lilyophelia wrote:
I wanted to offer another update on what I think is happening.



I think at some point this was a design decision between giving the player feedback on what the units were likely to do in manual combat (because it feels good) and having a totally automated combat system. To give the player that sense of feedback (and the ability to interrupt what seems like bad targeting decisions), the targeting had to be set in advance. The result is that some decisions seem to be really dumb (because they are dumb choices at *that* point in the battle round).

My guess is that since EL is an evolution of ES, and ES has a totally "automated" combat system (combat cards / battle cards / battle actions / etc.), the devs chose a semi-automated system for EL.



I'd really, really wish that they would bring a part of that card-based system to EL (as a patch or as a DLC), meaning that heroes could use one of several "modes" before each combat round, and these "modes" would give certain boosts based on the hero level and his/her skills. These "modes" would replace the aggressive-stance / defensive-stance / hold-position-stance, IF the army has a hero. If the army has no hero, they can use the standard stances which are in place now.

I really hope that the devs are reading this, since this is my greatest wish for EL (except for adding campaigns which replace faction quests), and I really, really miss the card-based system from ES.

Thank you for being so awesome, wilbefast. <3

lilyophelia wrote:
Yeah, I think it was a good design decision on many levels. It's definitely a trade off either way. A lot of players (especially newer ones) don't quite get the automatic nature of battle, and the arrows provide pretty important feedback. An option that experienced players could toggle would be pretty amazing. <3

Righto- I'll push this to the improve list. Still looking into ways to disable precomputation just for the AI in the meantime...

wilbefast wrote:
At this point it's something the player-base is used to, so if we change this it's guaranteed to annoy somebody somewhere. We could perhaps add a "don't precompute targets for my units" option in the menu though.

Yeah, I think it was a good design decision on many levels. It's definitely a trade off either way. A lot of players (especially newer ones) don't quite get the automatic nature of battle, and the arrows provide pretty important feedback. An option that experienced players could toggle would be pretty amazing. <3

wilbefast wrote:
At this point it's something the player-base is used to, so if we change this it's guaranteed to annoy somebody somewhere. We could perhaps add a "don't precompute targets for my units" option in the menu though.

That would be fine for me. It would level the playing field when/if the AI precompute gets turned off.

lilyophelia wrote:
Well, you have a choice to give units targeting orders or not. When the precomputed targets is turned off, all units will start the round without any preset targets (unless you give them orders).

At this point it's something the player-base is used to, so if we change this it's guaranteed to annoy somebody somewhere. We could perhaps add a "don't precompute targets for my units" option in the menu though.

Well, you have a choice to give units targeting orders or not. When the precomputed targets is turned off, all units will start the round without any preset targets (unless you give them orders).

lilyophelia wrote:
Some people like to control everything. With that being said, if the AI acts a bit more predictably (and is able to make just "okay" decisions on its own), I think that's enough to keep people from micromanaging every unit in a battle (which becomes tedious).



Lately, in my combats, I might control 1-2 key units (heroes and maybe a support unit) and then let the rest of my units just act independently. If you don't assign targets for your units, then your units will also recalculate their targets during the round. It has been a lot of fun for me so far.

Hmmm...so then are you saying that perhaps if players had only control of hero units in battle, it might be a bit better for everyone? It would certainly take some micro out of combat for sure.

Some people like to control everything. With that being said, if the AI acts a bit more predictably (and is able to make just "okay" decisions on its own), I think that's enough to keep people from micromanaging every unit in a battle (which becomes tedious).



Lately, in my combats, I might control 1-2 key units (heroes and maybe a support unit) and then let the rest of my units just act independently. If you don't assign targets for your units, then your units will also recalculate their targets during the round. It has been a lot of fun for me so far.

wilbefast wrote:
Interesting, very interesting



Yeah, the target pre-computation is done for the sake of human players, but it's true that it's a little counter-productive for the AI and during spectator mode or auto-resolution. Same story when it comes to units keeping their original target until it dies: it would be frustrating for players to have a manually override the default targeting each round. That being said the AI would be cheating, in a sense, if we allowed it to recompute targets for its units mid-round. After all humans are only allowed to assign targets at the beginning of the round.



It's one of those trees falling in a forest things though: if the AI plays better, provides a better challenge, is it so serious that it's not playing by exactly the same rules? Please share your thoughts on this



I'll look into how we can selectively disable the target pre-computation based on whether the empire is AI or human-controlled, but it's a tricky problem as the battle simulation doesn't actually have access to this information.

I actually really don't think I would mind if the AI re-prioritized targets in the middle of the round. The reasoning being that I, as a human, can make a more effective targeting choice at the beginning of the round than the AI can. I always think steps ahead as to the things that may or may not happen and the AI is going to be less effective at this. It isn't a cheat in the sense of a buff or advanced knowledge. The player likely would never really notice it in a glaring way.



Those are just my thoughts though...I'm sure others have differing opinions.

lilyophelia wrote:
When the round begins, generally all the targets are set immediately; this is called precomputing targets. You can see this in effect when you see all the red lines/arrows pop up during the targeting phase.



The only time it seems to pick new targets for a unit is if it can't attack the original target and it has to look for an alternative target. This is called an opportunity attack.



What might be happening is that a hostile unit (we'll call it the Enemy Hero) chooses a militia unit at the beginning of a turn (for any number of reasons; there are a lot of targeting weights that try to mimic good target selections). Then a cavalry unit that was initially out of range (and so it wasn't a good target at the start of the round, when targets were precomputed) with a higher initiative might rush up and strike a ranged unit right next to the Enemy Hero. Even if it makes sense to attack the cavalry unit (maybe it has just a little bit of life left), because the militia unit was selected as the Enemy Hero's target at the beginning of the round (during the precomputed targets portion of the battle) the Enemy Hero will walk past the cavalry unit and will go hit the militia unit.



Hopefully that makes sense; feel free to ask questions if it didn't.



That's probably not the only factor that's involved (because AIs are pretty complicated), but when I disable the precomputed targets (through modding) I immediately see the AI (for both the enemy and myself) start to make much better decisions.



I think at some point this was a design decision between giving the player feedback on what the units were likely to do in manual combat (because it feels good) and having a totally automated combat system. To give the player that sense of feedback (and the ability to interrupt what seems like bad targeting decisions), the targeting had to be set in advance. The result is that some decisions seem to be really dumb (because they are dumb choices at *that* point in the battle round).

Interesting, very interesting



Yeah, the target pre-computation is done for the sake of human players, but it's true that it's a little counter-productive for the AI and during spectator mode or auto-resolution. Same story when it comes to units keeping their original target until it dies: it would be frustrating for players to have to manually override the default targeting each round, so we keep the same target where possible. That being said the AI would be cheating, in a sense, if we allowed it to recompute targets for its units mid-round. After all humans are only allowed to assign targets at the beginning of the round.



It's one of those trees falling in a forest things though: if the AI plays better, provides a better challenge, is it so serious that it's not playing by exactly the same rules? Please share your thoughts on this



I'll look into how we can selectively disable the target pre-computation based on whether the empire is AI or human-controlled, but it's a tricky problem as the battle simulation doesn't actually have access to this information.

Thank you! I'll give it a go this weekend

If anyone wants to try it out without the precomputed targets, I made an extremely simple mod that adds a bit of text and disables it.



You do have to install it yourself.



I've been doing some work on the targeting weights as well, but that's a more complicated/involved mod and I'm not sure if/when I'll have the time to work on something standalone.



Edit: After playing with it for a few minutes, I should mention that this won't magically solve all your AI issues; a big part of the unit behaviors is still being decided by the targeting weights.

OK I have just gotten around to posting this. Finally have a save game with a battle and some screenshots.



This is a problem that I have been seeing since the latest big AI update.



Just start the fight with the quest monsters near Tuldraj.







If you follow the progression of the battle from screenshot 1 to 3 you can see that the AI ignores my Delver unit which has attacked and stunned the unit next to it to fire on the Militia below.



4th screenshot may have slipped in from a previous save of the same battle.

Oooh, can you make this mod removing precomputed targets available?



If I understand correctly, I can still manual battles as usual (which I almost always do) even if this is disabled?

I wanted to offer another update on what I think is happening.



When the round begins, generally all the targets are set immediately; this is called precomputing targets. You can see this in effect when you see all the red lines/arrows pop up during the targeting phase.



The only time it seems to pick new targets for a unit is if it can't attack the original target and it has to look for an alternative target. This is called an opportunity attack.



What might be happening is that a hostile unit (we'll call it the Enemy Hero) chooses a militia unit at the beginning of a turn (for any number of reasons; there are a lot of targeting weights that try to mimic good target selections). Then a cavalry unit that was initially out of range (and so it wasn't a good target at the start of the round, when targets were precomputed) with a higher initiative might rush up and strike a ranged unit right next to the Enemy Hero. Even if it makes sense to attack the cavalry unit (maybe it has just a little bit of life left), because the militia unit was selected as the Enemy Hero's target at the beginning of the round (during the precomputed targets portion of the battle) the Enemy Hero will walk past the cavalry unit and will go hit the militia unit.



Hopefully that makes sense; feel free to ask questions if it didn't.



That's probably not the only factor that's involved (because AIs are pretty complicated), but when I disable the precomputed targets (through modding) I immediately see the AI (for both the enemy and myself) start to make much better decisions.



I think at some point this was a design decision between giving the player feedback on what the units were likely to do in manual combat (because it feels good) and having a totally automated combat system. To give the player that sense of feedback (and the ability to interrupt what seems like bad targeting decisions), the targeting had to be set in advance. The result is that some decisions seem to be really dumb (because they are dumb choices at *that* point in the battle round).

I just want to update this to say that I've been playing with the way the AI chooses targets.



The way it works in the xml is that there are a bunch of different weights that it will process, and then it will pick a target based on those weights. Because there are so many different variables, a lot of times the behaviors aren't very easy to predict (and sometimes they don't even end up seeming like smart choices). I think the whole system would have to be dumbed down and simplified if you wanted the AI to make exceptional decisions.

I wonder if there are different behaviors for sieges and normal battles.

lilyophelia wrote:




In that specific case (looking at the screenshots) it might have been the high ground bonus made it prefer the militia, maybe?



Edit: I got confused and thought BPrado was the OP and I was meaning to say that the fortification thing wouldn't matter if you attacked the army). Sorry if I seem confused at all in my prior message.

Yeah I also thought of that but this is not the first time I'm seeing this behavior and I see it way too often where it works against the AI in a big way.



Yes Militia got a decent buff recently but there are very few cases where going after them versus equipped and armored main units is preferable. The more they do it, the more they leave themselves open for pounding from units that are actually dangerous.

There's a lot of variety in behaviors.



To some of us, we might decide that the we should target one unit (or the delver's unit, for example) because it's the most dangerous unit.



Another strategy might be to eliminate as many weak units as fast as possible to eliminate an opponent's morale bonuses. Instead of killing one powerful delver's unit, they might be able to knock out 2 militia.



Being able to properly choose properly between those two strategies on the fly is kind of the difficult thing to program. And those are just two examples of "why" and we're using innately more capable human processors to decide.



Finally, the AI definitely does try to do things like lock down flags. In this specific case, was the AI ignoring your delver's unit because it was trying to get closer to the flags so it could attack those units? Were there any slayer or other bonuses involved?



--



In that specific case (looking at the screenshots) it might have been the high ground bonus made it prefer the militia, maybe?



Edit: I got confused and thought BPrado was the OP and I was meaning to say that the fortification thing wouldn't matter if you attacked the army). Sorry if I seem confused at all in my prior message.

I´m not saying this is a siege or judging if the AI is right to do that or not. I´m trying to understand why it would do that, and pointing out this was a change that came with the same patch and which probably influences the AI choices.

lilyophelia wrote:
That would only be if they attacked your fortified city. I notice the AI tends to go for the weakest units first in many cases. The problem is that it seems to choose a new focus target(s) each round, so if things change (especially morale or height bonuses), they can sometimes go after targets that are bad choices.

Just to be clear: I attacked them...with a force that was NEXT TO my city. If you look at the militia...you will see they have no fortification bonus health.



Going after militia when you are being pressed by more dangerous units is just not a smart move. Period.

That would only be if they attacked your fortified city. I notice the AI tends to go for the weakest units first in many cases. The problem is that it seems to choose a new focus target(s) each round, so if things change (especially morale or height bonuses), they can sometimes go after targets that are bad choices.

Fortification lost in battle is removed from city fortification (then regenerates like before).

From the Release Notes thread.

BPrado wrote:
If I´m not mistaken, killing garrisonned units protected by fortifications will reduce the cities´ fortifications proportionally. Since Militia tend to be easiest to kill, I guess it justifies that.

Does it really? I thought it just removed them as defenders from the city so unless the rest of the units are garrisoned, then killing the militia allows them to just walk in a capture the city.



It's my understanding that the AI targets militia for two reasons:



They have a low initiative, which means targeting them wastes their movement and attack because they waste it on the counter attack.

They are easier to engage and kill than military units, making them easier to remove from the fight.

If I´m not mistaken, killing garrisonned units protected by fortifications will reduce the cities´ fortifications proportionally. Since Militia tend to be easiest to kill, I guess it justifies that.