tasunke

on Feb 21, 2012

please please PLEASE wait until after releasing Beta 2 before nerfing the AI.

Or how about this ... whatever is above Challenging -> Have that be the new top AI.

OR place a difficulty level between normal and Challenging? (if you want the name "challenging" tied to the hardest AI without bonuses)

(just please don't nerf the AI )

In other words don't pull a Sid Meier

mqpiffle

on Feb 21, 2012

Nooooo.

I love it.

Keep it.

I want to die.

Tasunke

on Feb 21, 2012

Reasons being:

I like FFH ... FFH is more like a distant family member that occasionally hangs around the house than a game. BUT!!! It has HORRIBLE AI.

Its a great game, has horrible AI, and the multiplayer is an iffy situation. (the game itself deals with plenty of OOS, and those that like to multi FFH are few and far between, sadly)

All of this to say ... I am LOOKING for a new AI to play against. The FFH AI is like an old friend, we play a game now and again but we ALWAYS know how its going to end.

With this new AI, I can have a goal of beating it. I won't have to give it bonus resources to be a challenge (or at least I hope I wont), basically fighting this new AI is something I will be looking forward to. (primarily because its in a fantasy 4X setting, a setting I have a soft spot for)

Eventually we will find an equilibrium and know where each other stands (aka find the limits of either my skill or the AI), but until then this will be an awesome game of how to bloody the AI's nose (instead of just figuring out how to win the fastest, or the most role-playing-y ... with no-contest AI lollygagging about)

After I have a few rounds with it, and I know where I stand, then we can talk about changing it ... but I would REALLY like to try it out

Cruxador

on Feb 21, 2012

Frogboy

reply 3

A human being wouldn't be able to coordinate 4 different armies arriving at a target city in the same turn.

I really don't understand this complaint. You can do the math to get it perfect if you want to, and most of the time you can eyeball it well enough that you only have to enforce a manual delay of a turn or two from long distances. The interface could (and should!) be better, with paths displayed and turn numbers printed as with the recent Civ games, but it's not as if we can't do this stuff fine right now.

Tasunke

reply 28

please please PLEASE wait until after releasing Beta 2 before nerfing the AI.

Or how about this ... whatever is above Challenging -> Have that be the new top AI.

OR place a difficulty level between normal and Challenging? (if you want the name "challenging" tied to the hardest AI without bonuses)

(just please don't nerf the AI )

In other words don't pull a Sid Meier

mqpiffle

reply 29

Nooooo.

I love it.

Keep it.

I want to die.

Calm down guys, he's not gonna nerf all the AI, just the normal difficulty AI. If you want the computer to be fighting at full power, you can turn the AI difficulty up.

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