Artificial stupidity
 

The worst thing about this game for me is the so-called AI. I'm really steamed right now. Scripted an atlantian king to cast a handful of spells then attack. He has the champions trident, but also a chest wound, so I'd really rather not have him attack, but the thing is, a few turns back when he was on 'stay behind troops' he decided to cast the cold-radiation spell and destroyed my mages with it. Dumb &(@%... grr... so I figured having him attack would prevent that. Nope. He casts his spells, and throws in that cold radation trick again all on his own, then goes to attack, killing another mage (the just arrived replacement from the capital for the two he killed before) and several spearmen in the process.

There's got to be something to do about this, it's just way too stupid. I've come up with a lot of little tricks to try and minimise it, but I haven't found any way to keep it from happening entirely. Very frustrating. Anyone else?

Any word on whether Dom III will pull the same crap? I think I'm going to wait to be convinced it doesn't before I buy it. I'm so sick of this.

Re: Artificial stupidity
 

you could... um... jut move him away from the mages for his starting position?

Re: Artificial stupidity
 

I do. He moves over to them and kills them anyway.

Re: Artificial stupidity
 

Started a new game with Jotunheim. At least breath of winter doesn't cause friendly-fire deaths with the giants. Still just hilariously stupid though.

Niefel giant prophet. Scripted:

Divine bless
Holy avenger
Fanaticism
Attack one turn
Fanaticism
Attack

What's he do?

Divine bless
Holy avenger
BREATH OF WINTER
Attack one turn
Fanaticism
Attack

I'm not making this up. Heck, I couldn't make this up. Blows my mind. This guy has that effect already, why would he waste fatigue casting it? *ROFL*

I've gone through the replay over and over, and thought and thought, and the only thing I can come up with is this. He hits the first fanaticism, no one has been hit yet, so there's no morale loss to fix, so he decides to cast another spell instead. That much of it makes sense, I guess. But why he picks a spell that does nothing but increase his fatigue is a mystery. Why his Atlantean predecessor would consistently pick that *same* spell, and proceed to decimate his own mages with it, is similarly a mystery. Playing man last week I had a Jade Sorceress with the same fixation. Whenever she got a chance, she'd fire off that Breath of Winter and then get lonely and start snuggling up with the lizards. This was particularly funny when she chose to do this while fighting Jotun, so not only was there no chance of it ever hitting anyone except her own side, it wouldn't hurt the enemy even if she did get close to them somehow.

The spell-casting AI in this game is seriously whack.

Re: Artificial stupidity
 

You're right about why he didn't cast Fanaticism. In a case like that, the AI picks a spell out of everything he might cast. The AI tends to favor spells that protect the caster, followed by spells that summon dudes, unless there's a nice target available for a direct-damage spell.

It might be true that Niefel Giants have "chill" (which causes fatigue and sometimes chilling of neighbors) but not "Breath of Winter" (which also causes actual damage). I suspect this is the case, actually? Anyway, the AI likes the spell, and isn't aware that it can sometimes hurt your own guys. It's maybe the biggest spellcasting AI frustration in the game.

The way the AI works, by the way, (if I'm remembering right) is that it first looks at the scripted spell - if it would have no effect, or if the script is such that the caster's spell is not specified, it practice-casts a bunch of spells (several times each?) and picks the one that has the best effect to actually cast. Not sure how "best" is defined.

Re: Artificial stupidity
 

I had the same problem with atlantis, the answer is either spread your mages out and set them to their spells then just cast (so they never move) or script them all to BoW.

Re: Artificial stupidity
 

I recommend spreading your mages out, no matter what. One group has a higher chance of attracting arrow fire and of being hit by stray shots. Also, if they fatigue out and your troops run, the enemy has to cover more ground to kill all the mages. Sometimes one or two will recover from fatigue and be able to flee.

I agree, you see some less than ideal spell choices at times, but you will also get some very pleasant surprises. I never script the spells that hold an enemy in place, yet one of my casters did just that to a flying pretender god. End result, dead pretender.

It was once described as giving orders and hoping they are followed. As a manager of real life humans, I can tell you that the results you see are very lifelike. Not that a game about magic, dragons and talking lizards should try to create “realism,” but in this case they have!

Re: Artificial stupidity
 

and if you were a mage about to be charged by a group of knights even though you could kill some with a spell wouldnt you cast a self protection spell?

Re: Artificial stupidity
 

The AI is pretty BoW crazy, though. Once you've researched it, you can pretty much bet that any mage with 2w (or 1w and a gem) will cast it if they are scripted to cast some other spell that would have no effect (like fanaticism on a turn where troops do not have a morale check).

Re: Artificial stupidity
 

First off, he will only cast breath of winter if you give him an untyped "cast" order, or if you didn't put him close enough to the front lines so that his scripted spells would reach any enemies, or if you asked him to cast spells that require gems. and there's only a trivial number of opponents. Secondly, if you tell him to attack, then he will only move into range of your other mages if there is an enemy in that direction.

Re: Artificial stupidity
 

No, he doesn't have breath of winter by default. He has a chill aura that causes fatigue and can freeze opponents. Breath of winter is a completely separate effect.

Re: Artificial stupidity
 

Move him closer to the front and move your mages closer to the back.
OR
Place him on one side of the battlefield and place your mages on the exact opposite side of the battlefield.

Re: Artificial stupidity
 

A mage does not move over to other mages ... in fact he doesn't even know about them. He moved over behind the rearmost squad, as he was ordered to do!

Never, I mean NEVER set a mage to "stay behind troops" !!

A commander set to "stay behind troops" will move to the rear of the rearmost non-fleeing, non-bodyguard squad and stay there until the squad flees - but nothing more. No matter if he's a mage or a priest or has spellcasting ability from an item, he wouldn't cast any spells.(or would attack an enemy unit in melee, unless attacked himself)

But you want your mages to cast spells. Therefore their script should read:
"cast [spell XY]"
"cast [spell XY]"
"cast [spell XY]" OR "attack -" if you want him to move up to the front line
"cast [spell XY]"
"cast spells"

Be careful to choose your spells XY in such a way that the mage will be able to cast them.

If you want your mage to attack after buffing up, make sure there's a way for him to reach enemy forces. "attack nearest" might be a bad idea after 4 rounds of spellcasting - you troops will be engaged already as "hold and attack" has them on the move on the 3rd turn. With troops engaged and squads fanning out he won't be able to find his way around them and get stuck in their rear.
Therefore, use "attack nearest" only on turn 3 but not later, or place your troops and mage/pretender in such a way that there's a clear path for him towards the enemy. If he needs 3 or 4 turns to buff up, better set him to the side and use "attack rearmost" or "attack archers"... . Just make sure he's strong enough or assign him some bodyguards.

Re: Artificial stupidity
 

Atlantian kings are great thugs, add on some decent equipment and they can all do nice buffs: all can do quickness+BoW, earth can do summon earthpower+invunerability, nature gets regen, fire gets fireshield, air gets mistform and mirror image, astral gets quite alot,death causes extra fear and i guess blood could cast blood vengance although ive never seen a blood king)

Re: Artificial stupidity
 

I have seen blood kings.

Re: Artificial stupidity
 

I thought they existed, just a sort of myth for me.

For equipping kings give non earth kings decent armour (i suggest either dragonscale for 18 prot and only a small defence reduction) or marble armour for alot of prot), a wraithsword(or hellsword if you must), preferably a horror helm or some other helm (maybe starshine), lucky pendant and then any extras you want like reinvig boots/regen ring or something. In non cb give then a bloodthorn and a charcoal/vine/accursed shield, this will give them fireshield/very easy to hit enemies/super high defence.

The best thugs imo are earth and astral kings, all they need is a wraithsword/blood thorn+shield, some reasonable armour for the astral and maybe a horror helm and they can run through small/medium sized armies. When fully tooled they can do great things (quickness+BoW+30 prot/astral and luck along with good equipment is amazing) and make great (and recruitable!) thugs until you get golems (i suggest you empower an earth king to summon them) and tartarians (i always have a d6 pretender where possible then just give him a skull staff and let him mass produce them while he/a vine king GoR's them)

Re: Artificial stupidity
 

They definitely DO cast on 'stay behind troops.'

Re: Artificial stupidity
 

No.

Re: Artificial stupidity
 

I script mages to (cast specific spell)x5, stay behind troops all the time. They don't stop casting spells until they run out of fatigue.

Re: Artificial stupidity
 

Just tested - I stand corrected.

This must have been changed somewhere along the development path - I vaguely remember testing this some (long) time ago and mages behind troops moved but didn't cast then.

However, if you don't want your water mage to move up to the nearest, rearmost squad, simply set him to "cast spells", and he'll stay put.

Re: Artificial stupidity
 

There is exactly one blood king (unless you count all the various demon lords), a corrupted earth king.

It is pretty easy to avoid breath of winter casualties if you spread out your mages and set them to cast spells at the end of their script, which are good ideas to do anyway.

Re: Artificial stupidity
 

I meant an king of the deep (atlantis) with a blood random, i know about father illearth.

Re: Artificial stupidity
 

I have had such a king of the deep, but then I've tooled around with very long atlantean games.

Re: Artificial stupidity
 

My mistake- what I get for skimming the thread. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Artificial stupidity
 

"I thought they existed, just a sort of myth for me. "

are you saying that:

a) randoms aren't very random, i.e. that blood is less likely than others, or

b) you havn't built very many kings, or

c) you have been (un)lucky

I suspect c, but helps to check.

Re: Artificial stupidity
 

Whoa, they actually do cast? I'm with you I would have bet 100% that they would move and NOT cast. If they do follow the troops and cast tho... that could provide a niche for your weak mages. If they can only manage the close range (5-10) evoc spells you could set them to follow and they could get up close to the enemy and blast them. Hmm...

Re: Artificial stupidity
 

Exactly. Except for their tendency to senselessly cast BoW and then kill each other with it, this is a very handy tactical tool.

Also it seems that when you put them on 'stay behind troops' they will fire ranged weapons on and off, keeping their fatigue down and their spellcasting going longer, but on 'cast spells' they ignore their ranged weapons and just cast until they pass out.

Re: Artificial stupidity
 

Testing reveals that switching the final order from 'stay behind troops' to 'cast spells' or, for that matter, to null, does not alter the behaviour. I still get mages running across the battlefield to get close to other mages, archers, or illithids and casting BoW. There is some variation, though, sometimes cast BoW THEN run to where it can inflict the most casualties on their own side, sometimes run to position first, THEN cast BoW.

*sigh*

I don't know which is dumber, the mage doing that in the first place, or the other units inside the area of effect simply standing there until they die from it, but either way, there's a stupidity overload going on for sure.

Re: Artificial stupidity
 

your solution is to not research enchantment, I guess.

Re: Artificial stupidity
 

There are certain limitations to the game engine atm - your perceived 'stupidity overload' is the result of, sorry to says that, your ignorance towards them:

1) Commanders do what they are ordered to - literally. They do not 'think about' what might be your intentions. The only freedom of choice is what spell to use when ordered to 'cast'. In that case, the AI will mostly go for buff (target:self) spells first. If there are targets in range, the battle engine will try out several different ranged spells and choose the one which deals the most damage. That does not mean it will do maxed damage, or any damage at all, because the random factors are newly calculated when the spell is actually cast.

2) Units do not 'know' about battlefield hazards. They move into poison clouds as well as into a breath of winter. Likewise, units do not 'know' about their own auras/fields.


Ok, another quick test:

A mage who is ordered to "cast spells", but can cast absolutely no spell defaults to "stay behind troops" it seems. (E.g. Blood-1 mage without slaves and low research - only spell would be 'bleed' which requires a slave).

"sometimes cast BoW THEN run to where it can inflict the most casualties"

Obviously, the only spell the mage could cast at that time was BoW. As he was ordered to cast, he did just that. Afterwards, he was ordered (by the game engine) to "stay behind troops" - and he did just that.

"sometimes run to position first, THEN cast BoW"

Behaviour like that I couldn't recreate unless I ordered the mage to move via "attack" order. If ordered to cast a specific spell 4x and then cast spells, the mage always stays put until running completely out of spells. In that case, he casts "BoW" first and moves on the next turn.
Exception might be heroically quick or quickened mages. The additional action points screw up the order of orders (if that makes sense).

"to where it can inflict the most casualties on their own side"

As unit do not know about auras, fields, units around them (other than who is 'rearmost', 'nearest', 'archer' etc), they can't deliberatly run where they can cause the most casualties. They go for the rearmost unit. Simply make sure your rearmost unit is 100% cold-resistant and keeps a healthy distance from the rest of your troops and you'll be fine. If you bunch up all your vulnerable mages, either by setup or use of "stay behind troops", the 'stupidity overload' is surely not on the games side http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Admittedly, there are some possibilities for improvement with the battle engine as well as with the game engine in general http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: Artificial stupidity
 

Obviously it has limitations, and obviously all game engines have limitations. But, sorry, your second clause is exactly reversed. The perception of stupidity here is a result of learning about those limitations, not of being ignorant of them.

Actually, that's the point, they DON'T just do what they're ordered to do. As you point out, there are several things they will do without being ordered to do. AI is difficult programming, I realise as well as anyone, and practically speaking it's impossible to get it perfect. I don't expect that.

I did expect, however, an AI that with some basic, fairly simple logic checks like 'don't cast this spell if it's more likely to harm your own troops than the enemy' or 'don't move close to friendly troops when you have an area of damage effect following you around.' That seems pretty elementary.

That's a pretty severe limitation, and quite an annoying one from a gameplay perspective, but it wouldn't actually be necessary to fix that to stop what I'm talking about.

Yep. It will do that even if not given that command.

Sounds right. And easily fixed, by anyone that has access to the code, one would think.

It does, actually, as the latest observation of that behaviour was out of a severely quickened unit. (A random R'lyeh hero, Traitor King? or something like that, L4 water mage with heroic quickness and the spell quickness as well. Definitely NOT ordered to attack or stay behind troops. I have the save game stashed to look at again if there's any point in it.)

Your rearmost unit, if you have archers, is pretty much always going to be those archers. In this case, as I recall, I had my Illithids (archers in the broad sense) on the right hand side, firing. The melee troops were spread across right-middle and slightly forward, and the assorted mages spread across the back row tending toward the left, with the exception of the hero with the BoW fixation, who was on the far right side and forward, just behind some melees, to keep him as far as possible from other troops when his casting orders ran out, on the basis of previous assertions on this thread. The melees move forward, the illithids fire, the mages cast... for several rounds it's all working well. Then, I'm guessing, what happens is that in the final rounds of the battle, as the spell ques empty, the battle has been won, the enemies are all in flight... and at this point there's no more targest for the spell casters. So they all run and bunch up behind the illithids. The earlier posters on this thread had said this was because I was using the 'stay behind troops' command, remember, so I was testing this and not using the command, and it happens anyway.

I can't believe I'm the only one that finds this beyond annoying. It's absolutely senseless. And fixing it wouldn't require any radical expansion of the AI engine so far as I can see. Simply disabling that forced 'stay behind troops' command you hypothesise (and it matches my observations) would pretty much do the trick. There's no need for mages to be moving around and casting spells when all enemy forces have broken anyway (and that's always or very nearly always when this happens - AFTER all enemies have broken.)

Re: Artificial stupidity
 

actually, I've never had a problem with this, and I play ry'leh. Order your mages to ALL cast BoW, and then cast, and, since mind burn is absurdly long-ranged, they should never move.

Re: Artificial stupidity
 

who says he will only be using mind burn? seems a waste of such expensive mages.

Re: Artificial stupidity
 

He means that the mages will be able to cast mind burn when the enemy is runing away becuase of the range, so your mages will not default to stay behind troops as they do when they can't cast any useful spell.

Re: Artificial stupidity
 

.. make that "can't cast any spell". They will cast even the most unuseful spell before they start moving.

Btw. - to correct this whole issue is obviously not trivial, or the devs would have done that long before.

There's no 'do nothing order' - even commanders set to "stay behind troops" wiggle about a bit each turn. So a mage who cannot cast any spell (no matter who silly it may be) can't simply stand still for one turn - he has to move and defaults to "stay behind rearmost" because of this.

Re: Artificial stupidity
 

Are you sure a fire mage being out of range will cast fireflies after the opponent?

Re: Artificial stupidity
 

Nope. He can't cast any spell, because he has no target in range to cast fireflies at. Dunno where I should have said otherwise.

He will cast at a single inf unit at max range despite the to-hit chance must be around 0.1%, though.

Likewise, he'll cast any other spell that has a target that is in range - preferably buffs spells, because those have range "self" or "1".

Only if he runs totally out of castable spells he'll start to move.

Re: Artificial stupidity
 

Here's what I want to know, how come everytime someone remarks that an AI is stupid he says Artificial Stupidity in mock of Artificial Intelligence. Why not Genuine Stupidity which is a much more fitting title. (IE the AI is genuinely stupid)

Re: Artificial stupidity
 

Because computers are stupid but for idiocy on a grand scale you need a human. ;-)

Re: Artificial stupidity
 

Actually neither term should be used. Artificial Intelligence isnt all that hard and has been done often. Its a common topic in the AI work groups. In those groups they joke about AI always meaning almost implemented because anytime an AI project is completed it stops being referred to as AI. Like diagnosis software, or autopilot, or streetlight management. All were AI projects until they were done.

What the players want is artificially human. As just one example... artificial intelligence would use a straight line. It takes a artificially human would sneak around behind or do a flanking attack. Or better yet to randomly select between them, sometimes when its even a bad idea but might be a surprise.

What programmers, especially game programmers have learned is that the closer you get to AH the more random gets worked in. So its often a shorter project that instead of starting with intelligent then gradually add more randoms, AH is often best achieved by starting with it being random then making it gradually more intelligent.
Just FYI trivia

Re: Artificial stupidity
 

No, they do exactly what they are ordered to do, which is exactly as has been described to you. It doesn't necessarily match with what you think you ordered them to do, but that's a problem with your understanding of the logic used for decision making.

If it's simple, then you'll be able to tell us all how to determine both cases. How does the AI know whether breath of winter is more likely to hurt your troops than the enemies?

No, it will only move forwards if there are no other possible spells to cast, or if you didn't give your commanders any orders at all. Stay behind troops is the default order.

If it's easily fixed, then you'll be able to describe exactly what the proper behaviour would be in each possible game situation.

I already pointed out in my first post to this thread tat heroic quickness screws things up. Perhaps you should have realized that when somebody refers to heroic quickness, they are explaining that your units with heroic quickness fall under that category.

Re: Artificial stupidity
 

I've mentioned this before, but a little check box next to researched spells in the spell list would solve most of these types of issues. If the check box is unchecked, then God has outlawed this spell (removed from castable spells list for this nation as far as the mage's ai is concerned) and any mage caught casting that spell will be stoned to death. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Artificial stupidity
 

But of course, only _after_ the offending sage's BoW has killed all the expensive mages. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: Artificial stupidity
 

I don't see how you could say that with a straight face, knowing that there are several final orders that can be given, yet as discussed in this thread the AI always uses 'stay behind troops' even when it's not the order given?

Using an expert system approach, you'd have a few rules like these:

1. Is the enemy Jotunheim? If yes, forget BoW, it won't do you any good.

2. Are you Jotunheim? If no, it's very likely going to decimate your own lines. Don't cast.

That wouldn't be the most sophisticated set of rules, but it would still be much more sophisticated than what it does now. Depending on the amount of information the programmers want to make available to the AI, more sophisticated chains of tests could be devised of course, but even the crudity above would work.

An even simpler fix would be simply to take this out of the list of spells the AI will cast unbidden. This is the type of spell that, if you're going to cast it at all, you should probably be casting early in the battle and following with a command to engage in melee anyway. Which, I gather from another post, is actually what they're doing with Dom3.

Re: Artificial stupidity
 

I'm telling you that because you are wrong when you claim that the AI always uses stay behind troops. You are also wrong when you claim that the AI sometimes chooses to use stay behind troops when you haven't selected it. I'm also not sure why you continue to ignore the fact that the behavious has been completely explained to you. I suppose it's because you can't be bothered to realize that when somebody tells you that heroic quickness can cause buggy behaviour when stacked with spell quickness, and you have a unit that has both heroic quickness and spell quickness, that it's obviously something else that must be causing the strange behaviour and you should continue to claim that some other bug is causing the problem.

So you propose that such a list be made for every single spell? Let's look at the other situations where it would be useful. Caelum, for example, or the undead Ermor themes, or miasma C'Tis.

Re: Artificial stupidity
 

Actually, that wasn't my claim. Several people, YOU INCLUDED, claimed that, and I concluded it fit what I was seeing and decided to believe you.

You know, I ignored your last crack about this for a reason. You're out of your freakin skull. Learn to read.

The poster that mentioned heroic quickness got a reply back from me saying that YES the particular character in the particular incidence I mentioned had heroic quickness, and I AGREED that explained that particular bit of strangeness I had reported. And you want to rant and rave for two posts now about me denying what I actually confirmed? You're just making yourself look like an idiot.

First, what other spells are causing problems? This is the only one that seems to give me much grief, although I imagine there are one or two others that would have the potential, I don't know what they are offhand. As I said already, if the programmers were motivated they could make some very sophisticated logic for this, but that's not necessary, a very simple fix (such as the one I understand has been implemented for Dom3) is also possible, so one shouldn't use the difficulty of implementing a very sophisticated fix as an excuse not to implement any fix at all. The simple one should still be a huge improvement.

I don't play Caelum that much, but it's my understanding that human players normally use lots of non-national troops, so it would probably be as big a problem for them as for anyone else. C'tis, again, I only played once, but I remember it being a *mixture* of troops, so again it's not safe to cast. Even Jotunheim, in 2 of 3 themes, is likely to have troops that are vulnerable to it, in fact.

Ashen Empire and Soul Gate could probably get away with it though. So sure, s/Jotunheim/"Jotunheim, AE, or SG" that's fine. Or even simpler, just don't cast the thing unbidden. A human player is going to script it when he wants it, casting it otherwise is almost never going to be any advantage, and very often will be a problem. And for AI players, the same thing really applies, they aren't smart enough to use it, it's far more likely to harm them than to help them.

Re: Artificial stupidity
 

If the programmers were motivated? You might have meant that casually but Ive seen rants on that which grated me.
There is one programmer and he has kept up a steady stream of improvments.

Also he has said in the past that he would look at flowcharts if someone wanted to psuedo-code something. That doesnt seem uninterested.

Re: Artificial stupidity
 

One? I had the impression it was two, but I assume you're in a much better position to know than I.

Either way, the game is a monumental accomplishment, and if you read anything I've written as a slight to that work or those who did it, I've been misunderstood.

All I meant by that is that, while I'd be happy to write out pseudocode for a much more sophisticated chain of logic there, it seems pointless to do so. It's my impression it would require considerably more work than is realistically going to be put into it to actually implement (as it would require the AI to have access to a lot of information it apparently does not currently have access to, and probably logic it wasn't designed to cope with at all.) Particularly considering it's not really necessary, as the much simpler solution should have almost exactly the same effect.

Re: Artificial stupidity
 

In a way there are. There are two developers. Johan is a programmer by trade and he makes it all work. Kristoffer teaches religion and mythology. He comes up with the nations, units, spells, equipment. He designs the stuff that Johan has to make work. They probably overlap abit.

Those are my own impressions of what Ive read and I sincerely hope Im not insulting either of them.

Re: Artificial stupidity
 

If you decided to believe us, then you wouldn't have just told me that you didn't believe us, and that there was still unexplained behaviour.

"I don't see how you could say that with a straight face, knowing that there are several final orders that can be given, yet as discussed in this thread the AI always uses 'stay behind troops' even when it's not the order given?"

You are simply wrong when you claim that the AI uses stay behind troops when not ordered to. If you think that's what the people who understand the game are telling you, then you need to go back and re-read their posts.

If you actually agreed that heroic quickness caused the AI glitch (which it obviously did), then you wouldn't have just told me that the AI randomly picks different orders from what you tell it to do. If you want to be believed, then perhaps you should provide a battle replay where a mage that doesn't have heroic quickness disobeys your final order.

Then perhaps you need to play the game more so that you understand the various rules. A spell as common as blade wind can cause more damage to your troops than breath of winter.

It might be a mixture of troops, it might also be nothing but marhsmasters and undead. It's definetly safe to cast in the undead only case, which is by far the more common of the two.

Well, except for the fact that nobody would use those troops.