|
| Thread: AI Mods: Classic AI (standalone) & XL Performance AI |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 3 4 5 6 · «PREV / NEXT» |
|
apkairan
Tavern Dweller
|
posted January 14, 2008 06:47 PM |
|
|
ok I just tried this mod ( classic AI ) in ToE, Rise to the power
on the champion level.It was 1 on 1 and I was haven and the enemy was academy.
Game became harder than vanilla heroic difficulty but it was not impossible. Neutral stacks were bigger so I had to plan my moves carefully.
Unlike in the vanilla version, enemy showed some intelligence by not mixing up their stacks with units irrelevant to their own factions.
Only problems were if my army is strong enough then the enemy showed a tendency to flee as soon as the battle starts. ( even if their strength was seen as moderate ) and the enemy did not expand at all.
IMO I think the enemy should only flee if they are about to be defeated or should not flee at all. This defeats the whole purpose of raising an army since battle is over before it begins.
Beside those annoying factors, game was improved in many ways. More revision would make it polished. Good job making this mod.
|
|
magnomagus
Admirable
Legendary Hero
modding wizard
|
|
posted January 14, 2008 08:23 PM |
|
|
Thanks for your small review, It leaves me with a few questions:
You said you were playing rise to power 1 on 1 but I thought that is a 6 player map, so was it 1 haven vs 5 academies?
In your review you said nothing about the borderguards, I remember rise to power in hof always to be problematic map with computerplayers because they open them far too late and so meet the human player far too late, I tried to fix this in this mod by increasing the value of the borderguards, I have seen positive effects on other maps, but haven't tried rise to power yet, so I wonder how your experiences were with these?
Now a few things about the flee factor, I had some discussion about this with other community members, and there is currently some incertainty about how a certain parameter affects it and whether it affects it at all. In the situation you describe you said the thread-level was moderate. I personally don't think it is strange he flees so soon in that situation because a moderate thread is very weak mostly.
If you want the gameplay to be more challenging you can also try the following:
-on smaller maps the ai is mostly considered more difficult
-in my experience the AI plays best with sylvan or haven and worst with inferno, I think that is because their racial skills are very easy to use (for a computer) and their creatures do good in straight forward fights without human brains.
____________
MMH5.5 Downloads | MMH5.5 Translations | MMH5.5 FAQ
|
|
cotillion
Hired Hero
|
|
posted January 14, 2008 09:34 PM |
|
|
regarding fleeing: I played quite a few RMG maps with Axeoth and I can say:
(Axeoth)hard: enemy fights to his death all the time - even if totally inferior it never flees
(Axeoth)expert: enemy is smart enough to flee if it sees no chance or is about to lose. sometimes a fight doesn't even start, he sacrifices his mostly inferior army to prevent you from getting XP and saving his AI hero. I think it's a smart move.
I find that (Axeoth)hard is better than (old)Normal, the AI has a little resource advantage and it's smart enough for me. Axeoth-Expert right now is too tough and I dare not to try champion.
|
|
magnomagus
Admirable
Legendary Hero
modding wizard
|
|
posted January 14, 2008 11:58 PM |
|
|
Your experiences seem to match with the settings for the cowardiceversushuman modifier I discussed earlier. This means:
setting=0,1 (Hard)/(Normal)= never flee (same as easy)
setting=0,2 (Expert)/(Hard)= cautious
setting=0,3 (Champion)/(Heroic)= very cautious
I didn't modify these settings in my mod. On first sight I should say it's best to use 0,2 for all settings, but it is difficult to test it works. I have tested heroic on 0,1 earlier and it still fled. That means there may be other factors involved that may be hard-coded. I'm also not sure what actually happens with the troops of an ai player that flees. Does it really lose all his troops like a human player does? I have a few reasons to question this:
1. The Ai almost never comes with a retreat proposal.
2. The Ai seems to rebuild after a defeat much faster.
3. If I was a programmer for Nival I would set it so (not to lose them).
If the answer is no, a more cautious setting is better because you will meet the troops later in a castle.
____________
MMH5.5 Downloads | MMH5.5 Translations | MMH5.5 FAQ
|
|
apkairan
Tavern Dweller
|
|
posted January 15, 2008 05:12 AM |
|
|
No. it was one on one as in one player vs one player.
Yes. It is true that Rise to Power was built for 6 players but
I usually close the other slots in that map to have the luxury of
expanding. ( and same luxury for the opponent )
For the border control, AI never even bothered crossing the
border gate. AI just teleported through the wall to get to me
( even after acquiring a key from black dragon ).
I've also played many rounds on the same map but noticed that AI
weakens itself by dividing its forces. If the full strength is 10 then 6 are given to main hero then 4 are given to low-mid level hero.
( while 8 can be seen as my army's strength). The enemy hero with 4 strength flees like little pathetic chicken as soon as the combat starts. So I end up facing the weaker opponent in overall. ( 8 vs 6 )
Not 8 vs 10 as I wished.
Or maybe you could prevent this in the first place by making the enemies to main its strength to the maximum level.
From my perspective, AI should never flee ( this is my opinion other
people's view can differ ). AI may flee to avoid giving exp to the players but actually they are the reason why player built the armies in the first place. Seeing the enemy's high lvl hero is like missing a boss battle.
|
|
magnomagus
Admirable
Legendary Hero
modding wizard
|
|
posted January 15, 2008 07:59 AM |
|
|
I think the first thing you should do to give yourself more challenge is setting the players in another way because the ai is a very bad expander and there is nothing I can do about that (because it starts spreading his power and different creatures between heroes). Rise to power is also not designed for expanding if you look how the castles are placed.
You should better ally them all together and make it 5vs1. That doesn't change your own abilities to expand, the only difference is the castles are guarded.
I also cannot change precisely the way the ai divides it's creatures between heroes, I can only lower the total amount and the amounts when expanding. You can try to use the xl-performance ai because that forces the ai to use only one hero so it will also concentrate all his power in one hero. But I think you already read about the weaknesses it has.
In my experience rise to power is one of the worst maps with ai because it has to wait until it gets instant travel to attack you (or to expand).
I personally think the computer player should flee after playing around 75% of the battle and after doing a retreat proposal.
____________
MMH5.5 Downloads | MMH5.5 Translations | MMH5.5 FAQ
|
|
apkairan
Tavern Dweller
|
|
posted January 15, 2008 03:11 PM |
|
|
Fair enough.
But know that I've already tried 5 on 1 and it did not make any difference to the game play. AI always showed the similar problem and ( even in your performance version ) when it comes to battle, their 'one ' main hero ran away like chicken and made the battle pointless. ( performance version )
Maybe I was expecting too much on this mod. Further testing showed that there are more problems with your mod.
AI properly used the border gate ( without skipping it with instant travel ) in vanilla 3.0 on heroic difficulty. But it seems like it does not in your mod.
Also the AI doesn't seem to give a crap about their expansion. My lvl 1 hero with 1 unit approached their town and their lvl 20 hero didnt even teleport back to town to defend it. ( can't even imagine that in heroic difficulty in vanilla )
Bit dissapointing, but im sure some may improve if you put more efforts into it.
It seems a bit odd to see you finding Rise to Power not suitable for AI. Because I never experienced any serious AI problem in that map.
It was after 1.3, where all those AI problems started showing up.
( similar problem occured in the other maps too )
In conclusion, maybe you should do some testing yourself since you never tried any testing in that map.
|
|
magnomagus
Admirable
Legendary Hero
modding wizard
|
|
posted January 15, 2008 04:03 PM |
|
|
Quote:
AI properly used the border gate ( without skipping it with instant travel ) in vanilla 3.0 on heroic difficulty. But it seems like it does not in your mod.
Also the AI doesn't seem to give a crap about their expansion. My lvl 1 hero with 1 unit approached their town and their lvl 20 hero didnt even teleport back to town to defend it. ( can't even imagine that in heroic difficulty in vanilla )
It's impossible that these things are affected by the mod. If you unpack the file and read the .xdb you can see that for yourself. The only thing the mod can do considering borderguards is increasing the value of a key tent, that means it considers a key tent to have the same value as a major artifact. But that still doesn't give any guarantees for opening the guards. Also the second problem is completely part of the ai code. The Ai code is part of the .exe file and cannot be changed by modders. That means these are just bugs that coincidentially happen.
I think you should realise that this mod only changes two things on heroic(=champion): neutrals are boosted to the same strenght as campaign neutrals and the ai uses two heroes instead of three when it has only one castle. (This setting is also completely normal because the lower difficulties were designed like this, Nival only made the strange decision to make the hero-count higher on heroic)All other values are the same. The main purpose of the mod was to create a difficulty level between normal and hard and copy some settings from the heroic level to the lower levels to make it more intelligent on these levels. For people who can beat the ai easily on heroic there is unfortunately not very much there can be done, so that's indeed a dissappointment, I'm sorry. For people who cannot beat it on heroic this mod is more fun because they can play heroic with higher resources (=expert) or hard without cheating (=hard)
The problems on rise to power I noticed before 3.0 were that the AI sometimes opened the borderguards and sometimes not. That seems to match well with the experiences you have now. When I have time I will take a look at rise to power under 3.0, but I fear there is not very much to improve on it by ai-modding. I think the best solution is to just delete the borderguards and replace them with level 6/7 stacks.
____________
MMH5.5 Downloads | MMH5.5 Translations | MMH5.5 FAQ
|
|
cotillion
Hired Hero
|
|
posted January 15, 2008 06:03 PM |
|
|
magnomagus,
Quote:
Your experiences seem to match with the settings for the cowardiceversushuman modifier I discussed earlier. This means:
setting=0,1 (Hard)/(Normal)= never flee (same as easy)
setting=0,2 (Expert)/(Hard)= cautious
setting=0,3 (Champion)/(Heroic)= very cautious
very interesting! Where is this parameter located in your mod-files? Maybe it's worth experimenting with it.
Quote:
I'm also not sure what actually happens with the troops of an ai player that flees. Does it really lose all his troops like a human player does? I have a few reasons to question this:
1. The Ai almost never comes with a retreat proposal.
2. The Ai seems to rebuild after a defeat much faster.
3. If I was a programmer for Nival I would set it so (not to lose them).
I never had a retreat proposal in RMG on hard(old normal) or expert (old hard). I surely DO hope that the AI loses ALL his troops when fleeing - otherwise that would be a bad cheat. (Imagine that as a cheap town portal for the enemy!)
I think it would be best to credit full XP for all defeated creatures when AI flees, because his army is completely destroyed. Same should be granted to the AI if you flee. But I guess that's hardcoded.
|
|
magnomagus
Admirable
Legendary Hero
modding wizard
|
|
posted January 15, 2008 07:54 PM |
|
|
This is the line you have to find, it exists 4 times for every difficulty level:
<CowardiceVersusHuman>0.1</CowardiceVersusHuman>
As I said before I'm not sure it is the flee factor, because even on 0.1 and 0 I have seen the Ai still fleeing on heroic.
Now about losing troops after fleeing:
On heroic level the AI often seems to flee while it has a huge army that may not win the battle but can severely damage the human player.
The result is he loses all these troops without even using them. That's why I think it should be better if the AI does not lose it's troop when it flees so soon. Keep in mind I'm looking from the perspective of a player who wants more challenge, so I would only like to apply such a rule to the highest difficulty level.
____________
MMH5.5 Downloads | MMH5.5 Translations | MMH5.5 FAQ
|
|
Cleave
Promising
Famous Hero
Raging Blood
|
|
posted January 15, 2008 10:26 PM |
|
|
I've been playing on Expert level and it's truly enjoyable. I tried to play on hard but the AI always fought to the death and enemy heroes were defeated way too easily. At Expert level, it retreats and it seems to me that it is indeed smarter.
Still the best thing about your mod is that AI turns don't take ages anymore. That's a relief when playing Hotseat (we play random maps with a neutral zone and the 8 factions are represented).
The boost for neutrals is a good thing too.
This is really a good mod. 
|
|
cotillion
Hired Hero
|
|
posted January 20, 2008 06:11 PM |
|
|
Quote:
This is the line you have to find, it exists 4 times for every difficulty level:
<CowardiceVersusHuman>0.1</CowardiceVersusHuman>
As I said before I'm not sure it is the flee factor, because even on 0.1 and 0 I have seen the Ai still fleeing on heroic.
I tried (new)Hard with 0.2 and 0.3 cowardice. There is no difference to 0.1. The AI never flees on Hard. So the only way to play with a AI that flees is on Expert difficulty.
Regarding Axeoth's heroes - can you check Felina (Inferno)? She has no gating skill at start, instead she has logistics. Was this intended?
(I don't know if "gating" appears as skill choice on level-up - so maybe she will never be able to use her primary demon skill)
|
|
magnomagus
Admirable
Legendary Hero
modding wizard
|
|
posted January 20, 2008 11:28 PM |
|
|
Thanks for notifying!
About the cowardicelevel: Yes I tried it myself too and nothing happened. This means this factor has no influence on the question the ai flees early or not. So there is also no reason to update the mod and improve it, because it is impossible. The flee factor seems to be 'hardcoded'. We can only hope patch 3.1 fixes the issues with the ai that currently exist.
About Felina: I checked it and you are right, I made a few copy/paste mistakes in her file. Her spellwringer ability also doesn't work. In fact she has the rusher ability from erasial (a normally hidden hero). She can still get gating later so this problem won't kill the gameplay when the AI gets her.
I think I will do an update for the mod later that will have this fixed, but I will wait for that some time longer, because I am planning to do at the same time an update to the package for compatibility with this ai-mod, spellschool mods (so everything can be seperated), patch 3.1 when it comes out and (maybe) quicksilver II when it comes out.
____________
MMH5.5 Downloads | MMH5.5 Translations | MMH5.5 FAQ
|
|
phoenixreborn
Promising
Legendary Hero
Unicorn
|
|
posted January 24, 2008 07:59 PM |
|
|
My understanding of cowardice factor was how much it feared your main hero on the adventure map, not fleeing.
As for the 66% values, that's simple testing by playing against the ai under different resuorce conditions.
Any chance of a similar AI mod (difficulty levels) for 1.6 users?
|
|
magnomagus
Admirable
Legendary Hero
modding wizard
|
|
posted January 24, 2008 08:33 PM |
|
|
Quote:
My understanding of cowardice factor was how much it feared your main hero on the adventure map, not fleeing.
Yes, that was also my initial thought and I'm now almost 100% sure it is. It also seems logical, on heroic it should act more cautious to be more sure of a victory, just like a human should do.
Quote:
As for the 66% values, that's simple testing by playing against the ai under different resuorce conditions.
I don't fully understand, I do understand that when you test a lot against the AI you get an idea about the benefits it has. But how can you know it is exactly 66%?
Quote:
Any chance of a similar AI mod (difficulty levels) for 1.6 users?
I'm not going to reinstall the game and redownload all the patch files. But if you can upload or sent me the defaultstats.xdb from 1.6 I can probably do it. I will also need to know how the mod must be packed .h5u .h5m or .pak.
____________
MMH5.5 Downloads | MMH5.5 Translations | MMH5.5 FAQ
|
|
Gnoll_Mage
Responsible
Supreme Hero
|
|
posted January 24, 2008 09:40 PM |
|
|
1.6 takes h5us I think.
____________
|
|
magnomagus
Admirable
Legendary Hero
modding wizard
|
|
posted January 25, 2008 10:57 AM |
|
|
|
forest001
Known Hero
|
|
posted January 25, 2008 02:56 PM |
|
|
Quote:
Thanks for notifying!
About the cowardicelevel: Yes I tried it myself too and nothing happened. This means this factor has no influence on the question the ai flees early or not. So there is also no reason to update the mod and improve it, because it is impossible. The flee factor seems to be 'hardcoded'. We can only hope patch 3.1 fixes the issues with the ai that currently exist.
actually it's possible to improve mode, you can switch ai difficulties,
grand eg. hard ai (vanila hard i mean this lvl flees sometimes but not too often) all the good staff from heroic (vanila) like, resurces casting, cautious, ans so on.
let me know what are you thinking about that.
thanks.
|
|
magnomagus
Admirable
Legendary Hero
modding wizard
|
|
posted January 25, 2008 05:23 PM |
|
|
Quote:
grand eg. hard ai (vanila hard i mean this lvl flees sometimes but not too often) all the good staff from heroic (vanila) like, resurces casting, cautious, ans so on.
Yes, that's one of the methods I used for creating this mod, but tests from me and others have now shown it is not possible to change the flee factor.
____________
MMH5.5 Downloads | MMH5.5 Translations | MMH5.5 FAQ
|
|
Gnoll_Mage
Responsible
Supreme Hero
|
|
posted January 25, 2008 08:53 PM |
|
|
Quote:
Quote:
1.6 takes h5us I think.
I don't understand, do you mean only h5 us owners can install the patch?
I meant that .h5u files will be loaded by version 1.6.
____________
|
|
|
|
