Posted by: Rafinius 28 Feb 2016, 16:41
In RTS games I sometimes enjoy letting AI play against each other when I want to see some gameplay action but am also doing something by the side that doesn't allow me to really play. So recently I wanted to see some Earthshaker fun and put Townes up against Leang on a large map with lots of starting money. Here's a few things I noticed about Leang.
- She takes ages to replace her lost powerplants. Sometimes over 5 minutes even (allowing the opponent to do more than a single cycle of superweapon fire even though all she needed to stop it was a single powerplant).
- She only ever built one supply drop point and, once that was empty, only sent one or two of her helicopters to even gather supply from the next one at a time. This was visibly contrasted by Townes who grabbed most supply on his side of the map pretty early on (though he too never used more than one helicopter from an empty supply zone to go aid on a new one).
- While Townes always used all of his money to build stuff, thus regularly being below a thousand despite constant gathering, Leang seemed to accumulate resources over time, constantly rising through nothing more than a full Internet Center and one long distance supply helicopter. Despite that her army seemed to roughly match that of Townes (mostly due to Townes sending his tanks in one by one and ignoring enemy fire more often than not).
- She often has her Hammer Cannons aimlessly circle around instead of either hitting in range enemies or escaping.
- In general she enjoys sending vulnerable artillery up front on its own instead of keeping it behind any kind of tank line or such.
- She never ever uses her Anvil Tanks as anything other than target practice for the enemy. Even if it isn't moving and being shot it will drive in melee range of the enemy and deploy/undeploy itself constantly without any effect until it's dead. I've noticed this over several games, not just this one.
- She loved sending her plane-based general powers over all the enemy laser defenses, thus wasting them each and every time except for that once towards the end where she finally got off her first Earthshaker shot and destroyed most of Townes power plants.
- She doesn't deem Microwave Tanks disabling her buildings as something worthy of defending against. You can't imagine how frustrating it was to see a single Microwave Tank disable the Temple of Gaia (which she built outside her base due to cramped space) for well over 10 minutes. Only when a Laser Paladin came and almost killed it did she send two Buratinos to take out the Paladin. The Buratinos then automatically spotted the Microwave and took it out too.
Sorry for not having a replay this time but I only thought of sharing it afterwards. I don't know if fixing the AI is something anywhere high on your priority list or if it is even feasible to do within the engine but if it is I am willing to run more tests and upload the replays this time around. If you do want me to do that you can even tell me what kinds of things you want to test (difficulty, factions, number of players/teams, starting money, map size, superweapon limits ect.)