KnightofPhoenix wrote:
My experience with the Forgotten AI on serious is different, they were playing decently and were responsible for the BL which previously had the highest score, declining rapidly after what must have been a massacre.

No doubt, but that's what bonuses do. They fill in the holes in the AI that it should be filling in itself (that's been the problem with the game from the start). That's not really a good measure of the AI. Granted I don't know what the conditions were in terms of regions and available resources in your particular game.



How the AI performs when it's not working with a crutch is much more interesting to me, because that means I can gauge how well its doing when it truly starts from scratch.



In general, factions that are supposed to start out 'weak' and then hit their stride later in the game are going to be the most outclassed (no one is going to wait for them to get up to speed). Those are always better played by a human, but then it kind of sucks to not be able to put a faction in a game apart from having you play it (or adding difficulty bonuses that make the OTHER factions over powered). I'd rather see a bit more equilibrium so that games don't become predictable. Maybe the Forgotten need more balancing. Can't say right now since I haven't played a game with them yet. Maybe an espionage specialized faction wasn't that great of an idea.



I've seen this issue in pretty much every 4x game where a very 'different' faction get's introduced. The Undead in both Age of Wonders 3 and Fallen Enchantress: LH suffer from this. In AoW 3 the Undead can at least be made better for the AI if they have certain specializations, but the fact that they grow so slowly means they'll almost never achieve any empire quests related to growth and expansion(without large bonuses). In FE:LH the Dead faction simply just doesn't know how to play itself.



Sure bonuses help a bit, but they also screw the balance of the game for everyone else if the other AIs are up to scratch. Or they make the 'slow start' faction too good at the stage of the game it is supposed to struggle in.

That's some high praise. I'm curious to read your impressions after you've had some time with the game. Personally, I think this AI update is great.

wilbefast wrote:
Turn 68 the Necrophage is, indeed, preparing to attack you. It is producing units and pacifying minors in order to gather experience and corpses.







About 10 turns later the blue Vaulters empire settles on the Necrophages' frontier. They are not happy about this.







Turn 99 they have declared war and are marching on the blue Vaulters.







Turn 111 the Vaulters have lost half their empire in 12 turns, and the Necrophages are in a pretty good situation.



Note that the Necrophage personality is pretty emotionless: they will attack targets that are vulnerable, they don't really hold grudges and they don't really care about how peaceful you've been towards them in the past.



I think they're doing reasonable well - I would expect them to turn on you as soon as they've dealt with the Vaulters, assuming you don't drastically raise your military power in the very near future.

Wow. Thanks for the info Wilbefast. I had no idea that was going on. I was thinking something had happened but I didn't know what.



That's some awesome stuff happening right under my nose and I didn't see it. I didn't notice the Vaulters losing territory.



Also, it seems I can't tell from the diplo screen who is at war with whom. Was it always like this? Do I need to be at peace with someone to know who they are fighting with?

Slashman wrote:
Wow. Thanks for the info Wilbefast. I had no idea that was going on. I was thinking something had happened but I didn't know what.



That's some awesome stuff happening right under my nose and I didn't see it. I didn't notice the Vaulters losing territory.



Also, it seems I can't tell from the diplo screen who is at war with whom. Was it always like this? Do I need to be at peace with someone to know who they are fighting with?

Nope, you just need to click on this button here in the diplomacy screen:







This will let you see their diplomatic relations, though you can't see what their attitude towards third parties is... unless you're spying on the empire

wilbefast wrote:
Nope, you just need to click on this button here in the diplomacy screen:







This will let you see their diplomatic relations, though you can't see what their attitude towards third parties is... unless you're spying on the empire

I kind of forgot that button existed. I feel rather sheepish now but there is no sheep emoticon...

icarus86 wrote:
Really sorry guys. I was certain that everything was discounted for the first 24hours

Must.ve been all the hype ... I.ll be more careful in the future.

So EL is 66% off right now on Steam, except for the last two DLCs which are 25% off.

There is a "Collection" which includes everything and goes for roughly $20 (CHF 19.04 to be precise).

Just wanted to correct my mistake and add this now ^^

So second update at around turn 168. I'm going kind of slow as I pointed out before due to limited playtime.



This is without a doubt the best expanding I've seen the AI do in any game I played since I started and things are eventful even though I don't know exactly everything that happened with the AI. This is normal difficulty too. So kudos to Amplitude for this



OK, first is that the Necros hammered the Vaulters down to almost death. I stepped in and harrassed an army of theirs from taking one of the last cities of the Vaulters and naturally the Necros weren't happy. They warned me but didn't declare war. I don't think the Vaulters have a bright future anymore.



Second thing is the interesting war that's taking place between the Drakken and the Cultists. The Cultists' military strength went way up, and because I had shared vision with the Drakken, I could see them flooding the Drakken territories with their armies of minor factions. What I didn't expect was that the Drakken seemed to have wiped most of those armies out. The Drakken had started to be terrified of my military strength so I thought the Cultists would have had an easier time of it (their military strength was higher). Drakken troops are tough though.



Third point is I don't know what is going on with the Ardent Mages. They were never at war, but they were also not really competing in any one category with any real progress. They have a good deal of territory but remain with a very weak military. Not sure what victory condition they are pursuing. I will attach saves so Wilbefast can take a look if he likes.



The last thing I want to point out that is very frustrating right now is the total lack of AI city organization. They don't seem to be trying to build up districts to higher levels. This is especially worrying for someone like the Cultists who only even have one city. None of the AI territories that I currently can see on the map have a level 2 district or city center. At turn 168...that's a bit worrisome to say the least. Their city placement also continues to be baffling sometimes. Still too near the edge of a territory. But I am much more worried about the lack of level 2 districts. Maybe I am over estimating population growth because I'm playing Broken Lords and I buy out my population. Not sure.
Broken Lords - Turn 119.zip
Broken Lords - Turn 127.zip
Broken Lords - Turn 132.zip
Broken Lords - Turn 138.zip
Broken Lords - Turn 144.zip
Broken Lords - Turn 149.zip
Broken Lords - Turn 155.zip
Broken Lords - Turn 163.zip

Slashman wrote:
The last thing I want to point out that is very frustrating right now is the total lack of AI city organization. They don't seem to be trying to build up districts to higher levels. This is especially worrying for someone like the Cultists who only even have one city. None of the AI territories that I currently can see on the map have a level 2 district or city center. At turn 168...that's a bit worrisome to say the least. Their city placement also continues to be baffling sometimes. Still too near the edge of a territory. But I am much more worried about the lack of level 2 districts. Maybe I am over estimating population growth because I'm playing Broken Lords and I buy out my population. Not sure.

I played a "normal" game with cultists to see the AI changes (and also, getting used with Guardian DLC I just got); from the empire statistics, I noticed that no AI factions have sufficient (or, halfway decent, even) food production and influence production. I think that the lack of population, caused by the lack of food production, is what keeping AIs from expanding their cities. For the obvious reasons, Broken Lords do not suffer from this; in my game, AI BL outbuilt every other AI -- it was pretty impressive, actually.



Other observations from one game with normal.



AIs tend to do pretty well when it comes to production, dust and science. They also try to use infiltration reasonably well. I am impressed here.

It seems that AI will do very poorly if they fail to pacify its own regions early on, due to roaming armies.

With the above, AI Forgotten did miserably, with everything being pillaged by roaming armies; it could have been destroyed by itself, had I not ended its misery. As others suggested, I think they badly need a buff.

I think AI tends to split their armies too much, even in late games. AI BL kept sending 2-4 units army into the same neutral region during cold war, only to be picked off one by one by my stack, while I was waiting for the arrival of my other stacks. Other AIs (even Vaulters, who have no reasons to do so) spread their forces too thin, as well -- roaming armies could easily take them. AI Necrophages was the only one who fielded a real "doomstack" of sort, though I have no idea why -- curiously, Necro did well military-wise for the above poster, as well.



Overall, I am impressed by the changes -- "normal" AI performed as well as higher-level AIs from previous versions. However, there still are rooms for improvements;

Spacegnome wrote:
I played a "normal" game with cultists to see the AI changes (and also, getting used with Guardian DLC I just got); from the empire statistics, I noticed that no AI factions have sufficient (or, halfway decent, even) food production and influence production. I think that the lack of population, caused by the lack of food production, is what keeping AIs from expanding their cities. For the obvious reasons, Broken Lords do not suffer from this; in my game, AI BL outbuilt every other AI -- it was pretty impressive, actually.

This makes sense. I like BL and I sometimes forget that they don't need food to expand.

Other observations from one game with normal.



AIs tend to do pretty well when it comes to production, dust and science. They also try to use infiltration reasonably well. I am impressed here.

It seems that AI will do very poorly if they fail to pacify its own regions early on, due to roaming armies.

With the above, AI Forgotten did miserably, with everything being pillaged by roaming armies; it could have been destroyed by itself, had I not ended its misery. As others suggested, I think they badly need a buff.

I didn't add The Forgotten to my game. I wanted to try them out in a separate game first myself.

I think AI tends to split their armies too much, even in late games. AI BL kept sending 2-4 units army into the same neutral region during cold war, only to be picked off one by one by my stack, while I was waiting for the arrival of my other stacks. Other AIs (even Vaulters, who have no reasons to do so) spread their forces too thin, as well -- roaming armies could easily take them. AI Necrophages was the only one who fielded a real "doomstack" of sort, though I have no idea why -- curiously, Necro did well military-wise for the above poster, as well.

This is consistent with my own observations. I declared war on the Necros due to the requirement of a BL quest. I sent two armies to two of their regions each with a hero and 6 units. My main BL hero started a siege on one city and was rather surprised to see the Necros send a Guardian in along with other reinforcements. I lost almost all my units defeating them except my hero and one set of Stalwarts and a Dredge I think. Took two battles to take down the Guardian. If they had had more reinforcements, I would have been wiped out. It was the one with mind control. Hate that power!



The Drakken and Cultists actually had more consistently cohesive armies. The Cultists more so as there were several stacks of 6 units invading the Drakken.



One other problem I am seeing is the lack of hero use. There were times when the addition of a hero to a stack would have really helped the AI. The Necros didn't send a hero at me along with their reinforcement army. If they had, I really would have felt it.



One other thing I want to add is that the new militia are really effective. I can actually rely on them doing decent damage in a fight. That's a big plus.

Overall, I am impressed by the changes -- "normal" AI performed as well as higher-level AIs from previous versions. However, there still are rooms for improvements;

I think we are of the same opinion. They really did good work with the AI. Just a few holes to fill IMO. Those holes may actually be deep wells for all I know though.



One other question I have if anyone knows: Did they adjust the bonuses for the higher difficulty levels now that the AI performs better? Were they reduced? Also what are their current values vs the old values if there was a change?

My experience with the Forgotten AI on serious is different, they were playing decently and were responsible for the BL which previously had the highest score, declining rapidly after what must have been a massacre.

I've played and finished 1 game on serious since the updates/content release and I'm loving all of it, I stopped after I noticed some of the new music from echoes, I just sat there listening to the new tracks.



I felt the incentive to assimilate different minor factions just to try out most of their faction quest, I wish there were longer bits of exposition but I was satisfied with the world building the quests provided I really enjoyed one in particular that let me use a pet sheep.



XD I'm hoping in future content we get more pet accessories they are really cool! Early game completing these special quests really saved me, they gave me some good equipment before I had a chance to steal or buy useful tech.



Ive been playing on serious as forgotten, I have also noticed that necros aren't aggressive enough, I was surprised that I went the whole game without needing to deal with any necros threat. It was the broken lords who were being aggressive early on with an advantage over me until I launched an invasion timed with multiple sabotages.

Slashman wrote:
OK I'm leaving a link for all my saves up to this point. My game is at turn 111. Hope this helps.

Turn 68 the Necrophage is, indeed, preparing to attack you. It is producing units and pacifying minors in order to gather experience and corpses.







About 10 turns later the blue Vaulters empire settles on the Necrophages' frontier. They are not happy about this.







Turn 99 they have declared war and are marching on the blue Vaulters.







Turn 111 the Vaulters have lost half their empire in 12 turns, and the Necrophages are in a pretty good situation.



Note that the Necrophage personality is pretty emotionless: they will attack targets that are vulnerable, they don't really hold grudges and they don't really care about how peaceful you've been towards them in the past.



I think they're doing reasonable well - I would expect them to turn on you as soon as they've dealt with the Vaulters, assuming you don't drastically raise your military power in the very near future.

I am impressed with the AI update. It fixed a ton of stuff and the game is -alot- better.



But still not sold on AI targeting. I will still use stand-ground with all my battles.

In a battle of Dekari Rangers, Daemons, Harmonites, & Militia (me) -vs- NecroDrones, Daemons, Forager, Militia (AI): the targeting selection was bad. I let the battle play out without input.



My rangers avoided the closer Drones/Daemons to target militia, while the opponents daemons flew right by my rangers to target my militia.



Targeting Selection for each side was as follows:

Militia -> Foragers -> NecroDrones -> Daemons

Militia -> Daemons -> Dekari Rangers -> Harmonites



The AI also pulls out Garrisons to defend other units that get attacked. Ive taken 5-10 AI cities in one game that still had 800-1200 fortification but no defenders.

Caotico09 wrote:
The AI also pulls out Garrisons to defend other units that get attacked. Ive taken 5-10 AI cities in one game that still had 800-1200 fortification but no defenders.

I have NOT seen this in my current game so far with one exception and it was the right call for the AI to make since it had a Guardian leading the assault.



All the other times I have sent armies after a lone unit or two and the AI had reinforcements from its cities in range, it would remove them from the battle. This was me against Necros. Don't know if other factions have different ideas or if the AI simply thought it had a better/stronger army. If this is the case, then the AI isn't wrong, it just isn't as good at assessing army strength as it should be.



They haven't done very much work on the tactical side of things as yet from what was said. I don't know if they plan to touch it in the near future.

I am trying a new game with the increased difficulty now -- I concur that it does cover the AI weakness. As a vaulter, I am still outproducing foods by a large margin, though; I am not sure how it will affect AIs later on. New Ai seems to be much more careful about starting wars, as well -- some may think it is too careful.

Slashman wrote:


The Drakken and Cultists actually had more consistently cohesive armies. The Cultists more so as there were several stacks of 6 units invading the Drakken.



One other problem I am seeing is the lack of hero use. There were times when the addition of a hero to a stack would have really helped the AI. The Necros didn't send a hero at me along with their reinforcement army. If they had, I really would have felt it.

It seems that they tend to use their starting heroes as governors; I killed hero-less starting armies of two factions in the new game. However, I am not sure what is the best choice for AI in this case.



I still think AI splits up its armies too often, though; it seems to have preference for using hero-less two units armies up to midgames, which does not seem to work well when they are in hostile territories or when there are neutral roaming armies. I have seen a roaming Kazanji army repeatedly terrorizing stalwart duos, for example.

Caotico09 wrote:
The AI also pulls out Garrisons to defend other units that get attacked. Ive taken 5-10 AI cities in one game that still had 800-1200 fortification but no defenders.

I have never seen new AI pulling out garrison units unless necessary (say, when fortification is going down). I don't see it committing their garrisons to field battles nearby as it used to do, neither.

Spacegnome wrote:
With the above, AI Forgotten did miserably

Yeah, like the Cultists they're a very eccentric faction, they're very very tricky to play well (even for humans). The Cultist AI got a little love in this update because we have a lot of Cultist fans out there (you know who you are), we may have to come back to the Forgotten some day. We're never fully going to avoid the AI playing the more technical faction less well than the more "beginner friendly" ones (like Wild Walker), because the AI will always make mistakes and the technical factions are - by design - unforgiving of mistakes.

Slashman wrote:
One other question I have if anyone knows: Did they adjust the bonuses for the higher difficulty levels now that the AI performs better? Were they reduced? Also what are their current values vs the old values if there was a change?

They're the same for now - we're waiting to see if anyone feels that "Endless" and co. are too hard. This doesn't seem to be the case at the moment.

Tsrintox wrote:
Ive been playing on serious as forgotten, I have also noticed that necros aren't aggressive enough, I was surprised that I went the whole game without needing to deal with any necros threat. It was the broken lords who were being aggressive early on with an advantage over me until I launched an invasion timed with multiple sabotages.

The faction does play a role but we don't want them being too predictable. Also note that, as with Slashman's example, they may very well have been fighting someone you can't see.

Slashman wrote:
Maybe the Forgotten need more balancing. Can't say right now since I haven't played a game with them yet. Maybe an espionage specialized faction wasn't that great of an idea.

The Forgotten faction for a very specific kind of player and a very specific play-style that focuses outwards rather than inwards. They are one of the hardest factions to play but that doesn't mean they are weak. Sure, they're not for everyone, but we feel that they're in a pretty good place balance-wise.

Caotico09 wrote:
But still not sold on AI targeting. I will still use stand-ground with all my battles.

Yeah, I got your saves. We'll look into the issues you've brought up

Slashman wrote:
I have NOT seen this in my current game so far with one exception and it was the right call for the AI to make since it had a Guardian leading the assault.



All the other times I have sent armies after a lone unit or two and the AI had reinforcements from its cities in range, it would remove them from the battle. This was me against Necros. Don't know if other factions have different ideas or if the AI simply thought it had a better/stronger army. If this is the case, then the AI isn't wrong, it just isn't as good at assessing army strength as it should be.

Here is a quick example. Something similar has happened often in this game like i said. Do you think this was the correct decision for the AI to pull out the garrison?



At the bottom of the map is a city called Djathat being sieged by a single red unit (o_O). Break the siege by attacking with "1st Auroch Warriors". The AI will pull out the garrison of O'irenth to the right as reinforcements. If you auto battle to kill the AI units, you can then move my army right and siege O'irenth. You can take O'irenth next turn without a fight since it has no garrison (but still has 1300+ Fortification).
Wild Walkers+ - Turn 225 Poor AI.zip

wilbefast wrote:


The Forgotten faction for a very specific kind of player and a very specific play-style that focuses outwards rather than inwards. They are one of the hardest factions to play but that doesn't mean they are weak. Sure, they're not for everyone, but we feel that they're in a pretty good place balance-wise.

I am not completely qualified to make statements with regards to balance,but I do think that they are on the whole well balanced and whatever modifications they would need would be minor.



But much more importantly, as a single player, I find the Forgotten very fun to play with (or even have the AI play it, which in my experience it does decently) and I am very glad the faction was made.

Caotico09 wrote:
Here is a quick example. Something similar has happened often in this game like i said. Do you think this was the correct decision for the AI to pull out the garrison?



At the bottom of the map is a city called Djathat being sieged by a single red unit (o_O). Break the siege by attacking with "1st Auroch Warriors". The AI will pull out the garrison of O'irenth to the right as reinforcements. If you auto battle to kill the AI units, you can then move my army right and siege O'irenth. You can take O'irenth next turn without a fight since it has no garrison (but still has 1300+ Fortification).

Hmm... this is a problem - I'll check with a programmer to see if I can get to the bottom of the issue.



edit: it seems we have a special case for sieges, but that it applied both to the attacker and to the defender: if I'm being besieged I probably want all hands on deck to defend myself, but if I'm besieging this probably isn't the case. I'd rather lose my besieging army than leave my city open to attack. Seems in our test cases the cities were always have enough apart that the problem didn't crop up. Good job spotting it, this will be fixed for the next update

wilbefast wrote:
edit: it seems we have a special case for sieges, but that it applied both to the attacker and to the defender: if I'm being besieged I probably want all hands on deck to defend myself, but if I'm besieging this probably isn't the case. I'd rather lose my besieging army than leave my city open to attack. Seems in our test cases the cities were always have enough apart that the problem didn't crop up. Good job spotting it, this will be fixed for the next update

That is awesome to hear. Thank you for looking into it!

In the screenshot, it shows the AI retreating, is the AI allowed to retreat from a siege?