First, I want to repeat (yet again) -- LH/FE is a good game.  I love the graphics, the basic premise, all that stuff (tho I still rue the removal of essence to re-awaken the land, and dynasties).  I focus on AI because there is no MP so AI is all we have.  And, you have a very talented staff working on the game and the AI currently doesn't measure up to their abilities or what I hope the game can be.

I haven't played since .75 so if I've missed a change my apologies.  I've looked at the change logs since then and didn't see the points I'll address mentioned but I could have missed it.  Again, apologies if/where I have.

I am not a good player, I'd say average.  I don't think I abuse CTL-N (I do use it to get a 3/3/3 capital start with green terrain -- I don't care for the 'dark' lands graphich, part of my rping my 'good' sov).  I do use a custom sov (earth, water, brilliant, proc's crown, clumsy, 2 other traits to increase research that appear to have changes/been removed in since I last played) and custom race (usually men but tried the race that allows road building the last game, enchanter for scrying pool, scholar, adept I think).  I don't use beastmaster or stack dodge or whatever the OP choices I've seen the good players mention.  I do like huge maps and high magic/resource worlds.  I think that benefits me (gives me more time to grow and more resources/etc to use) but also hurts me (gives the AI the same and at insane I expect it to make good use of them, and it also prevents me from rushing the AI to seize one/some of their better developed cities -- I don't go after the AI, I wait for them to come at me).

I do find insane challenging, but with my average skills that's disappointing, I shouldn't have to play at that high difficulty level to be challenged.  I don't think it's my skill but rather the AI not playing smart.  I don't see the AI do something and think "wow, that's smart", I commonly think "wow, that's not smart".

Tactical examples:

-I mentioned webbing already webbed units -- that useless actions deprives the AI of a useful action

-AI will not attack a nearby damaged unit, instead it moves towards a distant unit (wasting an attack that turn)

-AI target selection leaves a lot to be desired too often -- obvious targets (my ranged units that are decimating the AI) are not targeted and instead the AI moves towards melee units it can't reach for several turns

-AI is not using spells to protect itself against specific threats (my ranged units, or my fire-using units, etc.)

-AI champs may sit there and buff themselves (flameblade or whatever it's called) while it's being ranged-attacked to death long before it could reach one of my units to use the flameblade effect)

Strategic examples:

-this is the biggest one in my games -- I tornado the strongest/closest enemy stack, scattering the units into 1-2 units stacks, and those stacks don't attempt to recombine.  They usually don't even move afterwards.  I can then pick them off, where if combined into the original stack I'd lose my best stack fighting it.  Recombining units into the biggest stack possible is a very basic, simple tactic.  It's not me being a genius or abusing the game to tornado a stack then pick it off, it's the AI not responding effectively to being tornadoed.

-freeze/tremor -- I've never had one of my stacks froze/tremored/tornadoed.  Never.  Do you have a 'debug' mode where after you play a game you can see what spells the AI has cast and how many times?  If not, it would help to see just what the AI is/isn't doing.  I understand the AI does cast some strategic spells (once I had a freeze-spell cast on a city) and we can miss it because there's no obvious notification, but I specifically look for signs of spells being cast on my cities/stacks/etc. and I see maybe 1-3 cast in a several hundred turn game.

-I sometimes get declared upon but never see incoming stacks.  I'm thinking this is more a problem with diplomacy triggering a dec without the other threads of the AI joining in.  However... example time -- in Civ4 if I see a stack of monty or shaka units approaching my borders I know there's a war dec imminent.  The Civ4 AI decides to declare, prepares its forces, moves into position, then decs.  I've never seen that in this game.  I don't think this is my abusing CTL-N or being a genius, I think it's a thing the AI needs to do.

I have by no means looked at all the spells to see if there are others similar to tornado/etc. that can be similarly applied to beat insane.  I do know that the AI isn't using spells effectively against me (I'd love to have a spell cast in a way I hadn't anticipate and think "ouch, that hurt!, wish I'd have thought of that").

Do other folks see the AI cast freeze/tremor/tornado on them?  Or similar powerful spells?  Does anyone see the AI at ridic/insane doing things it doesn't see the AI doing at normal or challenging?  I'm not saying the AI doesn't do 'more' but I'm not seeing it, so what am I missing?

The easy response to the things I mention above is to remove them, as happened with the 'earth to mud' spell from a previous version.  It allowed me to defeat much stronger stacks.  Instead of having the AI counter it (mud to earth spell?  freeze land spell?  teleport units past the mud?  flying spell or units?  etc.) it was removed from the earth list.  That's dumbing down the game instead of smartening up the AI.  I hope this path isn't taken with spells like tornado -- instead have the AI recombine stacks as a player would. 

Again, if I didn't like the game and respect the folks working on it I wouldn't bother to care about the game, or post in the hopes of helping it get better.  Or attempt to recreate the post the forum ate  lol at me

This is a good point.  I don't play cutthroat, I'm more a builder, and enjoy exploring, building, researching, etc.  I purposefully don't rush the AI to take their generally better cities (at the difficulty levels I play they develop cities much faster), that would greatly weaken them and strengthen me.  I'm interested in sitting back and seeing what the AI do, how they develop, and letting them develop so I can be challenged.  Playing cutthroat would make the game even less challenging.

There are two things going on here. There are a lot of small things that the AI is doing poorly as sweatyboatman, Nick-Danger and others have listed here and in other threads. Perhaps as you say these don't explain the entire difference in AI performance but I think the cumulative effect of these many little mistakes is much larger than you seem to think it is. Fix half of them and I would expect the AI to increase in difficulty by about one difficulty step as a result.

The second thing is probably how people are playing as you say. FE/LH are games where a strong well designed killer stack can be used to defeat many weaker stacks. Similarly there are many spells which can strongly influence the outcome of a battle or war if used well. The player is much better at these things so a good player will wreck even a stronger AI given the chance. However to an extent this feeds back into the first point above, all these little AI mistakes effectively give the player the opportunity and breathing space necessary to defeat the AI.

• The player IS settling the best spots with essence and using Meditation on them, while the AI isn't, mid to late game the AI needs to be cheating just to keep up.
• The player is casting spells and using ranged units to kill the enemy while they are casting web on ranged units, chasing melee units they can't catch, targetting spells at magic immune units, using abilities which won't help it, etc.
• The player is using spells to lock down and destroy invading enemy stacks, teleport their own killer stack where it is required, etc, the AI is doing very little of this.
• The player will gather his/her forces into the strongest stacks they can, focusing their power. The AI does a bit of this but focusing power for a big AI should mean sending multiple of the strongest stacks it can manage as a unified invading force (note: I haven't played the latest version, from the sounds of it the AI is getting better at this).
• The player will strike decisively to capture and/or destroy cities as soon as it declares war, the AI can take an age before it turns up with an invasion force and will often appear indecisive about its military goal.

I don't know the exact solution but I do feel that fixing many of the smaller issues will have a disproportionately large effect on how challenging the AI feels.

A few items first:

 

(sorry for the wall o text... would be nice if there's a spoiler tag on this forum).

 

1) The problem isn't that there are good players that will beat the AI no matter what is done to it (shy of adding in real computational intelligence programming and/or a server farm to constantly adjust the AI based upon real games played) it's that the AI doesn't seem to be able to utilize what is in the game properly in the first place.

 

2) suggesting that players use Ctrl-N to get great starts is also a red herring.  Kael has mentioned that he isn't looking at properly balanced starts (or at least ensuring 'ok' starts for everyone) so that has to change first.  I don't actually use Ctrl-N in my streams, but I still manage to have a decent win rate on Ridiculous/Ridiculous provided that I focus on winning (it's easy to lose focus as the AI isn't trying).

 

3) The AI can get better, and it won't take massive effort to get it onto the right path.

 

There are two main lines of progress that should happen to get the AIs into a better situation - AI and balance changes.

 

AI

Some points have already been made, so I won't belabor the points  -

AI is bad at choosing settling locations.  While you may think this isn't that important, it always is important.  The base grain and materiels are multiplied with buildings/etc, so making the wrong choice of which tile to settle is multiplied into worse choices later.  Mostly this has been a little fixed due to removal of the mass spam of locations from the map, but I've seen AIs settle on 0/0/0 tiles often enough to know there's a problem with the settling location code.  2ndly, the choice of where to settle should also pull from what the empire needs. 

After settling, other issues arise -

The 'suggestion' for what type of city (Town/Fortress/Conclave) a village should turn into is wrong at about Vegas odds (so slightly more than randomly wrong).  Conclaves being suggested when there's no essence.  Fortresses suggested when there's 2-3 materiel, Towns/Fortresses suggested on 3-3-3 locations without forests or rivers.  My point here is if the AI is using the same 'advice' as players are shown, then they aren't making the best choices for what to create, civilization wise.  Fix this code and the AI will have better advice about its cities.

 

Building choices --

It's been said in other threads (and maybe this one), but the code for when/what order to add buildings to a city all seem to be gated in the wrong way.  I won't get into this one, but my basic build order for new cities focuses on production and unrest, mixed with border growth (to connect back to the capital) and merchants if needed.  I do tend to forget the research buildings a bit, but food is also pretty important to add (Towns focus on faction food buildings before city food buildings).

I also leave unit production to the fortresses, after I've managed to get a few up and running.  The AI seems to build units anywhere, which takes time and production away from the town/conclave buildings (so not getting ahead even if a nice spot is found).

 

which also swings back into the Tech tree. 

The point was already made that the AI is a bit too 'general' in researching the tech tree.  For most I'd say that was true, but I've seen bad choices from the AI as well.  Ie, the AI(s) that head straight to the towers always get rolled by anyone that chooses to go to to weaponsmithing/blacksmithing + cooperation.  Even in AI vs AI wars, I watched one AI mass spam cities (8+) and head to the towers, just to see a 2-3 city empire wander in and attack/take the cities that made the towers.  In this respect a more general path would be good, but what the AIs really need is 'focus' and 'awareness'.

Focus comes from not going broadly in the 3 tech trees early in the game, but rather just adding the parts that it needs from each.  Ie, civilization first (and only) while expanding.  A *short* trip into warfare to grab leather armour and maybe up to Drill (if big monsters nearby or an early war is coming) but rarely into weaponsmithing too early.  Weaponsmithing is needed if the monsters are too think in the area, or if war is about to start.  A small step into the magic tech tree for shards and possibly crystal mines is all that is needed early on.  Possibly some spells, if a mage/have a mage and decent mana/turn, but rarely too early.

Otherwise the focus is mostly in the civilization tech tree up to cooperation and construction (plus the education/food techs in that area).

Just as important is knowing what is in the area, resource wise.  if some need techs, then go get the techs at the appropriate time.  Ie, get crystals just before you can actually use them.

 

After that, situational awareness is the more important thing.  If your opponent (doesn't like you or are at war with you) has a better weapon or armour, then either build units that directly counter them (accuracy vs. dodge, spears vs armour, etc) or get a better tech to even it out.  If your tech rate is low, grab research techs. etc etc.

 

Coming along to a more direct issue is the seeming lack of strategic spells on the part of the AI.  Most people will point to the lack of delay/damage strategic spells being cast, which is true, as the problem, but if you dig a bit deeper, you might see that the AI doesn't seem to manage it's mana very well.  If the AI has no mana, it can't cast high cost spells.  This might also be a small issue for Pariden and why the AI refuses to use Arcane Monoliths.  Effectively, fix the AIs mana management problem and we might see more strategic layer spells.  This problem seems to be partly on the AI spending too much on heros wrt maintenance costing spells and partly due to not actually generating enough mana per turn.  This part goes back to the not having conclaves build conclave type buildings often enough.  Personally I always cast meditation on every 2+ essence city until I get enough shards or conclave buildings to make up for a potential loss of meditation on a city. 

2ndly, there's a small matter of saving for strategic spells and saving for tactical spells.  Both are needed, but if you're doing one, you can't do the other.  The AI should know not to cast spells on enemy cities if it needs the mana for combat or defense.

 

I also agree with the sentiment that AIs DoW'ing each other/you without actually move forces nearby is a cause for concern.  It's actually not the same as per Civ 4/5 given that stacks can move quite the distance and sometimes defense early war is better than offense early war.  But the AI really should try to have some units ready to go when it declares war.  I have seen this happen (AI having multiple stacks on my border at the beginning of a war) but that seems to be mainly for direct neighbours.  I've had AIs on the far side of the map DoW me, even requiring them to cross other factions territories or wildlands to get to me.  That part should stop.

 

While this post is definitely not 'complete' in most of the needs for AI change, this final point is also important --

 

The AIs don't seem to use their faction specific benefits. 

AI Pariden will definitely build Scrying Pools, but I've never seen it cast an Arcane Monolith.  A recent patch change nerfed that factions expansion/population wasting ways wrt outposts, but the real change should have been to have it actually use the spell for outposts rather than pioneers.  It should know that pioneers = new city, spell = new outpost.  It's that straight forward to fix that AI.

 

Juggernauts need to be moved one tech level earlier as they are basically fodder for Boar spears+warhammer units.  The Yithril haven't been a threat in FE LH due to Juggernauts, ever.  I rarely if ever see a Jugg in a normal game - even if the AI is past that tech.

 

Bows suck on heros, except for the Lightning bow.  The Tarth suffer from thinking it's actually a useful weapon.

 

There's more for each faction, but the basic jist is that each of the faction AIs should be making the most out of their bonuses, rather than seemly using the same general AI.

 

Which also brings us back to balance.

This post is already too long to write much about it, but the weapons and traits need a better balance and the AI needs to choose the right units for the situation at hand.  While the AI will use units that I make during a game in the next one, I can't constantly go back and remake every unit each time the game is changed.  A unit maker (choose faction, then choose tech level, then create unit) would go a long way to helping it out. 

Else, Spears are still OP (even with the recent change to the vs. armoured bonus) compared to everything else.  I don't even need ranged units.  Axes are useless and swords are 'ok' (the special ones are nice) but not sufficient enough to go without mass spears.

Here's the problem in a nutshell -

 

Spears have no drawback to using the impale ability.  Maces get dazed when they use theirs.  Cleave doesn't do enough damage to bother using though backswing is nice.  Swords require you to get attacked -- except by a spear unit that never gets counter attacked.

Maces and axes are very slow, swords are faster (basically counter the later armour penalties) but spears keep going.  In a typical fight my mace units get 2-3 actions, whereas the spear units take 5-6 actions -- mostly that's due to dazed maces missing a turn, but it counts as that's the reason to use maces.

 

Spears also rip through armoured units (the sword types) which means when a hammer or axe unit puts on chain/plate armour, it's effectively standing still waiting to get shredded by a spear unit.

What does that mean for the AI?  Spears rip apart the AI units as they tend to have a lot of maces and axes, with only some spear units and a few sword units.  It's about as bad for axes as for maces, but at least the mace units can use shields for the dodging/defense bonus.

 

I typically early build a hammer unit (upgradeable club, all leather only and upgradeable shield) with Lithe, Balance and Bloodthirsty (Dodging hammers).  No matter the faction (lucky+wraith makes this more OP) I make these.  Lithe and Balance should be cut down to 5 apiece.  20 dodge+Lucky/Wraith+shield = hard to hit.  I have bloodthirsty on there as my maces rarely get a 3rd move, so the spear units go and impale/attack units for the maces to finish.  Any spell that hits all units is also a really nice setup for this dodging hammer unit.

 

My spears are typically (depending on if I have the 1-h spears or not): spear (upgradeable) leather armour except for the Soldiers Gloves and boots (+accuracy and initiative) and then Fast/Finesse and either Precision for accuracy or Ironskin for defense to make up for the lack of leather boots/gloves.

On the more general topic of trait balance -- the +/level traits can't stack up to the +10 versions of similar traits.  That's mainly due to rarely seeing units make it up to level 10.  Either the game is over, or the unit just didn't get enough XP to level high enough before the game was over.

Balance wise, there is an obvious issue here -

 

Spears have a higher attack than all other weapons (at the same level) due to the armour piercing bonus + attack more often + can't get countered + can attack from the 2nd line.

So it's the high DPS build that also has the highest weapon strength and isn't weak to getting hit as nothing can hit back anyways.

 

My basic thought line on this hasn't changed much -

Hammers and Axes need to be at least 33% higher base attack than spears of the same level.  This is to counter the initiative penalty applied to using those weapons.  If they aren't higher attack than a 'faster' weapon, they aren't worth using.  The simplest balance strategy that you were/are using in FE LH is that initiative penalties on weapons are inversely proportional to the weapons damage output.  Ie, higher base damage (per weapon type) = more initiative penalty added.  Right now, there's no balance between the weapons due to not following this simple strategy in the game.  The problem wrt to the AI, is that the AI does not know that and keeps using the wrong weapons.

 

  Cleave needs to do a bit more damage to each unit (+20% to current would make it nice I think).  The first Axe and the Dagger should be moved to the 'starting tech' - basically available right away.  Move all other axes/swords up to fill the slots left by those ones.

I'd also be open to Impale leaving the spear unit unable to dodge for a round and leaving them with a -Initiative penalty for a round.

 

 

When it comes to the complaint about 'uber-factions' and 'uber-units' --- Kael control this, so he can change it by making him add costs to 'unbalancing' faction choices.  You could also continue to boost the other faction traits so that they are worth taking.  There's only a few good choices for faction traits and no real downside to taking one of the penalties to be able to get another one.  If the players can make OP custom factions, you can fix the basic factions to be more competitive by adjusting their choices as well.

I guess as a small addendum to the above, the game is usually decided by Boar Spears and chainmail, and rarely goes to platemail or higher level weapons if people aren't messing around.  This is basically due to the long tech times and the fact that the player can have a much better developed nation around the time that they need to get to the armour tech.

 

I'd also be ok with moving the +% vs. armour from the spear to the mace to balance it out.

Nice analysis!

I don't think heavy AI development and balance changes for its competitiveness is the way to go. Too much work to please too few, but maybe they are important people. Shoring up war, spell, and diplomatic behavior to look more human and effective would be plenty in my opinion, since everyone would notice that. 

I think the ideal changes are harder than people think, and many months of development can be put in to ideal personalities and behaviors, but I would be willing to bet big that it still would be a shallow challenge to a dedicated opponent at the end. But what is it, two guys programming AI in a game that is orders of magnitude more complex than go? The expectation can't be Deep LH because there isn't even a Deep Go yet. You can also change the balance to whatever seems to make it easiest on the AI, but unless that sucks the complexity out of the game it will probably just annoy users who want to have fun while opening new holes for opportunistic grognards. 

I think that effort can be put in to extra content to please the vast majority that are happy with the level of challenge that exists. Quests and diplomacy, more hero and sovereign love, graphics and UI, cutscenes and effects, and interesting scenarios. I think adding a new mode that shifts the challenge from beating AIs to beating the world would solve the challenge player's problem, since the playing difficulty can upped to any degree imaginable with little difficulty in development while providing strategy players with interesting challenges they won't be able to overcome easily. 

 

Good points MadDjinn, remember that LP on Civ5 where Genghis Khan DoWed you from behind Germany with no way of attacking you without attacking germans who were bigger than them, and he kept throwing demmands at you which you could ignore because he had no way to get to you I think same happens in LH. I had Yithril DoW me on a huge map (I haven't found their borders yet) but they never had a single unit coming toward me because I was surrounded by 4 other faction borders. I believe the AI is DoWing as soon as their "we don't like you" factor reaches a threshold without considerations of map position and if it is possible to actually get to target.

Regarding weapons, I prefer to use 1h weapons and shields for my frontline (effectively making them tanks), while my ranged back line deals the real damage. Simply can't compare ranged damage, be it mages, bows or xbows survival (no counterattacks, out of harms way, very hard to get to and swarm etc) to any type of melee troop. Add in hero buffs / debuffs and damage spells. Yes spears are nice and dandy, playing wraiths with lucky and dodge armor / traits is great but.... then you get an event or enemy army well made and your spears vaporize in 1 turn. Example - queen spider event - 2-2.5k hp armies of venom 3 spiders who have high initiative and web stuff (they have 9 groups of 3+ spiders) - the white ones - your spears now can't move to impale, can't make use of their movement, and have poor defense, no matter how high dodge you have on them, when 3+ enemies attack same target, EVEN with blind on them, they will hit. You can't 1 shot a group of those spiders with 4 ranged units (maybe if I had a 4-5 essence city with fire dmg buff), and there's loads of them.

Dodge is nice, but is RNG. Had a 3 round fight with a lucky wraith spears trying to hit an Idiotic dodger from Altar, neither unit landed a hit. Yet my archers and mages had no problems killing it despite it had air buffs to increase dodge vs ranged cast on it (was showing 48-56% chance to hit depending on level of units I had).

I feel is too easy to stack on spell resist in game atm past mid game. Altar heroes had 90+ resists (with 50% cold or fire as well for good measure against my army). I had to cast 3 shadowbolts with -28 SR each to be able to land a spell on them (and I have close to 150 spell mastery on Asha my hero). This is more problematic when said spell resist is on a caster. Which makes it close to impossible to land a counterspell. If they are mounted, you can't prone them either to stop the cast. And you have only bash left which is a melee ability. In current game I have 8 death shrines and 6 water. Horrific wail (54 dmg) and Blizzard (28 dmg / unit) are all you need to deal with most AI armies (not monsters, that's a different problem, where you go with the normal curse spam and spread with infection, use summons etc). AI can equip / buff cold resist (and fire) which makes blizzard and fireball not so great anymore true. But how do you defend against death damage spells, poison and lightning? (only saw a single item in game, boots of grounding I think, chainmail, that give lightning resists). Maybe a spell in life should act as a cleanse - single target, tier 3 or 4, to remove negative effects? Because as it is now, I can cast blind, slow, graveseal, remove all armor, and beffudling from the first spider you train as Resoln, and spread them all with infection (web doesn't spread). Then I can put 2 poisons up with dirge of ceresa and the other aoe poison from the magic tree, which will critical hit every turn thanks to graveseal (which doesn't affect critical hits from other damage spells like blizzard, horrific wail, drain life, entropy etc, yet the spells can critical hit). 

It really feels like dark magic is best vs anything non magic immune, and life is better against magic immunes (as it buffs / heals your troops). Fights vs dragons as dark magic user with scholar (-1 on cast times): cast kill - if is earlier in game, graveseal and armor debuff with blind and slow. Fights vs dragons as life magic: buff troops, heal them every turn, shrink dragon etc.

Maybe life magic could use a spell to transform a random shard into a life one as well? For example if my focus is on life and air, or life and earth, I have little use for other types of shards since I don't have spells that would benefit from their powers. Death magic can grow very powerful very fast as you pretty much just need death shards to fuel it, and keep couple shards of your secondary magic school (water complements it nicely because of slow, mantle of oceans, and some good strategic spells).

Unfortunately the removal of encumbrance (and without some other system to replace it) completely ruined my enjoyment of the game. I spent countless hours experimenting with (since I had to figure out how various things actually affected the battlefield) and tweaking units because that was a blast for me. Each faction had variations that permitted me to vary how I made units for that faction, be it the slaves of Magnar, the no-metal-armor of Resoln, the reduced/greater weight of armor for Tarth/Gilden, and let's not forget the increased weight capacity of Yithril. I adjusted my armor pieces to prevent going into Heavy encumbrance. I made good use of horses, when available, for my heavier units. All these things are now irrelevant and it makes units design rather pointless. Even Galactic Civilizations II had encumbrance on the ships.

As for the AI having trouble with encumbrance, I thought it was doing an adequate job as it was. One thing I thought it might benefit from was setting it to value medium encumbrance over heavy since it liked to make heavy encumbrance units a lot. Allow the AI to mix and match armor the way the player does (2 armor for 4 weight > 2 armor for 5 weight). This should have been much simpler with the elimination of damage types. At that point, an armor point was an armor point.

Anyway, I'm sure many people will enjoy the game, but cookie-cutter units don't do it for me.