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.

[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=Handel;59925]

Originally Posted by Ryastar

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.