Have yet to test out the mod but so far these AI changes seem reasonable

Still no news from creator on long war 2 compatibility?

I'd love to have WOTC's new enemies at least pay attention to the mimic beacon. Some idiot forgot to add mimic beacon code to their AI scripts in the base game.

Please let us know when WotC compatability is live!

@DerBK any news on the release of this mod for WotC ? i remember from your post on reddit that you already had it done, can we maybe expect a release within today?

Some cool additions coming to this for WoTC: https://www.reddit.com/r/Xcom/comments/6w6lh7/a_better_ai_for_war_of_the_chosen_list_of_day_1/

So glad this is getting an update \o/

Long War Support?

SO how about LW2 support?

Is this compatible with LW 2?

@ZotaOTT[RU]:
Never seen that with this mod, what's the unit? Mod-added?

After the start of the battle, one Unit is hanging, standing and there is nothing to do ... how to address it.

Dragon32 Thank you

@ZotaOTT[RU]:
Change e.g. this line:
+Behaviors=(BehaviorName=TryOverwatch10MaybeHunker90, NodeType=RandSelector, Child[0]=TryOverwatch, Param[0]=10, Child[1]=TryCower, Param[1]=90)
To
+Behaviors=(BehaviorName=TryOverwatch10MaybeHunker90, NodeType=RandSelector, Child[0]=TryOverwatch, Param[0]=40, Child[1]=TryCower, Param[1]=60)

And so on for the other, similar, BehaviourNames called TryOverwatch ## MaybeHunker ##

And how to change the marking on the spot?
Is, I assume, the Reinforcement flare. That's part of the base game and nothing to do with this mod. I have no idea how to remove it.

Dragon32 yes) What and how should I change? And how to change the marking on the spot?

@ZotaOTT[RU]
Do you mean enemies Hunker Down a lot? You can change the chance of a unit hunkering in the XComAI.ini file.

The enemy often goes to a deaf defense( how to fix this?

Noticed that one of the lines which removes a vanilla movement behaviour has two "-" at the start:
--m_arrMoveWeightProfile=(Profile=Fallback, [...]
Presumably that means that vanilla line won't be removed from the vanilla XComAI.ini as the line doesn't match exactly?

@keybearer:
No, just the AI.

Does this changes the way reinforcement works? I had a squad of stunlancers dropping on me without cue (no flares) within LOS. Running a larger enemy podsize as well so they just teared through my squad.

ABA2 comes with alternate files you can switch in to set vanilla podsizes.
Details in the second post here: https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/workshop/filedetails/discussion/793861140/282992646972938696/

I only ask because I like your mod having improved AI and such however the increased party size and pod size I can do without. I just want new enemies and better Ai without adjusting pod size or party size. Is there anyway to make that possible?

The aliens from the Alien Pack come with their own skill tree which they will continue to use. So, for example, ABAI wouldn't change how the LW Rocketeer uses his rockets or when the Muton Centurion uses his Warcry. The custom ABAI trees would only apply to units that use the vanilla tree. For LWAP, that is (afair of the top of my head) only the case for their tier 2 and 3 Vipers and Archons.

However the global changes (like cover priorities, movement profiles or shooting at panicked units) would apply to all of them.

How do the AI changes of this mod work with the long war 2 alien pack?
Would your decision tree adjustments work for every version of the stun lancer in that mod or just the base? Also would your global parameters change all new enemies if both mods were installed?

Thanks for the indepth analysis, DerBK. Sounds like (in your own time, of course) a ABLW2AI mod could be on the horizon (or at least on the same planet...)
Loving that abbreviation.

The LW2 AI is fairly competent, if lacking some some finesse. It's insanely aggressive, their AI truely plays to win. LW2 puts Troopers in flanks if that means they can get flanks on your injured guys themselves. LW2 enemies shoot at anything, no matter if it's panicked, bound or even mind controlled. They are out to hurt you. And seem to prioritize anything they can kill. They also seem to generally give cover an appropriate amount of priority.

Areas that could use a little touching up are the details, the kind of thing that i have been working on a few weeks ago: Reactions to being flanked, handling being suppressed, using abilities in a more clever way.

To sum it up, they did a great job of giving global parameters that work. What could use some more detailing is the behavior trees and how diverse the decisions in it are.

@DerBK Are you sure LW2 has a similar AI improvement than this? I played with ABA before and loved the cunning carefull Advent AI. LW2 AI from 1 missions now seems to runa round uselessly a lot, change from full to half cover for no reason or even active and stand right next to you flanked. Maybe just randomness though like I said just 1 mission so far!

Yeah, whilst A Better AI isn't specifically mentioned here: Mods Compatible with LW2 Rev.1.7

Improved AI 1.47, a mod with similar goals if different execution, gets this comment:
This mod has a similar function to a mechanic built into LW2

http://www.pavonisinteractive.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=23382&sid=6e2c515d5b6bc4dcff2c00c1461400eb

Yeah, looks like Peacock Interactive got this and that ABAI may even get obsolete in the end once LW2 is around. We'll see how it plays out in practice, but that all looks phenomenal and plug many of the holes that ABAI is supposed to care about.

Yes. When LW2 hits, i am going to make a playthrough with it on Veteran to get a feel for it. Once i beat it, i will start thinking about what i can adjust or should adjust.

I wouldn't worry too much about the enemy specific AI from LW2, if their Alien Pack is any indication they know what they are doing. If they also tackle the AI in a more global way like i do, remains to be seen i guess.

Are you going to look at LW2's AI? I presume after playing it to get a sense of the mod's changes?

This + Rapid Reinforcements = Very Much Fun compared to vanilla.

And some not so nice reminders when you forget to pay attention; like when your killer assault learns first hand that bleeding profusely is not conducive to good health because you put them too close and they miss two out of three close quarters shots... Yah, that's gonna leave a mark.

Thanks much for making this available without the numbers spam. (not that there's anything wrong with spam)

Ok, thanks for the quick answer : ) !
I'll give it a try with a lower difficulty, would be a pitty to see an ennemy sniper leave his cover to frolick in the open : (

Yes, this is the same AI as in Better ADVENT. It definetely makes the game more difficult, depending on your own skill it may even make you have to drop down a difficulty over vanilla.

However, the reason why ABA has extra disclaimers about its difficulty is because of the increased enemy counts in that mod - something that doesn't apply to Better AI.

Hi ! I'm going to play my first run and I's like to know if "A Better AI" is hard as "A Better Advent" ? There's a clear warning on ABAdvent page but not his one.
All those AI changes are very yummy !

Thought that'd be the case, thanks for confirming though

Well sure, if you disable the Better AI for Captains, those won't hunker down.

I'll see if i can put the Call Reinforcements stuff into ABAI by default when i do my next update to it.

Another thought: it'd be worth updating the Description to note that a person will need ADVENT Avenger's Hunker Down mod to get the full benefit of the new update.

Cool, subscribed.

In my previous manual install I'd modified the XComAI.ini to restore ADVENT Captains to the vanilla behaviour. This was so I could keep using Call Reinforcements. I seem to remember that, unlike with ABA, I wouldn't be missing out on much Captain-specific behaviours.

Is that still the case with 2.00? Or are there some new Captain-specific AI tweaks, like the Hunker Down ability, I'd be missing?

Thanks!

Just subscribe here. You can copy the modfolder over to where you have the other ones and then unsub, it's the same thing.

Thanks for updating this mod, sorry to be a pain but any plans to update this on Nexus? That's where I installed the mod from (I prefer to get mods from there where I can). If you've no plans to update there then I'd appreciate knowing that and I'll subscribe here.

It'd make Mutons and Funlancers scarier, since I'd assume they'd have a pretty good CtH with their melee and they wouldn't have to move in order to use it.

One of the first things that every unit does in its turn is reacting to being flanked. This will lead to a movement, unless there are no unflanked positions available (very unlikely).
Now of course i could put some further checks in there to differentiate this behavior and maybe make the unit shoot instead if it's very unlikely that it would survive moving.
Number of enemy overwatchers and hitchance from current position sound like reasonable conditions to use for the decision.
I will look into this, good suggestion.

Hey DerBK, just thought of something. Is it possible to add another "really good shot" sort of thing to the AI? I've noticed that if I point blank flank a unit and then overwatch them with other troopers, they'll always choose to run the overwatch rather than just shoot right at the person next to them (that they are mutually flanking.)

For example, I had someone run up to a box a muton was hiding behind. He flanks the muton but is flanked by the muton in turn. Instead of just casually blasting (or meleeing) the guy that was standing right next to him and flanked, he tried to run the two overwatches I had set and died.

Any idea if it'd be possible to add or adjust a behavior so that they're very likely to take those shots? Go down shooting, basically? The muton still had one other member of his pod alive, so he wasn't trying to flee to a new pod.

Excellent! Thanks for the update :)

This mod has been updated to include the AI developments from A Better Advent.

I plan on making a series of further improvements early in the new year and this is the base for that. Find my discussion threads ("Let's Talk AI") on the r/xcom part of reddit if you want to know more or want to give your input.

Oh hell, take your time man. Enjoy your Christmas. Just the news that it's planned is enough for me. Also think I'm subscribed to AA's mod, just without enabling it. Yet.

Absolutely.
The update for ABAI is probably the next thing i am going to do and the Hunker Down stuff is the main reason for that. Of course, i'll leave it to you to use a mod like the one i linked in the patchnotes to actually add the ability to enemies.

No promises on when i have the update ready, Will be busy this week, so i'll only be able to start looking at it after christmas. Might still be this year, could be early January. But it'll come.

I was just reading the ABA 2 change log and noticed some really cool AI changes (well one leapt out at me and slapped me round the face: hunker down). Being a typically needy and pushy mod user I was wondering if you had plans to port those AI changes into this mod?

Thanks for this. I'm giving ABA2 a whirl but I kind of like having a somewhat more basic selection of enemies and troopers to use and this gives me the option of still having the "not entirely retarded" AI from ABA2 without needing to have all of the new variants.

That's above my paygrade :D
It's not like i am making an actual game AI here, i just make some parameters to feed into the AI that Firaxis programmed. I likely can't give you any info that you can use as far as developing games from scratch go.