Extremely bad AI

[Handel]

One thing which spoils the game is the extremely bad battle AI.
Just a couple of examples (my hero is mid-levels wizard):
1. Several times I battled with potent wizards having 120-150 mana in their 12+ levels... only to find out they cast the same stupid spells which cast the warriors and paladins with 20-30 mana. Like "pygmy" (the AI all time favorite and a champion for useless spell), slow, haste and magic shackles. Slow and haste may be good for a warrior or paladin but who the f..k needs them when you are a powerfull wizard? Untill the enemy casts slow and haste I simply blast their troops off.
The only enemies which use high damage spells are the evil gremlins.
2. Being married and with lots of leadership artefacts I managed to accumulate 10,000+ leadership and found 4 black dragons in the elven lands. I still have to find a ressurection spell so I thought the dragons will be dead in a couple of battles. Only to find out the enemy NEVER EVER attacks them. Basicly the AI attacks only stacks which units can be killed in one hit. Obviously the concept of concentrated fire is something the devs didn't implement in the AI.

[Ryastar]

In reply to your examples:

1. Pygmy is actually one of the best spells in the game. It reduces the target's health and damage by 20/30/40% (purely from memory, i could be slightly off on the exact percentages) in 1st/2nd/3rd levels, so the bigger the stack, the more effective the spell is, so don't knock it. Slow and haste are useful for anyone. JUst because you prefer to be a chaos mage doesn't mean that everyone is, some prefer buff/debuff spells instead. Also, i have found that enemy heroes DO cast offensive spells, so don't make a sweeping statement about a game before you have played it through several times.

2. First point: res. doesn't work on Black dragons, nothing will return themm from death. Second, what you point out as a flaw is actually good strategy. I does make sense to attack the weaker stacks, rather than the ones that you barely hurt - otherwise you make no real impression on the enemy. Oh, and the AI DOES know how to use concentrated fire, I have had battles where the enemy did nothing but target the stack i least wanted to die. Again, don't make stupid, sweeping accusations against a game before you have even half way completed it for the first time.

The battle AI is just fine, and quite challanging at times. If you find it bad, stop playing on easy.

[Smash]

Not exactly Handel, Ai is so dump that it is unpredictable, example 1 knight has in range several archer skeletons and 2 royal thorns what he will pick up? Yes you guess right royal thorn which he barely scratch ><.
In homm3 ai always tried to maximize damage done to you or kill/block your precious archers he even use your dragon's breath against your own army but ai in kb:l looks like don't know what to do.

[Keneth]

I have to agree with Ryastar, the AI is not the smartest of things but it can be very efficient at times. As your progress in the game, more and more enemy heroes will use AoE damage spells like geyser, fire rain or lightning. And the AI will usually target the stack where it can do the most damage, of course some stacks take priority, like (royal) thorns, the AI loves bashing and burning those. Besides, you don't get to complain about difficulty or brag about scores if you're a mage, go play a warrior, preferably on impossible, and then you can whine. :P

[sector24]

I don't think the AI deserves to be bashed that much. It is good at what it does, which is deal the most damage at any given time. The primary reason it targets thorns are that they have low defense and fire vulnerability. Just imagine the AI mousing over your stacks and looking at the amount of damage it'll deal to each stack, and the highest number is always going to be thorns. As players we abuse this mercilessly, and AI doesn't know it's not attacking our "real" units. One potential AI improvment would be for the AI to assign much lower priority to phantoms and summoned units. (Which would lead to all sorts of new exploits)

As for the spells, each AI hero has a small list of spells that it can choose from. Not every wizard has offensive spells worth using. While Pygmy seems worthless to you because it doesn't actually kill any of your units, it does seriously decrease your offensive potential. If you put 3 stacks of thorns next to each other I guarantee it'll cast fireball instead of pygmy if it can. But as a player you deliberately keep your units spread out, and the AI only has a couple spells to choose from, so it chooses the best one at the time. One way to improve this would be to calculate a threshold at which point no spell was worth casting and the AI would save its mana. (Which would lead to all sorts of new exploits)

[Handel]

[QUOTE=Ryastar;59889]In reply to your examples:

1. Pygmy is actually one of the best spells in the game.

2. First point: res. doesn't work on Black dragons, nothing will return themm from death. Second, what you point out as a flaw is actually good strategy.
QUOTE]


Sorry, I thought I wrote it in english. Will try again. So about "pygmy". Reducing the health of my stack of priests with 20%? And who needs it? The enemy is POWERFUL wizard. Instead of casting pygmy for -20% temporarily he could simply blast them for -50% permanently. Not to mention they are back to full health 2 turns later before any enemy unit to aproach them at all.

As for the second pont. Thanks for the info about the black dragons. I noticed I cannot heal them but weird enough Gizmo heals them. As for the good strategy - what exactly is good strategy? Killing a stack of 30 archers which barely make 50-100 damage? Or killing a stack of dragons which make with every attack 2x1500+ =3000+ damage? And besides the battle is not won when you kill the weakest unit. The battle is won when you kill all the units. So when is better to kill the enemy dragons? When your units and your mana is depelted or when everyone is in full health.

[Stepsongrapes]

[QUOTE=Ryastar;59889]In reply to your examples:

1. Pygmy is actually one of the best spells in the game.

2. First point: res. doesn't work on Black dragons, nothing will return themm from death. Second, what you point out as a flaw is actually good strategy.
QUOTE]


Sorry, I thought I wrote it in english. Will try again. So about "pygmy". Reducing the health of my stack of priests with 20%? And who needs it? The enemy is POWERFUL wizard. Instead of casting pygmy for -20% temporarily he could simply blast them for -50% permanently. Not to mention they are back to full health 2 turns later before any enemy unit to aproach them at all.

As for the second pont. Thanks for the info about the black dragons. I noticed I cannot heal them but weird enough Gizmo heals them. As for the good strategy - what exactly is good strategy? Killing a stack of 30 archers which barely make 50-100 damage? Or killing a stack of dragons which make with every attack 2x1500+ =3000+ damage? And besides the battle is not won when you kill the weakest unit. The battle is won when you kill all the units. So when is better to kill the enemy dragons? When your units and your mana is depelted or when everyone is in full health.

Your hypothetical seems highly suspect.

Under what circumstance is the computer capable of doing enough damage to kill a stack dragons, but wastes it on a small stack of archers?

As another poster indicated, the AI is generally interested in maximizing raw damage actually done with its attack. It's pretty damn good at not wasting a powerful attack on a dinky stack (e.g., it won't generally pass up hitting a full stack to go overkill a little stack).

The AI is, as most game AI's, generally not that creative or resourceful. However, this AI is pretty efficient and operates well within certain guidelines (e.g., maximize damage, focus on range units, etc.).

[Smash]

I still cannot figure how and why ai pick up targets, choosing it sometimes so mindless.
Btw my example with knight really happen so if someone say that ai is good i will laugh at him.

@Sector24 You are mistaken, ai do not think at all choosing spells otherwise fighting with this shaman with 50 intellect would be one hell of battle.

Some one who say that ai is not pathetic should go play homm3 try ai in this 10 years old game and then come back.

Simply they didn't put too much effort into ai, what is a big shame because it is single player only game.

Pygmy one of the best spells? Oo There is tons of better spells than pygmy even slow is better (for no range ofc).

Lets take facts straight ai do not aim for stack that he can kill, he can attack full hp evil beholder for 23 damage when near him is archmage with 15 hp left.

[Keneth]

You can always go and rewrite the AI if you think you can write better procedures.

(and no, this is no a "why don't you try it" remark, just a fact)

[sector24]

That's not what I said. The enemy heroes generally have a limited spell selection, like 3-5 spells at their disposal. Sometimes they have NO direct damage spells, so when you say there are tons of better spells than Pygmy you are right, but the HERO DOES NOT HAVE THEM. If the hero casts Pygmy, it's because it is the best spell that the hero has at that particular moment. Some heroes just have awful spells which is a design decision and not a flaw of the AI.

For the few heroes that have Ice Snake, Fire Rain, and Geyser, they use it every round until they run out of mana. For the heroes with Fireball sometimes they don't use it because it will only do 700 damage, while a spell like Pygmy will prevent 1000+ damage. If those were the only two spells you had, you'd do the same thing.

Actually, that's not true. I'm pretty sure you'd ignore all reasonable arguments in favor of telling people how awesome HoMM 3 is and how dump KB is.

[Smash]

Hmm... no one paid me to do it while i paid for a game. Conclusion?

No offence but it's is their job not my. It not like this game cost 5$.

Actually, that's not true. I'm pretty sure you'd ignore all reasonable arguments in favor of telling people how awesome HoMM 3 is and how dump KB is.
That is not true. It is fact that homm3 has better ai and homm4, and homm5, disciples 2, age of wonders, fallout 2 i don't remember any more games with turn based combat :/
I am watching carefully ai while playing kb:l (i don't think there is any difference in difficult level) and i described few examples even. Today i conquer for example ork's embasy and ork you fight there was using magic halabard (155 damage) every turn, he dry out of mana very fast, why he was using it dunno (only one spell in the poll?).

[Keneth]

That's true but I didn't see "Amazing AI" anywhere in the advertisement either. ;)

[Sherwood]

No, the A.I. isn't perfect and does have several flaws.

That being said, it still is generally quite competent and could be a whole lot worse.

[Handel]

Basicly to make the job easier the devs usually make combos (in every combat game) so the AI tries to find a known pattern at the battlefied and this triggers the respective combos.
So far the combo the AI likes most is to cast "sleep" on the archers and to hit them ASAP with their ranged attack:-)

[Gatts]

Well - AI units use mostly all of their skills - and that is better than many other games (other games had problems using "wait" or abilities/ spells...)

Developers are well aware of the AI level of their game - that is why your enemies have much more units than you do.... would be AI brilliant as you would like it to be - you would never win battles like "fighting your own double army" etc.

So actualy it is what I like so much on this type of single player games - players skills improve but AI skills do not - so longer you play, better tactics you can prepare - so you can demolish and clear nearly any battlefield you like and enjoy it as well...

[taltamir]

while there are problem with the AI, none of the OPs arguments againt it are valid...

Generally speaking, the higher the level and HP of a unit, the less damage it does per leadership... so 3000 peasants do WAYYYY more damage then 4 dragons. But every hit by the enemy kills many. The enemy is playing to win, not to piss you off by killing unique units, you just happen to have a more powerful hero.

pigmy decreases damage and health of stack, by a percentage... as well as those other spells, they are all "scaling".. that is, their effectiveness depends on the amount of units and their power.

Depending on your build it can make chaos magic best, or worst. I find it really awesome with a chaos magic oriented mage. But when using large enough stacks a 2000 damage fireball (17 mana, level 3, well placed) becomes a drop in the ocean compared to, say, making all your units inflict max damage for 5 rounds. (bless, level 3, mass effect). Because it increases the total damage of your units by more then its own damage. A stack of 1000 units doing 2-4 damage each will do an average 3000 damage(2000-4000). Bless increases that to 4000, always. I found all the buffs to be useless compared to direct damage until I found out that SOME of them become mass (affect all units on the battlefield) at level 3. Not to mention that you save a lot of runes that would otherwise be wasted on certain skills, runes that can be used to increase your units power... like nighttime operation with its +2 defense +2 attack during night, or inside, or in caves... (where all the tough opponents are in other words)

[Gatts]

Now I am wondering -> would it not make sense to balance the magic skills?

(if you want chaos level 3, you will can't take any level of order... if you want each magic -> you can take only one level of oposing magic schools - order/chaos and you can have only 2 levels of distortion, if you want distortion level 3 -> you can have only one other school of magic, but this can get to level 2... )

Like this:
O/D/CH
0/2/3
0/3/2
1/2/2
2/2/1
3/2/0
2/3/0

This will give even more "feeling" for Palading - I wuld go for Level 3 Order if being a paladin, that is for sure.. that means I could not use chaos (only from scrolls... so I would keep the few scrolls I find for final battles - this would make the "how many scrolls you can bear at once interesting after all)

Just a thought

[taltamir]

dear god, I am a level 70 wiccan priest, i spent 30 years studying wicca magic, and I still get taken down by any other class... last night i was beaten by a police officer, i asked around and he just graduated police academy! he is a total noob! Yet one hit of the taser and i went down... tech is way overpowered in your game and needs serious nerfing, i mean... seriously, air planes? space ships? I certainly can't use magic to fly... heck i can't even compare it to bullets! if something isn't done right away i am taking my business elsewhere!

[taltamir]

PS... there is no reason to rebalance SINGLE PLAYER games... Why do you care and who are you to tell me how to fight and win my battles? people are winning games on impossible with 0 units lost the ENTIRE GAME! and without using ANY magic AND not recruiting a single unit (only getting them through eggs and the like)...

So forgive me if i don't weep at your feeling that magic/warrior/unit X is overpowered. don't like it, don't use it.

[Hento]

The only enemies which use high damage spells are the evil gremlins.


If enemies with high intellect behaved like red gremlins it would be quite impossible to finish the game without any losses.

[taltamir]

gremlins are the only creatures with infinte mana...
the AI also cannot regen mana per round, that is, they use up their mana and thats it. afterwards you just mine mana from some weak troops you let live and resurrect all of your troops.

[Hento]

mine mana from some weak troops

How do you do that?

[taltamir]

kill all but one or so of an archer (ideally one that hits multiple hexes with one shot, or has very short range), or better yet, a NO RETALIATION enemy troop. Put some troops near it, case magic spring on your unit and let it be hit. you get 5 mana per hit.

[Hento]

I don't understand why do you keep calling it magic spring when it's not called that.

[taltamir]

it is in my version, i just checked and it says "magic spring"
There was a bug where defeating the giant turtle says you got two scrolls, one of which was "source of magic" and you did not actually receive it, well: 1. it was fixed so now you receive it.
2. it is a translation artifact, everywhere else in the game it is called "magic spring"

[Gatts]

I have it named "Magic Spring" as well, since the demo...

[psycoticlunatic]

A little note about some pet peves of the A.I.:

They attack the summoned thorns too often [possibly why I only found one place that I could get them all game]

The enemies use their own dragon fire extremely effectively, however, unlike heroes, the enemy does not use YOUR dragon fire against you [on purpose].

---

Other than that, I think the AI does a good job. Let me ask you a question: does it make sense for everyoen in the game to know some good AoE spells? Did you find fireball around every corner? Why should all of the AI have fireball? Granted it does seem that all AI's have pigmy...

[Dabrinko]

In my (european release "Nobilis") the "Magic spring" spell is called "Source of magic".

[spur007]

I personally love the AI doing a heal on the UNDEAD. That's why auto combat can be a bad thing.

[Vomaxx]

people are winning games on impossible with 0 units lost the ENTIRE GAME! and without using ANY magic AND not recruiting a single unit (only getting them through eggs and the like)...

Are they? They start with 10 or 12 men, never recruit anyone, never use magic, and, e.g., free Violetta? I would pay money to see someone do that.

[BB Shockwave]

I'm seriously thinking the game designers read this post, and that's why in AP even the lowliest Pirate with 5 intellect comes with 100 mana and an arsenal of chaos spells... It made fighting enemy heroes much, much more annoying.