I played (still play) the Heritage, 8 player MP map, rather small. It's a very poor (resources-wise) map. I played it on hard difficulty with 3 human players overground and 3 underground and 1 ai player each over- and underground.
Actually the ai went on the offensive first. In the underground the random ai town was a Dungeon and it broke 2 days before the end of week 4 into the realm of my Academy there. I was lucky because I had everything in place to reinforce my main hero and attack the invader asap, but it was no child's play. The attack thwarted the building of the Cloud Temple, because I had to hire massively, and I lost ALL Genies and some. The hero was level 12, when my hero was level 10 (difference is explained by him coming through massive guards) and he had DECENT troops.
I took advantage and counter-attacked and a week later I conquered the Dungeon which was town level 29 with everything hired out except 2 Dragons.
It's pretty obvious that the AI gets MASSIVE boosts in money and resorces: ALL buildings were upgraded and everything was hired except the 2 dragons (with 3 being killed before).
So on Hard diff the AI has advantages, but it looks like it's a challenge.
By the way, the surface ai player is Haven. Necro there gave his best hero a beating, but even though the Necro hero is extremely powerful and had 6 Knowledge plus Raise Dead I took losses in a pretty interesting fight that saw the Haven Hero Resurrecting Angels and Angels Resurrecting Paladins. THAT Town isn't dead, yet.
As a sidenote, there is a Dragon Utopia in the middle of the surface and guess who got there first? Yes, Necro, but if Necro wouldn't have been there it would have been the Haven AI player.

Out hunting whiner i see jj Well the ai needs some tune ups her and there but i suspect they will be working hard on that. Until then im in the middel of the scanerio grate fun!

I think te A.I. have resorce advantage... but is better this way...

Hey I don't have the game yet, but will you be able to play maps like the one you discussed just in single player against 7 AIs?

quote:

Originally posted by SirMonty:
Hey I don't have the game yet, but will you be able to play maps like the one you discussed just in single player against 7 AIs?

Yes

quote:

It's pretty obvious that the AI gets MASSIVE boosts in money and resorces: ALL buildings were upgraded and everything was hired except the 2 dragons (with 3 being killed before).

Thanks for the confirmation, but then the title of the topic is inaccurate, since it currently reads "Strategic AI seems good". If it was any "good" it could actually build up its own armies and resources without the need for the boosts. That's part of what constitutes an "AI".

If it absolutely NEEDS the boosts to present a MINIMAL challenge, it's called "broken", or at least "poor", not "good". Do we agree on this? Because it's pretty basic and has NOTHING to do with personal expectations or opinions.

Khel.

khel is 100% correct.

we made another few threads on these issues and the a.i gets many bonuses in heroic, things beyond just having more resources.

the a.i has good cheating support, which doesnt mean its a good a.i, just a cheating a.i.

Do you want a good AI or a good enemy player controlled by AI?. I want the second, and if it need some help through resources I'm ok with it.

quote:

Originally posted by Vitirr:
Do you want a good AI or a good enemy player controlled by AI?. I want the second, and if it need some help through resources I'm ok with it.

I want good AI, any moron can do cheating AI.

Btw ai = horribly badly scripted in campaign.
It has too many issues. For example mission 3 from camp 2, if you take the 2 towns and manage to defeat the druids in the first month the ai doesn't even take the mine next to him. It's not guarded and it's not he doesn't have troops.
Again something similar happens in the 4-th mission from camp 3. You can take in the beggining a hut of the magi and spy on enemy. What i've seen computer doesn't do anything in the first 3 days with 2 of the heroes (he has enough troops to clear mines).
Then it moves for one day around then the next day just sits there like looking at the moon.
Indeed i can confirm on the normal maps he plays ok but i think he is too keen to take out other ai. I've played the non aliied maps with my brother and computer had 4 castles and we had 4(2 each). He manages to go trough the guards really quick (we were playing on normal).I'm still playing the warlords map to see how well he acts in a 7 alliance .

quote:

Originally posted by pavel44:
I want good AI, any moron can do cheating AI.

And?, it is a programming contest or a game?.

Well, I was playing one map a a couple of days ago(don't remember which one it was exactly) and it was like the end of the 2nd month. So I went away from my castle with my hero, had no army left in the castle to test what the computer will decide to do. The two AI heroes, which were not far away from my castle, just continued to skip around and collect resources, not paying any attention to me or to my castle. I've decided to punish them for that and went to capture their Academy castle. Only after I've captured their castle they've decided to pay my empty castle a visit. So from all this I conclude that AI needs to get more aggressive.

Also on another map AI hero did go for my castle while I was away BUT after he captured the castle, he just went away and left no army there, so when I came back a day later I had no troubles recapturing my old town (AI was busy collecting resources). If he would have stayed inside (and he should have as I was only one day away from the castle), I probably would have lost the battle, but he did not

hehe, i also played a 8 player xl map.

This was interesting cause 1 AI did rush ALL other 4 AI factions in no time was between 2-5 weeks. the other 2 i got.

once the AI was unified under one banner it became dangerous. it had powerful heroes like knight hero who is mainly might with 20 each att and def, also with artifacts. good use of spells was not required to lead massive troops effectively that way. so AI actually beat all my secondary armies lead by rather mediocre if not weak secondary heroes. main hero, who was insanely powerful with big army was never beaten, but could not be everywhere at the same time.....so all i did was hunt that one AI hero with its mighty stats, once killed, the game was over as AI suddenly became very defensive again.

AI needs resources boosts....as AI behaves completely different if it has a big army and good hero or not...it will be only offensive if it has someting to throw at you, its the same in all hero games. maybe not 1 and 2 where AI comes for you no matter what it got in the first place making it a bit harder(seemingly)

"Do you want a good AI or a good enemy player controlled by AI?"

I don't understand why it's a question of making a choice... the former should bring about the latter. See HOMMS 1-3 for reference. DO NOT see HOMM IV.

@DarkMystery:
Previous Heroes (bar IV) had the option of not giving any boost to the computers. Did they cheat a bit? Yes, they knew the position of your heroes. Did they engage in psychotic behavior, leaving mines unflagged and empty castles unattacked, waiting for the weeks to pass and the boosts to arrive? Nosirre.

Khel.

quote:

Originally posted by Khelavaster:
See HOMMS 1-3 for reference. DO NOT see HOMM IV.

@DarkMystery:
Did they engage in psychotic behavior, leaving mines unflagged and empty castles unattacked, waiting for the weeks to pass and the boosts to arrive? Nosirre.
Khel.

In HoMM3? No, they didn't. They took the castle, split their army, went out with a new army, let the powerfull hero stay in with his cut army, so I could easily overcome both armies and have the castle. Great AI .
If the AI doesn't have some boost it will be no challenge. The only way they can build a descent AI is by playing the game for a few months with every faction and then program their best tactics.

They make chess computers for 40 years now and only a few times it can beat a good human chess player. So don't expect to much.

I played the same map on normal difficulty against only AI players. I thought I was winning after having just taken out quite some army from the blue player (I play red). Then he hunts down my hero with a necroarmy that was many times my size. I had just bought my first two angles a couple of weeks ago and he had:

22 of the Green dragons (dont remember the name)
23 Black dragons
23 Titans
1023 Skeleton archers
and then some more that I dont remember.

For a poor map that is not bad.. game over for me...I cannot imagine where he got money to buy this kind of army... Yeah necro seems weak

Edit: Each round his hero made a phantom image of the 1k skeleton archers...

the reason it took 40 years to make a.i that can beat humans is mainly hardware limitations.

also what you said about them only beating human players a few times is soooo false, most chess games that run on PC's can beat most chess players that arent grand-masters, and special computers that will beat grand-masters alot.

quote:

Originally posted by joasoze:
I played the same map on normal difficulty against only AI players. I thought I was winning after having just taken out quite some army from the blue player (I play red). Then he hunts down my hero with a necroarmy that was many times my size. I had just bought my first two angles a couple of weeks ago and he had:

22 of the Green dragons (dont remember the name)
23 Black dragons
23 Titans
1023 Skeleton archers
and then some more that I dont remember.

For a poor map that is not bad.. game over for me...I cannot imagine where he got money to buy this kind of army... Yeah necro seems weak

Edit: Each round his hero made a phantom image of the 1k skeleton archers...

its not that his necro that he won, a.i gets to cheat in the way of getting neutral units to join it, so I guess tons of tier 7 units joined it.

quote:

Originally posted by joasoze:
I played the same map on normal difficulty against only AI players. I thought I was winning after having just taken out quite some army from the blue player (I play red). Then he hunts down my hero with a necroarmy that was many times my size. I had just bought my first two angles a couple of weeks ago and he had:

22 of the Green dragons (dont remember the name)
23 Black dragons
23 Titans
1023 Skeleton archers
and then some more that I dont remember.

For a poor map that is not bad.. game over for me...I cannot imagine where he got money to buy this kind of army... Yeah necro seems weak

Edit: Each round his hero made a phantom image of the 1k skeleton archers...

what month, what week, what difficulty? everything can be explained.

rush the ai its weak against rushes in EVERY game i played EVER. WAIT and you might loose.

quote:

Originally posted by akrav:
the reason it took 40 years to make a.i that can beat humans is mainly hardware limitations.

also what you said about them only beating human players a few times is soooo false, most chess games that run on PC's can beat most chess players that arent grand-masters, and special computers that will beat grand-masters alot.

chess AI is much simpler because there are no x factors no various unusual situations. That is much harder to implement in more complex games like H5.