Could the AI become a bit TOO good? - Total War Heaven Forum

Topic Subject:

Could the AI become a bit TOO good?

Legion Of Hell
Centurion

posted 30 December 2008 14:19 EDT (US)

From the plethora of hands on articles made by Gamespot, IGN, Eurogamer and others we can see that they have mentioned how the AI has improved.

One notable example is with the recent article on CVG where they were playing as the Continental Army against the British at Bunker Hill. They show the AI�s tenacity as shown below.

�My men bayed a war cry that mingled with the stampeding hooves of their mounts, charging for glory with swords outstretched, racing past an abandoned farm before collapsing en masse as a group of garrisoned enemy snipers parted them from their brains as they rode past. This was going to be tougher than I thought.�

It shows the AI�s astute thinking by placing sharpshooters in an abandoned farm where the AI used it to devastating effect. If the AI becomes this good then I can imagine many people whether hardened or inexperienced in past games being dealt a nasty surprise by the AI.

What do you think?

General Rawlinson- This is most unsatisfactory. Where are the Sherwood Foresters? Where are the East Lancashires on the right?

Brigadier-General Oxley- They are lying out in No Man's Land, sir. And most of them will never stand again.

Two high ranking British generals discussing the fortunes of two regiments after the disastrous attack at Aubers Ridge on the 9th May 1915.

Author

Replies:

Gallowglass
Legionary

posted 30 December 2008 14:37 EDT (US) 1 / 5

I think the M2TW AI was capable of doing this, it just avoided the details (i.e. it kept skirmish mode on when it didn't need to, as shown in the two single-battle AARs I did).
If ETW doesn't have that problem, then I see the AI being the equal of a bad human player.

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Boetje
Legionary

posted 30 December 2008 16:46 EDT (US) 2 / 5

AIs are never good enough. if they are that hard, the game-make-people make a difficulty switch. (oh wait, they did that with a bad AI too!)

and don't forget that a forum community generally is a lot better in the specified game than a preview writer playing a demo.

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Waffentraeger
Legionary
(id: Daelon)

posted 30 December 2008 17:00 EDT (US) 3 / 5

AI will never be "too good", that shouldn't even been debated.

Gaius Colinius
Seraph Emeritus

posted 30 December 2008 17:13 EDT (US) 4 / 5

Could the AI become a bit TOO good?

Not really. In theory, all games should be unbeatable on the highest difficulty level and then scale down from that.

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Lord_Morningstar
Legionary

posted 30 December 2008 17:26 EDT (US) 5 / 5

It is theoretically possible to build a near-unbeatable AI, but the time taken to write it and the computer needed to run it would be phenomenal. Deep Blue was able to beat Gary Kasparov at chess, but it�s a game with fewer options immediately available to the player at every step than a Total War game.

But the AI in strategy games does seem to have steadily improved. And the people on communities like this probably represent the top 2% who�ll actually play the game.

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