Wouldn't 'distance between cities/armies' only come into play for units deemed by the AI 'surplus beyond required city defense'?

Also, there have been enemy amies nearby (then again, perhaps they were moving towards the cities and just hadn't arrived yet, or perhaps they were affected by pathfinding limitations, etc.)

How about strategic spell casting?  Affected by map size?

Logic train speculation goes like this: cities are undefended, units are roaming nearby, units had to come from somewhere, it's possible some of those units came from some of those undefended cities, AI champions may not be sufficiently caring about whether city is well enough defended before shipping off units -- which would be unaffected by map size.

Capiche?

How about AIs (not) casting mid level spells like tremor/freeze on invading armies>  Map size related or no?

It's a design choice explained here: https://www.galciv1.com/encyclopedia.asp?action=showpage&page=https://www.galciv1.com/docs/criticalmass.html

I think it's smart. When you are the underdog, don't you try to befriend the most powerful civ? It's what the AI is doing too, it's trying to get along with you so you don't slaughter them. This design choice will produce some interesting results, not seen in other 4X games, like the late Civilization V for example. In GalCiv for example, if you find yourself being the underdog, you can try to appease the powerful civs until you develop your diplomacy or economy, and then slowly build your way up. I won games in GalCiv without firing a shot.

I disagree...  with the whole AI is broken idea.

most games I've played 1 or 2 of the AI players generally outplay me to the mid game stage and then I've had to deal with their superior armies at some point.

I had in one game a stack of doom with a champion and 8 Juggernauts come at me... only reason I could stop it was I happened to have an early dragon in one of my stacks that I had to crash Civ techs to get. 

Last game the AI had complete stacks that frankly were far superior to anything I had in my inventory at the time. I probably could have beaten them but it would have been a Pyrrhic victory at best.  Only luck bit was that the AI is a little dumb still with dealing with monsters and I had a deadly Drake army between me and him that took out 8 of his stacks. (yes I set it up that way on purpose... it was fun)

the AI does pretty good at matching my level of play.  it's far better than any other AI I've seen.

I've also seen at least 3 situation (one where I actually lost) where the AI recognized a hopeless military situation and goes for an alternate victory condition. That I've never seen another game AI do.

Oh man! An AI discussion and I almost missed it.  We're closed for the holidays.

I can assure you that the AI does, in fact, try to do all of the things that the OP says.  Also, like Arzon above me mentions, yes, AIs get weaker the larger the map size. That's not just in FE but in every strategy game including Civilization, MOO, you name it.

That's because of "The traveling salesman problem".  As a practical matter, the AI has a very difficult time visualizing a large map. That means in terms of coordinating armies as well as the various guessing algorithms that try to calculate the odds that there are units in its FOW coming for it. 

Sometimes, the AI doesn't guard its cities well, especially on big maps and late game when units move fast because it thinks that that city is "safe".  On smaller maps, it does a better job guessing where units might be.

The AI also does cast strategic spells. A lot. Especially in v1.1.  The problem is that it doesn't notify the player and this gives the illusion that it's jsut not casting. We need to give some visual indication that a unit has been cursed/slowed/etc. on the strategic map.

The AI does use the concept of army groups (this is something I never got into GalCiv).  That is, it assigns various armies into a particular geographic group and will assign a group, prior to going to war, to head near the border.  Unfortunately, I have not found the results of this algorithm to be particularly effective (i.e. it needs work).

All I can say is, if you're playing on bigger maps, I haven't forgotten you. The AI continues to get worked on.  I do recommend that on larger maps, turn up the AI difficulty.  You can also edit the coredifficultylevels.xml file and let the AI have the FOWcheat at lower difficulty levels so that it can see where your units are.  It's a cheat to be sure but you might find it more satisfying from a challenge point of view.

Writing AI is a tricky business as you can imagine.  A few people have mentioned ways of getting a better game experience such as designing more units for each player.  I like the idea of having a library of units that people share. I'll talk to Kael about that.

No doubt AI is seriously hard to do for a game like this. But there is a common thread in the comments and I think areas that if improved could go a long way toward improving the perceived level of the AI.

1. As far as I’ve seen the AI is still not good at defending cities (at least on large maps).
2. If the AI decides to go to war it should be prepared, i.e. ready to launch an attack.
3. If war happens, no matter who initiated it the AI should go into war-mode.
1. I’ve often been at war with the AI and seen its build queues be stacked with nothing but city improvements. I’m wondering if AI personalities is getting in the way here.
2. Particularly if the AI is the underdog it should be trying to get troops out fast and it would be good if it could identify units that are good to produce when “someone is coming for you”. I.e. not too expensive but not crap either.
3. Research war tech if not already doing so. This is not necessarily from the war tree, though. Getting larger units size and larger army size from the civ-tree is important for example.
4. Try to use full armies, for attacks in particular. Unless the AI is making a grab for an undefended city.
5. Using multiple armies when attacking defended cities for a one-two punch.
6. Try to research some ranged troops and include some in each army. If possible try to get ranged troops with improved initiative (as a bonus, get them from a strike garrison).
7. If the AI loses cities try to get them back.
1. I imagine many players use a stack of doom that conquers a city and then moves on to the next leaving the conquered city undefended, particularly if you’re going for a quick win.
8. If the AI has researched some cool toys try to outfit champions and troops.
1. This one is somewhat tricky because some champions and troops are not worth outfitting with cool stuff.
9. Lost sovereign syndrome. I see this quite often. The AI sovereign wanders far away, possibly with the best army, and gets lost, seemingly. At that point it often stops moving or wanders aimlessly in some desolate area.
1. This may quite possibly be due to path finding glitches. Thus, any improvement to path finding would be great not only for the AI but for players as well.
2. In my last game I couldn’t even find Verga until he accepted surrender and it turned out he had ended up in a narrow valley surrounded by mountains with no way out except the way he came.
10. Whenever possible the AI should try to use a two-pronged attack. This one is important especially since players like to build one stack of doom. The downfall of the stack of doom is that it can only be at one place. Magic can somewhat change this but even if the doom stack cloud walks it still had to abandon whatever it was doing.
1. This can also be a great defense. If the stack of doom is coming for you try to attack one of the player's undefended cities. The further away the better.
11. Stomp on the leader. This is a board game classic but probably shouldn’t be used (heavily) on easier difficulties.
1. If the player is getting ahead, AIs should consider “the enemy of my enemy …” which includes joining forces with other AIs it’s not currently friends with.
2. It probably makes most since if empire AIs band together against a kingdom player and vice versa but in desperate times anything goes.
3. This is also opportunity for a variant of the two-pronged attack. If the player is at war with AI-1, AI-2 should consider the opportunity of joining in. Not necessarily attacking, AI-2 could resort to cursing player cities etc.
12. What do players hate to see in the opposing army? I can only speak for myself.
    1. Ranged troops, especially in large units and high quality. Doubly so if they have high initiative (and/or strike garrison). This also requires some “tank”-units that can protect the ranged units, though.
    2. Units with high defense or dodge. I get dismayed when I attack with my best units and hardly make a dent or constantly miss.
    3. Counterstrike.
    4. Nasty magic, especially area effect and when it combines with another advantages or disadvantages. E.g. giving high defense units even higher defense.
    5. Fast units (high initiative long move range) that can close with my vulnerable units.

I’m sure there are some more things that can be added.

This I think I have strewn my thought upon in earlier posts,
I still think there should be changes to the way roads boost movement (and the UI should still reflect half movement points, and quarter movement points left),
to the massive movement bonuses of mounts compared to non-mounted units,
and In general I think the game would be more fun, and the AI less challenged, if all vision of units was boosted by 1 unit, and meaby zone of control of cities by 1 too,
so you have more time to see these insanely quick moving bastards that fly across the land at lightning speed because they randomly happened to find a horse.

I can't expect the AI to counter what it cannot see.
Also the AI should be better at making "Mounted Raider" stacks, where ALL the units in a certain stack is mounted, so they can charge at the enemy territory and wreak havoc at that amazing lightning-speed all mounts go by in the world of elemental.
(I know that doubling movement is probably realistic for horses, but I don't think its a good gameplay feature to have mounted units move at twice the speed as normal units, especially when normal units move so dreadfully slowly, I still really think the bonus movement stuff around the game should be reconsidered...)

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

The fact that a random game map is created out of stamps has implications for optimising the AI.

I don't mean that the AI should cheat by looking at four tiles of an as-yet uncovered bit of map and saying 'oh this is stamp 239 I should see this and this three tiles away' although that did come to mind.  But the optimal ways to move through that stamp and from one stamp onto the next can be determined while the world is being loaded, in much the same way that the light level on tiles in a Minecraft world due to a moving light source such as the sun can be pre-determined rather than calculated on the fly.

What I'm getting at is that when the AI is doing its planning it doesn't need to necessarily consider every possible route of attack (or when it is thinking about defence, each angle of attack).  It can think about it in a general 'I need to get from this stamp to this one in order to achieve this' way.

Stamps are (usually) bigger than tiles and there are fewer of them.  And even when a map is not constructed from stamps, it can be arbitrarily broken down into chunks of a similar size and treated as if it were.  This means the AI can have a pre-calculated rule of thumb or answer for:

• how passable is this stamp? (can I go west to east, can I go south to north, or is it a dead end?)
• how long does it take to cross this stamp?
• how much can I improve access across this stamp with a road?
• how easily can this stamp be choked (by cities or military units)?

After exploring and exploiting those stamps it can say:

• which stamps does this stamp connect to?
• is this stamp choked?
• am I sharing this stamp with another player?

It can worry about which tile it precisely needs to be on when it actually gets to that stamp, if it even gets there.

Armed with this information, the strategic AI can find out if it can attack a particular city or army on a particular stamp in a reasonable time based on the information from each stamp.

If it can't attack because the route would take too long, it can think about how to speed things up with city/outpost (and hence road) building.

If it can't attack because the direct route is choked, it knows where the nearest enemy choke point is.

For particularly large maps, making the iteration cruder by only considering the start and destination stamp and the ones in between may not be enough, so then you need to group stamps into contiguous masses (like a superstamp, say) and have another strategic layer of crudeness i.e. I only need to know how to get from this big mass to this other big mass, which stamps are on the joining edges?  Okay I need to go to that stamp, I'll work the rest out when I get there.

PSA-About some of the posts on this thread and really this entire forum

I wish people on these forums would start being truthful. Seems like anytime a SD person posts in a response everyone wilts. You're not helping the game or SD. You're making it worse because wilting makes SD think that the game is in a good place. People outside of this community don't even look at the game because of its shortcomings. If you're truly such fans of SD help them by being honest and explaining what's wrong with the game. There is a reason only 100k people bought this game. There is a reason EWOM failed. Be honest with SD and tell them the problems the game has. Wilting and making excuses doesn't help anybody. It doesn't give SD a more marketable product and it doesn't improve our game play experience.

About the game and ways to improve it

EFE is a great game, good enough to make you angry that it isn't as good as it could be.The core problem of the gameplay seems to be that everything is based on RNG. RNG is fine for some aspects of a game but all of the aspects that are based on it limit the quality of experience.

The bottom line is, the AI really comes up short in this game. It's why EFE is something u can play 1-2 times and then there is no repeatable experience.  Tactical, Diplomatic and world map AI all need help. Here are 3 things that could be better.

World- Army composition and world map task

Your typical experience in this game is the AI sending random half stacks of units without an intended goal moving in RNG around the map. Other times when you're playing on Insane it will amass random stacks of  units such as 9 horse swordmen and attack with it.  But not always, the units will sometimes move back and forth on your borders and not attack despite being at war and the city is not well defended.

Diplo-Factions go to war or befriend you without input from player. Sometimes they go to war without warning. Sometimes you refuse tribute to a stronger faction and they increase their rep with you. I'm sure this wasn't the intent. Unless the AI is programmed off of RNG too.

Tactical-Caster AI doesn't cast spells with any logic or reason. Seems to be entirely RNG. Maybe add some if then else statements. If Player has clump of archers, fireball them.

Happy Holidays Frogboy.

I am in the late stages of a wildlands map game and I really enjoy having all the different wildlands in one map.

What I discovered playing this map is once my champions got to about level 16 the tactical battles became one sided.  Here are some of my thoughts why.

1) By this time one of the champions can cast fire ball.  This spell is very powerful even when resisted.  I would suggest the AI try to spread it units to try to limit the effect of this spell.  This also helps against catapults too.

2) Most of my doom stack consisted of ranged units(mages, archers, and catapults) with two champions.  Most AI champions wanted to attack my champions that are heavily armored and that had honey or pork to heal themselves.  The champions absorbed the hits while the rest of the units stayed back.  Two things I feel that would help the AI in tactical battles is to try to protect the ranged units better with spells or add traits that help in dodge or spell resistance and to better determined their targets.  The AI needs to determined what spells they need to defend against and what is the largest immediate threat it needs to take care of first.  Example is taking out splash type units first or to get the units close to the opposing units to make catapults less useful.  Casting guarding wind or flame shield to limit damage.  The AI needs to get its units up close and personal when going against ranged units.  This means when spiders cast webs against ranged units, they need to move first then cast the web.

3)  Another tip for the AI is that sometimes it's better to wound a group unit to a point where it becomes less effective.  If a unit attacks at a 16 X 4 becomes considerably weaker when it is 16 x 2 or 16.  I find this useful to soften the opponent from ranged units then finish them of with close range units.

4) When the AI comes into enemy territory it needs to make sure that they are not stacked on top of each other.  I used freeze which froze three stacks of units.  This allowed me to take all three stacks out.

5) The last tip I have to help the later game is to get the AI units better intuitive   The units right now are being attacked several times before even getting to my units.

I am sure I will live to regret these tips, but I feel this would help the AI become more deadly.

- HOMM III (WoG)

- Civilization IV (Beyond the sword)

Even HOMM V (Tribes of the east) & the true magnificent successor of MOM, Age of Wonders (shadow magic) have better AI.

I will agree with the CIV IV BTS but HOMM III and HOMM V? No way. Those games didn't even know how to play the game. They both are scripted and cheat at even the lowest level. 

During the beta Frogboy made it very clear he wanted nothing to do with dynamic threat detection in the tactical AI.  The AI chooses a target and sticks with it - simple as that.