1. #1

    [Feedback] The AI on the difficulty 'Hard' is way too weak

    Hello,

    As far as I can tell, the AI does not play very smart on the difficulty hard. Meaning:

    - It does not try to kill vulnerable enemy heroes sometimes. Example: Necropolis Campaign - third mission (steal the staff) the great angelic pursuer at the end ignored charna although it was supposed to kill her

    - It sometimes does not build any buildings at all. Example: Again third necropolis mission, I captured two sylvan cities which were level 1, meaning that not a single building was built in them.

    - It does not build buildings fast enough. Example: throughout the Haven and Necropolis campaign at least (since that is what I played), the enemies towns where usually on level 24 when my town reached level 35, which is simply to low for a 'hard' difficulty. This probably leads to the next problem:

    - The AIs armies are usually way too weak/small. Example: Throughout the whole haven and necropolis campaign, I never encountered enemy-armies which were harder to defeat than 'severe' (a.k.a. beatable with ~10% losses) as long as I had a city with a good amount of creature dwellings. The only exception being the scripted armies created through special occasions within the campaign (which were always very good :-) )

    - The AI usually fights good, but never(or seldom) uses the special abilities of the creatures it commands. Especially if the AI commands neutral creatures.

    - The AI almost never picks up any loot placed on the map

    - The AI builds a _lot_ of different heroes (which is fine, but probably eats aways the budget of the AI), but is seldom able to protect them. Meaning: a hero which has no chance of winning should try to avoid a fight at any cost. It usually is able to protect the heroes carrying the bigger armies, but 'scout and loot' heroes

    Some of these points may also apply to other AI difficulties, but I only played with 'hard'
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  2. #2
    AI is not smart on Heroic difficulty also. I consider this a bug - wondering around, not attacking units, etc
    In campaigns the AI should be smarter as it is programmed, or should be...
    Apart the big load times and high memory usage + other map bugs, the stupid AI is second on my list as a game breaking experience. But I consider that first the game must be playble = fewer bugs, after that taking care of AI
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  3. #3
    The shortcommings are also seen in Tactical Combats.

    Unlike games like Age of Wonders where units have many abilities and can it be difficult for the AI to decide, TC's in heroes should be much lighter. It would seem like all it has to know is when to wait or attack, but all I've seen is it charges blindly while trying to flank.

    If I summon units (which I consider a very powerful spell, bordering OP in the present state of the AI), I can lock it on its side of the battlefield. AI doesn't seem to try to block ranged units with summons of its own, or using teleport or fast units; nor know where it could do the most damage (It casts spells, but seems like they are just buffs or debuffs. Don't think I've ever seen it using damage spells).

    I've never seen it using hit and run strategies like in previous games (though that was annoying but effective). Actually, I've never seen an AI retreat (is that even in the game?).

    But yeah, the biggest problems are with the world map AI, I guess.
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  4. #4
    My favorite is that it ALWAYS runs in there with the melee units, even if it doesn't need to in order to win. That's one reason why the quick combat feature is nearly useless. If it would just have the melee units defend and have all the ranged units kill the other army = zero losses. Instead it just runs melee units forward (doesn't even delay their move to the end of the round so that they don't get hit like the older versions of the game used to). Melee units die, which means I need to fight every single combat for the computer since it can't figure out how to just kill the enemy with ranged units.

    AI is dumber than previous AI's, another regression.
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  5. #5
    another thing that seems to be high priority for AI is killing 1 unit stacks, so actually you can win very hard battles (mentioned as deadly) with 2 archer power stacks + 5 x 1 stack fast units to detour the enemy
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  6. #6
    If you actually try to use Custom difficulty then you'll realize that only two things are affected by difficulty setting: Neutrals spawning and Enemy economics. That's all, AI will be 'dumb' no matter what. As to issue with it focusing single stacks - AI actually trying to get morale buffs/debuffs to get ahead of you. And there's also that skill in leadership or whatever it's called in english that lets next creature in queue act twice after you kill a stack.
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  7. #7
    I agree. The AI is so bad...

    Not a challenge at alla.

    I remember h5 and h6 the ai was quit good
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  8. #8
    Originally Posted by Violantw Go to original post
    As to issue with it focusing single stacks - AI actually trying to get morale buffs/debuffs to get ahead of you. And there's also that skill in leadership or whatever it's called in english that lets next creature in queue act twice after you kill a stack.
    yes, I know about this, but actually doesn't bother me because usually -20 morale on one turn is not that bad and you get your +10 morale killing enemies stacks and you also have buffs from artifacts, sights, skills so actually bad morale rarely happens and the advantage of losing almost nothing in battles is huge. So AI should be smarter and calculates if he can do more real damage to your army
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  9. #9
    I agree. In all previous Heroes games, I played on Normal and found it challenging enough. In this game, I started in Normal and didn't lose a troop in like the first 2 maps of the campaign (until I decided to restart in Hard). Feels like they should shift all the difficulties to the left ('Easy' is the current Normal, 'Normal' the current Hard, etc).
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  10. #10
    It is really too bad. I still enjoy the challenge of building up my own army, collecting everything in my territory and trying to get the best units as quickly as I can. However, I am usually able to defeat the first AI hero I meet with pretty reasonable losses, and, once you've defeated the main army of a faction, it seems they will never be a threat again.

    On my very first game, I did venture into AI territory too soon and encounter a hero I couldn't hang with, but that has only happened once in the first two Dungeon maps. Apart from that, I have taken acceptable losses in every fight and no losses in the great majority of fights.

    The AI not using the Wait command appropriately is a very disappointing weakness, and makes all the difference against high initiative foes. I don't except it to know how to use more advanced strategy (though it would be nice if it could), but this is utterly basic!

    I also agree that the map AI is bizarrely dumb. I have seen it ignore freesources, pass by lesser heroes, and even pass by castles it could probably take back from me.

    I will hope for an AI improvement, but, with the memory leak to worry about, I doubt we'll ever see that.
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