If the DLC funds more patches to make the A.I. competitive, then I’m all for it. It’s a fun game but it could be a fantastic game if there was a challenge beyond gaining the first few levels for your sovereign.
Varley definitely has a point – all of the higher difficulty levels are a front-loaded challenge. If you can make a few levels and gather a few heroes together, you can win any game. Sometimes it takes turtle-ing until you’ve got the tech to handle the right fights, but I’ve yet to lose a game. Sure, I’ve jumped out of games when I have a bad start, or when I’ve gotten bored with the eternal mop-up of the later stages, but I’ve never outright lost a game.
That is definitely the issue, one shared by every similar style game in recent memory. All the challenge is front loaded. Once you get past that, there is no real challenge any more. It would be nice to have an AI, assuming the player has several well established cities and plentiful resources to still challenge the player. All these games have the same lame trick. Give the AI a huge resource multiplayer and have them “zerg” the player with poorly designed armies while having no real strategy for winning the game.
Having said that, the tactical AI in FE is actually decent. The strategic AI is brain-dead.
Is that still the case after the 1.3 AI update?
The strategic AI gathers armies together, attacks cities with few defenders and lots of other good moves. However, once it initiates a battle, it doesn’t cast spells properly (i.e. focuses on buffs rather than offensive or summoning spells). It also has a no idea of how to split it’s army across multiple threats. You can be vastly outnumbered and summon an elemental into the middle of the AIs army and it will completely focus on the elemental. This allows you to bring forward your units and slowly one by one take out the AI’s units. If they manage to kill your elemental, just summon another one. The only exception to this is the AIs archers, they always seem to focus on your rear-most unit for some reason.
I’ve used this tactic to win a Poor -vs- Deadly battle numerous times.
It also has no concept of choke points.
uhh… you are saying opposite stuff.
Ooops, misread DeepT. I disagree and feel while the strategic AI has improved with the latest 1.3 upgrade, the tactical battle AI is still quite stupid.
I have not played it much since the 1.3 update. I did not mean to imply that that tactical AI has improved in the 1.3 update. Pre 1.3 update: The Tactical AI was decent. Not great, but decent. Its big weakness was the lack of or poor use of tactical spells. The strategic AI was terrible and with my little play-time in 1.3, seems slightly improved, but still woefully lacking.
It is lacking, it still does silly things like spam Pioneers when everywhere is settled, but it has definately improved since 1.3. The AI Sovereigns no longer wander around without an army and actually attack cities that they see are lightly defended. However, no matter how impressive the strategic AI may get, if the tactical AI gives little challenge it all falls down.
I probably worded my previous posts wrong, I wasn’t saying that you were wrong, I was just trying to emphasise that the tactical AI is a bigger issue and needs work before the strategic AI.
I’ve even seen people saying the game is more of a challenge if you auto-resolve all the tactical battles because then it’s a level playing field and down to army ratings rather than “tactics”.
I suppose auto resolve could make it challenging, but there is a bug that happens once in a while. You will lose a battle you should out-right win. There have been battles against known army types that I can wipe the floor with, that have on rare occasions resulted in a total loss. I have a hard time trusting that kind of system. On the other hand, it would greatly speed up the game.
It’s not so rare, it’s actually quite common.
It’s impossible to trust the fast battle system, it’s beyond terrible.
It’s something that needs to be entirely reworked or scrapped.
I have been playing this since the (bad old) WoM days. I like it a lot. One of my main issues, though, is that the challenge leaves by the time I get to bring out the big guns–heavily armored troops, high level heroes, etc. I have yet to try the 1.3 AI and am looking forward to seeing if that makes the AI more competitive in the late game. Another approach is this: is there an “advanced start” option for LH? I recently tried a Renaissance start for Civ5 for the first time and actually quite enjoyed it, and maybe something similar here would fit the bill. Or is there a combination of starting options that would be similar?
And congrats to Derek. The only thing I thought missing from FFH was AI, and I’m hopeful that with Derek+Brad can knock it out of the park. LH is certainly getting there, for me, but I’m more excited to see new things on the horizon.
Stardock need to either reverse on their decision not to implement multiplayer or invest significant effort on the single player A.I. No matter how good the design, premise and gameplay is, without a challenge there’s no game. I play each new version for a few days and then eventually shelve it waiting for the next patch. It’s such a shame.
I’m sure significiant investment was made on the AI, it’s just that fantasy games are so difficult compared to space games that the AI feels worse in comparison, especially when you throw in tac battles and quests to boot.
It’s a big reason why I’m hoping Stardock announces GalCiv III soon- GalCiv to me is a better formula then Elemental, and the improvements made over the life of Elemental could result in something special.
If anyone is hyped on Age of Wonders 3, they should be wary of how the AI will be…
I enjoy the game a good amount. Sure, it gets easier as you roll out the tougher units and the AI struggles to keep up, but it doesn’t strike me as brain dead either in tactical or strategic. Not great by any means, but not brain dead. I don’t play for a consistent challenge and I just revel in the enjoyable romp, but I can understand the disappointment many feel when assessing the strength of any 4X AI. I’ve yet to meet a great AI in a 4X game even close to as complex as LH is. I agree space is easier to implement that in, but I like the fantasy setting and feel the LH world is pretty well fleshed out.
AOW3 does look hype as hell, but I am like you- super wary of the AI, especially given the previous games in the series. I’ll wait for Tom’s review before buying on that one, since I think our tastes in TBS are similar.
I agree with Alstein–I think the systems in a space 4X are significantly simpler, or at least less diverse and complexly interacting, than in a fantasy one (at least as far as these games are “typically” done). So better AIs are more easily achieved.
I can’t imagine they won’t make a GalCiv III, for “business reasons” alone. I wonder if Derek will have control of it? I hope so.
I’d say a lot of the A.I. regarding Gal Civ was related to the rock, paper, scissors combat mechanic that is moderately easy to build heuristics around. Sword of the Stars which has an significant matrix of weapons/defenses took years & expansion packs to get truelly competitive.
FE - LH has a much more complicated tactical combat system that the A.I. hasn’t got to grips with yet, i.e. choke points, initiative being extremely important, tactical/summoning spells, etc. I’m hopeful that Brad will get it to where it needs to be, he just needs time. 1.3 was a big improvement, we just need a few more patches along those lines.
I grabbed FE:LE and the DLC on the Steam sale that just started today, been looking forward to trying it. But it’s locking up my machine. Anyone have similar problems? 5-10 minutes after starting a game, the whole machine will freeze. Have to hard reboot.
Win 7, NVidia GTX 295, latest drivers. DXDiag here.
I sent Stardock support an email, too…maybe they’ll have some ideas.