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AI Agressiveness

Posted: Fri Oct 18, 2019 2:41 am
by jlan5031
I've just finished watching DarkRob's latest video. The Austrian AI army was so timid and lacked aggressiveness until the last five or ten minutes of the game. I'm curious. I know historically the Austrians were never very effective against the Napoleon's forces, but how accurately does the game portray Austrian fighting abilities? My question is how does the Waterloo game determine the aggressiveness of the AI forces?

Re: AI Agressiveness

Posted: Fri Oct 18, 2019 7:25 am
by DarkRob
I've just finished watching DarkRob's latest video. The Austrian AI army was so timid and lacked aggressiveness until the last five or ten minutes of the game. I'm curious. I know historically the Austrians were never very effective against the Napoleon's forces, but how accurately does the game portray Austrian fighting abilities? My question is how does the Waterloo game determine the aggressiveness of the AI forces?
I think its mostly determined by AI scripting and the stance the scenario author sets for the AI forces. I think I remember Mitra and Reb talking about using "Hold" as the AI stance for the Austrians and that maybe not being such a great idea.

At the same time, the tactics I invented for this game are broken. They were designed to completely neutralize the AI no matter the situation. They purposefully discourage aggressiveness on the part of the AI. A lot of people still to this day do not know the true power of skirmishers, nor do they realize how the combined arms mechanics can be manipulated to shut the AI down.

Still, scenarios cant be balanced based just on how I play, and I wouldn't want them to be. I don't really play the game, I manipulate it. I show what can be done, not necessarily what should be done in the spirit of the game.

Scenarios still need to be written in a way that allows them to be winnable in a variety of playstyles. Playing the game the way I do and manipulating the hell out of it is only one way. Play the scenario Headquarters in the Saddle and Im sure its a whole different story.

Ultimately do I think the Austrians should have been scripted to be a bit more aggressive in that scenario? Maybe. I would have to see how the scenario plays out in a variety of playstyles to really make that determination. But even if they were more aggressive, in my playthrough, it wouldn't have made any difference. It just would have gotten more Austrians killed.

Sometimes I think I take things to far in my videos. I make the AI look bad because I have a lot of experience at doing that. But its really not bad at all. In fact, in many ways the AI for this game is amazing. I just don't often give it a chance to show what it can do because I know how to shut down all its options before it even has a chance to get going because I know what its going to do before it even does.

But if you watch some of my HITS videos where I don't do any of that kind of stuff and just play the game the way it was meant to be played you can see the AI do some pretty impressive stuff.
Take "Napoleons Finale" as a good example. I get my ass handed to me for about the first 30 minutes of that video and then I order the Chassuers of the Imperial Guard forward to attack and the AI carries out my orders well.

Scroll to 29:40 to see the Imperial Guard advance on the Mont St. Jean ridge.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-5_WJZGHJ8&t=2743s

Re: AI Agressiveness

Posted: Fri Oct 18, 2019 1:49 pm
by RebBugler
Officer aggressiveness level is found in the OOB, Column X, Style. The six degrees of aggressive actions, or the lack thereof, are listed under Style in the unitattributes.csv file.

Also, as DarkRob explained, attack orders influence aggressive tactics. To the best of my knowledge, nationality has nothing to do with AI aggressiveness, however, I haven't compared the Style stats as related to your topic.
Enlighten us, I drew the map. :)