Anybody able to beat two AI opponents?

[Badut]

I don't play campaigns much anymore. And I don't have enough time to play against human opponents on a server. So I resort to playing 1 vs 1 against the computer.

I find that 1 vs 1 against the AI is too easy.
But I definitely can not win playing vs 2 AI opponents.

Has anybody been able to take on 2 AI's and win?

[dipseydoodle]

Yes! I think you can change which ai you go against, if that helps.

EDIT: Or try Survival Extreme.

[Badut]

Yes! I think you can change which ai you go against, if that helps.

Do you mean choosing between default AI and RCA AI? which is stronger anyway?

EDIT: Or try Survival Extreme.

Survival Extreme? sounds like fun. does it come with the Wesnoth installer or do I have to download an addon?

[dipseydoodle]

Do you mean choosing between default AI and RCA AI? which is stronger anyway?

There's more in 1.9.

Survival Extreme? sounds like fun. does it come with the Wesnoth installer or do I have to download an addon?

It's on the add-on's list in 1.8.

[Sangel]

I don't play campaigns much anymore. And I don't have enough time to play against human opponents on a server. So I resort to playing 1 vs 1 against the computer.

I find that 1 vs 1 against the AI is too easy.
But I definitely can not win playing vs 2 AI opponents.

Has anybody been able to take on 2 AI's and win?

Have you tried giving the opposing AI extra gold to start with? You can slowly ramp up the AI's gold advantage until it provides sufficient challenge.

[Crushmaster]

I can beat one AI with 200 gold versus my 100 without a terrible amount of difficulty (or so it seems. I can pull of their 100 versus my 50 as well, but it's more difficult. For clarification, this doesn't mean I always have an a hundred percent success rate). However, I haven't been able to beat (yet) two AI opponents with 100 gold each (I've tried some on Island of the Horatii [spelling?]).

I'm sure I'll be able to some day, though. I couldn't use to beat one AI opponent with 200 gold, after all.
In Christ,
Crushmaster.

[Iris]

There's more in 1.9.

No.

[dipseydoodle]

Oops.

[PeterPorty]

I can beat 2 AIs with each the same amount of gold as myself, although it's pretty hard to do so.

[Simons Mith]

It's doable. It can be hard work. I found 1v1 against the AI dull, too. So I used to use these settings:

2vs1,
me: 100 gold, AI: 125 gold each,
me: standard income, AI: standard income +2 each

1 gold per village, random 60x60 map, 15 villages per 1,000 hexes, unlimited turns. AI teams allied (that bit's important, or they'll fight one another and cancel themselves out). 100% experience

At those settings I'd win more often than not, provided the initial map was slightly in my favour.

At 2 gold per village, I'd usually lose.

The new AI in 1.9.x is better and I've had to tone back the settings a bit. I now tend to use:

2vs1,
me: 100 gold, AI: 100 gold each,
me: standard income, AI: standard income

1 gold per village, random 60x60 map, 20 villages per 1,000 hexes, unlimited turns. AI teams allied. 70% experience

At 2 gold per village, I don't think I've ever won against the new AI with those map and income settings. I've pretty much given up trying at 2 gold and two equal AI opponents.


What I found was that at 2 gold per village the initial rush of the computer units buys the AI enough time to dominate me economically. I might last another 20 turns, but I could kill 2-3 units for every one of mine and still go down in the end. At 1 gold per village I can usually last long enough to level enough few units to claw my way back to victory, provided I don't stop paying attention.


2vs1, I would suggest you start with two mutually hostile AIs with about equal cash and income. That's significantly easier. Once you've have some practice, try two allied AI sides each with 60% of your starting cash, and work up. If you can win reliably against AIs sides with more than 100% of your cash and 2 gold per village, you're a far better player than I am.

2 gold per village immensely favours the most numerous side(s); I find the game unwinnable against allied AI sides earning 2 gold per village. It would be nice if one could award fractional gold per village - 1.5 per village, say.

My opinions about what parameters affect who are as follows. I'd be interested to see whether other players agree:

More gold per village: favours side(s) with greatest numbers

Fewer villages: slightly favours sides with faster units.
The new AI is a significantly more competent village-manager than the old one. Old AI, I reckoned fewer villages hurt the AI more than it hurt me. New AI, I think it's about equal.

Smaller keeps: slightly slows unit production for the richer sides. Needs to be <6 hexes to be noticeable. This may even help the AI by making it churn out unified squads of units at a time, rather than units in ones and twos.

Fog and shroud: favours the more numerous side(s). Against the AI, these factors can make its initial rushes more damaging, and caution forces you to slow your advance, giving the AI a greater economic advantage while you're creeping forward. Shroud also forces you to pay closer attention to your village count, in case a scout sneaks past without your noticing.

Bigger maps: favours the human

Unlimited turns: favours the human

100% experience: favours the human

Map design: with a 2vs1 random map, label the 4 corners ABCD working round clockwise and assume the human is at point C. I found it the AI's keeps were at AB or AD, I had half a map worth of villages to collect, and could usually turn it into a single-front conflict. That gave me a good chance of winning at 1 gold per village, and a long slow, drawn-out agonising defeat at 2 gold per village. If the AI was at BD, I'd be starting in the middle of a pincer movement and I'd have a proper fight on my hands at 1 gold per village, and I'd face pretty rapid destruction at 2 gold per village.

[Badut]

Yeah, I wanted to improve as a player so I needed to find way to make the AI more challenging.

I can't handle 2 AI's yet so I guess a good middle point is to give a single AI a gold advantage. Thanks for the suggestions.

Edit:

The new AI in 1.9.x is better and I've had to tone back the settings a bit.

I checked the changelogs for 1.9.0, 1.9.1 and 1.9.2 and the only changes to AI were bugfixes.
Have there been improvements to the AI that aren't listed in the changelog? or were the bugfixes enough to make the AI a (slightly) more formidable opponent?

[Simons Mith]

The new AI in 1.9.x is better and I've had to tone back the settings a bit.

I checked the changelogs for 1.9.0, 1.9.1 and 1.9.2 and the only changes to AI were bugfixes.
Have there been improvements to the AI that aren't listed in the changelog? or were the bugfixes enough to make the AI a (slightly) more formidable opponent?

Ah, good point. More likely the new AI came in earlier, in 1.8(?), and I didn't immediately notice. I didn't use 1.8 for very long at all, I switched to the dev version instead. I've always used the 'default' AI, and it was some unknown time after the default became the 'RCA' AI that I began to realise that once-tight battles were now consistently going against me.

[Caphriel]

Yeah, I wanted to improve as a player so I needed to find way to make the AI more challenging.

I can't handle 2 AI's yet so I guess a good middle point is to give a single AI a gold advantage. Thanks for the suggestions.

Increasing the AI's income will provide a better experience than increasing it's starting gold, overall. If you increase the starting gold only, you'll experience a large early rush followed by an easy clean-up after you survive that. If you give it a little extra starting gold and a somewhat improved income, you'll have constant increased pressure to work against.

I haven't played against the AI in a long time, but unless it's learned to retreat, it won't provide a comparable experience to playing against humans. While you'll improve as a player against the AI, you won't get much better against humans, and may even pick up some habits that make you play worse against humans.

[Badut]

I haven't played against the AI in a long time, but unless it's learned to retreat, it won't provide a comparable experience to playing against humans. While you'll improve as a player against the AI, you won't get much better against humans, and may even pick up some habits that make you play worse against humans.

I know that at some stage I will stop improving unless I play some decent human players but I don't think I've reached that stage yet.
It's not that I don't want to play humans, I just lack the time and my internet connection is flaky

[Caphriel]

Fair enough, I don't play much anymore, due to lack of time.