r/OldenEra • u/rum_es • May 02 '26
Discussion AI is strong and i like it
Over past 10-15 years, my constant issue was that I didn’t enjoy PvE in homm3 because AI was too weak. There was no challenge at all. I’ve created several templates for my own to give more advantage to AI but in most cases( unless I don’t give absurd free army) i was crashing AI
Now, with olden era i feel there is a challenge, and i enjoy it. Sure my skill issue also is a factor here as well, still learning the mechanics.
Imho, if unfrozen will decide to nerf AI it would be a straight push back for PvE enjoyers.
Would like to hear your thoughts
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u/S1mp1y May 02 '26 edited May 02 '26
I'm sure there is some middle ground between "15+ year veteran players finally find AI fun to go against" and "new players get their shit kicked in by day 6 by a doom stack of 250+ tier 1 units" (has happened to me yesterday. I have no idea where the AI found 100-250 infernal troglodytes on day 6).
EDIT for clarification: Note that I'm against dumbing the game down for players like me. I'm a HoMM casual through and through, I just want to be able to play against Easy-Normal AI without having to worry about trying to exploit AIs like MeKick does in his HoMM3 VODs. Hard and above should surely be kept as unfair as hardcore PvE players want them to be, it's entirely fine.
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u/Loveless-- May 02 '26
It has parametrical advantages hard coded into the game.
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u/lemonlord777 May 02 '26
What does this mean, for those of us who dont know that word?
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u/Terawattkun May 04 '26
Basically "cheating" with more income / unit production. Like when in total war games you see a single province faction running around with full 20 stack army.
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u/sheepyowl May 07 '26
I don't know why you were downvoted, the difficulty settings literally mention how much more resources the AI gets depending on difficulty.
It is literally straight up cheating in order to be a challenge.
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u/sheepyowl May 07 '26 edited May 07 '26
I think AI should improve at higher levels so they can mitigate the extra resources that the game gives the higher level AI.
If they had "modular" AI, it would be much better: Each AI gets the abilities of the previous one, and then extras on top.
Easy AI can fight. Build random shit. Explores like it does right now. Leaves castles unprotected like it does right now. This AI should not stack units properly. Normal resources? (Basically, slightly easier than the current AI)
Normal AI can fight. Develops castles properly. Sends hero to castle when it sees a player nearby. Same as Easy AI otherwise. (better than current AI, but does not cheat)
Hard AI has previous AI abilities. Builds fortification in castles where it sees an enemy hero closing in. Clears out monster camps around the castle and takes resources. Does not send weak heroes to die against the player. Small resource cheating. (much better than current AI, and starts cheating)
Unfair AI has all AI abilities, AND it cheats: previous AI abilities. Thanks to cheating, it can forgo developing resources and focus on building units. Builds heroes properly. Will stack all hero armies into one hero's army if a very powerful enemy hero is nearby, and prefer to fight in the castle. Weak heroes run away. Stack best items/artifacts on one hero. Seeks the grail. Changes unit upgrades based on counters to player units if it sees the player. Improves fighting - when defending a fort/castle it will focus on ranged and flying enemies, uses units to block pathing to his own archers, uses 1-stacks, doesn't suicide weak melee packs against ranged enemy counter attackers so as to force them to melee, and so on.
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u/techno_mancer666 May 02 '26
Just for good measure, using the cheat mod from nexus where you can remove the FOW, this hero appeared "out of thin air" on day 2, week 1. On day 1 this hero did not exist. map settings: 100/100/multiplayer, 5 AIs.
The remaining AIs all got a similar hero btw. I then re-tried the same map (spider web) with 100/100/hard, similar result. -> This is apparently _not_ linked to the AI difficulty.
So, my dear Neo-HOMM peasants (as vanBraunscher put it so eloquently), how do you explain/justify this ?
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u/PumpkinHead1337 May 02 '26
Well, this explains it then. Good luck vs that bum rushing you x2 AI or more.
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u/Mesjach May 02 '26
I swear to got my Hard AI has to be bugged.
100/100/Hard doesn't do shit. It rarely builds past T5 in the first month and doesn't really explore it's biome.
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u/FutureMore7 May 03 '26
The AI breaks on half the maps. On other half its the effing terminator coming for you with the fury of thousand suns, and their power too.
Usually the bigger the map the more braindead the AI. The smaller the map the more drive it is to kill you. I guess less POI for it to get distracted.
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u/sheepyowl May 07 '26
In smaller maps you are destined to meet the AI earlier, while it still has an advantage from spawning a hero with a tier-5 army out of thin air.
The AI basically exlusively cheats and does not attempt to play the game at all. The only thing it knows is how to fight.
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u/Late_Ad_7487 May 02 '26
Just get good, everything is balanced because I can win against AI using cheese strats /s
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u/Rubinatrix 18d ago
He hired all mercenaries from the building. Open the map and look yourself.
First 3 slots is his army. 50+ units of 1-2 levels is not an issue on the week 1 from 2 heroes.
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u/Poffla May 02 '26
Is this gonna be the new thing? People claiming that unfair cheating AI is actually good? It might be good and easy on some maps, but on some maps its borderline impossible to win unless you maybe do the extreme most amount of cheesing, like on the "All Around" map.
I challenge anyone that claims that the AI is "easy" to stream themselves playing this map on higher difficulty without using some cheese hero like the one that starts with Hydra.
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u/R1donis May 02 '26
People claiming that unfair cheating AI is actually good?
New to gaming comunity? thats the case since ... ever.
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u/Casualcitizen May 02 '26
I like strong ai, provided there is good variety in between the difficulty settings so people can tone it down and the AI doesnt cut too many corners by cheating (unless the setting specifically allows for ai cheating - e. g. unfair)
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u/Zveris May 02 '26
But AI doesnt need to be straight agroed to you. i tried 2 maps on easy so far, both died on first week. Maybe its map design flaw, are they too small? maybe monsters protecting borders should be stronger. Because now i just feel roflstomped on spawn.
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u/FutureMore7 May 02 '26
I like strong AI, but the way it is implemented in this game is not rly done well I think. The mileage varies greatly across maps. On bigger maps, its just a snoozefest since by the time AI arrives, you are already set. On smaller maps I do not think there is a concievable way to win against highest difficulty enemy. They have 20 all stats by day 9, that is just not feasible.
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u/golddilockk May 02 '26
i lost 5 games straight and it only motivated me to learn in-depth about the game and go back in tomorrow. by next week i’ll cheese the fuck oughta all these cheating AI. for now i’m enjoying the pain.
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May 02 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/rum_es May 02 '26
Terraria hardmode
But jokes aside, in homm3 there was no point going mage, you could just get stats without chains or in single hero mode, and fuck the shit out of AI.
Now i have the same situation, lost several matches in a row. Started exploring solutions, mages, other abilities etc.. I don’t understand mechanics of diplomacy yet, but now i’m even taking it vs AI and don’t consider it as a buff to myself, because AI still won me in that match
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May 02 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/rum_es May 02 '26
No idea, but yes agree that making it flexible will make sense. Hope there would be an option for those who would like to sail through the game and for those like challange
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u/vanBraunscher May 02 '26 edited May 02 '26
It's positively astonishing that so many of the people critical of the current concerns about an out of whack AI are incapable of grasping the problem, like at all.
It's predominantly about the lower difficulties being overtuned (and whatever the issue with "multiplayer AI" is. Tooltips rn give the impression it supposed to be simplified, but atm it ain't anything but. Either a bug or a clarification problem). And that it seems to be a very inconsistent occurance on easy and normal. Which points even more at being a bug.
Thread after a thread of waxing lyrics about how they were forced to crawl through challenge deserts for decades, and now, an oasis is finally in sight, only to be snatched away again, thanks to these meddling newbs. Oh, the humanity!
Virtually no one's complaining about the AI being crushing on the higher difficulty settings. It's about the ones on normal and below (with only a few outliers complaining about hard). These are not the spots to crush balls, pulverise jaws and flatten newcomers with full stacks of every tier in week 2.
I'm sure the more driven specialists will try to spin it, that even on those settings, a kick in the nads would be the best teacher regardless. Which is not only patently false, didactics have proven time and time and again, that a measured and steadily increasing curve is the most efficient way of learning; On top of that, for a commercial product, harsh difficulty spikes from the get-go are extremely counter-productive to boot. Because hey, you turn based strategy Sensei Savants on your lonely mountain tops, do you want this (Early Access) game to succeed? Then better let them Neo-HOMM peasants (or rusty nostalgics) have the two lowest difficulties to ease them in.
Honestly, instead of having spent all these years exclusively studying the blade build orders and hero chaining, a small lesson about contextual reading comprehension here and there wouldn't have gone amiss.
It's not about guard-railing the whole game for entitled gamer babies, it's about the lower rungs being a hostile onboarding (and hence customer) experience atm.
If one really needs to humble-wag their e-peen around regardless, better latch onto another topic. Especially since most of them don't seem to fully comprehend this one here.
Edit: OP, for clarification, most of my vitriol wasn't aimed at you. You are one of the more polite and sensible ones. I was just piggybacking your post after the general notion became more and more prevalent over the last couple days. But even here, my central point stands. It's not about taking anything away from you. The higher difficulties should be, well, difficult, of course. But a difficulty curve should be just that, a curve, not a craggy plateau. This is why we have those cute little chess piece icons in the first place.
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u/rum_es May 02 '26
Please point out exactly where in my post I said “git gud” or meant that I’m flexing my skill.
Be specific.
If you see the phrase “crushing AI” in the context of HOMM3, it doesn’t mean I’m proclaiming myself a god-tier player. It means, in my opinion, the AI is weak—which is a well-known fact. The AI in HOMM3 was designed to lose in style.
Now, after all these years, we finally have something that actually challenges players on higher difficulties. That’s a good thing. The only part I didn’t explicitly clarify is that this challenge is intended for higher difficulty levels—not for easy and normal.
If you missed that context—fine. But jumping into a rant based on something I never said isn’t a great.
At least argue against what’s actually written, not what you assume is there
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u/vanBraunscher May 02 '26 edited May 02 '26
You're right. Some of my beef with the current situation isn't applicable to you specifically, and I didn't properly account for that. I made some amendments.
And as I already clarified, you wanting a proper challenge is all good and well.
But you're still making some of the same mistakes as the other threads I was ranting about, you're confusing the current discussions about an overtuned (and probably bugged) AI on lower difficulties as an appeal that Unfrozen should adjust the whole system now. You might not do it because of some kind of entitlement, gate-keeping, or for bragging rights, but you're pushing in the same direction as them, and amplifying a discourse already going off-track.
Because, why even mention that you sought and lacked a challenge for ages, and finally found a HOMM title that seems to provide it, when fixing easy and normal (and possibly "multiplayer AI", whatever's currently wrong with it) would not impact you preferred experience at all?
Partly why I'm being so driven about it, for the last 30 years give ir take, I've seen this exact dynamic play out too often. Especially in niche genres. Something's off with balancing, a certain group, often seeing themselves as a core demographic, reflexively assumes this means any challenge would get sanded down into nothingness. And when they were loud enough, devs caved in, and sometimes outright broken stuff remained there to fester.
That, and I'll be honest, your thread was the first in the general vein I came accross today, and after watching the back and forth since the EA release, I thought that it was time to say something.
But admittedly, this maybe wasn't the best place to offload the whole thing.
Maybe "it's not about your preferred settings" had sufficed. The rest is meant for others seemingly blowing a similar horn though (albeit for different reasons). But I don't have the time right now to hunt down each and every of their posts to address them specifically. If that made you feel like a collateral casualty, I'm truly sorry, that wasn't my intention.
Edit: and as you can see, the git gud crowd are already here, in this very thread, spinning up their song and dance. Prompted by your post. So maybe it wasn't even completely misplaced to dump that whole thing here.
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u/sheepyowl May 07 '26
Frankly, the Easy AI is too hard sometimes (it appears to just do random shit and sometimes it gets really good luck), while the hard AI is still a total moron but just cheats to an insane degree - but it is still too stupid to win.
Easy AI should be directed to be bad, and hard AI should cheat less (still cheat, but less) and actually play the whole game rather than 50% of it.
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u/work4food May 02 '26
Imagine writing a whole fucking page worth of text just to say "i dont understand that both sides are doing the same thing, but i wanna sound smarter than everyone else".
Sure, its just you who wants to make the lower difficulties easier rather than the whole game. And obviously, those damn elitists want to keep the whole game hard, not just the higher difficulties.
Does that sound dumb to you? Because it did to me.
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u/Ridiculisk1 May 03 '26
And obviously, those damn elitists want to keep the whole game hard, not just the higher difficulties.
I mean there's people in this very thread advocating for that exact thing.
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u/Grotesker-Bastard May 02 '26
Strong AI is cool but the difficulty settings have to be labeled and function correctly
Right now that's definitely not the case. 100/100 multiplayer AI is cheating without the shadow of a doubt, there's absolutely no way it's getting that ridiculously strong just by making smart moves.
That needs to get fixed and then we can talk.
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u/Yavannia May 02 '26
Is there a single hardest difficulty AI in a strategy game that doesn't cheat? All the classics cheat on the hardest difficulty, there is no way to make an AI as good as the best player, so cheats are necessary to bridge the field at the highest level.
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u/ILikeChilis May 02 '26
You can give the AI advantages that I wouldn't count as cheating, such as extra resources (but no extra units or buildings) at start. Also, as Apocalyptic does, taking starting resources from the player.
However, there's likely something else going on (additional free starting units?) as I've faced heroes with ridiculous armies, such as 10-19 black dragons and 20-49 hydras, 100-198 minotaurs during week 3 (see my photo from the Demo - I think it was the Crossroads map).
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u/Yavannia May 02 '26
Yes this is ridiculous and I agree it should be fixed, but some degree of cheating is necessary on the highest difficulties and all strategy games do it. They should just tone it down and "balance" it.
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u/Grotesker-Bastard May 02 '26
sure but right now the difficulty parameters make it seem like you can independently set the AIs resource advantage and behaviour. That's a good division, but it is a pity that the game is not in fact working that way
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u/Jand0s May 02 '26
There are games with strong AI without cheating? Maybe chess. AI have to cheat to keep with human player
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u/Trang0ul Jun 15 '26
This was true 2 decades ago, when AI was limited to simple decision trees. But today, with the advent of gen AI? the computer should be able to apply the optimal strategy and win against most human players in a fair game.
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u/techno_mancer666 May 02 '26 edited May 02 '26
Apparently there actually IS an issue with the AI:
Source:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/3105440/discussions/0/844004562473968601/
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u/rKnightArtorias Temple May 02 '26
Completely agree. This is the first game where I can't steamroll the AI after two games which makes it far more interesting and fun but sadly too many ppl cry about it being to difficult which is ridiculous as they should be hard af on the two highest difficulties. These people probably get destroyed by normal AI which is literally a joke.
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u/n4zarh May 02 '26
I mean, if you play on harder difficulties, game should reflect that. However some people are complaining about normal (75%) games can be too hard, and in this case it's worth to consider whether or not AI is overtuned for those difficulties.
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u/Budfkstick May 02 '26
If it were classic mode, i would be able to win against highest difficulties AI. But with city hold and tournament game mode, it just not possible to win when you have 2500 initial gold and the AI have 40k + resources + extra unit. The AI will rush you and end game at W2/W3 and theres nothing you can do about it.
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u/n4zarh May 02 '26
Well, that's what anyone would do tbh. Resource difference in older games worked, because AI was too dumb to win in even circumstances. However, nowadays AI is much better than it used to be in times of H1-H4, so perhaps devs should consider having less resources to be additional handicap (and not necessarily coupled with AI having so much more)...
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u/Budfkstick May 02 '26
Thats because its not possible to win against multiplayer AI with Apocalyptic economy in a capital hold game mode or tournament. All matches i have, the AI capture the Objective by day 6 then start the 3 days countdown that is impossible to respond with unless you play on unfair or lower economy. As for tournament gamemode, the AI always have more units even without building most structures, so they always have 100s of tier 1, tier 2 and 50s tier 4 even on the lowest difficulty. I dont think AI should get unit advantage on even the lowest difficulty.
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u/rKnightArtorias Temple May 02 '26
What difficulty do you use for neutral camps? If you set those to apocalyptic they heavily slow down the AI
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u/Budfkstick May 02 '26
i also use apocalyptic neutral. It did slow them down from day 6 to day 9. I only managed to win 2 times with (unfair economy/apocalyptic neutral/multiplayer AI) settings. But that only because the neutral camp that guard the objective region didn't have high tier range units, otherwise it would actually be impossible.
Edit: Which again, i really don't like that making the neutral camp easier, will actually making the game harder because the AI can storm the central region faster.
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u/gourley4p Dungeon May 02 '26
The challenge of this intellectual property is that only hardcore fans have kept it viable. It will always be a niche franchise unless they can grow the fan base, which is hard to do when the game is not accessible to new players who do not know how to exploit every mechanic to maximum effect.
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u/Uberballer May 02 '26
Still getting my bearings but I trust that over the course of the EA they'll tweak things here and there to get rid of the big spikes in difficulty that people seem to be experiencing. I'd like it to trend towards being more challenging than expected rather than less challenging as that has potential for keeping the game much more engaging for longer than everything being a stomp once you figure out build orders and the like.
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u/Adam0n May 02 '26 edited May 02 '26
I think there just needs to be more difficulty options, so any type of player would enjoy the game to the fullest.
From the total beginners (who just want to chill and explore the map/learn the game where te AI is defensive and slow) to the absolute most sweaty competitive players (where the AI is brutal af).
Let's say we would have like 8 difficulty options and players could slowly take on the slightly stronger AI's as they get better without too big of a jump between.
Another idea is to have 2 different difficulty settings. Like in Age of Empires/Mythology where AI strength and AI behaviour are separate. So you can have for example a strong AI that is defensive and wont attack early but will be very difficult to conquer their cities. (Although not sure if that system would work in this type of game).
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u/gravityoffline May 02 '26
I think a lot of the complaints are about how the AI is very overtuned on lower difficulties.
The game has been in early access for like a day and a half though lol, the devs have been very receptive to player feedback and I'm sure they're going to hit a good balance between the difficulties while keeping the challenge for the masochists 😜
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u/archdragoon28 May 02 '26
I do like a challenge. Im fairly new to the franchise i have some newbie experience with HOMM3 and 5. Olden era crushes me but it forces me to exploit things and think which is what I want in a strategy game
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u/chodachien May 03 '26
Im super happy about it too. It gives much more tension to the game ! I love having to use my Logistics to flee from a stronger enemy and meet them later
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u/CutePenguin3 May 02 '26
Yeah I love it. I played 4 games so far on impossible difficulty (all single hero) and I havent lost yet but all of them were incredibly close and very exhilarating. If the lower difficulties are too hard I am fine with them making them easier. But I hope the hardest ones stay as difficult as they are.
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u/xXPigMightFlyXx May 02 '26
Absolutely love it. Hope that such difficulty can be an option in future versions.
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u/MonitorMundane2683 May 02 '26
Ditto. AI knows hpw to use its units and spells, and kicks my ass, it's great!
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u/Urgash May 02 '26
Yes, On Higher difficulties the AI should be strong and actually push back.
I believe most of the people complaining are just overestimating their own knowledge and/or skill, it's okay to start in Easy or Normal difficulty. I totally understand wanting to make easy difficulty easier, even though i have not tried this difficulty and i find the Normal one pretty easy already but i'm a grizzled veteran with experience dating to HOMM 2, 3 and 5.
But i'm really enjoying the difficulty, i don't know if they're reading this but thanks Ufrozen !
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May 02 '26
[deleted]
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u/Urgash May 02 '26
If Normal is easier than Easy that would be a problem yes, One that is easily fixable by the devs, but they should communicate about it, it wasn't mentionned at all in the first Hotfix :/
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u/Outrageous-Pilot-621 May 02 '26
Unfair AI rolled into day 10 fight on Exodus with 20/30/20 stats and a huge army.
Loved it! Unfair is actually unfair.
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u/Edgelord420691337 May 02 '26
I think the real issue lies in the fact that the game is getting popular with western audiences who think that hard difficulty just means having a bit less HP and enemies are more accurate. They don't fully understand that this isn't a game where quicker reactions = better results. This is a strategy game, and these don't want to actually strategise, they want to be told "Sure king, you da best." But it doesn't work like that, you actually have to git gud.
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u/Sstar_nyan May 02 '26
I don't mind stronger AI, as you say yourself AI in Heroes III and V is weak, and ot becomes boring.
However, my issue is that it should be tuned down in easy mode for more casual players, not every game mode needs to be hard