New unofical AI patche for h5

[cjlee]

Having downloaded and played this for several hours, I must commend the makers for a good quality product.

I've always believed that my true standard as a player was Average or Normal, except I can play Heroic because of the stupidity of Heroes V AI.

Now I see that on Hard, it is really Hard! What's with all those neutral heroes popping up unexpectedly? No more bullying poor little critters for easy artifact pick-ups? Eight skills! All great stuff that Nival should have incorporated long ago!

except, what is the Hall of Decision? I didn't find anything about it in the documentation; maybe I missed it.

[Quantomas]

Having downloaded and played this for several hours, I must commend the makers for a good quality product.

I've always believed that my true standard as a player was Average or Normal, except I can play Heroic because of the stupidity of Heroes V AI.

Now I see that on Hard, it is really Hard! What's with all those neutral heroes popping up unexpectedly? No more bullying poor little critters for easy artifact pick-ups? Eight skills! All great stuff that Nival should have incorporated long ago!

except, what is the Hall of Decision? I didn't find anything about it in the documentation; maybe I missed it.

Cheers. It's always nice to hear people appreciate the work and that the result is worth the effort. I think it truly fun to play with the new options and to develop new tactics to deal with the neutral champions. It has an impact on the hero skills you choose, the creatures you place in the combat arena, for example I never really relied on minotaurs and hydras with Dungeon, but now with their stamina they are priceless. Before it was mostly ranged units and blood furies doing all the work, the game is richer now for it.

The Hall of Decision is another upgrade that is planned. You can find more details here: Heroes 5.5 - Eternal Essence

[Mlai]

Does this mod just beef up AI and smooth out gameplay time... or does it change gameplay (other than what the above post showed in increase in options)?

I don't mind having 8 skills instead of just 6, or having heroes pop up in critter battles... but does the mod make other changes such as balance changes?

I'd prefer to just play the game with my own balance mod, but with better/smoother AI.

[parcaleste]

IT WORKS! IT WORKS! The campaigns started!

[Quantomas]

Does this mod just beef up AI and smooth out gameplay time... or does it change gameplay (other than what the above post showed in increase in options)?

I don't mind having 8 skills instead of just 6, or having heroes pop up in critter battles... but does the mod make other changes such as balance changes?

I'd prefer to just play the game with my own balance mod, but with better/smoother AI.

It is a complete rewrite of the AI. It does remove a couple of AI cheats, for example extra creatures and town buildings for the vanilla AI on hard and heroic, so it is actually more faithful to the stated rules. If your question pertains to whether the patch changes the game's rules, except of the optional enhancements in 3.1c, the answer is no, these are not modified.

edit
There are a couple of bugs in the tactical combat, for example an accelerated Battle Griffin rushdive and a few skills like Stormwind have still values from 3.0. These are the only instances that affect the game itself that I am aware of, and these will be resolved until 3.2.

[Yurian Stonebow]

I'm not a big fan of the Nival made H5 but seeing this great fan product (and having played it for some time now) I believe that the game's finally approaching the standard. A huge thank you to the team behind this patch and here's wishing them all the best for future improvements and bug fixes. Thumbs up, fellas.


-Yurian

[Ya5MieL]

This probably is hands down Best mod for H5 available.

I'm just hoping that in future releases (if they happen) it sticks to the roots of fixing AI and doesn't try to be more (like including any sort of balance changes - allowing 8 skills is bordering it, even if it is just an option).

Now with that fear out in the open, in its current state this mod gets 10/10, as it makes the play versus AI seem much more natural (even though I find Fritz engine playing really un-natural at any other than expert+ modes; but it feels better in HoMM).

I recommend everyone gives this a try in skirmishes vs AI. In campaigns keep in mind that it can alter the difficulty of many maps because they were designed specifically for their weaker AI (so AI starts with more towns/creatures/everything). This one will not let you make a good comeback once it starts beating you so maps where you start with bigger disadvantages by design will prove to be much harder.

Mod of the year award

[Mlai]

I removed this mod after it crashed my single-player skirmish game after just 1 hour of play. Seems too buggy at this stage.

I was trying the first 2v2v2 map in TotE.

[Quantomas]

Cheers for the friendly words. It is always good to see that this mountain of work, that it really is, is appreciated.

I played the ToE campaign with the AI patch on hard. It is like Ya5MieL said, the balance is a bit different and it plays out differently. But I removed the AI cheats Nival put in, like extra creatures or more buildings constructed per day, so it is not extremely hard. There are some campaign maps that are now much more interesting, the more open ones, but some with narrow designs and armies spawned and such, do not benefit in the same way.

We have now 3.1e that further boosts the AI performance and also contains a good number of important fixes.

Current stable build:
3.1e public release (7.8 MB)

Project website:
Heroes 5.5 - Eternal Essence

[Slayer of Cliffracers]

Could they make a version of this mod for Heroes V original and Hammers of Fate? The better AI would make those scenarios and campaigns well worth a replay.

[Quantomas]

Seems too buggy at this stage.

Apologies to all who were using 3.1e. There was indeed a weird critical bug introduced in 3.1e that corrupted maps being loaded. 3.1f fixes this.

This reminds me that we should go back to the time-honored practice of testing new builds first in a beta release for two weeks or so before we will release these to the public.

Could they make a version of this mod for Heroes V original and Hammers of Fate? The better AI would make those scenarios and campaigns well worth a replay.

This is indeed our plan, to reenvision the original campaigns of Heroes V and Hammers of Fate. We plan to rework the maps so that they are fun and a decent challenge on all difficulty settings, and none of the current simplistic tasks like build an army to capture castle X or defend against a spawned threat in week Y.

Beyond that we are also working on our own original campaign.

Current stable build:
3.1f public release (7.8 MB)

Latest beta build:
3.1.9 beta release (11.0 MB). It's older than 3.1f. Watch the news for the next one coming out.

Project website:
Heroes 5.5 - Eternal Essence

[parcaleste]

I guess it is some of the new maps - the Ring Of Speed has been put in my Right Hand slot.


Also - can you make a "mod" in which the externals to accumulate guardians?

[Quantomas]

Also - can you make a "mod" in which the externals to accumulate guardians?

What do you mean by "accumulate guardians"?

Technically, we can do all kinds of things.

What we actually are doing is to improve Heroes V in its current form until we have a proper 3.2 patch (unofficial) with a truly powerful AI.

After this step we will set out to create a fresh game with new campaigns, magic system, game mechanics and more. You can find out more on our project website.
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Project website:
Heroes 5.5 - Eternal Essence

[kyrub]

Hi Quantomas, the project website gives some very interesting reading about AI conceptions. Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I have not played Homm V yet (being warned off by poor AI reports). Seeing your plans, I really should.

Also:

Of course I have full access to the AI source code because I developed it. My stakeholders tolerate that I do work for the Heroes 5.5 - Eternal Essence project because I can reason that it is a very good reference.

Very nice from you to put some more time into the game.

...you have sometimes to take a sanity check on your assumptions. For me that is, if a project takes more time of your life than your free time, you need valid reasons to do it.

Fully aggree, have similar experience.

[parcaleste]

I mean the externals/dwelings on the map are now accumulating only creatures to requit, but what if they also accumulate the guardians? You know, the big externals/dwelings for lvl 4+ creatures? Let's say Inferno, it has like 3 Succubi, 3 Hell Chargers, 2 Pit Fiends and 1 Devil. What if they "accumulate" each and every week depending on the difficulty of the map played (Heroic, Easy, etc.). This addition works really well in WoG and I love it there, even though in several... months there are so many guardians in some externals, that you need some really high class hero to break them and make them work for you.

Otherwise I like how the improved AI moves - you can see it esp. good on the battle field, where it ignores the summoned troops to attack your original ones, even though this ignore sometimes just does not make sense.

[Quantomas]

Otherwise I like how the improved AI moves - you can see it esp. good on the battle field, where it ignores the summoned troops to attack your original ones, even though this ignore sometimes just does not make sense.

There you have picked a thing with which I am not satisfied.

BTW, have you tried Neutral Champions = easy & artefact guards = on? This will get you a fair fight in the high level dwellings.

[Quantomas]

Hi Quantomas, the project website gives some very interesting reading about AI conceptions. Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I have not played Homm V yet (being warned off by poor AI reports). Seeing your plans, I really should.

Also:

Of course I have full access to the AI source code because I developed it. My stakeholders tolerate that I do work for the Heroes 5.5 - Eternal Essence project because I can reason that it is a very good reference.

Very nice from you to put some more time into the game.

...you have sometimes to take a sanity check on your assumptions. For me that is, if a project takes more time of your life than your free time, you need valid reasons to do it.

Fully aggree, have similar experience.

Thanks a lot.

[parcaleste]

... There you have picked a thing with which I am not satisfied.

I am not saying it's perfect, but sometimes it is really a big (understand nice tactical) "obstacle" when you don't have the propers spells or mana.

BTW, have you tried Neutral Champions...

Unfortunately I am playing the campaigns right now (as I lost my original saves some time ago), so I think this option is off there, but I tried one of the maps on heroic with the heroes "guardians" on. Br-r-r-r, scary stuff. I am not sure if this was the idea, but I got totaly squashed in each and every first battle, as the enemy hero was having Magic Arrow and was doing quiet good damage to my troops (meaning my troops were dying like flies ), so I am not sure if this was your idea, but I think it is an idea or two too strong/overpowered.

[parcaleste]

I tried the "Demon Hunter" map and I am not sure if it is a bug or it is just me, but I can't find the icons on the left here:


and as you can see:

when I mark the ones in the left the "v" is missing from the equation. Also the Lookahead Depth, Neutral Champions and Hall of Decision are not working as well. Do I need to do something special or I am just not looking in the right direction/doing the right thing?

[Quantomas]

These options are on the next screen, once you have selected "Create".

However, you need to run the H5_AIadv_31g.exe instead of the vanilla. The version on the start screen should confirm this.