"New" AI combat technique? :: Age of Wonders 4 General Discussions

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Råb!d

27 Jul @ 10:36am

"New" AI combat technique?

*Griffin update*

At least, this is new for me. I've never seen so frequent and heavy use of AOE spells by the AI at the mid-game point.

The AI for one of the factions have the ability to use spells on the first turn and it has several high level AOE spells.

It just sits there for the first 3 turns buffing, while damaging several of my units. By the time I get close enough to attack with my units I'm already down quite a bit. And, I can't just turtle and wait for them to come to me. I usually try to get good positions and buff my units a bit.

I can't tell how advanced the main faction is, but many of my Heroes are higher level and my units are generally the same Tiers.

And I'm not playing on Challenging+, but I did give this faction a small boost with 1 extra tome.

For reference, there are no Vassals or Independent Cities starting out and it's Teams of E vs E. I'm playing an Evil faction versus mostly random Custom Factions, with the exception of the Small buffed Good faction.

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Showing 1-6 of 6 comments

Typha

27 Jul @ 1:06pm

If they're mixing it up it would be nice. I think everyone does the turtle thing.

Råb!d

27 Jul @ 2:54pm

I should clarify that, if I turtle, it just used AOE spells and knocks me down. It doesn't send units in until I'm already in rough shape.

Zaidah

27 Jul @ 3:13pm

There is one change in the Griffin update that might have to do with that :

"AI now prefers spells that are the most cost-effective, rather than just the most effective"

So I guess the AI will prioritize using AoE damage/debuff spells if you have 6 or 7 units stacked within a 1-hex radius (if you divide the spell cost with the number of units affected, it becomes very cheap per unit)

Last edited by Zaidah; 27 Jul @ 3:15pm

Råb!d

27 Jul @ 4:08pm

Originally posted by Zaidah:
There is one change in the Griffin update that might have to do with that :

"AI now prefers spells that are the most cost-effective, rather than just the most effective"

So I guess the AI will prioritize using AoE damage/debuff spells if you have 6 or 7 units stacked within a 1-hex radius (if you divide the spell cost with the number of units affected, it becomes very cheap per unit)

That makes sense.

Estellese

28 Jul @ 10:23am

If the AI has learned to turtle I will be quite happy. Some of my builds are meant to turtle and this would make those builds actually scary in the AI's hands.