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Post some TBS with non-shit, non-retarded AI?

Worst AI award goes to (pick 3)


  • Total voters
    28

whatevername

Arcane
Joined
Sep 2, 2013
Messages
666
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666
The only requirement is they should have tactical combat.

Examples of games that have SHIT AI and are unplayable:
King's Bounties, NuXCOM, HoMM 6, Disciples 3, Elemental and further abominations, Gal Civ 2, AOW 3, Eador, Panzer Corps

Examples of games with retarded AI:
AoW:SM, HoMM 5, Civ 5
 

agris

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Apr 16, 2004
Messages
6,760
I don't know about TBS, but for TBT Silent Storm 2 Gold is quite good. Just remember to play with the Skill Watchdog hack so that your characters level properly. Endless Legends is also a darling around here (and is TBS), but I haven't played enough to vouch for it. It's fun, but the AI during combat seems easily manipulable.
 
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whatevername

Arcane
Joined
Sep 2, 2013
Messages
666
Location
666
I don't remember the AOW: SM AI being spetacularly retarded, althrough it had some problems - like how you can kite it in a city siege with a ranged unit, one broken and one unbroken gate. Or chicanery involving stacks in order to stop enemy attacks.
How about 30 troops sitting in town and getting bombarded by lightning storm for a few turns till they almost all die.

You can kite with unbroken gates, lets say you have 10 archers and send 1 swordsmen to the side. AI troops will try to kill the swordsman while your archers shoot them and kill them.

If the AI has 30 troops and 1 archer inside a castle, 30 troops will sit inside while they are being slaughtered by magic and ranged units as long as that archer is alive. I watched AI vs AI battle like that.

5 elven archers killing AI's Kharagh, fenrir and warlord with no casualties.

AI sending solo heroes which gets them brutally killed while it has other troops it could've put into the hero's stack.
 

octavius

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Aug 4, 2007
Messages
19,182
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Bjørgvin
Yeah, the poor AI is what ruins too many strategy games, and make me tire of them too soon, especially Civ 1-2 (haven't tried the rest yet) and the Age of Wonders games. AoW: SM is somewhat better than AoW 1-2, though.

HoMM 3 is probably one of the best ones when it comes to AI, and doesn't HoMM 5 have an unofficial AI patch?

I'm current'y playing HoMM 2: Price of Loyalty, and the tactical AI leaves a lot to be desired.
Infantry blocks own archers when facing only enemy archers, AI wastes lots of spell points on own units that don't see any action or on enemy units that would have been killed anyway, and AI does not account for friendly breathing.

Master of Orion 1 also has a decent AI.
 

Nathair

Educated
Joined
Jan 12, 2012
Messages
55
The experience from chess and the like is actually that even quite competent AI's are so fundamentally inhuman that they're still somewhat annoying to play. You end up facing something which is obviously making non trivial mistakes but more than compensating with massive strengths in other areas.

A bit different when they can script individual encounters to be interesting like in KB/FFT etc.
 

Grimwulf

Arcane
Patron
Vatnik
Joined
Oct 1, 2014
Messages
4,045
Location
Kodex Kommunistic Kastle
I'll just throw in some old shit.

1. Celtic Tales: Balor of the Evil Eye. AI is solid, but the game itself is not that hard. Pick Calatin as a starting char for maximum challenge. Early game is guaranteed to be exciting.

Random screen:

maxresdefault.jpg

2. Fantasy Wars. Not sure about the title; it's called Кодекс Войны in original. Hate those Warcraft3-style graphics, and the game didn't age well visually. But the gameplay is solid, AI is well-done. Couldn't find a way to exploit it back in the day. Always a fair fight.

Random screen:

ec873a2fbd428a4262432ce23402bae0.jpg

3. Not old and not exactly a strategy. Some might even say it's not turn-based, although it is. Anyway, every real men must play Valkyria Chronicles. Even if you decline weeaboo.

Random screen:

Valkyria-Chronicles-large-0827.jpg
 

Borelli

Arcane
Joined
Dec 5, 2012
Messages
1,261
Imperialism 2. The game tracks every nation's military power ranking and if you are near the bottom enemy WILL bottomfeed on you. Aside from that the AI is kind of predictable but not so much as to make the game unplayable.
The only requirement is they should have tactical combat.

Examples of games that have SHIT AI and are unplayable:
King's Bounties, NuXCOM, HoMM 6, Disciples 3, Elemental and further abominations, Gal Civ 2, AOW 3, Eador, Panzer Corps

Examples of games with retarded AI:
AoW:SM, HoMM 5, Civ 5
Why Eador? I find the most important thing in its early game is how good you fight against neutrals to build up your power and i don't find the AI bad at that at all (most of the time).
 

whatevername

Arcane
Joined
Sep 2, 2013
Messages
666
Location
666
Imperialism 2. The game tracks every nation's military power ranking and if you are near the bottom enemy WILL bottomfeed on you. Aside from that the AI is kind of predictable but not so much as to make the game unplayable.

Why Eador? I find the most important thing in its early game is how good you fight against neutrals to build up your power and i don't find the AI bad at that at all (most of the time).
AI units just rush forward like zombies and attack random targets so you can kill an army twice as large as yours with low casualties. If there are archers, fast and slow units, the AI overextends and you fight 1/3 of the army at a time and so on.....
 
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Johannes

Arcane
Joined
Nov 20, 2010
Messages
10,487
Location
casting coach
Imperialism 2. The game tracks every nation's military power ranking and if you are near the bottom enemy WILL bottomfeed on you. Aside from that the AI is kind of predictable but not so much as to make the game unplayable.
IIRC its pretty easy to totally own the AI in the tactical battles, though I no longer remember the exacts of how. But I guess you could simply use the auto-resolve for battles to get extra challenge, though on first playthrough(s) that shouldn't be necessary.
 

sser

Arcane
Developer
Joined
Mar 10, 2011
Messages
1,866,661
Without heroes, the first Warlock game had pretty impressive AI. The AI seemed to understand withdrawing weak units, using spells, and keeping the battleline plugged.

Heroes, unfortunately, threw all of that in the trash as the AI didn't know how to handle their own heroes, while your own became empire-wrecking units.
 

Ninjerk

Arcane
Joined
Jul 10, 2013
Messages
14,323
I've heard good things about FFT 1.3

Just got this running on my psp. I was alreayd interested but you mentioning it made me actually go out and try it
They completely changed the spells to be more distinct (rather than being mostly e.g. 3x3 cross AoE, e.g. the lightning spell goes out in 2 straight perpendicular lilnes from the player and spans the entire map regardless of altitude). Apparently the base AI in FFT was already incredible, but was severely limited by spell availability and the overpowered characters the game gives to the player.

EDIT: I only played the first couple maps myself, but I read some users had to try some battles out dozens of times because the AI would just brutally outmaneuver them. Another thing I forgot to mention is that many of the spells can 1 or 2-shot a character so you have to be incredibly careful about unit positioning on a turn-for-turn basis.
 

DakaSha

Arcane
Joined
Dec 4, 2010
Messages
4,792
i have no idea about the AI but the mod does admit to just drastically stacking the odds against the player.

This is fine for a game like this though, imo. FFT is a deep as shit game, and its something i can imagine being fun to explore
 

whatevername

Arcane
Joined
Sep 2, 2013
Messages
666
Location
666
Without heroes, the first Warlock game had pretty impressive AI. The AI seemed to understand withdrawing weak units, using spells, and keeping the battleline plugged.

Heroes, unfortunately, threw all of that in the trash as the AI didn't know how to handle their own heroes, while your own became empire-wrecking units.

Warlock's MotA AI is dumb as a brick.
It attacked ghosts with donkey knights and did 0 damage (ghosts are immune to physical) while it could've killed the ghost with a magic tower and elven caster it had there.

It sent a lone lord to attack a town with 6 of my units around the town and the lord got pwned. The rest of his troops arrived later.

AI kept sending 1 rogue from the capital to face 15 of my units every 2 turns for a while... Maybe it wanted to negotiate?

Blob on blob warfare:
AI launched a sneak attack on my blob and killed a green bat and an archer. It lost 8 mages, 10+ large rats, a bunch of goblin archers and sharpshooters.

Stupid demands which lead to wardecs and later the AI offers gold/etc to make peace = free stuff for me.

Edit - also it doesn't explore. I flew bats all over the map looting lost caravans and shipwrecks and never saw AI units reasonably away from its territory.
 
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rado907

Savant
Joined
Apr 23, 2015
Messages
249
I loved the Decisive Battles series (Korsun Pocket, Battles in Normandy, Battles in Italy) from Matrix Games. The AI is not phenomenal, but it tries.
Battle for Wesnoth also has decent AI. Again, nothing to shout about, but reasonably challenging.
 

Disgruntled

Savant
Joined
Sep 17, 2012
Messages
400
The day they program smart AI is the day the robots take over. I think we underestimate the effort it takes to build a good one because we measure it alongside other features like graphics or quests.
In the end these are game developers and not much else. They'll take the easy route on something that gives very little back for the amount of time it takes to master.

Think of it like building a human brain, you might spend a year implementing realistic instincts but the player will only see a retarded NPC because you didnt have the time to implement realistic intelligence.

Back on topic, im going to mention Blackguards because of the difficulty and the fact I dont remember any instances where I made it easy by cheesing the AI. Most of it was down to great level building though.
 

MilesBeyond

Cipher
Joined
May 15, 2015
Messages
716
First post ayy lmao


I'm assuming that in OP's books "SHIT AI and are unplayable" is better than "Retarded AI?" Because I've never played a strategy game with worse AI than Civ 5. Hell, Master of Magic had better AI than Civ 5.


Let's see, for the rest of it...

Honestly I don't think the AoW series has ever had a meaningful difference in AI. AoW 1, AoW SM, and AoW 3 AI are all at roughly the same level. I've seen lots of people argue that SM's AI is better than 3 or 1? But there hasn't been any proof so far, and as someone who's played the crap out of AoW 1, SM, and 3, I really can't say that there's much difference. All three games you can steamroll the AI pretty easily at the highest level, and the AI's never particularly smart, it just cheats outrageously. Actually, come to think of it, at least SM and 3 don't have the whole "randomly march armies for no reason" that 1 had, so there's been at least some improvement. But if 3 is worse than SM, the difference is miniscule.


Of the HOMM games, 2 probably had the best AI. I never played 6 but of 1-5, 4 probably had the worst. Surprised it's not on this list.


Anyway, probably the closest I've come to seeing a TBS game with decent AI is GalCiv 2. Which... yeah. Isn't saying much. That being said, I'm surprised it's gotten so many votes. I mean I know the AI isn't the second coming that everyone makes it out to be, but it's still significantly better than AoW or Eador or any of the HoMM games (and I prefer AoW, Eador, and HoMM to GalCiv 2).
 

KoolNoodles

Arcane
Joined
Apr 28, 2012
Messages
3,545
I thought that the AI for Alea Jacta Est, etc. games was not bad. Same for ACW.

ajeelmntdetl.jpg
 

Beowulf

Arcane
Joined
Mar 2, 2015
Messages
1,963
I thought that the AI for Alea Jacta Est, etc. games was not bad. Same for ACW.

ajeelmntdetl.jpg

I concur, just give it some (small) detection and activation bonuses and in certain scenarios it can get pretty challenging. To bad OP wants only TBS examples.
 

whatevername

Arcane
Joined
Sep 2, 2013
Messages
666
Location
666
The day they program smart AI is the day the robots take over. I think we underestimate the effort it takes to build a good one because we measure it alongside other features like graphics or quests.
In the end these are game developers and not much else. They'll take the easy route on something that gives very little back for the amount of time it takes to master.

Think of it like building a human brain, you might spend a year implementing realistic instincts but the player will only see a retarded NPC because you didnt have the time to implement realistic intelligence.

Back on topic, im going to mention Blackguards because of the difficulty and the fact I dont remember any instances where I made it easy by cheesing the AI. Most of it was down to great level building though.

Maybe they should be making games in other genres instead of TBS then?
MoO2, HMM3, XCOM have decent AI. I lost like 50% of the games in MoO2 and I can win consistently only with uber research, uni-tol, all out spying/darlok and monsanto farmer races.
I get pwned by chess and go. Where are the robot overlords?

First post ayy lmao


I'm assuming that in OP's books "SHIT AI and are unplayable" is better than "Retarded AI?" Because I've never played a strategy game with worse AI than Civ 5. Hell, Master of Magic had better AI than Civ 5.


Let's see, for the rest of it...

Honestly I don't think the AoW series has ever had a meaningful difference in AI. AoW 1, AoW SM, and AoW 3 AI are all at roughly the same level. I've seen lots of people argue that SM's AI is better than 3 or 1? But there hasn't been any proof so far, and as someone who's played the crap out of AoW 1, SM, and 3, I really can't say that there's much difference. All three games you can steamroll the AI pretty easily at the highest level, and the AI's never particularly smart, it just cheats outrageously. Actually, come to think of it, at least SM and 3 don't have the whole "randomly march armies for no reason" that 1 had, so there's been at least some improvement. But if 3 is worse than SM, the difference is miniscule.


Of the HOMM games, 2 probably had the best AI. I never played 6 but of 1-5, 4 probably had the worst. Surprised it's not on this list.


Anyway, probably the closest I've come to seeing a TBS game with decent AI is GalCiv 2. Which... yeah. Isn't saying much. That being said, I'm surprised it's gotten so many votes. I mean I know the AI isn't the second coming that everyone makes it out to be, but it's still significantly better than AoW or Eador or any of the HoMM games (and I prefer AoW, Eador, and HoMM to GalCiv 2).
By "SHIT" I meant AI units randomly moving forward and randomly attacking something. Or if the AI loses to a much smaller army. Or splits its army in half so you could easily defeat the two halves standing next to each other like AoW 3.

I play AoW:SM only on 1 map because all other maps suck. I play in alliance with 3 retarded AIs against 4 AIs. The enemy AIs get a ridiculous amount of troops/towns and I have to save 3 retards from dying.... lol.... so at least AoW:SM is playable to me.

Civ 5 makes dumb mistakes, but it seems like it HAS some kind of AI. On the other hand if you play as England it's so bad that you might not lose a single unit during the whole game if you plan everything right.
 

octavius

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Aug 4, 2007
Messages
19,182
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Bjørgvin
Honestly I don't think the AoW series has ever had a meaningful difference in AI. AoW 1, AoW SM, and AoW 3 AI are all at roughly the same level. I've seen lots of people argue that SM's AI is better than 3 or 1? But there hasn't been any proof so far, and as someone who's played the crap out of AoW 1, SM, and 3, I really can't say that there's much difference. All three games you can steamroll the AI pretty easily at the highest level, and the AI's never particularly smart, it just cheats outrageously. Actually, come to think of it, at least SM and 3 don't have the whole "randomly march armies for no reason" that 1 had, so there's been at least some improvement. But if 3 is worse than SM, the difference is miniscule.

What really made me hate the AOW1 AI was when I played a very balanced/symmetric map, and the AI player would move his entire army towards my area on turn, then I build one extra unit, the AI retreats, next turn the AI builds another unit, then moves forward again, and so on for several turns. It was unreal and ridicilous, and made me realize only unbalanced or story maps are worth playing as single player.
AOW 2 was better in that regard, but it had no ship AI whatsoever; the AI neither built them or used them. If the AI started on a small island with a ship and large army it would never expand.
SM fixed the ship AI somewhat, and has overall the best AI of the first three AOW games IMO. Unlike AOW1 balanced/symmetric maps can be playable as single player.


Of the HOMM games, 2 probably had the best AI. I never played 6 but of 1-5, 4 probably had the worst. Surprised it's not on this list.

HoMM 3 definitely had much better combat AI; trust me.

Incidentally an interesting difference between the AIs in the AOW and HoMM games is that in the former one AI player will never annihilate another. It least I've never seen it.
 

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