Good AI?

[willyfunt]

I have been playing RON for about a week now.
I was initially quite impressed with the AI, losing my first few moderate games then understanding the game better and winning. Now I am playing on tougher and am noticing some faults with the AI. I have read several treads on how great the AI is and I am impressed with the AI but I think some negatives need to be pointed out.


These three games were all played in succession so its not as if i picked a few badly played games by the computer out of many well played ones.

First off check out this recorded game:

Territory Victory

This game was played on Tough difficulty.

I had to do very little in this game. I did not build especially quickly but did have the Russian territorial advantage. With 3 cities up, I had gained more than 70% of the territory and won without a fight in less than 15 minutes. I realize that this is on a small map, but the AI should do something.

Ok second:

Poor Attack Route

Now this game was played on Tougher. Here my expansion town should be taken by the computer. He chooses the correct town to attack, which is impressive and sends his troops in through my territory resulting in them taking massive attrition and getting demolished. Another thing to note is that I build a tower near one of his barrack and every archer that comes out of the building decides to attack it, giving me quite an advantage. I get a good middle position on him, and destroy his towns. He finds no counter attack.

And lastly, the value of supply wagons

Poor Strategy

Tougher again
Here he attacks my central town first and loses his supply wagon. I garrison all my guys in my town, waiting for him to take attrition and kill all his guys. He attacked this town with a tower w/o a siege weapon. Once I establish a castle, he decides to exclusively attack that. This was my strongest position. I take out his supply wagons and he quickly loses. He needs to retreat once he loses his supply wagons and he needs to find a different route of attack.

It has been stated that you have to attack first to win on tough and harder modes. If you review these 3 games you will find that i didn't have to do that. The later 2 the computer made a bad attack first (with a much larger army) and i got the advantage militarily and destroy him.

I love Rise of Nations but i think some work can be done with the AI in terms of strategy and response to attack.

Willy Funt

[Carch]

The second two seem to illustrate what I think might be a bug in the AI. I've seen the same thing. It seems that some conditions cause it to just forget about attrition altogether and act as if there was none.

At other times, it's very careful to retreat if it loses supply wagons, or use its generals' ambush ability to hide the supply wagons to prevent them getting hurt.

After lots of games with the AI, I've seen what you describe also. One more thing ... if you all-out rush the AI, you're pretty much guaranteed a win, unless you're up against a Rush AI or Russia.

[wilebill]

In general I am delighted with the AI but have noticed some wierdnesses.

1) On replays notice that AI seems to make no effort to optimize placement of wood cutter camps. This hurts the AI's buildout a lot.

2) The AI sometimes fails to respond to an early rush entirely, perhaps being in boom mode and unable to realize there is no use just sitting there booming when the enemy has captured the capital city --- which I did, Mongols (me) vs French (AI) and while it had built a tower in its expansion city, I just ran by and attacked and took the capital with no resistance whatever.

It never even tried to build a barracks, just boomed away with its one remaining city until the capital capture timer ran down. Boring victory.

3) The AI sometimes is a sucker for attacking a tower or castle when capturing the city nearby (and out of range of the fortification) is obviously the best thing to do, and will often keep at hammering vainly away at the fortification after you have destroyed its siege engines and the supply wagons. Then you wheel your army around at your leisure and hit him from behind when attrition has mostly killed him anyway. But sometimes the AI does retreat properly under these conditions. Perhaps it depends on the map details of the attack area or something, I cannot tell.

4) It would be great if later on when BHG has some time and is looking for game enhancements, if BHG could make some of the AI's specific attack and defense behavior configurable. Like what I am thinking about is ChessMaster where you can configure a player in detail like how much it values its queen, its relative balance of tactical versus positional play, its appetite for delightsome poisoned pawns (heh heh), and its degree of error proneness, among other things.

Again I emphasize that I am on the whole delighted with the AI as it is.

[Solver]

I am also very delighted with the AI, but I believe that in this thread, we should outline the weirdnesses. Someone already mentioned how AI sometimes forgets attrition...

In a game I played yesterday, the AI was quite good, getting to the next age a bit before me - my econ research sucked this time. The moment that I moved my big invasion force into AI territory, it send an army so big to one of my cities that I was forced to delay my own assault and defend - very good. Now, the stuff that's interesting comes from Englighment age onwards. In Enlightement, we fight quite evenly, but I make good use of my General and siege, and manage to gain a stronghold. The AI plays well, though, and goes Industrial. Soon thereafter, so do I, and I gain access to Tanks and better troops. So OK, I'm pressing the AI with my manchu Rilfemen, but he has Musketeers and Light Tanks. All fine. Quite some battles take place, I gain more territory, but AI plays well. We got Modern about the same time, AI just a few seconds before me. Now, I'm starting to get surprised. The AI tries a counteroffensive at the city I first took from him, with Tanks and - MUSKETEERS! It hasn't even bothered to upgrade his Musketeers, although Infantry are already available! Of course, my Manchu Infantry and a few Bazooka make quick work of it. Now, realizing how weak his infantry is, I go Tank + Bazooka, because all the units except for his own Tanks he sends is obsolete. He had airforce, but no advanced Barracks units... odd, isn't it?

[wilebill]

1) AI may send units on a raid that get trapped by geography and forget all about them. For instance, Romans (me) versus Koreans (AI) the early Classical Korean raid proceeded towards me and shortly after entering my territory found themselves on a U shaped highland with cliffs on three sides. The replay showed that the force wandered about aimlessly there for some time before beginning to senselessly march back and forth until they dropped from attrition. The units were within one fifth screen width at max zoom out of getting out of the highland trap but never were recovered by the AI. I wondered what had happened to them because my scout got killed by them and I prepared for a force that never arrived.

2) AI often attacks in earlier ages with just one siege engine when it could afford two or three or four, which really reduces the effectiveness of its attacks.

3) Just my impression, but it appears as if the AI builds up its army in the most inconvenient place possible to respond to an attack. This may make sense in later ages, but makes the AI more vulnerable than it ought to be in earlier ages.

4) AI often fails to protect its supply wagons or keep them to the rear, sometimes seems to attack with its supply wagons.