AI tweaks in HOF ?

[MistWeaver]

According to "Fight Club", blowing up brains with gunshot might help one of you. Good luck

No, that was shooting oneself in the cheek from inside the mouth.

Goddamit you saw that..

[DaemianLucifer]

Anyway,though I know TT is a good example of a clever AI,lets try and steer this back on track,shall we?

Except for the obvious bug fixes in the AI itself(blowing its own troops up with a demon,for example),what do you think the AI needs to become better?

[MistWeaver]

what do you think the AI needs to become better?

Well, lets start from what skills AI should possess to be good AI.

IMO:
1) real good planning.
So in the start AI should create some kind of masterplan of domination with milestones. Creation of one should depend on map specifications of course.
simple fragment of possible plan:
AI: if i can collect 15 crystals on this map "quick enough" than #14 milestone: build champions; #17 milestone - try direct town attack.
else direct attack would stand before building champions.

2) flexible priorities
Yes, now enemy town one week away - has its priority of capturing. But if AI some how will know that major enemy hero is 2 weeks away from it, it should greatly increase priority of capturing exactly this town.

3) foreseeing human actions
If this human hero on horizon has weak/moderate army - he is most probably going to capture mines.
If this human hero has big army he'll probably moving towards my town.
If this human hero skipped gold mine on his way, he is probably being in a hurry to target. List of possible targets: .....


Like this. So far H5 AI is lacking all of these.

[Elvin]

Perhaps having some set skillsets and priorities to make it more challenging.
Stop AI peculiar habits:Harmful touch on pixies,overseers exploding near allies,arrow towers hitting wrong targets as ghosts etc
The enemy hero some times moves 2-5 tiles if you have a superior army.Wtf?
Enemy creatures will hit your weak stacks when they NEED to attack a strong stack if they are to stand a chance.
I doubt the AI uses certain combos as motw or motd.Maybe it's just me.
Some stacks that should wait will defend instead.
For God's sake allow enemy main heroes to retreat on hard.There's no challenge after the main is defeated.
Maybe let enemy heroes take into account that when they follow your hero without having bought this week's army they may be overwhelmed by the reinforcements.
Why not give all army to the main istead distributing it to weaker heroes that are easily defeated?That's why it loses even though it has all the advantages.

If the AI is fixed then we may even get a less cheating AI.That's just as important for me

Edit:Seeing Mistweaver's reply I see that he has in mind a smart AI while I have a non-stupid AI.I don't believe Nival will go through all this to make it superior,that's why I proposed the above.Afaik they are not as hard to implement,at least most of them.However maybe we can hope for a smart AI LATERtm.

[Alamar]

Somehow I'm not surprised.Still this guy's tone is like 'mind your own business'.Does he have any idea of customer relations?

Playing Devil's Advocate: An answer of "when it is done" is pretty standard now and it usually isn't meant as an insult. Usually a "when it is done" answer implies that they will ship the patch when it is of high enough quality to do so without trying to impose a schedule upon it.

BTW: I do have huge problems with many of the Nival attitudes that I've seen esp. from certain lead designers ....

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As far as the AI goes I'd like to see it behave more like a human and use its bonuses in a little less iron fisted way.

For example I don't think that the AI should get huge day 1 bonuses but it should receive some bonuses on a daily basis that would allow it to be "properly funded". This way the bull-rush tactics that you see won't be too much of a problem. NOTE: This isn't a hard problem to fix.

Next I'd like to see better built AI heroes. As far as I can tell most heroes just have a fairly random assortment of skills and a few abilities without really sticking to a cohesive theme. Improving how the AI chooses skills, even to the point of scripting, would help a fair bit. Then maybe the AI wouldn't need AS MANY bonuses as it gets now. NOTE: This should also be easy to fix.

The other issues of making a plan & sticking to it are a lot harder to fix but they do need to get to it sometime.

[DaemianLucifer]

Playing Devil's Advocate: An answer of "when it is done" is pretty standard now and it usually isn't meant as an insult. Usually a "when it is done" answer implies that they will ship the patch when it is of high enough quality to do so without trying to impose a schedule upon it.

I boubt thats the case here.And what happened with monthly patchings?

As for the AI,it would be very nice if AI implemented some advanced tactics,both on adventure map and on the BF(chaining,creature and spell combos,etc).Look at the AI the wog and equi teams made(ok,those were just small tweakings of the originals,but they did make WoG AI unstopable,especially when you turn on combat splitting,and they did make the HIV AI actually exist).I wonder why ubi is so reluctant to ask fans for help when it is obvious that they can do so much.

[MistWeaver]

And what happened with monthly patchings?

Im more intrested to know what happened to the promised by Fabrice, AI improvents. (well, more like "why" than "what" )

[Eternor]

There is an article (in Russian), by Nival programmer, about Heroes V AI development: http://dtf.ru/articles/read.php?id=41841

It answers some questions that might explain why the AI is so flawed.

[Kalah]

Translation, somebody?

[MistWeaver]

Translation, somebody?

Just a sec. Actualy I wanted to share THIS to CH long time ago.

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Ok its here (main stuff):
viewtopic.php?t=4350

[zarakand]

I don't know why we bother guys. We could spend another five years making suggestions and Nival wouldn't listen to any of them.

It's obvious Nival could care less about customers or the game. They work to deliver the bare minimum quality product and collect a paycheck. We all know they got hired because they were willing to work for the least amount of money, not because of they were reknowned for their quality.

[Alamar]

I don't know why we bother guys. We could spend another five years making suggestions and Nival wouldn't listen to any of them.

It's obvious Nival could care less about customers or the game. They work to deliver the bare minimum quality product and collect a paycheck. We all know they got hired because they were willing to work for the least amount of money, not because of they were reknowned for their quality.

So we can feel that we at least tried???

I wish that I could read & write Russian because I suspect that most of the things said on forums NEVER makes it into the hands of people that matter [assuming that they would care].

[MistWeaver]

I wish that I could read & write Russian because I suspect that most of the things said on forums NEVER makes it into the hands of people that matter [assuming that they would care].

So far, from what Ive read from nival's russian forum, the only thing that they are going to consider is duel presets.

[fly away]

I wish that I could read & write Russian because I suspect that most of the things said on forums NEVER makes it into the hands of people that matter [assuming that they would care].

I am quite sure that Nival employees can handle English pretty well. But I suspect the real problem is that they don't care. The only way to make them work better is to go through Ubisoft, I'd think.

[zarakand]

LoL, how I wish I was a fly on the wall during the conversation that UBI related to them how fans had "whined" and forced Nival to change the battlefield size and so on.

Probably had Nival employees muttering under their breath, "#$@#$ fans, kill them all"

[Caradoc]

I do not regard myself as a 'fan'. I am a player first and a customer second, but that is the extent of my relationship with Nival. In the past, I was a fan of JVC (and also Gus Smerstadt) because they did admirable work. I was interested in them as people and their perspectives on gaming. And though I am largely pleased with Heroes V, I can't say I am a fan of either the company or the developers.

As a community we should take the time to correct any statement about 'fans' saying this or wanting that. The term the company will hear is 'customer'.

[Omega_Destroyer]

Well said Caradoc.

[DaemianLucifer]

I am not really angry that they dont listen to our demands and wishes.But I am angry that they dont listen to beta testers and our bug reports

[asandir]

I'm angry that they won't fix things .... but I know it's not gonna happen, so I just gotta live with it I guess

Mod note: Spam removed.

[Alamar]

I am not really angry that they dont listen to our demands and wishes.But I am angry that they dont listen to beta testers and our bug reports

I also like how they didn't bother to beta test the AI ... the one thing they could have gotten tons of feedback on and OBVIOUSLY needed every shred of it.