It will be very hard for Eugen to create a challenging AI for the game due to it's one-shot nature and how hyper-important positioning is. At least in Starcraft the AI can "generally" attack move units and still get trades, but in this game, it's entirely possible for the AI to literally lose thousands of points worth of units without doing any damage at all.
Yes I think it will be very difficult, I think the reality is the AI needs to cheat a little in terms of unit availability and income to pose a threat but I have no idea if currently it does that at higher levels. I am also unsure how it "responds" to you brining out particular units. I THINK it brings out more AA if you use jets and choppers from past experience for example. I had played very little against the AI until people asked so it's quite an eye opener.
@@Bandanner It absolutely does respond based on your unit composition, and has some general strategies programmed in (for example, forward deployment and/or heli-focused decks will *always* do a full or half heli rush early to try to take space quickly) - it does not cheat re. availability but it does cheat (on the harder difficulties) on initial point pool and ongoing income. Personally I don't think it's enough though. *shrug*
On the other hand, positioning and more "binary" nature of unit health states allows for the AI to utilize the need for positioning to its advantage. The extreme example would be chess, where AI reigns supreme. Eugen games, while not that extreme, of course, do follow a lot of checkboxes. I think the AI should perform better in a game like this than in SC and I'd go for a more cynical conclusion of devs not paying much attention to the CPU opponent development (which is completely in line with game development in the past decade, as opposed to, say, two decades ago). In SC, quick microing is very important and instant and it often relies on decisions that AI can't really comprehend. Here, you're not going to micro your infantry out of a mortar shot, then put it back in, then put it out again etc. and the "thought process" is more comfortable for the AI (there are three tanks there with these parameters, I need something from this pool of units; I am not going to push that sector there because I will definitely lose that engagement; A lot of AA there, I am not going to send my plane there etc). One additional thing that could help the AI is the fact that there isn't a lot of maps in the game and maps are set. The AI could get map-focused coding in order to better strategize and prioritize on specific maps. Which ties into the notion of AI being completely uninteresting for the devs in the modern era (probably not a great return on investment with focus on MP and live service).
Late reply here, but IMO the AI in Wargame Airland Battle felt far superior to Red Dragon which was far more spammy. I hope they can recreate that feel in the new game.
Generally speaking I find the AI very vulnerable to planes. From what I can tell they don't use vehicle AA at all and rely exclusively on spamming MANPADS. They also don't make use of CAS planes or fighters, except occasionally at the extreme end of a game if they have nothing left to buy.
I just had a thought about the AI buying all these Command units: AI is maybe as confused about command units being in the infantry tab (instead of the Logistics tab) as the rest of us!! Perhaps AI thinks these are just combat infantry units to deploy? They still over-bought Sultan Commands, but that just might be AI trying to put the conquest point pressure early, need to tweak the algorithm down so it's more like "if AI has 3:2 or more forces ina conquest area, high chance of RNG selecting a Command unit". But let's get the Command units out of the Infantry and Tank tabs, put 'em back in Logistics. As for simulating a smarter AI opponent, maybe Eugen could implement something akin to IMPERFECT satellite intel. Perhaps at initial deployment and every 2 minutes or so after, the AI gets a kind of "snapshot" of information about anything you have that is not in cover or just purchased, and it reacts with attempts to counter. The time-sensitive nature of "satellite snapshot" intel means AI still doesn't know where you moved units meanwhile, and maybe it is an RNG roll whether it sees your out-of-cover Command units.
Very hard and Hardest have same AI as Hard, but have higher unit availability (more per card) and cheaper units. This is per something a Eugen dev said on steam discussion board IIRC.
The AI was much better a few weeks ago. Who knows what happend. It is not playing any ACs anymore and overall is doing weired stuff. They have to do better.
I am feeding back any strange stuff the AI does in the games I play, so I have mentioned about the CV's in this case. I am unsure what they have planned for the AI and how much additional work they have done on it and just not released so I am just feeding back what I experience. It's interesting that its changed in the last few weeks though, I honestly never played against the AI much. If you play against it a lot, do you think it performs better with certain divisions in your mind than others?
@@Bandanner As I only played NATO so far, I only did play against RED AI. Not much difference between them. It played AC's before. It sneaked around to kill my CV. I even observed it landing a choppeer to avoid my AA... it was much better then. I am stuck on playing "hard" only, because the others do only change the amount of income and available units, that's what I did understand. Keep going !!
