Will the ToE AI be less dumb??

[PhoenixReborn]

Battle - I guess equal. Actualy H5 Battle AI could be better, but sometimes it does very stupid things. Especially in 1.5 as I heard.

Since you didn't specify I'm guessing you're referring to how it deals with phantoms and summons. I've seen the a.i. shoot at my phantomed Titans with it's hero so it isn't completely ignoring them, contrary to popular untested belief. It does try to walk around gated units and will not attack them. One beef I have is about horned overseers, they rarely explode at the right time, and that problem has been there since 1.0.

[Corribus]

@Mistweaver

Are you kidding? The AI always flees in my games. Way too often.

[Alamar]

@Mistweaver

Are you kidding? The AI always flees in my games. Way too often.

I'm not Mistweaver but I can tell you that the AI never flees from me on heoric difficulty and hasn't been able to flee for many patches ...

[jerseys]

It deasn't flee for me too on hard. It does on normal though. I remember that way back in 1.0 and 1.1 it was the other way around.

[PhoenixReborn]

I can't find a setting to tweak A.I. fleeing. The only settings changeable that I can find in rpg stats relate to the adventure map control.

As far as I can see it is based purely on starting army sizes.

[Wurtzel]

It's been set by the designers that the ai will NOT flee on hard or heroic levels, but will on normal.. (I think it makes more sense the other way around) Therefore, rightly or wrongly, it's a designer choice..

[Elvin]

Or rather mess up...

[Jolly Joker]

Hrm.

How does the V AI compare to the AI in III?

Adventure - H3 is better, simply because H5 :
1) Almost never flees from battle, thus losing its best heroes.
2) Becomes passive after ~2 month.
3) Too often ignores mines & chests.
4) Its designed to lose.

Battle - I guess equal. Actualy H5 Battle AI could be better, but sometimes it does very stupid things. Especially in 1.5 as I heard.

He's kidding again.
Basically I'd say this.
Compared with H 3 in H 5 there is no adventure AI. Instead there are cheating routines that will allow the AI to make your life difficult. The overall impression is that there is no "person" behind it and not much "playing". The cheats make sure, though, that the AI will be an opponent no matter what on the higher diffs.
Compared with H 5 there is no battle AI in H 3. I always found the H 3 battle AI extremely lacking, even bad - a LOT worse than that in H 2. If you ever saw an AI opponent with expert Tactics try to sort its formation when defending a town with a moat and destroy half his army (virtually) in the process by placing and replacing stacks on moat hexes you know what I mean. The battle AI in H 5 is ALOT better.
So for me this compares favorably for H 5: H 3 creates the IMPRESSION of a good game (with a seemingly human-like "playing" adventure AI), but the final battles, if any, are a disappointment 19 out of 20 times.
IN H 5 the AI does NOT create this impression. Instead it's more like a greedy dumb-rich bully that can afford most everything it wants and therefore is powerful. However, a promising fight will keep that promise most of the time.

[Orfinn]

The A.I flees indeedly regarding which difficulty you play. I have seen it fleeing some times, ca 40% of the times I play normal and even more on heroic, which is my second preferred difficulty. I think the combat A.I in H5 beats most of the predecessors. But I wouldnt mind a better A.I though thinking the cheating a.i like a big, bad bastard but still possible to beat makes me grin Sometimes in frutration

[MistWeaver]

@Mistweaver

Are you kidding? The AI always flees in my games. Way too often.

No. Im not kidding. Ive never seen AI fleeing from battlefield, starting from 0.9 demo till 2.0 HoF.

I was reading Nival forum and HC forum, indeed, it flees for some ppl, but for mosty it does not.

[MistWeaver]

Compared with H 3 in H 5 there is no adventure AI. Instead there are cheating routines that will allow the AI to make your life difficult. The overall impression is that there is no "person" behind it and not much "playing". The cheats make sure, though, that the AI will be an opponent no matter what on the higher diffs.

Thats what I call Turn Based Pac-Man. And I dont like playing it.

Compared with H 5 there is no battle AI in H 3. I always found the H 3 battle AI extremely lacking, even bad - a LOT worse than that in H 2. If you ever saw an AI opponent with expert Tactics try to sort its formation when defending a town with a moat and destroy half his army (virtually) in the process by placing and replacing stacks on moat hexes you know what I mean. The battle AI in H 5 is ALOT better.

Well if you mentioned siege, H5 AI does a lot of stupid things during siege as well.

So for me this compares favorably for H 5: H 3 creates the IMPRESSION of a good game (with a seemingly human-like "playing" adventure AI), but the final battles, if any, are a disappointment 19 out of 20 times.
IN H 5 the AI does NOT create this impression. Instead it's more like a greedy dumb-rich bully that can afford most everything it wants and therefore is powerful. However, a promising fight will keep that promise most of the time.

And I, for example, find disappointing when AI loses its main hero in the first battle that I win even by "quickcombat" (while it was AI attack). And also I find disappointing that AI almost turning off after some time. And stays in its town preparing for super lame "final battle" where it has no chances.

[Jolly Joker]

And I, for example, find disappointing when AI loses its main hero in the first battle that I win even by "quickcombat" (while it was AI attack).

Never happened to me. That reads like H 4.

[MistWeaver]

And I, for example, find disappointing when AI loses its main hero in the first battle that I win even by "quickcombat" (while it was AI attack).

Never happened to me. That reads like H 4.

Ive seen that a lot in 2.0 on "hard", one of the reasons why I quit playing HoF so fast. And as for H4, it always flees if it sees that it's going to lose the battle. (if it has town, of course)

[Jolly Joker]

Nah. Play with wandering monsters, you know, the setting where monsters come to you when you come too near to them and you'll see what I mean.

[Silence]

Compared with H 3 in H 5 there is no adventure AI.

Compared with H 5 there is no battle AI in H 3.

I do not argue with that, but say in other words: H5 has strong RPG and tactical combat/battle elements, while H3 is much more a strategy game. I think once, JJ, it was you who said that H5 AI in contrary to H3 pretty much grants you a hard "final battle". I would add that a "final battle" is IMO sign of RPG games with a final boss fight. Strategy games tend to have a breakpoint somewhere in the middle and easy end, unless "dominance victory" is enabled and quits the slaughter.

[Alamar]

JJ is basically correct & fair in his analysis.

H3 has a VASTLY superior adventure AI [compared to H5].

H5 [to me] seems like it has a better combat AI .... I will add that some game design decisions have aided H5 AI compared to H3.

As far as "feel" goes it seems like H3 is playing more like a human opponnent so it's easier to get immersed in the game. H5 seems to play like a cheater so [win or lose] it's not as satisfying of an experience as it should be [for me]

I will say that on heroic difficulty the H5 AI is almost always going to present an early challenge in the game. The same can't be said of H3 without heavy scripting.

As far as which AI is better [in the end] that depends on your viewpoints & goals for the AI. If your ultimate goal is an AI that "feels" more like you're playing a human than H3 is your boy. If your ultimate goal is an AI that will be competitive without the map maker having to do heavy scripting then H5 is your boy.

[Jolly Joker]

@ Silence
I won't argue with that either, but I'd like to venture that in H 3 the "strategy" part against the AI is focussed on (and decided basically) once you have a Town Portal hero. Since movement spells have been cut down massively in H 5 you could say that the "strategy part" has been upped: playing for example on a 4-player map in H 5 might pose grave problems therefore as soon as you've conquered the first opponent because there is no easy way back. If there are other active parties around - and chances are that there are - you'll be vulnerable a certain amount of time.

[Corribus]

No. Im not kidding. Ive never seen AI fleeing from battlefield, starting from 0.9 demo till 2.0 HoF.

I was reading Nival forum and HC forum, indeed, it flees for some ppl, but for mosty it does not.

Hmmm, maybe I'm playing with a different patch or something. I still am playing on normal or hard diff. because I'm still learning the game. But about 50% of the time I will attack an AI hero only to have it flee on first opportunity, with armies that, while not really a match for mine, would at least hang around for enough turns to do a little damage. In The Cultists (Dungeon Campaign, Map 3) I had a really hard time capturing the AI heroes because they kept fleeing from me, and what's worse is they all were good heroes with high spell power, so they did a lot of damage. It was most vexing. Actually, I found that map to be one example where the AI really gave me a run for the money, even on lower difficulties. I had to restart it several times. The AI did a good job of amassing armies, and attacking my base towns from my weaker flank, as well as protecting its high level heroes by fleeing a lost cause. Chalk it up to lucky map design, but it was an inspiring example that the H5 AI *can* put up a decent fight if the map is designed correctly.

[Jolly Joker]

Umm, that's a campaign map, so it's single player map. On those basically everything is possible due to scripting.
However, real "AI" comes into play only on MP maps (where the AI has to be able to play on every position under every circumstance). Here scripting is simply not allowed at the moment, so it's the "raw" AI there.
Which is, I think, what is meant here.

[Corribus]

Ah, got you. Nevermind then, carry on.

(Still it was a better challenge than I ever had on an H4 map, campaign or otherwise...)