Heroe's V AI

leginreed · Unread postby **leginreed** » 26 Apr 2006, 10:55

While having a peek at the UBI forum I noticed a thread where several people were moaning about the bad AI on HOMMV.

Bad AI is my biggest worry, I would rather have decent AI at the expense of fancy graphics.

Has anyone on this forum played the Demo and what are your thoughts on the computers attempts to beat you?

I gather on one of the maps the computer starts out with a big army.

Thanks

Oh sorry if this is already covered on another thead, I had a quick look before posting this one.

Joskevermeulen · Unread postby **Joskevermeulen** » 26 Apr 2006, 19:02

I played the demo and it was very exciting to finally have a new homm world. Nice graphics and the game wasn't running very choppy.
I am very happy they did the effort to make the demo.

But concerning your question about the Adventure map A.I? my feelings with this demo are not so positive:
- The a.i. is mostly scripted to walk from point a to b often beginning from a certain event (reach certain point / reach certain week)
- In the custom game i never had to really fight the enemy(he just ran in circles never remarking my hero, i just walked in his castle (had to kill very few enemy stacks) while his allmighty superheroe was literally 3 steps (not turns!!) away from the castle. Then i just clicked 7 times on the next turn button and i won the game. He didn't attack me while he was 10 times stronger and he was dismissed after 7 weeks without home castle!
- In the campaign on different occasions the enemy hero ran straight past my hero godric and commited suicide on my heavily defended castle, but Godric had only one creature defending him! If the enemy hero killed godric he would have won the quest, but it went for a suicidal (probably scripted) attack!
- This is probably to nostalgic: The heroes II demo was really an example of a huge replayable map that showed of the A.I. quality of the engine. There were tons of different castles and each time the fight for the mainland was different. There was not much scripting involved it was just a big map many different castles and you could choose your own path to win the map, each time very unique and fresh. This demo also offers some different ways to victory but is far less replayable.
I just hope they chose a little map and that the big maps will really offer very challenging replayable games.

Conclusion:
It is a good thing they had a demo but the demo doesn't show us much of a dynamic adventure map A.I. that is necessarry to give the game endless (SINGLE PLAYER) replayability on different maps. But it is possible there is a good A.I. it just isn't made clear! But with the combat A.I. there doesn't seem to be big problems at first sight. Let's hope it isn't a second HEROES IV sitting duck A.I.

Thelonious · Unread postby **Thelonious** » 26 Apr 2006, 19:07

Euhm, do note this is a demo... The AI probably isn't in all it's glory. Also check CH main site -> the interview, if they are planning to make a lower diffeculty setting that's not for nothing you know.

Ethric · Unread postby **Ethric** » 27 Apr 2006, 00:20

Played that singlemap on the demo now. When I got to the enemy's castle there was a pile of sulfur right by the caste, unguarded, untouched... which seems a bit weird.

Kalah · Unread postby **Kalah** » 27 Apr 2006, 00:26

On the other hand the enemy does seem to flag any mine within reach and recruit whatever creatures it can... Hmmm.....

Guess I'll have to play the real thing once it's out!

theGryphon · Unread postby **theGryphon** » 27 Apr 2006, 04:49

Take a look at the Demo readme. Demo was NOT the final thingy. Probably they took care of these items by now:

5. Known Issues
===============

- Some texts are not final (proofreading, gameplay check, fitting in interfaces...)
- Some models or animations may be faulty
- Music selection, sounds or mix may not be final at some points
- AI may decide to not to recapture town on the "Falcon's" map
- Leadership perks incorrectly placed at racial ability slots on Hero Screen
- Godric may stop chasing Agrael on the "The Cultist" map
- Map "The Queen" can be finished without completing objective "Get a message to Nicolai"
- SPACE hotkey is not working in the creature hiring interface
- Tooltips and icons of some Spellbook bookmarks are mixed up
- Sometimes sprites couldn't attack skeletons
- Spirit Link ability is not working
- Profile button in Multiplayer menu may not work
- Water implementation in Haven town is not final
- Player may gain levelup twice when using Sacrifice Pit in Inferno town
- Sound FX for several map objects are missing
- Hero path plotting may have visual artefacts when Player Movement Speed option is set to maximum
- Game crash in Duel mode if combat ends while Options menu is open

Gaidal Cain · Unread postby **Gaidal Cain** » 27 Apr 2006, 09:08

Ethric wrote:Played that singlemap on the demo now. When I got to the enemy's castle there was a pile of sulfur right by the caste, unguarded, untouched... which seems a bit weird.

I think that was a mistake in the map, which made the resource pile unreachable. I tried going for it, but couldn't.

Ethric · Unread postby **Ethric** » 27 Apr 2006, 10:49

Well I got it just fine. If you look at the potd now, the one about hacking to play as haven on that very map, the pile I refer to is the mercury flask Obviously it's random, as it was sulfur in my case. But that shouldn't make a difference.

It's only a demo of course, and not final. yet I found it a bit curious, what with it being right by the castle and all, and considering it was the one thing it didn't take, while taking a lot of other stuff further from the castle.

ioticus · Unread postby **ioticus** » 27 Apr 2006, 16:32

I was going to pre-order but the demo put me off. The developers seem to go out of their way to hide the nature of the strategic AI by giving the AI big advantages in resources and setting up puzzle scenarios (just like Heroes 4) . I also noticed the AI not capturing resources even though it had obviously been near them because it had flagged nearby mines. I fear this will be another Heroes 4 fiasco with crappy strategic AI. You can be damn sure I will read options of fans about the AI before I buy this time.

Kalah · Unread postby **Kalah** » 27 Apr 2006, 16:47

We shall post our opinions, be sure of that!

dragonn · Unread postby **dragonn** » 27 Apr 2006, 20:51

I remember the AI in Heroes III being quite clever, and very irritating too

(especially when enemy heroes reached your castle on the last day of the week). It was good, quite competetive, though sometimes the computer player made some irrational things. The thing is that a 7 year old game had better AI then its succesors. Overall the AI in H5 is not that bad (in the demo of course, we'll see about the final product), but many bothersome mistakes occur while playing it, like those mentioned before. Furthermore there are some other issues which should be corrected in my opinion: the fact that enemy caster units instead of attacking, cast non-damage spells on themselves or their enemies (I noticed it while fighting Matriarchs or Inqiusitors), and attacking would be a better choice taking in account they won't live long

. Or units attacking the weakest enemies (for instance: when I was fighting with Heaven their 38 Paladins made a very strategic and wise decision to attack my one remaining Nightmare instead of the Devil which was lurking nearby). I don't mind, less casulties for me, but really, the game should be more competetive. Hope the final product, or the patches (I hope not) will fix the problems...

DaemianLucifer · Unread postby **DaemianLucifer** » 06 May 2006, 07:57

The weirdest thing just happened to me.I decided to give demo another shot.While playing a fight with isabele against deleb,he did something remarkable:He used his horned overseers explosion ON HIS OWN IMPS!!!

Whats up with that?

dragonn · Unread postby **dragonn** » 06 May 2006, 08:26

DaemianLucifer wrote:He used his horned overseers explosion ON HIS OWN IMPS!!! Whats up with that?

Have you ever heard of a comunist way of increasing morale while in the heat of battle? Russian commisars were killing every allied soldier that didn't want to fight and tried to run away from the batllefield (As they said:"not a single step backward!"). Well maybe it didn't work well on the soldiers mood but it was effective...

DaemianLucifer · Unread postby **DaemianLucifer** » 06 May 2006, 08:31

dragonn wrote:Have you ever heard of a comunist way of increasing morale while in the heat of battle? Russian commisars were killing every allied soldier that didn't want to fight and tried to run away from the batllefield (As they said:"not a single step backward!"). Well maybe it didn't work well on the soldiers mood but it was effective...

You mean he killed his own imps to become enraged?But doesnt that require the whole stack to be killed?

dragonn · Unread postby **dragonn** » 06 May 2006, 09:35

DaemianLucifer wrote: You mean he killed his own imps to become enraged?But doesnt that require the whole stack to be killed?

I don't think the games AI is so advanced to use such tactics...or maybe? It would be nice...nevertheless it's a good strategy if you have a small imp stack, or you can always split them, and kill your one-imp-stack in order to enrage your army.

DaemianLucifer · Unread postby **DaemianLucifer** » 06 May 2006, 10:02

dragonn wrote:I don't think the games AI is so advanced to use such tactics...or maybe? It would be nice...nevertheless it's a good strategy if you have a small imp stack, or you can always split them, and kill your one-imp-stack in order to enrage your army.

Yes it would be a nice tactics.But why sacrificeing your units like that?Wouldnt it be easier to have a stack of one overseer and explode heam near the enemy?

dragonn · Unread postby **dragonn** » 06 May 2006, 10:11

DaemianLucifer wrote: Yes it would be a nice tactics.But why sacrificeing your units like that?Wouldnt it be easier to have a stack of one overseer and explode heam near the enemy?

You know, the unit is so slow that I usually don't have an occasion to use their ability

(damn this innitiative bar)

DaemianLucifer · Unread postby **DaemianLucifer** » 06 May 2006, 14:13

It happened again.The computer detonated his overseers on his imps.Why?I have no clue.

ThunderTitan · Unread postby **ThunderTitan** » 06 May 2006, 15:21

DaemianLucifer wrote:Wouldnt it be easier to have a stack of one overseer and explode heam near the enemy?

I don't think the dmg from the explosion would be worth loosing the Overseer. There the ones with Enraged anyway. A better way would be to just send 1 imp over to the enemy to get killed. Wasting an Explosion on the Imps seems stupid.

DaemianLucifer · Unread postby **DaemianLucifer** » 06 May 2006, 15:25

So AI in HV is stupid.Well,thats a surprise.

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Heroe's V AI

Heroe's V AI

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