How is the AI ?

[Haig]

Funny thing is that the AI seems to be able to see thru fog of war:

In neolithic era, put your nomads to auto-explore: they aim straitght for the anomalies thru the fog of war. And when new anomalies spawn inside the fog of war behind them, they just U-turn and head straight for those.
I put the first nomad to auto-explore, every time when they find a new refugee I put that one on auto-explore too. Finally I was able to get Harappans before the AI lol

It also explains I think why AI can have the influence on some independent people that are on a continent they havent seen yet.

 

[Taefin]

1. Acts as a "speed bump": check.

Very well said on this! Whatever trips in the AI’s brain when they get in an ancient-medieval era war with the human, I want Amplitude to give us more of! It is just wave after wave of death between your city and theirs, and even on the best battlefield I consistently get right up to that tipping point. It’s too bad they mellow out in early modern, and don’t pump out the kind of units they should be able to.

 

[Siptah]

Very well said on this! Whatever trips in the AI’s brain when they get in an ancient-medieval era war with the human, I want Amplitude to give us more of! It is just wave after wave of death between your city and theirs, and even on the best battlefield I consistently get right up to that tipping point. It’s too bad they mellow out in early modern, and don’t pump out the kind of units they should be able to.

Yes, this is the most fun part, battle-wise. I don't know why it stops with that afterwards, but I think trade plays a role.

It also explains I think why AI can have the influence on some independent people that are on a continent they havent seen yet.

While there is a bug there, there's also an AI trait that for that I think.

- They could also be more reactive or opportunistic: I had no military for two eras and nobody came to exploit this fact.

Be sure to have some AIs in the game that play more aggressively. I had this as well in one game, and realized that all the player-made persons I used were extremely friendly. In my experience, the AI jumps on a weak player. Often when I was losing many troops in a war, a second AI suddenly declares.

 

[Taefin]

Oh good to know! I need to make sure all my AI personas are set to some kind of aggressive.

I’d believe that trade has a role, I just finished a game (using my house rule win condition: have the most fame when selecting a new culture) adding Dutch for my first money-cultures-only game. When 200 of your stability and half your yields come from luxuries it kind of feels like you should just double down on peace. Game goes about 100 times faster but doesn’t hold my attention well.

 

[Infixo]

Bad passive ai, no wars between ai. This game is a citybuilder without any challenge just like Civ 6. Civ 5 Vox Populi is a much better game.

Not true. AIs fight between themselves, and even are able to conquer a city, finish the war and keep the city.

Funny thing is that the AI seems to be able to see thru fog of war:
It also explains I think why AI can have the influence on some independent people that are on a continent they havent seen yet.

I read on G2G about it and someone said that it was „practically confirmed by devs” during one of OpenDevs phases.
This also explains why AI is able to go Ancient in like turn 3 (happened in my last game). I was like: whaaat?

 

[AntSou]

Combat is getting trivial for me now:

I still find it more engaging than combat in Civ. There's clearly a few things the AI could do better. I notice they don't always focus their attacks, rather spreading their damage over several of my units. I lost 50% total health as you can see in the image, yet it was all distributed rather than focused.

I had eight units (3 + 5) and did not have the initiative on attack. The 5-stack was a reinforcement. The AI chose not to place a unit over my reinforcement tile. Why? It's very easy for the human player to move fast units onto enemy reinforcement tiles before they have the chance to reinforce. The AI should at least do the same.

Better yet would be to change this design choice. I don't like it, it's easily abused. Reinforcement tiles should perhaps be inaccessible by opposing forces, but come into combat with a one turn delay.

 

[Pfeffersack]

A personal problem I have with Humankinds AI is the way difficulty levels are designed - as it seems, the AI has been - depending on the difficulty - either dumbed down (by denying it advanced logics which could be there) on the low levels or it plays to its best ability, but also gets all kinds of cheats (like ignoring FoW) on top. Beside that this makes it hard to compare with e.g. Civ6's AI (where you have an "equal foot" level with no AI boni, but their full "intelligence"), I dislike this design for both learning the game and because the choice is narrowed between a dumb or unfair AI. By no means Civ6 is flawless is the deisgn of its difficulty levels (e.g. I don't like their upfront extra units) and it is not unlikely that Humankinds AI is (or will become) overall better...but for my taste this is ruined by how you get those better performance into your games.

 

[Siptah]

afaik there are no bonuses on metropolis except for map knowledge and the person traits. But the person traits can be massive of course.

 

[Taefin]

I had eight units (3 + 5) and did not have the initiative on attack. The 5-stack was a reinforcement. The AI chose not to place a unit over my reinforcement tile. Why? It's very easy for the human player to move fast units onto enemy reinforcement tiles before they have the chance to reinforce. The AI should at least do the same.

The few times I did this since release, my units on the reinforcement tiles got killed. So I assumed the reinforcing army got a free attack against the unit camping the tile. I haven’t done it since, as I can usually apply equally good upfront damage by setting myself up on the terrain. But it would be humorous if I were doing this for no good reason Camping the spawns is a major area of abuse if it works and I am completely in favor of strong mechanics to prevent it.

 

[fortydayweekend]

Combat is getting trivial for me now:
View attachment 606345

I still find it more engaging than combat in Civ. There's clearly a few things the AI could do better. I notice they don't always focus their attacks, rather spreading their damage over several of my units. I lost 50% total health as you can see in the image, yet it was all distributed rather than focused.

I had eight units (3 + 5) and did not have the initiative on attack. The 5-stack was a reinforcement. The AI chose not to place a unit over my reinforcement tile. Why? It's very easy for the human player to move fast units onto enemy reinforcement tiles before they have the chance to reinforce. The AI should at least do the same.

Better yet would be to change this design choice. I don't like it, it's easily abused. Reinforcement tiles should perhaps be inaccessible by opposing forces, but come into combat with a one turn delay.

The AI will probably never be able to use terrain effectively, but it should be able to think about where to fight in general based on force composition. Eg if it's bringing a full melee stack against archers, it should try to fight on flat open ground and totally avoid cliffs. Picking the right battlefield seems to be the main advantage the player has over the AI.

Also there's a few tactics they could add or nerf, e.g. frontline unit cycling is very easy for the player but the AI doesn't do it... there could be a damage penalty for retreating, or program the AI to do it too.

A personal problem I have with Humankinds AI is the way difficulty levels are designed - as it seems, the AI has been - depending on the difficulty - either dumbed down (by denying it advanced logics which could be there) on the low levels or it plays to its best ability, but also gets all kinds of cheats (like ignoring FoW) on top. Beside that this makes it hard to compare with e.g. Civ6's AI (where you have an "equal foot" level with no AI boni, but their full "intelligence"), I dislike this design for both learning the game and because the choice is narrowed between a dumb or unfair AI. By no means Civ6 is flawless is the deisgn of its difficulty levels (e.g. I don't like their upfront extra units) and it is not unlikely that Humankinds AI is (or will become) overall better...but for my taste this is ruined by how you get those better performance into your games.

I'm not sure about this, on HK level the AI is still just as easy to ambush and out-manouvre. The combat bonuses are noticeable though.

 

[Taefin]

Like the time 4 stray Gaesati chased my army up a cliff

It would be cool to see an opportunity attack mechanism for pulling units off the front. I think this would double the difficulty of HW for me. Though coding a retreat condition into the AI is probably just as easy (if health <40% and there are any non-engaged units within range). That said, cycling units only does any good if you win the battle. Marching a weak unit to its death gives you a double attack that can break lines open.

 

[PSG]

The auto-scout function is horrible. My units will zig zag and got back and forth over the same tiles for a few turns many times. I have noticed that pillaging armies will move strangely while it moves towards my outpost/city.

The AI seems to know when you are moving a bigger and stronger army towards it even if said army is 3+ turns away. I imagine its cheating by using the destination of your army in the code.(still better than Civ 6)

I don't trust auto-resolve of combat unless I have overwhelming numbers. There have been many fights where I have a 25% advantage in power and no range units are involved and I get crushed.

The Ai likes to cross the ocean to build in your backfield and then doesn't do much to protect itself. It kinda lays their like a slug just like it would in Civ 6 late game.

 

[Taefin]

I hope devs are investigating what is going on with the mid/late game passivity by the AI. Today after Maya just poured units into an attack on me at the ancient/classical transition, no one since has built up or modernized their military. Playing will all advanced/expert militaristic personas.

 

[Morgawr]

I am so glad I thought to check out this forum because I was about to give up hope.. but it sounds like there is indeed a HUGE difference in AI behavior between difficulty levels, not just the bonuses they get. Very different from Civ AI which doesn’t do that.. This is what I just posted in the HK forum about my experience:

First of all, I must say I'm a huge fan of Endless Legend and I've been waiting for this game for over a year. However my first 40 hours of play has been a disappointment. I played two games up to ~turn 60, first the advanced tutorial and next a regular game on default difficulty, just to test things out. However in both games the AI was a total pushover. Both games I was able to invade my entire continent and wipe out my two neighbors in the first 50 turns. What worried me most is that all of the opponents I faced built virtually ZERO units (except starting scouts) so I didn't even have to try that hard. I just used the 2 bonus warriors I received from ruins and built 2 archers and conquered the continent. It was just way too easy and posed no challenge whatsoever, so I got bored and quit. I was leading on the fame charts by > double the fame of the 2nd runner up. I know on higher difficulty levels AI gets yield bonuses but the passiveness is worrisome and I am wondering if the AI actually starts "playing" the game on the highest difficulties?

This is a genuine question and I really want to keep playing the game but want to have the possibility of being challenged by the AI (e.g. at least face somewhat of an army when I declare war) Please tell me the AI builds units on higher difficulties or is it only exclusive to the most aggressive ones like the Huns. I did face the Hittites who are supposed to be military focused yet they were the ones with zero units. I need some hope to keep on playing instead of waiting for devs to improve the AI.

 

[Aristos]

Well, the AI is making me build armies in my first game on Empire.

But I crowded a normal map a little, to force border pressure, so that might be a factor too. But yes, I see the AI building armies and navies, even in my previous game on Nation.

Couldn't see the air force in action yet, because my first game on Nation ended early because of extreme pollution

 

[PhilBowles]

Hey !
I see many positive opinions about this game. Can someone who actually have and play this game, review the AI aspect of the game ?

Some of this may be keyed to difficulty level, as I've only played an 'intro game' and have been told that's at Town difficulty (still can't find difficulty level in settings), but my impressions are certainly not favourable. On the plus side, the mistakes it makes tend to be mistakes Civ AIs make so it's not as substantially worse as I expected given my experience with Endless Legend.

The AIs I faced routinely attacked with forces too small to face mine - usually single units, but later in the game just with single bad armies. The only tough fights I had were ones against a double stack that was static (i.e. I came across it, the AI didn't coordinate an attack), and I think only then because I misunderstood the reinforcement system and the rates at which units can move so I didn't deploy units I could have. Army composition was bad - usually just spamming the same unit type, generally a unique unit such as Hunnic Hordes. Worst of all, target selection was baffling, with units attacking until something was nearly dead and then ignoring it in favour of attacking something else. Only in one case did the AI obviously launch a directed multi-unit attack to kill one specific unit (a veteran musketeer) - and even then it cost them three or four cavalry units to take it down. That may have been less an AI flaw than simply the fact that they were so far behind me technologically.

The AI cavalry did make reasonable use of terrain, but it was pretty hit-or-miss whether they'd use their post-combat move to get out of danger or just run next to a spear unit or something else that would kill them.

 

[Taefin]

I wonder if the AI runs into money problems. The one time I took a vassal, the payout was minimal (68 money for two cities). Lots of non-upgraded units (on HK). It’s like they build a dozen or two land units early on then a dozen ships at medieval/early modern. If those die it seems like it’s over for them.

 

[Elhoim]

There a beta update on steam right now, with several improvements to the AI:

• Improved the way AI Units hold City walls and handle sieges.
• Improved the way AI handles Shared Projects.
• Improved the way AI handles Armies upgrading.
• Improved the way AI handles military objectives.

AI FIXES

• Fixed an issue where, in some cases, AI Empires keep offering a Border treaty when the player made a Counter Proposal.
• Fixed an issue where Expansionist AI Empires keep triggering Trespassing on the Player's Territory.
• Fixed an issue where AI Empires keep making demands on Trespassing grievances.
• Fixed an issue where an AI related error is encountered after advancing to the Medieval Era.
• Fixed an issue where, in a few cases, AI Empires are unable to cancel task when they don't have enough Money to execute it.
• Fixed an issue where, in a few cases, AI Empires don't correctly evaluate distances with reachable Armies.
• Fixed an issue where, in a few cases, AI Empires are not able to correctly interpret some Technology-related gains.
• Fixed an issue where, in a few cases, AI Empires don't consider all City gains whent they have a lot of Cities.
• Fixed an issue where, in a few cases, AI Empires don't correctly interpret gains for other Cities but the Capital.
• Fixed an issue where, in a few cases, AI Empires don't check for Emblematic Districts in the Construction Queue.
• Fixed an issue where, in a few cases, Nomadic AI Armies are assigned to regular Claim missions.

 

[NombreyApellido]

humankind level difficulty, small map, big pangea, normal speed, 5 AI, mostly expert personas, fighting green that has +4 Protector strength (mama occlo)

attack move to siege Thebes, AI stole first strike by forcing sortie.
no problem, won it by holding the flag but lost 3 scouts out of a stack of four

this happened instead of city being occupied

so, the AI gets another try the same turn... kewl

BTW got Memphis the moment it got built, killed two of her scouts one being mounted and this trick is what's stopping her from being exterminated

 

[Taefin]

Was the second attack triggered by that army outside the city wall? Also I’ve never had a chance to see city capture on sortie, since they are pretty rare, but I’d guess you need a total victory not a defend flag victory.

Edit: Oh wait, nvmd you are eagles.

Is a beta update something you have to opt into? That list sounds very promising. I my game today I noticed AI not attacking from inside walls if there is no range/threat of damage/loss. But I didn’t manually update anything.