AI Blunders

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I'm sure everyone has experienced some at some point. These times when the enemies in games do something so stupid it seems like they are going out of their way to make life easy for the player. There are two that I can think of off hand, what stories does everyone else have?

1) Total Annihilation : I was playing on a skirmish map and lost most of my army in an ill-judged attack. I built masses of fixed defences (think Maginot Line) and hid behind them while I rebuilt my forces, slowly expanding the defences to cover more metal deposits. Once in a while, the AI would throw small groups of three or four tanks against the line - despite having a large army and control of most of the territory (and therefore metal) on the map. These could concievably have been scouting missions, to determine the weak points in the line before delivering the coup de gras...but for one thing. After a few of these attacks, I saw the enemy commander... alone... trying to attack my biggest nest of gun turrets...apparently without the D-gun. Boom, game over - I win.

2) Thief II - one of these big robot thingies is patrolling ahead of me. I can't find a way to sneak past it, I can't find a way to sneak up and put a water arrow in its back, so I try to throw a mine into its path. I miss, the mine lands what would probably be a foot or so away from the patrol route. The robot hears the noise, turns to look for the source - then deviates from its patrol route and steps right on the mine.

[ November 17, 2002, 15:33: Message edited by: Ironbeard ]

 

This is part of the game.

In real life, the only "hidden" mine would be the one you set and conceal. Not throw.

Now, if it was shadowy where you threw it, then there might just be a chance you'd walk close to it too.

Boom.

 

I've noticed that the hireling AI in Diablo II isn't that great either. Your hirelings will sometimes stand in fire and let it damage them (this happened to my mother while she's played, she'll be in the middle of a killing spree or collecting loot from dead monsters when she'll see her hireling just standing there in the fire looking stupid.)
I've also seen quirky AI in most Westwood games (Command and Conquer and others.) It's similar to the post about the enemy attacking the strongest defense points of mine on the map. That's the thing about earlier Westwood games, determine where the enemy attacks from, set your fortifications there and they'll probably consistantly attack from that direction.

 

I have yet to meet a good AI, it can surprise you once, perhaps twice but then you know how it works and the game loses its challenge. The only thing the developers do to make the game more challenging is to 'cheat' ie give the AI alot more resources or any other advantage that doesnt make it into an even playing field. Civ3 for instance has a quite good AI compared to many other games but it still bugs me that when you rise the difficulty the computer dont get smarter, it is just cheaper for it to produce things while it gets more expensive for the player. That is not really fun imo.

 

I've heard that Medal of Honor: Allied Assault has decent AI (that's what one of my friends tells me at least.)
Starcraft's computer players don't seem to cheat and they have moderately decent AI (they can rush and do it well.) I have'nt had the time to see how well Warcraft III's AI behaves but that's a definite project for me in the future unless someone here knows anything about how it works.

 

Arcanum and Moh have decent AI.

Arcanum will have your NPC's close in very, very close before unloading with ranged weapons sometimes. And this is actually not all that bad, because more often than not, they do it because you are in the line of fire and they try not to hit you.

MoH usually has guys take cover, but there are some scripted areas which they are scripted to not take cover. Which means, it's on you to wipe everything else out before they get gunned down.

This is why I cheat. Conforming to the programmer's ideas just doesn't interest me anymore. It did in Dragon Warrior 1, and Final Fantasy 1. I did in Dragon Warrior 3 and 4, Mechwarrior 3, and Final Fantasy Adventure 2.

No longer.

 

One thing that bothered me about MoH is that once you kill an enemy, or trip an alarm, every single enemy immediately knows exactly where you are and starts shooting at you with pinpoint accuracy.

I remember one mission in the snow where I had to blow up a cannon. I sneaked up to it, zoomed in with the sniper rifle, and took out one soldier guarding it. I was a good distance away, hiding behind a tree, with plenty of cover, and could barely see the enemy, even zoomed in with the scope. The second and third soldiers were looking in different directions. Yet as soon as I tagged one of them, the rest immediately started shooting at me, and hitting me for lots of damage.

Yet on other parts of the game, the AI seemed incredibly realistic. The enemies would move around to make themselves harder to hit, they would appear to coordinate attacks, etc.

 

"every single enemy immediately knows exactly where you are and starts shooting at you with pinpoint accuracy."

This is exactly what I'm talking about. They just program that in there for "balance" purposes.

At least in Thief they have to hunt around for you. They might be aware, but they know not *where* you are...

 

I've noticed good AI in other games: Metal Gear Solid 2 for example. The first game had decent AI as well (what sticks out the most is that if your character left footprints in the snow the guards would "see" them and follow them and then guess what! it's time to fight lots of guys with automatic weapons!) I'll be interested to see how the enemy AI operates in Splinter Cell it looks to be a very interesting game.

 

On BGII, you tend to find that several mages cast a contigency on death, casting several spells probably assigned for a weakened mage.

On GTA3, they have overdone the police in their severity. A simple felon such as bumping into a car seems to force the police to punch you down to the ground, or a small firearms issue will cause them to shoot you to death. Nothing like the normal police, always seeking the least violet method possible.

 

Even if it is logical looking back, it just struck me as very funny at the time that the enemy would go out of its way to step on a mine.

[ November 18, 2002, 16:41: Message edited by: Ironbeard ]

 

I'd have to say that in BG2-TOB the mage and cleric AI's were completely rubbish: Cleric's normally cast animate dead and then start attacking the skeleton, mages cast haste, blur, mirror image, invisibility and then start running around doing nothing. I have also noticed that when Yuan-ti mages finish all their spells they cast a few skull traps at you that normally hit themselves more than you.

AOE2: Once in a game i had 2vs2 on hardest; I stupidly built a rubbish defence in the beggining and my ally died very quickly and i was left with 2 castles against 2 maniacs who kept sending hundreds of really powerful troops at me. Suprisingly from 2 castles I killed them both. Why didn't the AI send all the troops at me with one stroke instead of waiting till i was ready for it? In the score i had 15000 kills which shows how wasteful the AI is and they had gathered about 400k of each resource. I also went back to a very early save and used cheats to see their base and suprise suprise they had tons of troops doing nothing.

And.......In response to MOHAA having decent AI: At one point in the game i managed to kill 140 nazi troops in the same room fairly easily; When you are in a room and the door is on one side though there's a box on the other side they'll walk in to the room completely vunerable and hide behind the box. What??? By the time they reach the box you've already shot them!!!

[ November 18, 2002, 15:22: Message edited by: Dhirngulin ]

 

Driver,
Just one inch across the trafficlights and the cops smash your car up, the trunk contains heavy dynamite.
You guessed it ....KABOOM!!!!

 

Carmageddon2 (when i had a pc that was bad enough to play it) - the mission against the ridiculously huge quarry truck with loads of health and hard to damage.

While out of my view, the truck somehow managed to do the best parallel park between two buildings and got completely stuck (like the scene in Austin Powers 1 where Austin is trying to turn the little truck around in the hallway and gets wedged in. It was imposible that that manouver could have been performed so i put it down to an AI blunder.

 

Jagged Alliance 2 is a game with great AI at some times and awful at other...

BAD: Novice level for example... another example is when you are on a roof shooting everyone in an area and then everyone else come just to stand there... -boom-... headshot and one head of... and they cannot give eachother first aid...

GOOD: Expert level for example... they hide behind walls and beside rocks... they use rocket and greande launchers and throws a greande at unaturally accuracy...

good game though...

 

Evanji doesn't what you are talking about reflect the difficulty level rather than AI or did I misunderstand your post?