Really a balanced game ?

[Yomar]

I know that developers worked hard to balance this game, so here is my question.
Many ppl say that Loy's are a strong faction, maybe even overpowered (if I remember well cavalry was even weakened), so I made some tests, I pitted the AI against itself on some standard maps, and almost always, the Loyal faction was beaten by Knagla and even more by Northerns.
(I also tried to invert turn order, and starting day time, but I got approximately the same vicktory results).

Now I know that how good a faction is, depends also by the player ability (and IA plays badly), so this means that beginners or bad players are advantaged against Loyals by picking Northerns for example ?

If the game is really so balanced should the result of the IA battles not be about 50% of victories for each match ?

[Velensk]

I'm going to leave aside the question of how balanced the game in general is and comment very specifically on this question.

If the game is really so balanced should the result of the IA battles not be about 50% of victories for each match ?

Absolutely not.

Wesnoth is all about decision making and is not purely a contest of power where you can jam two equal forces into each other and come up with something even. Different factions require decisions to be made in different ways and focusing on different priorities. The AI has no grasp of strategy and a very simple grasp on tactical priorities. Different factions are punished to different extents by lack of certain skills some of which the AI is better at than others. Some factions are punished more or less for not knowing when to retreat, some counters are counter-intuitive, some decisions which make sense to the computers mathmatical evaluation are really stupid, some styles of play which are critical to some factions but not others are beyond the AI's comprehension. In short, the AI is too stupid to make all the factors that are highly relevant to balance come into play.


Now as to the balance of the game in general. I don't believe it to be perfect but I will say that the skill ceiling is sufficiently high and it is close enough that it'll take you a long time to run into genuine problems that can't be overcome with better play.

[Yomar]

So if I understood well, the game is only balanced when played by human beings.
Because when you watch matches played out by the IA you can easy guess on which action to bet, after that you watched some.

[Velensk]

It doesn't sound like you understood well. The problem is that when you watch a game played by an AI it tells you absolutely nothing about what actions are good or how easy it is for each side to control the overall situation.

I'll give an example to illustrate. Although it's not as bad as it used to be, the AI when playing loyalists loves heavy infantry. If you watch the AI playing loyalists vs northerners it will heavilly recruit heavy infantry and mages. Anyone with a half decent understanding of what the match-up is like when very skilled humans play it know that such would be a horrible idea against any human who knows what he's doing. However the reasons it's a bad idea would never occur to an AI. An AI doesn't understand how playing lots of heavy infantry put you in a permenant responsive position as you can't afford to agress to much lest you get caught out of position at night unable to retreat and destined to be picked off by archers and assassins. The AI also doesn't understand how overrecruting expensive effective units as opposed to efficent units like spearmen would put it in a position where they cannot spread out to defend on all fronts as effectively and thus will end up either getting focused down by concentrated power or spread thin and spending all its time trying to chase village stealers away. What it does understand is that it's enemy is fielding a lot of blade/peircing damage and that heavy infantry resist blade/peircing very well.
---The problem is, that just as the AI doesn't understand not to play a certain way because it can be countered so effectively, it also doesn't understand how to counter it. So an AI going heavy on heavy infantry could actually toast a northerner player played by the AI and it would look like a solid stratagy. The northerners will likely respond with a counter charge consisting mostly of grunts and assassins and the two forces would meet in the middle, likely around the time night is starting and it'll come down to a matter of luck and random position whether the heavy infantries resistances are enough to overcome the nightime buff and greater efficency of the northerners. Watching this would tell you nothing about the amount of control loyalist cavalry give the loyalists nor the variety of siege, rush, or diffusion stratagies available to northerners, nor even the actual role of heavy infantry in this match-up. Essentially, the game the AI plays is in no way represesentive of the balance between humans and in fact if you did balance the game for the way the AI's played it would almost inevitably be very unbalanced when you gave the same tools to a human.

The AI also cannot read maps. If you want to see something sad, watch two AI's play on Arcenclave Citadel. The two AI's will recruit a small force around their leader and then spread. The AI has no idea that it needs to be recruiting all over its half of the map so that it can grab all its villages efficently nor any understanding of the diverse dynamics of the fronts. The AI cannot be used to test map balance either for these kinds of reasons.

About the only thing the AI has a good understanding of is how to crunch numbers while in a fight on how to best get kills but even then it doesn't consider everything a player can and it does not have a good method for sorting out all of the different tactical priorities in a fight and choosing which are most important.

[Alarantalara]

The AI also cannot read maps. If you want to see something sad, watch two AI's play on Arcenclave Citadel. The two AI's will recruit a small force around their leader and then spread. The AI has no idea that it needs to be recruiting all over its half of the map so that it can grab all its villages efficently nor any understanding of the diverse dynamics of the fronts. The AI cannot be used to test map balance either for these kinds of reasons.

If you want a very fast way to see just how important the above is to results, make exactly one of the two AI players the Experimental AI in 1.11 and watch a game on Arcenclave Citadel. It does recruit units near the villages on the first turn and as a result has a 100% win rate against every AI that doesn't. If it plays itself, then the game looks much the same as any other between two AIs after the first couple turns.

[Velensk]

Good to know.

Still, even with that fix, it still doesn't make the AI worth anything for testing map balance.

[Yomar]

Yes, I noticed that AI likes mages and infantry, for that reason I also tried to recruit the units and then give the control to the computer, but he still looses, he simply is not able to use them well and at the right moment, so for the factions are not balanced to use them with the actual AI, or better the AI is not able to use them well.
He is better at blind rushes so a faction with ceap units to get numeric advantage is more adapt for the AI's play style.

[optimother]

Computer plays well by Notherners because they are cheap and intended to be disposable. But when you start sending expensive units to death without any care you obviously lose more often.

[Yomar]

Computer plays well by Notherners because they are cheap and intended to be disposable. But when you start sending expensive units to death without any care you obviously lose more often.

Yeah, i guess that's true.

[iceiceice]

If the game is really so balanced should the result of the IA battles not be about 50% of victories for each match ?

IMO this says much more about how good the AI is than it does about the current balance for skilled players. The AI is not much better than a newbie, it follows a very generic strategy that needs to work well in any scenario with any UMC faction. It doesn't have any knowledge of even the basic rules of thumb for strategies for the various faction matchups, it basically just rushes you always, and that's really only even remotely a good idea if you are northerners. (Debateably it might be good in rebels vs. drakes...)