Inconceivable AI cheating

[autoaim.cfg]

I was shopping yesterday and was stuck with the sweet sweet surprise of suddenly standing in front of HoMM V at the computer department. I picked up a copy without hesitation. It's one of the few franchises I've been following. HoMM & Quake, to be precise. I got hooked on the game back in in HoMM II and own retail copies of HoMM III, HoMM III - Armageddons blade, HoMM III - Complete (couldn't find SoD, so...) and HoMM IV. I've also been an avid player of HoMM III - WoG. This background is just to say that while I'm no expert player, I'm not a complete retard when it comes to playing HoMM either.

I did initially find the 5:th installment of HoMM fairly hard. I started on the Falcons Reach scenario and played around with it a bit. When I had conquered the underworld and gathered enough oomph to venture topside I intially did fairly well. My army was holding up pretty good... and then I ran into the AI player. WTF? It was roughly three times the size of mine, with high level units all over the place. I was hammered into the ground in 0.1 seconds. No contest there.

I had a few more of these experiences and was getting tired of it. I wanted to fool around with the skills a bit and see how the skill tree played out in practice, so I went for WinRAR and started to poke about in SS2.xdb in the data.pak. I patched up the starting army to consist of 800 Succubi and some 200 imps instead of the default units. That should do the trick, right? I started a new game, quickly went topside, locked down all the resources, got my Succubi upgraded to Succubi Misstresses and started to box the AI in. My initial battle with the Blue AI hero near the Blue base was successful. She went down. A mighty blue army was obliterated and I gained a sackfull of experience points. Ahh... ok, now to just pin the AI down with masses of Succubi Mistresses in the two garrisons closest to Blue. Then I have lots and lots of time to develop my hero and play around with the skill tree. Nice! Fun!

Out of NOWHERE, I was attacked by the Blue AI wielding an army of MASSIVE proportions, including a metric f*ckton of archangels. Me and my roughly 300 Succubi Mistresses + assorted other units were hammered into oblivion in about 0.1 seconds again. Game Over!

WHAT... THE... F*CK???

To say that the AI is "cheating a bit" is roughly saying that "Dresden, 1945 was a little bonfire". This is absurd!

[Alamar]

Hmm ... I wonder if UBI took out a lot of the cheat codes so we couldn't see exactly what was going on????

IF [but only if] the AI is getting insane $, resource, and creature bonuses that aren't tied to map scripting then I believe we have a really BAD AI on our hands.

While I like a challenge I do want to at least have the illusion of some amount of fairness.

[Campaigner]

Autoaim.cfg: The single scenario maps (not the multiplayer ones) are scripted and the A.I isn't "normal" on those maps.

What you mention have been said before. Story purposes. You can understand the single scenarios if you view them as "standalone campaign scenarios".

p.s. Hey, cool nick ^^

[Alamar]

Autoaim.cfg: The single scenario maps (not the multiplayer ones) are scripted and the A.I isn't "normal" on those maps.

What you mention have been said before. Story purposes. You can understand the single scenarios if you view them as "standalone campaign scenarios".

p.s. Hey, cool nick ^^

Am I the only one that doesn't like UBER scripting of the AI in the campaign and scenario maps? I wish they had turned the scripting way down and just let things play out.

[Jolly Joker]

Some points.
I always read, "H 3 had a good AI". Not true. The AI sucked qwere it counted most: it was (is) unable to create an adequate HERO. How often did it happen to you that you played a game (on higher than normal difficulty, mind you, with the AI having advantages as well), having a good time reaching a decisive fight with what LOOKED to be an interesting computer opponent only to hammer him into oblivion, because - on first sight - he didn't habe the faintest idea about what to do on the battlefield? The story behind it is a lot more different, though. The AI is simply unable to create a good hero: no mass spells, no good skills, only crap. But try the following: make a map and for the AI limit the available heroes for it, but give it the right basic skills already. That makes things a lot more interesting.
I don't care whether the darn AI cheats or not: the humans are cheating as well, aren't they? Each reload is a cheat, right? And I don't understand the fuzz. You play as best as you can, you reach the opponent, the opponent is giving you a hard time. Full stop.

[DaemianLucifer]

Am I the only one that doesn't like UBER scripting of the AI in the campaign and scenario maps? I wish they had turned the scripting way down and just let things play out.

Not the only one.It botheres me as well.But what can we do?(besides complaining,of course)

[Alamar]

Some points.
I always read, "H 3 had a good AI". Not true. The AI sucked qwere it counted most: it was (is) unable to create an adequate HERO. How often did it happen to you that you played a game (on higher than normal difficulty, mind you, with the AI having advantages as well), having a good time reaching a decisive fight with what LOOKED to be an interesting computer opponent only to hammer him into oblivion, because - on first sight - he didn't habe the faintest idea about what to do on the battlefield? The story behind it is a lot more different, though. The AI is simply unable to create a good hero: no mass spells, no good skills, only crap. But try the following: make a map and for the AI limit the available heroes for it, but give it the right basic skills already. That makes things a lot more interesting.
I don't care whether the darn AI cheats or not: the humans are cheating as well, aren't they? Each reload is a cheat, right? And I don't understand the fuzz. You play as best as you can, you reach the opponent, the opponent is giving you a hard time. Full stop.

I tend to agree with many of your points. When I made maps for H3 & H4 I [as much as possible] specifically gave all my starting AI heroes decent basic skill sets because I knew that I could build a hero much better than the AI could. I would go a step farther sometimes by making sure certain spells went into their towers to make sure that they would only use "good" spells in combat

Theoretically though I don't see proper hero building as a hard problem at all. Actually [with the cheats that I would allow for an AI on impossible mode] I think it's inexcusable for the AI not to build a hero every bit as well as I could [the first time I played a map].

[MistWeaver]

Some points.
I always read, "H 3 had a good AI". Not true. The AI sucked qwere it counted most: it was (is) unable to create an adequate HERO. How often did it happen to you that you played a game (on higher than normal difficulty, mind you, with the AI having advantages as well), having a good time reaching a decisive fight with what LOOKED to be an interesting computer opponent only to hammer him into oblivion, because - on first sight - he didn't habe the faintest idea about what to do on the battlefield? The story behind it is a lot more different, though. The AI is simply unable to create a good hero: no mass spells, no good skills, only crap. But try the following: make a map and for the AI limit the available heroes for it, but give it the right basic skills already. That makes things a lot more interesting.
I don't care whether the darn AI cheats or not: the humans are cheating as well, aren't they? Each reload is a cheat, right? And I don't understand the fuzz. You play as best as you can, you reach the opponent, the opponent is giving you a hard time. Full stop.

Oh.. I see. Well .. if to look at things in your way, then the H4 AI is quite enough for all times. And why not ? Lets write scripts to make for it a good hero, a good town, lets give him an army and then

You play as best as you can, you reach the opponent, the opponent is giving you a hard time. Full stop.

Do you really think this is fun and intresting ?

The really fun game is when you can be defeated by AI without BRUTE force . Where you dont must use hide&sneak strategy all the time, couse the opponents AI army is several times larger whatever you do.
Thats my point !

And one more thing. I do not go against bonuses for AI. BUT it is a mapmaiker should deside to give them or not and how much. And the developers should give us a PURE AI. It can be weak, but it must be honest.

[Joskevermeulen]

the developers should give us a PURE AI. It can be weak, but it must be honest.

I completely agree with Mistweaver.

We have seen that a challenging pure AI was possible in Heroes II and Heroes III.
Heroes V in my opinion (i've only played the demo) isn't a big difference in gameplay with those 2 (so for the A.I. the basic rules stay the same).

So I even think if Ubisoft would contact the A.I. programmer(s) of Heroes III to fix the A.I. of Heroes V they wouldn't have a very hard time.

Any idea who programmed the A.I. for Heroes II and III? JVC?

[Jolly Joker]

Mistweaver, I don't know why you come up with the H 4 AI. That AI was inept because it would kill itself with neutral stacks so that you didn't have an AI on the higher levels. Advanced diff is what you could play. So, no, developing goal missed.
And missed are some points, here as well in the other thread: the AI tends to lose more units in combat against neutral - it MUST lose more, and I don't think it's cheating THERE. So it's fully ok, if the AI gets more money - the creatures are limited, so money cannot buy an unlimited army.

[Gaidal Cain]

We have seen that a challenging pure AI was possible in Heroes II and Heroes III.

Those AI's were hardly "pure". H3 AI got bonuses to income, and it's quickcombat sometimes made it win battles it never would have been able to in "reality"...

[MistWeaver]

So it's fully ok, if the AI gets more money - the creatures are limited, so money cannot buy an unlimited army.

In some way he can. Not unlimited but definitely larger. Ill tell you how. Its a pity that I've deleted log, but things are going like this:

AI receives 10k a day, so he feels free to barter for rare resourses no matter huge prices. So he can build archdevils' building already on the third week.

And again. Its ok if AI cheats. But there is a fine line between 10k gold a day on "normal" and cheating just on higher difficulty levels.

[uncreative]

All I can say is that I plan on deleting the damn game from my HD until they decide to make an AI that doesn't cheat its ass off. I'm a turtler, always have been and I love HOMM because of the amount of defenses you can build into your town. I like building up a large army and sieging. It absolutely does not work against a computer with limitless resources and I am seriously disappointed overall in the entire game. The campaign providing enemies with creatures on the map, huge resources, even the stupid multiplayer maps had a computer player earning enough to max out the armies of six heroes. I spend all my money and manage to build one massive hero and six slightly smaller heroes charge in--I can't stand it--All I want is simple recreation not some god-awful cheating AI and they didn't provide it to me. They even removed cheats--I'm not 16 anymore, I'm 25, I have a job, and a wife who deosn't play pc games. I either have to spend nine hours playing and reloading and playing aggressively, which I hate, or just not play at all. I opt for the latter. Ubi, you can kiss my @!#()!#*()@!#*)@*&$&$&$&$&!)!(@#)@(%)*&)*#)*^)$#^&)*%@&@&@&@&@&&@#)$*(#

expletive

[Asjo]

Well, the AI doesn't seem that bad. It does sacrifice small armies too easily (go close to your armies) and leave it's force too scattered. At least that was my experience in the last map of the haven campaign, but then I thought to myself that it was probably because of the priorities it had been given in order for the campaign to wokr out.

Something I haven't paid great attention to is how the AI builds its hero, but as long as it can do that and combine armies well, I don't see any need for it to have any bonuses in regular scenario maps (I'm indifferent to the campaign map conditions, as campaign maps are solely meant to provide a very specific challenge). The AI seems aggressive enough and is able to make use of resources and fight neutral monsters well. It's planning might not be fantastic, but it seems on the level of Heroes 3.

However, something I do not like is that I see in this topic that single player scenarios should be scripted as well (or hardcoded for AI). If that applies to all those maps in general and not just to the individual map, it's an outrage. As said, the AI should easily be able to do without extra resources, and if any mapmaker wants the AI to have an advantage, he can just put it in the map.

[5il3nc3r]

Didn't feel like creating another topic about it, and it kinda fits in (I guess) but just more proof that the AI is stupid:
I'm playing sylvan. I have a little pack of war dancers (hit all around them) that I managed to conviniently place somewhere that can hit 3 of his units at the same time. It's their hero's turn. He cast Circle of winter on my war dancers (as in ON my war dancers). Result: my war dancers are unharmed, and he hit his 3 units I was attacking... o.O wth!?

They really need to work on the AI >.>

§ıĿ

[ThunderTitan]

@5il3nc3r
That sounds like a bug.

[5il3nc3r]

an AI bug then? Isn't that included in the "they need to work on the AI" phrase? Or am I mis-interpreting something?

Oh and btw, @ your sig: my friend actually had it happen to him XD

§ıĿ

[ThunderTitan]

I was refering to u saying the AI is stupid. I'm pretty sure there was no actual decision being made on whether it should kill your or his troops.

[DaemianLucifer]

Well a nice bug that is.Id like that happening to me.But the one with overseers exploding on own imps is enough for me.Happened only in demo though.

[Alamar]

Some points.
I always read, "H 3 had a good AI". Not true. The AI sucked qwere it counted most: it was (is) unable to create an adequate HERO. How often did it happen to you that you played a game (on higher than normal difficulty, mind you, with the AI having advantages as well), having a good time reaching a decisive fight with what LOOKED to be an interesting computer opponent only to hammer him into oblivion, because - on first sight - he didn't habe the faintest idea about what to do on the battlefield? The story behind it is a lot more different, though. The AI is simply unable to create a good hero: no mass spells, no good skills, only crap.

From your quote above, if I read it correctly, you're stating that the AI builds heroes that cast mass spells, have good skills, etc.

I'm not really seeing any difference at this point from H3. I've just finished playing 2 multiplayer maps [no scripting] against the AI and in neither game [total of 10 AI opponnents] have I seen any hero cast a spell above level 3 and haven't seen a single "mass" spell yet.

I was hoping to see at least one mass haste, a mass slow, a meteor shower or SOMETHING. As a matter of fact the ONLY level 2 spells that I distincly remember seeing are Raise Dead and maybe Ice Bolt ....

While I personally think that it should be "easy" to script the AI to build a great hero and cast cool spells in combat my [very limited] play time with the game so far isn't showing many signs of promise.