Making the AI smarter: What would you do in its' shoes?

[Magical Glace]

Exactly that.

If you were in a reverse situation of typical FE, that is, you have a massive army of "weak" units, your goal is to break through the small line of "elites" the player has and kill The Lord, how would you go about it?

Charging haphazardly clearly does not work, so what to do?

Edited November 2, 2014 by Youmu Konpaku

[dondon151]

the best strategy is to obstruct player units without attacking them. take that, LTC!

[Irysa]

put a ton of ballistas and siege tome users in the back and spam cavalry with forged 1-2 weaponry that all overlap with each other and never ever have them leave the aoe zone. have a magic seal ala kishuna covering everywhere but where your siege tome users are.

[Nicolas]

Give the AI mountain, bunch of WK with canto and make AI as smart as this in FE5. I always remember those little bastard form ch9 in FE5. When I was played this game for first time and did't know about how smart is AI in this game I get rage.

[Refa]

Rig the seize point to explode.

[Dragoncat]

Rig the seize point to explode.

We have a winner, folks.

Being serious now, I guess I would actually consider the weapon triangle. Like if there's a swordmaster blocking the way, I wouldn't send the bunch of axe fighters that are in range. The axe fighters would stay where they are while the cavaliers and other lance users that are slightly out of range would move in. FE AI often ignores the weapon triangle in my experience. I remember a particular fighter/warrior with low hp that attacked promoted Ike with an axe. I don't know whether that guy was suicidal or just plain stupid.

[eclipse]

Not put stray apostrophes where they don't belong!

If I could, I'd change my recruitment requirements to be the following:

- Anyone who can use C rank staves or above, as well as offensive magic

- Magic stat must be at least halfway to one's caps

- Everyone is equipped with Berserk

TAKE THAT PLAYER!

---

If I have to work with only the scrubs I have, I'd crowd everyone around the throne, and then attack in the following priority:

One-hit kills, assuming some arbitrary hit percentage -> X-hit kills, assuming everyone that can kill has some arbitrary hit percentage -> unarmed scrubs

Otherwise, they don't attack.

[Ein]

Maybe not make the AI prioritize how much damage they can deal regardless of potential success.

Better class variety as the game progresses and better level layouts that put the player in a position where they have to think things through a little more than just throwing Sigurd/Sety/some dude or dudette with 1000% crit chance and Vantage/Seth/Titania/Haar/Paired Up Avatar at everything and call it a day.

[Mighty Kamina]

Make the AI consider their chances of hitting and surviving when attacking player units. Also if available, have them go to areas where they can only be attacked by one unit.

[riariadne]

- Anyone who can use C rank staves or above, as well as offensive magic

- Magic stat must be at least halfway to one's caps

- Everyone is equipped with Berserk

Berserk is B rank though. Also you probably wouldn't get very many applicants.

Generally not suicide units, don't rush into bad situations, etc. Refa has the winning idea but yeah.

[eclipse]

Hey, if I'm the evil overlord, I will do things like hack Berserk staves so that they're C rank!

Due to the nature of the game, the odds of "not suiciding" get worse as the game goes on - it would be like asking an AI to play Lunatic+.

[Jiac]

Focus on killing one unit to piss off people who want to have a run without one unit dying.

[Shinehollow]

To realize what class they're attacking so they don't go for someone who beats them in the weapons triangle.Also to have better stats no matter which mode because from my experience with RPGs like this,I know the AI always have lower stats then they should.

[Rapier]

put a ton of ballistas and siege tome users in the back and spam cavalry with forged 1-2 weaponry that all overlap with each other and never ever have them leave the aoe zone. have a magic seal ala kishuna covering everywhere but where your siege tome users are.

This gave me an idea, though I don't know if it'd work: Enemy formations and strategies regarding these formations. You just gave me an example: Some sort of magic seal unit like Kishuna protecting high defense, low res units from being attacked by the player's mages. Alternatively, enemy archers around mages to protect them from horsebirds and the like. Armors with lance/axereavers also sound evil. Horsebirds flanking the player's units also sounds nice, if done well. These are just simple examples, we could expand them until they become more complex - like a puzzle of sorts.

The problem is inserting this kind of stuff in the game.

[GrySun]

If FE9-10, just mass cavalry, they are simply broken with their movement after attacking, making sure that you can continuously beat on 1 guy.

Having a warp staff and warping a strong unit next to the enemy cleric would be extremely rage inducing.

[Chiki]

I don't think the AI can do much apart from avoiding pointless suicidal moves. In most playthroughs, the player's units tend to be just a lot more powerful, so whatever the AI does is usually pointless.

The best thing the AI can do is just suicide on the most fragile player unit until that unit dies.

[BrightBow]

First thing is to pull all forces from all over the map together. If Sleep Staffs and and Long Range magic is available, focus them on the enemy Leader. If Ballista are available, lure them into attack range and focus on one enemy at a time. Otherwise attack head-on.

If unfair instantly moving reinforcements are available, use them to take out the healers. Also, the cavaliers take full advantage of Canto to minimize enemy phase casulties. And healers will actually pay attention when casting they spells would be most effective.

Otherwise, throw units at them until they all run out of weapon charges.

Edited November 2, 2014 by BrightBow

[Kiseki]

If this was Awakening, I'd get all of my mooks to S-Support and Pair Up to demolish the main Lord's band. Throw their game-breaking tactic back at them. Other than that I don't know anything else besides making the game entirely luck-based.

If enemy Dancers can actually do their job in games other than Thracia 776 I'm down for it.

[X-Naut]

Abandon the chapter and go after them later after excessive level grinding and weapon forging.

Or ambush spawn several mooks adjacent to the enemy leader with silver forges or effective weapons. Chest-bursting or not he's not going to withstand that for several turns.

[Gryz]

Summary of the FEU topic on FE7 AI (scroll down to section on targeting)

http://feuniverse.us/t/fe7-the-official-ai-documentation-thread/348/16

GBA enemies are actually capable of caring about their safety to some extent. Although, many GBA enemies are assigned an AI 3 byte that negates those concerns with a zero multiplier.

Edit: Some clarification, all GBA enemies have a preference for battles where the defender cannot counter. I'm referring to the AI considering the effectiveness of the defender's counter when counters cannot be avoided.

Edited November 4, 2014 by Gryz

[Jotari]

Have them actually use rallies effectively.

Baiting enemies out also tends to be a safe strategy for the player, it would be kind of cool if the AI tried to bait the player out by moving in range of one strong unit and waiting at the edge of another's range until there's enough soldier to rush the strong one if s/he's not coming out to play.

[dondon151]

Baiting enemies out also tends to be a safe strategy for the player, it would be kind of cool if the AI tried to bait the player out by moving in range of one strong unit and waiting at the edge of another's range until there's enough soldier to rush the strong one if s/he's not coming out to play.

FE12 has configurations in which enemy units won't attack you unless more than one of them (in a given group) is in range to attack a player unit.

[XeKr]

FE12 has configurations in which enemy units won't attack you unless more than one of them (in a given group) is in range to attack a player unit.

Fairly common in FE13 too.

Re: ot Was going to rant about AI design but eh. Regardless, a lot of suggestions itt do not make the AI any smarter. It’s somewhat interesting the things sometimes conflated with intelligence. <_<

Edited November 4, 2014 by XeKr

[Mekkah]

If I'm an area-based reinforcement unit and someone moves through my area without stopping I would probably still appear!

Edited November 4, 2014 by Mekkah

[Topazd]

Rig the seize point to explode.

That reminded me how Lorenz actually exploded in FE3 when he committed suicide on the seize point, haha.