Is the AI too difficult now?

[Seleucids]

I've seen several posts that suggest that the current Petra is too difficult, after my changes to its behaviour. My question is, should I make new PRs to nerf it

Also what about creating more granular difficulty levels? For example we can lower the very easy to even lower and add some more extreme levels.

Currently the only cheat of Petra is in terms of eco. We can give the extreme levels other cheats such as bonus to atk, unit hp, building hp, unit movement speed, training time discount, projectile accuracy, armour, price discount...

[DesertRose]

No, medium AI is fine. It's about the level a somewhat competent player can beat consistently after 1-3 tries.

AI can be made easier by decreasing how many units they produce (e.g. Very Easy AI stops producing units when it hits 1/4 of max population), and only advancing to Town Phase / City Phase when the majority of human player clicked on the update.

Giving units / buildings bonuses to their combat stats is a terrible idea. It makes it virtually impossible to learn the game.
You cannot learn to gauge the strength of your opponent's army, and learn how strong different unit classes are if AI units "behave" differently.
Discounts seem pointless when you already have an eco bonus.

The only one that looks acceptable is training time discount.

[Deicide4u]

1 hour ago, Seleucids said:

Currently the only cheat of Petra is in terms of eco. We can give the extreme levels other cheats such as bonus to atk, unit hp, building hp, unit movement speed, training time discount, projectile accuracy, armour, price discount...

Even that one cheat is enough, when combined with all-seeing eye of the AI. We don't need more.

I am actually fine with the difficulty of AI. Medium AI should play like a half-competent player, that's the point. It's just a fair challenge without any bonuses.

People just got used to weak AI in the past releases, so they will have to adjust their strategy. Proper booming is now a hard requirement to beating the Medium AI, and players need to learn how to do that. It should be nearly impossible to beat the AI 1vs2, otherwise the AI is very weak.

Honestly, it's boring to always curb-stomp the AI without a challenge. People need good introduction to the meta, and your changes to the AI achieve that well.

Edited 19 hours ago by Deicide4u

[Arup]

1984 "big brother" was actually Petra all along

[Seleucids]

OK I played 1v3 against very hard AI and it was easy for me. Case closed. 

metadata.jsoncommands.txt

 

Edited 17 hours ago by Seleucids

[AlexHerbert]

I just observed that they go everyone against one player (me), and when team game, Petra plays very hard for them but sometimes for my team decide is time to go on vacation.

Edited 17 minutes ago by AlexHerbert
Missed one word

[Atrik]

In any games, but especially RTSs, you can expect a huge level disparity, even between newbies. It's not always obvious what actions are important to win a game.
@Seleucids you already did try to help a lot with tutorials etc. We could always use more of these, or increase their quality. 
The game itself should also rework some of its design to make technicalities easier to overcome for players, or more obvious how to handle them.
These points would make the game much more attractive and accessible. The AI difficulty right now is actually very low, your PRs didn't fix the main issues with it. But for players who don't know the basics it's easy to get overwhelmed, but that's not because of the bot difficulty, who is probably max 1250 in "very hard" mode. So don't worry, if your changes did improve petra, it's certainly a good thing.

[Deicide4u]

22 minutes ago, Atrik said:

The AI difficulty right now is actually very low, your PRs didn't fix the main issues with it.

I wouldn't say it's very low, but decent. Very low maybe for a player who can be considered a veteran of the game or "pro".

But yes, there are still some issues. The AI doesn't counter-react to player's strategy, doesn't heal its units well, and still sends his gatherers to distant resources. Another major issue is the grouping logic, as the AI keeps sending attacking units in a straight line.

Oh, and the classic one: it doesn't use Civilians only for gathering food and wood, and CS only for mining.

[guerringuerrin]

Would be very nice to list all the things to improve so we can keep working on the AI. There are also some AI mods that seem to have good improvements.