Quick bits of feedback after about 100 hours of play

Well I can say personally I didn't know the in's and out's of the AI as apparently you do after just 100 hours of play. I actually see new things from it from time to time and I've been playing the game for much more than a 100 hours. The fact that a unit gets 'stuck' on another particular unit doesn't seem all that 'unrealistic' or 'unbalancing' to me at all since I can't reproduce it at will. Especially if it is a commander. I find other things more of an issue that have little or nothing to do with the computer getting stuck rarely on the same target throughout a combat. Especially if it's already been addressed and acknowledged as something they may or may not be able to fix. But of course it is opinion that guides feedback. And my opinion it's hardly considered cheating, since it doesn't use it all the time, to it's obvious advantage or even to 'win the game', but by a semingly random occurance.

[ January 30, 2004, 08:55: Message edited by: Zen ]

[IKerensky]

Originally posted by diamondspider:
[QB] So 2 horsemen ride up and my unit of 50 breaks them, that unit then pursues the one remaining horseman (on foot no less) the entire length of the battlefield while ignoring the 50 other troops they pass unless they are directly in their path?

Even you must admit that the troops didn't pursue fleeing units forever, right?

Well all depend of what you mean by forever. In numerous case ( antiquities battle mainly ) troups going into pursuit never come back to the battlefield until long after battle end.

We have account of pursuit for several hours to even days.

In fact, this even was a part of battle strategy and at a point Hannibal (IIRC) specifically deploy his small cavalry in front of the heaviest Mauritanian one in the hope they will rout and be pursued, effectively deprieving his opponent of one of his better weapon, leaving footmen fight between them. His tactic work and the ennemy cavalry doesnt show up until next day.

I think that the current AI could use some cleaning but the problem is not nearly as bad or illogical as it can seem.

BTW I am totally against a specific fire at commander, from a gamebalance and historical point of view. It is simply impossible to distinguish the commander from the unit in the battlefield in real life. All you can do is target the rear area and hope for a lucky shot. I am speaking of unit commander and not HQ wich tend to be more identifiable but usually out of harm way.

The current target rear and target archer commands are enough, it is up to you to protect your valuable unit by carefully setting them up... For the lone XBow targetting your commander I think it could be the AI unit commander equipped with magical weapons at they seems to target more specifically their counterpart... wich I fairly understand due to their "magical" power.

I think we need to remember that Dominions worl is more antic ( ancient romans, greek, and so ) than modern age thus the current way the battle work ( give order to unit before hand and pray, having no power to alter battle after it start ) is absolutely right for thsoes times.

[ January 30, 2004, 09:36: Message edited by: IKerensky ]

[diamondspider]

Originally posted by Zen:
Well I can say personally I didn't know the in's and out's of the AI as apparently you do after just 100 hours of play.....

Not a very friendly thing to imply. Do you flame people often? Do you enjoy it?

I am here giving honest feedback to what personally bugs me. I don't claim to know anything about the AI, but I sort of have to speculate if something is bugging me and there are 4 people telling me that it isn't.

No good deed goes unpunished it seems...

[ January 30, 2004, 12:45: Message edited by: diamondspider ]

[diamondspider]

Originally posted by IKerensky:

quote:

---

Originally posted by diamondspider:
[QB] So 2 horsemen ride up and my unit of 50 breaks them, that unit then pursues the one remaining horseman (on foot no less) the entire length of the battlefield while ignoring the 50 other troops they pass unless they are directly in their path?

Even you must admit that the troops didn't pursue fleeing units forever, right?

Well all depend of what you mean by forever. In numerous case ( antiquities battle mainly ) troups going into pursuit never come back to the battlefield until long after battle end.

We have account of pursuit for several hours to even days.

In fact, this even was a part of battle strategy and at a point Hannibal (IIRC) specifically deploy his small cavalry in front of the heaviest Mauritanian one in the hope they will rout and be pursued, effectively deprieving his opponent of one of his better weapon, leaving footmen fight between them. His tactic work and the ennemy cavalry doesnt show up until next day.

I think that the current AI could use some cleaning but the problem is not nearly as bad or illogical as it can seem.

BTW I am totally against a specific fire at commander, from a gamebalance and historical point of view. It is simply impossible to distinguish the commander from the unit in the battlefield in real life. All you can do is target the rear area and hope for a lucky shot. I am speaking of unit commander and not HQ wich tend to be more identifiable but usually out of harm way.

The current target rear and target archer commands are enough, it is up to you to protect your valuable unit by carefully setting them up... For the lone XBow targetting your commander I think it could be the AI unit commander equipped with magical weapons at they seems to target more specifically their counterpart... wich I fairly understand due to their "magical" power.

I think we need to remember that Dominions worl is more antic ( ancient romans, greek, and so ) than modern age thus the current way the battle work ( give order to unit before hand and pray, having no power to alter battle after it start ) is absolutely right for thsoes times.

---

Yes, I generally agree with all of your points.

In most cases it is fine and "makes sense" to me. However, on occassion it does silly things.

My intent was to expand on another post regarding "switching" intelligently rather than just sticking on one target forever regardless.

Just one aspect of the AI that I don't personally like and wanted to share that fact as most of the game I find to be very fun

Originally posted by diamondspider:
Not a very friendly thing to imply. Do you flame people often? Do you enjoy it?

Obviously I do, since all my Posts you see are flames.

No good deed goes unpunished it seems...

Well since you claimed the AI was *cheating* (as you put it) I'd assume you are not providing honest feedback on what you know, but your opinion about something you may or may not understand. I don't claim to understand the game in it's entirety, and even in part the Develeopers have said the same themselves. So I find it particularly hard that you suddenly know the secrets to the AI in a 100 hours, unless you are reading the code and can say.

It's hard to come to a discussion claiming "cheating" and "this is what is WRONG" when you in fact don't know if it's wrong, right, bad luck, circumstance, or in fact cheating. And blanket statements like "The AI this" are in fact very misleading.

I'd hope you'll find as you play with the game more and discover more about it, how you think it works, and how you were wrong about any number of things, you'd have more appreciation for that, but not everyone does.

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Zen:
There is also a % that units will actually be able to fire at the 'rearmost' and not 'mostly rear'.

This isn't quite correct. According to the devs, there's a chance that a unit will pick the most rearmost squad. If this chance fails then the next closest squad is checked, then the next, and so on.

So while putting your commanders as the rearmost may seem like a good idea, it is in practice not. Unless you want to take the chance that a flier or archer to actually target the rear.

It could also be that his commander was one of the only mounted units, or units with a size greater than 23 on the battlefield, which would make him a candidate for both 'target largest', and 'target cavalry'.

Thats what I ment Graeme. There is only a % chance that orders on Fire Rearmost will actually target them. Fire Rearmost is the only one that I know that functions this way, all other orders work right out of the box.

I believe it is a 20% or lower chance, from the tests I've done.

I may have phrased it wrong, but that's what I ment

Edit: Or it could have been any # of things that may or may not impact the game that we have no idea on. Having only 1 mounted unit on a battlefield is also not a good idea, as well as only 1 large unit (unless you have Air Shield or high prot) simply because of that.

[ January 30, 2004, 20:05: Message edited by: Zen ]