AI in Heroes of Might and Magic 5 - Nival principles

[Jolly Joker]

Can we please have some hard facts before we speculate. Sphinx? Dragon Utopia? And who's "him", by the way? Do you want to say that all this complaining is because "he" reported that the AI had a hell of a lot of money at one point which can only be vecause it gets some massive amounts of money? Seen in a Thieves Guild? A town's guild won't show the money, btw. You need 2 towns or an outside guild.
Rumors. This is ridiculous.

[ThunderTitan]

And who's "him", by the way?

And this conversation is over. If you can't even make sense of a simple sentence there really is no point. [size=0]Talking about the AI, for crying out loud. You didn't get enough sleep or something?[/size]

Seen in a Thieves Guild? A town's guild won't show the money, btw. You need 2 towns or an outside guild.

No shit Sherlock. Geez.


I've seen the AI have so much money on normal that it wasn't funny. And yes, it was pointless, but that just pissed me off more.

Think what you will, but the AI could be better, there's no denying that.

[Jolly Joker]

Of course it could be better, Einstein. Everything could be better. That's not the point, isn't it?
On further reading I noticed you really mean the AI with "him". I admit. I'd never have thought you'd personalize the AI and make it male. Does "he" has a name then?

[ThunderTitan]

Of course it could be better, Einstein. Everything could be better. That's not the point, isn't it?

Understatement of the year.

On further reading I noticed you really mean the AI with "him". I admit. I'd never have thought you'd personalize the AI and make it male. Does "he" has a name then?

What, it's a male-dominated society, everything made by men is a he.

[Alamar]

The first thing that you need is you have to let the AI see the entire map.

just to be clear, you did know that the AI in h5 does see the whole map from the start, yes?

or are you just speaking in general terms?

I am quite aware of that. I'm just saying that as far as cheats the most important one is the ability to see through the shroud to offset player's knowledge of maps.

That would be nice but I agree with you that it would cost way too much in development time, development resources, and computing power.

I agree with JJ that in order to provide a REAL challenge to an experienced [not necessarily expert] player then the AI is going to need some cheats. What those cheats are, how they are structured, etc. makes all the difference in the world though ....

Considering the money and time that went into developing shiny graphics,and various graphic cards,I think it is posible to advance AI very much if the same amount of resources shifted into its development.But then again,AI wasnt needed for movies,and it didnt sell games,so thats why shiny became the priority.

I'm not saying the AI can't be BETTER ... I'm just saying that it isn't about to beat you on any difficulty level without "cheating" in some way or another. To get it close to your level would take more time, $, and possibly computing power than is available in the budgets & projections of user PCs.

@Alamar
You mean, you've played Heroes all these years and never noticed the different production values when you conquer an AI town on day 1? In H 2 and H 3 on Impossible at least (don't know about expert) the AI produces 1 additional unit on each level. The AI starts with bigger armies as well (the heroes come with more units). No one ever complained.

I may have known this "back in the day" but the only times in the past year or so that I've played H2-H4 is as a prep for beta testing and just to see what the "flavor" was like before I posted comments on H5.

If it matters NO I wasn't aware of that. If it did that then that would be what I'd qualify as an inexcusable cheat.

*****************************************************

@Everyone: Just calm down and take a breath. We have differing opinions on how the game should work and what can be done. That's life and we should get over it.

BTW: Having more sliders during game creation would make things much nicer because we would have control over lots of things possibly including how much, if at all, the AI cheats.

Mod note: The MGW cries when someone doesn't use the edit button when he should... GC

[MistWeaver]

So what the hell are you talking about? What kind of idiot rumor is this 10000 gold each day on normal difficulty anyway?

Rumors. This is ridiculous.

Strange. You did not call it "idiot rumor" when I first talked about it several month ago. Instead you said that you accept this as valid and that acculaty you do not care.

Of course Nival had to do something with it. Even it their article they mention that gamers were displeased with H5 most rude cheat. Thats why we dont see such rudeness on NORMAL in 1.3 Though it still gets the res bonus.. just smaller. But at next level after NORMAL the situatuion didnt changed. Just now I was testing it and saw in console log how AI bought archangels for 12k, but on next day it had almost same sum of gold that was before.
add:
It had no gold mines, and just one town. Yes, and it bought more units im sure, but console window was small so I missed that.

[Meandor]

@Alamar
You mean, you've played Heroes all these years and never noticed the different production values when you conquer an AI town on day 1? In H 2 and H 3 on Impossible at least (don't know about expert) the AI produces 1 additional unit on each level. The AI starts with bigger armies as well (the heroes come with more units). No one ever complained.

H3 AI had less cheats and managed to be challanging. Let`s say that H5 AI creates similar difficulty for player like H3 AI. All is fine and dandy, but you know, H3 was made some time ago. One would expect some improvements, but we get the finger.

[Caradoc]

Let me jump back in here to say I think the Heroes V AI has the same basic problem as all the others to date: it does not look ahead but attempts to make the best move it can each turn. For instance, it does not realize that to build its castle it will need a lot of wood, so it does not put any special emphasis on capturing a Sawmill. Since an empty castle does not have enemies to kill or troops to buy, it does not place a high value on capturing it.

Given the number of options that have to be evaluated, it probably is not feasible to program a look ahead. A mapmaker might want to put in a build sequence that would have the AI develop its castle like a human would, deducting whatever resources it might have. It would have been good to provide the mapmaker with a way to manipulate the AI priorities directly, but perhaps a method will be found. It took a couple of years before someone (I think Rakne Fe?) came up with a way to make AI heroes aggressive.

So let's reserve judgment and see what can be done. Whether you call it cheating or not, if the AI gives you a good game when you use the same stategies that you would against a human, then who cares how it does it?

[Jolly Joker]

H3 AI had less cheats and managed to be challanging. Let`s say that H5 AI creates similar difficulty for player like H3 AI. All is fine and dandy, but you know, H3 was made some time ago. One would expect some improvements, but we get the finger.

That's where I disagree. I don't think that The Heroes III AI was a challenge. We are talking about MP maps here, not user-made single-player maps (which you could make a challenge all right). As said ago, I wouldn't call a game challenging that you will constantly win on the highest difficulty level. The main problem with the H3 AI was that the Heroes it developed couldn't compete. Therefore it wasn't challenging. While the GAME was rather interesting and you MIGHT have some problems earlier in the game when you was weak, there always came a point (rather early) when the game was basically finished and the rest of the game was a mop-up - on imposssible. I wouldn't call that a challenge. It was more of an anti-climax, having an interesting game the first few weeks, but winning the big battles without any losses most of the time.

[Mytical]

Again, I have to agree with JJ hear (wow this is like a record). H3 really didn't challenge me even at impossible. Yeah it was difficult the first month, but after that..seemed to steadily fall behind. Now again I think the AI really needs to be improved..or the system simplified so the computer does not have to cheat. I will tell you of another that was sad, Disciples..seemed to cheat to no end..yet constantly went down in defeat in late game. Again I think there is just too much for an ai to consider with current technology without at least doubling the space this game takes up on your hard drive...at least. Then you have to get rid of memory leaks, ect..so it would be a bit difficult. However, ubi and allies did make a hash out of this, and it does need to be addressed.

[Jolly Joker]

Nice to see you agree with me, Mytical.
In the good old days I did a lot of checking in collaboration with Ungoliant and contributed a little bit to his now defunkt site mmportals. What I did among others was designing a small series of "tourney maps" for each of the (original eight) towns, called battleground.
The aim was to design a replayable tourney map that would have a challenging AI, but not because of material superiority but because of the AI really battling. I think, that the maps were rather well constructed and a blast to play. (If you are interested in some really nice H 3 battling tell me, then I'll send it to you.) The point here is that the H 3 AI could have been a HELL of a lot better with just a little bit better skill picking.
Ungo and I were seriously considering at that point, that NWC might have dumbed it down on purpose (so we are at Nival's principles again.)

[Gaidal Cain]

The main problem with the H3 AI was that the Heroes it developed couldn't compete.

Have to agree with you here. But why couldn't they've made it more challenging that way for the H5 AI? If Nival would have made a big list of possible development paths for the different hero types - say 10 or so for each type - corresponding to a few scenarios, and given the AI just those skills at level up. It would be a kind of cheating, yes, but it would be a lot harder to detect than for example free resources, and it wouldn't interfer with proper strategy like smoking the Ai out by claiming it's mines.

[Mytical]

It would also have to prioritize buildings (give each building a factor depending on how useful it would be and if it can be built or not). Then it would have to prioritze creatures, and also prioritize if creatures or buildings would be better for it (depending on resources), ect. So it would be a lot of work, but I think it should be done and a priority. Also you could have the AI priortize differently depending on difficulty level. Easy AI would prioritize less valuable things then heroic AI.

[ThunderTitan]

I wouldn't call a game challenging that you will constantly win on the highest difficulty level.

Are we back on that again?! Once you get to know how to play the game well then of course you're gonna beat the AI every time, coz he can't learn while you can.
The issue is if the AI can actualy play the game on it's own without cheats, and how well. He shouldn't just stop playing for a week all of a sudden to make sure you win. It sould never just let you win when it could have crushed you.

[Alamar]

The main problem with the H3 AI was that the Heroes it developed couldn't compete. Therefore it wasn't challenging.

It's not like the H5 AI picks skills & abilities any better than H3. I fought a L19 necro that had all 6 skill slots filled and the only magic skill that he had was basic light magic.

Note H5 heroes often aren't pathetic because there are far fewer truly cruddy skills to pick.

@GC: I agree that having multiple scripts for each AI hero's skills & abilities would allow the AI to create a MUCH more powerful hero than they currently create. Doing this would remove some of the need for the other bonuses that the AI currently gets.

[DaemianLucifer]

Mod note: The MGW cries when someone doesn't use the edit button when he should... GC

The mighty MGW never cries.It pulverizes those that disobey

[Laserluger]

Nival are just a bunch of stupid, idiotic, no good, morons... and I might add amators, wasted son's of *****, un-proffesionnal losers... and the list might continue but I fear the mods will erase this post...

Hell.. no wonder the game is so lame.. because there are LOSERS(that's right losers with all capital letters) that are producing it... enough said...
.

Nuff said :-DDD

Heroes V just STINKS! It is the Xblivion of the series... It is like
Master of Orion3... Pure puke!

Yeah baby... the new trend of all the devs making sub-par downdumbed
console-style garbage for the ADD-kiddies has killed another great series.


THE HEROES ROUND TABLE, All things Might and Magic ???
Hell no! No way H5 belongs here... It belongs on Somethingawful.com

[Gaidal Cain]

Mod note: The MGW cries when someone doesn't use the edit button when he should... GC

The mighty MGW never cries.It pulverizes those that disobey

I never said what kind of cry it was. It could be the MGW Cry of Doom, you know. You don't want that to happen to you.

[ThunderTitan]

Mod note: The MGW cries when someone doesn't use the edit button when he should... GC

The mighty MGW never cries.It pulverizes those that disobey

I never said what kind of cry it was. It could be the MGW Cry of Doom, you know. You don't want that to happen to you.

The MGW cries high preassure tears made of molecular acid...

[MistWeaver]

At last I received answer from OldBoy at nival forum. He said following:

- AI does not receive creatures from nowhere (excluding scripts of course)
- AI has population quantity same as human
- neutrals join AI by same rules as they join human
- From patch 1.2. AI does not receive cheat money. Instead he has cheaper buildings & creatures. From equal on easy till 30% on heroic

So.. if everything is pure truth, situatuion looks bit better to me. Now AI depends on economy.. at least a little.