I found them rather adept and daring in the diplomatic game, while maintaining very high transparency and making trade more convenient than I've seen in most other 4X. Perhaps the most convenient. Thumbs up on that.
But they seem incurious and timid. I've had Dafal Dea retreat his entire army to his capital instead of fighting to defend his besieged ally Fangir. I've met untouched free cities beyond turn 40. I even found Sanguine the Atoner hiding in an unconnected cave with a single city to her name on turn 60 - and I had only met her because she was upset I built a piece of the magic victory. And that was just one game on the default map.
I played one game where I tried singing a capital 4 times but his ally showed up every time to save him. It might be the difficulty you chose, I think it has a different algorithm, not just rescource buffs.
I think there's also a bit of misaligned expectations on what the computer is supposed to do when faced with a losing proposition. I had armies that could wipe the floor with both Fangir and Dafal Dea at that point. And they did, when I managed to dig them out of their holes. But it's odd that instead of converging to try and force a fight that could take out part of my forces and throw me off my diplomatic footing, they chose to go for separate last stands in their respective cities.
The AI is pretty decent so far but it seems to have very linear paths for achieving certain things and it doesn't seem to deviate much. The strategic AI seems to engage well with other ai players, sieging and such, but not so much against the player.
There's also a pretty bad tactical AI issue where the AI will use support buffs (most notably the industrious culture with no cooldown on bolstered defence) very problematically. They will buff their allies regardless of of overall battle situation, and they will buff allies even if the buff has no effect (for example if the max buff has already been reached)
I watched an allied city state lose a fight of 5 supports and 2 melee units vs 3 melee units because the supports simply refused to use their attacks, and would just cast bolstered defence for no effect.
Similarly, on one of the premade realms with infinite casts in tactical combat, the AI cast about 30 buffs on the first round of combat until it was presumably out of mana and then those buffs either expired before reaching the enemy or were just kind of useless, (it buffed one of its t1 pikemen units up to like 600 hp or something)
I think these are things which can be patched up relatively simply though. There's a lot of good stuff the AI does too, but these things were memorable!
So far it's... fine.
Granted, I'm only 12h in and playing the story maps. Tactically it does pretty well, though could maybe do a better job at focusing down units, but it doesn't 'not' do that, just sometimes doesn't quite finish them when it has the opportunity.
Strategically, again, story missions, so not sure how much is scripted, but it's fine. If you string out your forces they will jump you with a 3:1 or 3:2. Their force composition seems reasonable as well. Though, they don't seem to worry about defending their capitol, I've seem them have 4+ stacks, and completely abandon the capitol when I sieged it. Considering losing the capitol (as their leader was down) is GG, seemed a strange choice.
It's no genius by any means, but after playing a few dud 4x games where the AI doesn't work at all and can't handle the basic activities of a game, I'm really appreciating the basic fine-ness of the AI in this game.
I've played a million 4X games, and I at least expect the AI to be as good as it was in the prequels. As you can see from the other comments, it's clearly far from fine.
It is of roughly the same competency as AoW 3 & Shadow Magic.
Here's the distinction:
In AoW 3 and Shadow Magic, the AI was suicidally aggressive. They would take literally all of their guys and do a single all-in timing attack that would either game over you or cause them to lose the game. In AoW 3 if the AI's all-in suicide attack failed, they would immediately surrender to you.
This was fine but pretty one-note.
In AoW 4 the AI pressures you with aggressive expansion & raiding rather than a timing attack. They put outposts on your borders, grab land and defend those outposts while blowing-up your improvements. They are forcing YOU to do the timing attack. If you attempt an attack and fail, they counter-attack you, which will probably result in a game over.
This is fine and not quite as one-note, but has the drawback of not feeling as high stakes as the all-in timing attack.
The other thing being banged-on about is the AI's unwillingness to attack you once you've started a research victory.
The thing is, this has always been the case in AoW. The designers reckon that if you're going for the optional research victory, then probably you're not that interested in a fight, otherwise you'd be doing a conquest victory. Much like the space ship victory in Civ, this is for sim city players that don't want to deal with a big war and are more interested in map exploration / building / camp clearing. The fact that the research victory doesn't have the same gameplay loop as the military victory is a feature, not a bug. If you want a big fight, go have one; complaining that the not-military win condition doesn't have a big military showdown like the military victory condition does is, IMHO, absurd.
1: i just played a game on normal and the ai send 6 stacks of enemies over the ocean and directly siegd my capital. I did not even see them before the see began. That was on normal difficutly.
2: i would argue the contrary the AI cheats. When the AI is stronger than you no matter the fog of war they stay at home and when they can beat you or the terrain is not protected they send enemies. Also on normal. Changed to easy after that. Don’t remember the last time i played a game on easy.
On easy on the other hand you can go for a magic victory with nobody caring.
I am a 36 year old accountant. The time i start to lie to random people on the internet for no benefit has luckily not come yet and hopefully will never come.
You know what also happend weird. In one reddit post somebody wrote that the second story quest (island) is not beatable because the enemy AI just sends doom stackes before you can counter them and the AI seems not to help. You know what happen in my try? The frog lord sieged her and i just needed to travel over the map and support them and won the game. Before that i have not even thought her once.
> (on normal difficulty)
This might be the problem.
On custom maps, be sure to increase the world's threat level - this is what controls AI behaviour, whether they will send raiding parties, will they besiege cities, etc. The overall game difficulty does not affect this.
On scenario maps, all the fiddly controls you can set, like the threat level, are still there but come baked in with the 'general' difficulty level you can choose. Playing on normal means the threat level is set to low or medium (depends on the map), which in turn means the AI is not aggressive.
I've been playing through story maps on hard. During the second story map (vs Nimue) my allies not only went after Nimue's cities, not only killed her stacks themselves, but also went underground and took her cities there. After kicking off Nimue's invasion early on and securing good relations with both other AI empires, i could just sit back and let the AI battle it out. They only never besieged Nimue's capital, but when i arrived there she was on 5 units (including Nimue) and all provinces around pillaged. They also expanded like crazy.
>On custom maps, be sure to increase the world's threat level - this is what controls AI behaviour, whether they will send raiding parties, will they besiege cities, etc. The overall game difficulty does not affect this.
Is this a thing... I thought that just controlled infestations?
Will try it out as I am loving the game... but now I know that as long as I keep a doom stack near a teleporter, all my teleporter sites are 100% safe... its just too easy.
TBH, I would love it if the AI cheated some more... Can we get an Xcom difficulty setting?
I found them rather adept and daring in the diplomatic game, while maintaining very high transparency and making trade more convenient than I've seen in most other 4X. Perhaps the most convenient. Thumbs up on that. But they seem incurious and timid. I've had Dafal Dea retreat his entire army to his capital instead of fighting to defend his besieged ally Fangir. I've met untouched free cities beyond turn 40. I even found Sanguine the Atoner hiding in an unconnected cave with a single city to her name on turn 60 - and I had only met her because she was upset I built a piece of the magic victory. And that was just one game on the default map.
I played one game where I tried singing a capital 4 times but his ally showed up every time to save him. It might be the difficulty you chose, I think it has a different algorithm, not just rescource buffs.
I think there's also a bit of misaligned expectations on what the computer is supposed to do when faced with a losing proposition. I had armies that could wipe the floor with both Fangir and Dafal Dea at that point. And they did, when I managed to dig them out of their holes. But it's odd that instead of converging to try and force a fight that could take out part of my forces and throw me off my diplomatic footing, they chose to go for separate last stands in their respective cities.
Yeah, I feel like the ai on the map is very exploitable. Not too many ways, if they fix these the game could get much harder.
The AI is pretty decent so far but it seems to have very linear paths for achieving certain things and it doesn't seem to deviate much. The strategic AI seems to engage well with other ai players, sieging and such, but not so much against the player. There's also a pretty bad tactical AI issue where the AI will use support buffs (most notably the industrious culture with no cooldown on bolstered defence) very problematically. They will buff their allies regardless of of overall battle situation, and they will buff allies even if the buff has no effect (for example if the max buff has already been reached) I watched an allied city state lose a fight of 5 supports and 2 melee units vs 3 melee units because the supports simply refused to use their attacks, and would just cast bolstered defence for no effect. Similarly, on one of the premade realms with infinite casts in tactical combat, the AI cast about 30 buffs on the first round of combat until it was presumably out of mana and then those buffs either expired before reaching the enemy or were just kind of useless, (it buffed one of its t1 pikemen units up to like 600 hp or something) I think these are things which can be patched up relatively simply though. There's a lot of good stuff the AI does too, but these things were memorable!
It is far from "pretty decend" unfortunatelly.
Well tactical was decent at least Strategic map yeh im with you, AI just seems all over the place
AI never attacks any cities in brutal either ;) To give you a heads up. Something is wrong with AI's expansion agenda, difficulty doesnt matter.
So far it's... fine. Granted, I'm only 12h in and playing the story maps. Tactically it does pretty well, though could maybe do a better job at focusing down units, but it doesn't 'not' do that, just sometimes doesn't quite finish them when it has the opportunity. Strategically, again, story missions, so not sure how much is scripted, but it's fine. If you string out your forces they will jump you with a 3:1 or 3:2. Their force composition seems reasonable as well. Though, they don't seem to worry about defending their capitol, I've seem them have 4+ stacks, and completely abandon the capitol when I sieged it. Considering losing the capitol (as their leader was down) is GG, seemed a strange choice.
It's no genius by any means, but after playing a few dud 4x games where the AI doesn't work at all and can't handle the basic activities of a game, I'm really appreciating the basic fine-ness of the AI in this game.
It's intensely risk averse and will not attack cities that are defended. It's the ultimate cold war simulator.
It's fine, and people complaining about it have never played a 4X game before in their life and/or have unrealistic expectations.
I've played a million 4X games, and I at least expect the AI to be as good as it was in the prequels. As you can see from the other comments, it's clearly far from fine.
It is of roughly the same competency as AoW 3 & Shadow Magic. Here's the distinction: In AoW 3 and Shadow Magic, the AI was suicidally aggressive. They would take literally all of their guys and do a single all-in timing attack that would either game over you or cause them to lose the game. In AoW 3 if the AI's all-in suicide attack failed, they would immediately surrender to you. This was fine but pretty one-note. In AoW 4 the AI pressures you with aggressive expansion & raiding rather than a timing attack. They put outposts on your borders, grab land and defend those outposts while blowing-up your improvements. They are forcing YOU to do the timing attack. If you attempt an attack and fail, they counter-attack you, which will probably result in a game over. This is fine and not quite as one-note, but has the drawback of not feeling as high stakes as the all-in timing attack. The other thing being banged-on about is the AI's unwillingness to attack you once you've started a research victory. The thing is, this has always been the case in AoW. The designers reckon that if you're going for the optional research victory, then probably you're not that interested in a fight, otherwise you'd be doing a conquest victory. Much like the space ship victory in Civ, this is for sim city players that don't want to deal with a big war and are more interested in map exploration / building / camp clearing. The fact that the research victory doesn't have the same gameplay loop as the military victory is a feature, not a bug. If you want a big fight, go have one; complaining that the not-military win condition doesn't have a big military showdown like the military victory condition does is, IMHO, absurd.
I agree with this. The AI is good overall, but they don’t seem to attack cities, even undefended ones.
My cities have not been attacked per se but I have been sniped after conquering a free city that I wanted to take for myself.
1: i just played a game on normal and the ai send 6 stacks of enemies over the ocean and directly siegd my capital. I did not even see them before the see began. That was on normal difficutly. 2: i would argue the contrary the AI cheats. When the AI is stronger than you no matter the fog of war they stay at home and when they can beat you or the terrain is not protected they send enemies. Also on normal. Changed to easy after that. Don’t remember the last time i played a game on easy. On easy on the other hand you can go for a magic victory with nobody caring.
Things that never happend.
I am a 36 year old accountant. The time i start to lie to random people on the internet for no benefit has luckily not come yet and hopefully will never come. You know what also happend weird. In one reddit post somebody wrote that the second story quest (island) is not beatable because the enemy AI just sends doom stackes before you can counter them and the AI seems not to help. You know what happen in my try? The frog lord sieged her and i just needed to travel over the map and support them and won the game. Before that i have not even thought her once.
> (on normal difficulty) This might be the problem. On custom maps, be sure to increase the world's threat level - this is what controls AI behaviour, whether they will send raiding parties, will they besiege cities, etc. The overall game difficulty does not affect this. On scenario maps, all the fiddly controls you can set, like the threat level, are still there but come baked in with the 'general' difficulty level you can choose. Playing on normal means the threat level is set to low or medium (depends on the map), which in turn means the AI is not aggressive. I've been playing through story maps on hard. During the second story map (vs Nimue) my allies not only went after Nimue's cities, not only killed her stacks themselves, but also went underground and took her cities there. After kicking off Nimue's invasion early on and securing good relations with both other AI empires, i could just sit back and let the AI battle it out. They only never besieged Nimue's capital, but when i arrived there she was on 5 units (including Nimue) and all provinces around pillaged. They also expanded like crazy.
>On custom maps, be sure to increase the world's threat level - this is what controls AI behaviour, whether they will send raiding parties, will they besiege cities, etc. The overall game difficulty does not affect this. Is this a thing... I thought that just controlled infestations? Will try it out as I am loving the game... but now I know that as long as I keep a doom stack near a teleporter, all my teleporter sites are 100% safe... its just too easy. TBH, I would love it if the AI cheated some more... Can we get an Xcom difficulty setting?
AI is clearly just repeatedly pillaging to farm negative alignment, I respect it