Hammers of Fate AI script broken?

The new Heroes games produced by Ubisoft. Please specify which game you are referring to in your post.
BlazeMarshall
Leprechaun
Leprechaun
Posts: 2
Joined: 04 May 2015

Hammers of Fate AI script broken?

Unread postby BlazeMarshall » 04 May 2015, 05:27

So, I've been playing through the Heroes 5 campaigns lately, and in particular the last couple of days, Hammers of Fate. I'm not ashamed to admit I've been using the guides posted on the main site here.

However, I've noticed a few things... strange... about the AI behavior. Heroes that are, according to the guides, supposed to be dormant are running around in full actvity, plot heroes with specific objectives ignoring them to go wandering.

There are two particularly jarring examples I have, both of which in Ylaya's campaign.

In mission 4, when Thralsai eventually spawned in, to my knowledge he is supposed to be scripted to charge your city, and attack it - period. Perhaps getting distracted by a couple of buildings along the way, but he's supposed to charge your city, and hit it. Period.

This did not occur. Instead, he wandered right past it, ignoring Ylaya in my city entirely. I watched him in confusion for a few turns before I realized he was running off to chase after Raelag who I'd sent off to the surface, to wander away from my main city just to make sure he wasn't in movement range of Thralsai when he arrived to attack my city. After successfully escaping, Raelag hid in a corner near my city. I expected Thralsai to follow him through... except he proceeded to wander around the map aimlessly, hitting the occasional neutral stack I'd skipped, vacuuming up resources, hitting buildings, even eventually stealing the Dwarf city from me.

I ended up having to make a concerted effort to hunt him with with Ylaya, involving attempting to lure him to my main city by leaving it undefended with Ylaya nearby, but then realized that Thralsai was in easy movement range to both enter the one-way portal, and take the city in one move, so I had to leave Ylaya there to protect it, but his behavior thus far pointed to him, in response, ignoring the portal to keep wandering that section of cave or go back to the surface. Instead, he went through the portal to go after the mines directly north of the main city, and I ran Ylaya into him, only for the quick battle screen to show him fleeing after losing only 100 or so Blood Furies. I was very confused.

Less confusing and more frustrating is occuring in Mission 5. The objective is to reach Horncrest in a week, and break the siege, of course. Now, later there is a side-quest to take out the Inferno towns, but (again, to my knowledge), until you've gotten Horncrest, they're supposed to be idle, not doing anything. Imagine my surprise to see a "Blue player has been defeated" notice well before the end of the first week, and look over to see that the Inferno player has killed Duncan and taken Horncrest. This did not trigger any defeat conditions, and I still arrived in time to break the siege, and trigger the cutscene of all five heroes meeting up... except once it was over, Inferno still had Horncrest, and I still only had Ylaya and Isabel. I tried taking over Horncrest via siege, and though I got the city, I still didn't receive Duncan, Freyda, OR Wulfstan. Nor had any defeat conditions been triggered.

An alternate run simply had Inferno's heroes rush Ylaya and Isabel instead (generally Isabel who was running ahead while Ylaya made a quick, otherwise affordable pit-stop, and Isabel can't take on said heroes)

***

So in short, the AI scripting in these missions seems to be all sorts of broken. Any ideas what might be causing it, or if there's a fix?

EDIT: Just in case; the Hammers of Fate version is 2.1, and I purchased Heroes 5 and both expansions over Steam.

User avatar
Kalah
Retired Admin
Retired Admin
Posts: 20078
Joined: 24 Nov 2005

Unread postby Kalah » 04 May 2015, 07:07

Well, you have probably looked at the discussions in the guides as well, during which you can see that the guides have been updated, but only up to a certain point. I am not sure how far each of them goes, but I know that they weren't all replayed and rewritten after each patch. In other words, some of it may be a bit outdated.

The AI is not exactly Einstein's brainchild. Sometimes, it's dumb as a doornail. If you want to play against a good AI, however, there is an option and I refer you to this page to find Quantomas' enhanced AI mod.
In War: Resolution, In Defeat: Defiance, In Victory: Magnanimity, In Peace: Goodwill.

BlazeMarshall
Leprechaun
Leprechaun
Posts: 2
Joined: 04 May 2015

Unread postby BlazeMarshall » 04 May 2015, 07:31

That's just it though - the guide explicitly states that it's for patch 2.1, which is the patch I'm playing.

Plus, this is more than just the AI being dumb. It is outright breaking the mission - refer to my second example, with Ylaya's mission 5, The Decoupling. The Inferno hero (who is, as far as I know, supposed to be dormant at first) KILLS DUNCAN and captures Horncrest out from under the besieging Haven Renegades' noses, without triggering the "Duncan must survive" defeat.

And then when I manually retake the town, Freyda and Wulfstan didn't spawn either. The AI actually broke the mission - granted, it's probably still POSSIBLE for me to finish it at that point, but it certainly becomes more difficult, what with having to spend the extra troops fighting to take Horncrest back, and not having the extra power of Duncan, Freyda (ESPECIALLY Freyda) and Wulfstan and their starting armies.

On the plus side, I did successfully navigate around the AI's loopiness and get to Horncrest without getting (too badly) ambushed along the way, and without Inferno snagging it out from under my nose.

Even managed to take out the 10,000 Enforcer garrison without losing a single soldier! Whee, Resurrection :D


Return to “Heroes V-VI”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: Bing [Bot], Google [Bot] and 32 guests