AI in the start-phase of new game

[philippel]

Well, while this is my first post on tthe wesnoth-board, I have been playing wesnoth for a couple of years by now and I just wanted to hear some other opinions to the game-ai in the beginning phase of a multiplayer game.
(I used the search function, but colud not find anything relating to my topic)

I updated to 1.8.x recently and now I find the ai in mp games recruiting a lot of scout units.
So in the last Isar's cross Knalgan recruited three gryphons, while the undead sent 3 ghosts.
Scout units are, of course,not a bad choice in the beginning of the game, but in several games now the ai used all its money to create several scouts in rounds 1-2.
A friend and me fought against 3 members of the Knalgan Alliance recently, and we were hit by 13 gryphons in round 4-7.

And for me it has made the ai a lot weaker:
1. It is very easy to counter, because the ai has (more or less)only units of one type in beginning of the game

2. These units are usually quite expensive (so early game losses hit the pc antagonist really hard)

3. most important: It is very ineffective, especially on small maps, as it is the case with Isar's cross, you simply do not need a lot of scout units.


So have you made smiliar experiences? And if yes, what do you think about it?

[Ken_Oh]

I doubt that the AI takes the size of the map in account over just the number of villages when recruiting scouts. Isar's Cross is simply too small of a map to be balanced, so if you want to really follow up on this, tell us if you find the same thing on other small (but balanced) maps.

[Eskon]

Just now played Caves of the Basilisk and the AI sent four or five gryphons for an instant assault. It has happened on several other balanced 1v1 maps too.

[tsr]

I remember talking about this a few releases back and then it resulted in all mainline mp-scenarios getting an appropriate [side][ai]villages_per_scout=X[/ai][/side] value.

Now that you mention it is seems it might not work as intended anymore, I can't really say when it could have changed, I don't play much mp vs the AI, but the last couple of days I've played some 1v2 on 3p-maps and I also reacted on that.

/tsr

[philippel]

today: "swamps of weldyn (?)"
Knalgan enemy: recruited 3 gyrphons and 2 archers in the first round (using all his money)
I mean it is not really stupid, but it is very one-sided and therefoe easy to counter.