>Play Medium difficulty
>AI is incapable of being a threat
>Play Hard difficulty
>AI shits down your neck
>Player gets annoying penalties / AI obviously cheats
Why are most /VST/ games like this?
What are some /VST/ games with actual balanced difficulty for comfy yet still decently challenging playthroughs?
If you have some basic military forces, say 2.5 units per city, in civ 5 then the AI won't bother you.
Making a good AI is hard even for simple games: most strategy games are very complex and designed without considering AI limitations, which only worsens the problen.
>Infested Planet
>good
I shiggy diggy, but I agree with the broader point of asymmetric SP usually working out better.
Biggest cope I've ever seen
>players don't like it when it feels like the AI cheats. Our solution? Make it cheat
Someone hasn't been reading stories about Valve playtesters.
The playtesters being moronic is irrelevant
>not because we can't program it, but because experience tells us the players will get frustrated and quit
>so we make the AI cheat which leads to the same issue of players getting frustrated and quitting but at least this time they'll be correct when they accuse the AI of cheating
One of those ways involves less effort on the dev's part, though.
Yes. I understand why they don't do it. Saying "uhm actually we CAN do it but you don't want it" is gigacope.
Their intelligence is irrelevant for the point in made in the cope image. The author is saying fighting against an AI that feels like it's cheating makes players want to quit. AIs that cheat feel like they're cheating, because they are. Still most strategy games include AI that cheats. That's what makes it a bunch of baloney cope.
You're not seriously suggesting they can't code a competent AI, are you?
My suggestion is still that "the reason we don't code good AI is because players don't like to play against an AI they think is cheating" is a bunch of cope as it has been from the beginning.
Not on part of the devs, certainly. They have to gimp their own AIs all the time to accommodate players, and not just strategy devs.
work on your reading comprehension anon
People judge things on what feels right rather than objective truths. And since the customer is always right, you play along and give them what they want. For instance, in turn-based games when the player sees 80% chance to hit, the last thing he wants is to miss four attacks in a row (or to see the AI land four critical hits). Therefore, the actual hit chances are often cheated in player's favor.
Maybe players want dumb AI that acts like a punching bag that's too dumb to beat a based human and needs cheats to become a threat.
All AI's should be like in Empire Earth where the laziest AI ever just shit troops for free and every skirmish is a ww1 simulator.
I'll take competent AI over cheating one anyday. How tf is that more frustrating than diety in civ 4 showing up with a 80 units stack at your borders kek
Because the AI can hardly even play games, unless it's something super straightforward like a board game. And even when it cheats you might still overpower it because you have a brain and it doesn't. It does suck that most games don't give you many difficulty options that could satisfy everyone, because some players want a fair duel, some an impossible challenge, while some want to build up for four hours undisturbed.
>actual balanced difficulty
You can forget about that for now with how crude these AI opponents are. What you should look into are asymmetric games with a curated singleplayer focus that reward creative problem solving. I liked Militia and Infested Planet where the enemy doesn't even play the same game as you - both these games have good customization of the difficulty, by the way.
You can program ai to mimic optimal player behaviour without cheats, some literally who modders did this for aoe2 and now most players can barely win vs hardest ai
It still doesn't change/adapt and you will eventually come up with strategies to beat it every time unless the strategy is actually unbeatable. Also it requires devs to play the games they make, since in the end playing against an AI is essentially playing against the programmer. AIs primarily suffer from playing the game the way the devs intended the game to be played instead of how metagays play it online.
>metagays
There's your problem. They exist to suck the fun out of every game by manipulating gameplay elements, exploits and glitches in a way that gives them absurd advantages. Would they finally be able to enjoy skirmish if the AI would run calculations on how to buttfrick the game in its favor?
>Because the AI can hardly even play games, unless it's something super straightforward like a board game.
This is literally not true. Some time ago HOI4 devs had push out a patch that makes the AI DUMBER, because it got too good at invading unguarded coastlines and sp shitters were complaining about that. Which is where the real issue lies, that there is simply not sufficient demand for good AI, since majority of sp players want AI to be like a boss in an action game - slow moving, telegraphing it's attacks, only punishing if you don't recognise it's patterns, and ultimately there to lose. Those who are sufficiently dissatisfied with this to do something about it will just go and play MP.
Daily reminder that most HoI4 players play Nazi/Monarchist GERMANIUM on Easy/Very Easy
The game is already balanced around Nazis winning.
Every country gets historical and ahistorical penalties other than GERMANIUM which only gets pure buffs.
Depending on the game mods can help a lot. I play some WH2 and mods do a lot to make the AI feel threatening without being overbearing, as long as you don't mind a bit of a slower game and more battles.
what mods?
As someone who made/help make the most popular WH2 AI mods, its still mostly just jury-rigging and its all held by wires, but yeah, CA did leave behind some very obvious bugs/design choices that simply made no sense
because making the AI more complicated would require too much processing power
or it would require actually knowing how to play the game
>What are some /VST/ games with actual balanced difficulty for comfy yet still decently challenging playthroughs?
Rise of Nations has a good AI, but its unplayable with the nukes enabled.
>Strategy gamer plays game
>bitches that it's too easy
>bitches that it's too hard
>they want a special goldilocks difficulty just for THEM
I'd hate to be a developer
I really enjoy Unity of Command 2. On "classic" difficulty I find it just as you say: comfy yet challenging. It's one thing to capture all the objectives, another to do it without serious losses (units are often carried between scenarios, so it matters).
AI is capable of exploiting your mistakes. You almost reached an important bridge? Oops, its blown. Supply route exposed? Here, I will sacrifice this unit but delay your advance by one turn. Infantry with no AT weapons crawling through fields? Time to use those armored divisions. You occupied an important city? I will wear down defenders with feint attacks from all sides and deliver a killing blow.
Of course it's not perfect, but AI is generally capable of all those, so you're inclined to keep focused.
Also, to some degree wheather and battles are random. Overhelming force i.e. elite panzer vs ragtag infantry in open field will always win, but when sides are roughly equal you can sometimes get suprising results. But so does your opponent.
All in all it's a fun game.
Lots of DLC with additional campaigns (base game is Allied invasion of Europe), I own them all, some were less enjoyable but I don't regret buying any of them.
ive got a long list of shit so im not naming much off the top of my head so
>unnatural selection
lets you make factions more aggressive are and gives them an autoresolve buff vs other ai. im playing a modded chaos dwarf campaign in wh2 and used it to buff races ill need to fight for short campaign victory (greenskins, dwarfs, rats) so they grow nice and fat.
can also give random buffs to everyone or to whoever you want or straight up delete factions
>never obsolete ai lords
this gives a lot of free exp to legendary lords til like level 30, starts on like turn 40 or 50
as for the stuff i cant remember the exact name of
>front load skillpoints
gives you a multiple skill points at certain levels instead of one every level
>table top caps
this actually makes the game somewhat easier (depends on who are you and who you are fighting) because the ai will never be able to compete with a player in building an army.
introduces army caps from table top, separates every unit in the game into core, special, and rare.
you can change the values of the units in the mod but requires more effort than i am willing to put in so i have not but changing the cap per army is easy.
>tailored faction garrisons
autist went through every faction and gave them all somewhat unique garrisons. karl's garrisons and gelt's garrisons will not look the same. you're garrisons will be stronger and so will the ai's. buildings besides walls will add units to the garrison.
>various ai iq buffs
got one that makes it so they are less likely to make armies mostly 1 unit type and another so they'll build more recruitment buildings and another so they use their skill points better. ive got more probably.
you can also get specific mods for factions. if i am going to fight a lot of tomb kings i get a mod that gives them 2 armies per dynasty researched instead of 1. if i am going to fight a lot of lizardmen i like to get a mod that puts the saurus building back to tier 1.
meant for
I went through my mods real quick home from work and I actually use "reporting for classic" for my garrison mod, I remember now there was quite a disparity in the balance of garrisons across factions with the other mod. This one also gives your garrison heroes levels.
>Why are most /VST/ games like this?
Because, if you put enough effort into a product to make it worth playing, you hardly need an AI for more than introductions. People just play PvP in that case.
Most people play strategy games single player.
It’s cause devs don’t play their own video games, and they also are moronic at strategy. They literally hire people to play their game for them, and those people are generally games journalist tier.
Biggest example is stellaris, where the AI is still moronic, even though the economy is so simple.
1. Build mines to build buildings and other stuff so you have a decent stockpile of minerals
2. Build up your economy or build up your research.
3. Build up your military.
GG easy game.
>be ai
>build military without eco or research
>rush player’s starbase
>die
>do it again with your rebuilt fleet
I’m not upset the AI doesn’t colony rush, I’m upset the AI doesn’t even bother to economy.
Sad thing is the people I play against die to the AI. To be fair, if the AI has bonuses, like as a fanat purifier, the fleet rush does work rarely, so I really can’t say anything. I did die once when I ran into 3 fanat purifiers early game, so fair.
>vamp counts is jerking off with hero spam+zombie stacks and hoping you get a good raise dead for your cool units
oh so that's why no one plays them
Real question, is there any /vst/ out there where AI is actually brutally difficult without cheating?
I don't think there is one.
Try Age of Empires 2 definitive edition, the extreme AI is trained to mimic popular online player strategies and does them really well, it does not cheat at all
It's still weak to rushes but if you let the AI breathe it will shit down your neck
He's right. AoE2 HD devs actually coded a proper AI.
>can design a proper AI opponent
>can't unfrick unit pathfinding after 4 years
why are they like this
What 4 years schizo? Definitive edition had barely just come out.
yes, it has been 4 years since DE ruined pathfinding.
I heard it does cheat in some ways, e.g. once it finds your TC, it'll no longer need further scouting to know where all your stuff is.
AI War 1 and 2, though those are asymmetrical so I'm not sure they count.
>that filename
Why don't you go back to Ganker and make ten othet threads about YIIK being real art.
i found the AI in AOE4 competent without cheating on the higher levels, unless microsoft lied to me
Not really /vst/ but close to it since the base game was once a wc3 funmap. There are vids of ai beating pro players in dota from like 5 years ago, they are apm limited and outsmart them with fake attacks, going for trades etc., was really impressed with that, but sadly i think the project was discontinued, could have been a nice basis for rolling that ai out for proper strategy games
I remember that. There was a similar project for starcraft where they literally made Ai a player. It was entirely disconnected from the game and taught to 'click' the screen to accomplish victory, it had gotten to a fairly impressive point where it could mimic a mid MMR player, but it seemed to have died, too. I wonder why such projects never really get further than proof of concept.
>starcraft
didnt know that, I just looked up a video on youtube, I dont know much about sc2, apparently it's apm is a little bit too high, and therefore it abuses the blink ability of its units a bit too much, but still pretty impressive
>/vst/ still doesn't understand that nobody, even /vst/ wants a "hard" AI which is easy to make but rather a "good enough but i still win" AI which is almost impossible to make and certainly isn't worth the resources
I think a hard machine learning ai, that you can "dumb down" again (maybe limiting its apm further and further) is the way to go. Feels infinitely better than a dumb ai, that just ressource cheats.
Maybe something like
>very easy (30 apm)
>easy (60 apm)
>middle (120 apm)
>hard (240 apm)
>impossible (600 apm)
>machine learning ai
hahahhahahha
>that behave like a ruler
Gotta love vague statements like this, so then you can morph it into whatever is suitable for you when you're rightfully told that you don't actually want anything like that and nobody does
>that you can "dumb down" again (maybe limiting its apm further and further) is the way to go.
This was similar to what AoE2DE devs did, the new AI is not machine learning (as far as I know), it does not cheat, but the difficulty simply limits how much economy it can have
The final extreme difficulty also allows it to mimic more frustrating skillful player behaviour such as dodging projectiles and minmaxing ranged units by moving them while they're 'reloading'.
Honestly AoE2DE devs don't get enough credit, they're probably the only ones in the past 10+ years who figured this shit out and either aren't braindead or cowardly enough to actually go through with it.
I don't think it's a coincidence that AOE2 is primarely a MP game nowadays. So is chess and Starcraft (Alphastar) - other games that have impressive AI developed for them.
MP and SP players want different things - SP players want a videogame enemy that is meant challenge them, but still lose in a predictable manner and MP players want an equal opponent. This is reflected in AI for these games.
Playing against myself in Hotseat mod in CIV6 simulating by myself each CIV was one of the best experiences I had with the game.
More games should have that option, I'd finally play Humankind if it did.
Also,
>playtesters are irrelevant!
Most players don't finish the games they play. Mobile game market is larger than regular one. Very few devs are actually interested in catering to your homosexual ""hardcore"" ass. And that was before you admit to pirating shit.
Dunning-Kruger swings both ways. You are NOT an average player.
>/vst/ still doesn't understand that nobody, even /vst/ wants a "hard" AI which is easy to make but rather a "good enough but i still win" AI which is almost impossible to make and certainly isn't worth the resources
But yeah asymmetry as well as smoke and mirrors is the way.
For CIV games what I actually wanted is an AI that behave like a ruler and not a suicidal moron who will kill himself so the player dont win the game.
I want a hard AI that I need to practice against to beat. Some people spend hours getting fricked up by the deity civ AI that cheats out the ass. Why is it so hard to believe that some people want to get their ass beat by an AI that doesn't cheat?