AI thoughts
 

Going to start off with a request - if we could please discuss this without blame or attacks, that would be appreciated.

With that said, I'm curious as to get people's feedback on the current state of the game's combat AI. As an example, I'm going to use the Soothsayer's "Loki's Touch" ability - the ability that allows them to "enrage" an enemy stack. There are other equally illustrative examples, but this one will suffice.

First, an analysis of how that currently works in the game: The unit that gets enraged is considered by all enemy units to be a hostile unit. So not only will the unit that receives this ability attack previously friendly units, those same units will actively attack it as well. Furthermore, units seem to prioritize attacking that unit over attacking your own units. Now, if the same ability is used on a unit in your army, I believe that most players would agree that they would not actually attack their unit that got hit with the ability. Indeed, they would likely do their best to minimize the damage that the unit both takes and inflicts.

The question, then, becomes, "Should the AI behave in a similar fashion?" There are two ways to approach the question. The first is from a humanistic point of view - do we want the AI to try and behave as a human would behave? Humans are capable of coming up with lots of creative ways to handle situations that the AI will never be capable of, but in situations like this, it certainly can approach the situation from the same viewpoint. And that viewpoint would simply be "try and minimize the damage of the situation". The AI won't be as good as you or I would be at it, but it definitely could be better.

The second viewpoint would be from a gameplay perspective. And that would simply state that the whole point of having such an ability is to cause problems like that for the AI. The skill as a whole would be substantially weaker if all the AI units completely ignored the enraged unit and went about attacking your units as usual. The AI shouldn't react as a human would react because that removes a great deal of the power of such abilities.

Personally, I'm rather on the fence between the two arguments, as I can see the appeal of both. So I'm trying to get feedback on what people believe the AI should do in this or similar situations.

Again, please keep answers constructive and on-topic. Posts such as "The AI just sucks" aren't going to be helpful.

Thanks!

The game is basically based around making the AI not behave the same. Certain abilities (like target, or anything that uses runes) simply don't work for enemy units or against player units. Others would require a lot of in-depth thought to use.

The way things work now is that enemy units aren't being commanded by an overall AI, but instead work individually. This makes sense in that all of your non-hero battles wouldn't be against coordinated enemy forces, and non-coordinated enemy forces wouldn't understand the extent of your powers, thinking that the units you used Loki's Touch on were permanently mind controlled or defected or w/e. So in this respect I don't think it's unrealistic that it causes a lot of chaos and interfighting when you use Loki's Touch, that's how a smaller force in supposed to defeat a much larger one.

It would be really cool if there were two different AIs, with a special, stronger one for Hero vs. Hero combat. Normal fights would be you vs. an uncoordinated but much bigger horde and Hero fights being you vs a similar opponent with similar skills.

First, I want to point out that predictable AI is actually a big part of what makes this game fun. Think of fights that involve more chaotic things such as heros with big single target nukes, or 'dispel'. These fights are generally less fun. I think having consistent AI will generally be for the best.

Second, the Ai behavior effects the quality of certain abilities. In KBAP, most enemies would avoid Mystic Eggs in favor of real units, making the spell particularly strong. If enemies prioritized it, it would be much weaker. We cannot evaluate AI behavior solely on what 'makes sense' for the unit, as much as how balanced it makes all abilities.

Another good example of that, is that in previous games, ranged units would occasionally not move and then shoot, to deal more damage with less risk. They'd just randomly decide to melee. This behavior made them a lot weaker than they otherwise could be.

I see it differently than Zechnophobe, for me the more unpredictable the AI is - in any game - the more fun it is. And I guess that's sort of a holy grail for videogame developers - to make the AI as close to a human behavior as possible. Whenever you see or read a review criticizing the AI it's almost always because it's too predictable.

So for me it'd be awesome if enemy units behaved as closely to a human player as possible. I.e. they wouldn't attack enraged stacks let alone prioritize them, AI dragons, archdemons, inquisitors and some others would behave more intelligently, enemy heroes would cast Target (then all other stacks would be greyed out for your lower level units) and so on.

Except what you described is completely predictable behavior. If they never attack enraged stacks, that's predictable. What's unpredictable is if they SOMETIMES attack enraged stacks. Being intelligent is not the opposite of being predictable.

People only think they want unpredictable AI's. What they really want, is more intuitive, predictable, AI's.

The OP never said anything about the predictableness of the AI, only about the intelligence. They aren't one and the same. That said...

Any intelligent opponent must be predictable. The idea that unpredictableness = intelligence is the complete opposite of reality. Intelligence implies a plan of action and a plan of action implies predictability.

Disabling spells like Target, Fear, Sheep would be painfully unfun for players if enemy heroes actually utilized them to 100% efficiency. A lot of things would need a lot of balance changes if that were the case. The game would literally be impossible fighting a powerful mage hero with a non-mage otherwise.

It's not necessarily about intelligence, per se, it's about what would make an AI "better". And by "better", I mean conform to what the player is looking for in an AI. I mean, it's nice that you could completely disrupt the enemy ranks by hitting them with Loki's Touch, but does that make for better combat? Is it preferrable that that happen? What about the AI's targeting of things like the Ice Spikes from Lord of the North? If the AI doesn't target them, they become somewhat worthless - unless you luck into one blocking the AI's path - but if they do target them, the AI tends to spend turns attacking them rather than moving towards your army to attack it. And suchforth.

Basically, do people prefer having spells and abilities that allow them to semi-exploit the AI's poor decision making, or would that make combat more difficult than they are hoping for?

Interesting discussion here.

Personally, I think learning to exploit the AI is a large part of what a strategy game like KB is all about. Since the troop and spells are somewhat random or in limited supply, I find myself re-inventing or adjusting my tried-and-true methods several times each game. I like that about KB a lot and I appreciate that my experience learning the AI sticks with me even as my circumstances change.

It's not important to behave as human. It's important to have good performance, i.e, if it can be done to be even better then a human, perfect! I am 100% sure this can be done with king's bounty AI, because all that takes place on the battlefield is just mathematics.

There was a time in history, not long ago, like 10 years or so, when few people dared to consider that there will come a time when a Chess AI would outclass the human worldchampion by 500 elo points. 500! this means being better by 25% ! A human worldchampion has 2800 elo performance. Houdini 1.5a and Houdini 2 currently play at 3300 elo performance. :D

Chess is more complex then a KB battle so to create a powerful AI of KB is walk in the park compared to making Grandmaster skill chess engine.. If this were to be done, you would enter the battle knowing that the AI will inflict the maximum damage on your units that it can possibly be done. (the results would vary a bit because of the element of chance in the game, of course)

My viewpoint about this second viewpoint is that it's dumb. Basically, the motivation of it is " I want an easy game don't take away overpowered abilities and don't make AI smarter". Simply wrong.

Ok, I won't say that the AI sucks, even if it does, but I don't see how saying that would be off topic or unhelpful. The road to progress is paved by heavy criticism. Those who praise everything rarely make the world a better place.

Chess is a much less complex game than KB - by far. In Chess, you are limited to 16 pieces total per side, with only 6 distinct movement methods. In KB, there are dozens of unit types, many having unique attack settings. You have dozens of spells that can be cast be either side. You have rage powers that can be used. You've got variable map types rather than a static 8x8 board. The sheer numerical variance of options makes any Chess-style brute force approach impossibly complex. And that's assuming you were willing to wait the amount of time it takes to calculate a move in Chess that's off-book.

There's no chance we'll see an AI that's anywhere near as good as you can get in a Chess program any time in the next decade - minimum.

"Overpowered" as a concept is entirely subjective. The issue isn't whether abilities are too powerful, it's how the AI should react. Or, rather, an alternate way of looking at it is what tools the player should have to handle the AI. Using the Loki's Touch example, certainly it would be easy to make the AI not target the unit that got hit with the ability. And there's no doubt that would make AI armies more potent. But so would doubling all their army sizes. So would giving them all initiative bonuses. So would giving them all double attack/defense ratings.

What it comes down to is whether the AI is being overly hampered by the abilities, or whether they strike a decent balance, and give the player decent options for dealing with the AI.

[quote\Ok, I won't say that the AI sucks, even if it does, but I don't see how saying that would be off topic or unhelpful. The road to progress is paved by heavy criticism. Those who praise everything rarely make the world a better place.[/QUOTE]

It's unhelpful because it's not constructive. You are welcome to say the AI sucks as long as you say why you think it sucks, and what would make it suck less.