AI Issue: Emptying All Enemy Archers' Arrows with 1 Person

[abc123456]

AI issue that lets you easily waste all the enemy archers' arrows with just 1 person.
Then you can you just advance your troops with no enemy missiles left.

My theory is that sometimes the AI decides it is in a safe position for archers, like high ground, and decides to unload all their arrows on 1 person far away.

Bannerlord beta branch: e1.4.2.231320

 

[Lord Irontoe]

You've just stumbled on to an age-old M&B strategy right there, though its traditionally done on horseback while circling the archers at the edge of their range. I'm not sure how to fix this without creating a far more sophisticated AI. I mean it looks like the archers are doing their best given the situation. They're hugely outnumbered, so they wisely staked out the high ground and refuse to down off the hill, and they're shooting at the only target within range. Its just their bad luck and worse aim that you didn't die on the first volley.

Maybe they shouldn't be shooting at their extreme maximum range and should hold fire until the target is closer and they have a better shot. That would prevent this tactic, but then the player could still cheese them by standing at the edge of their effective range and picking them all off with his own bow, since he wouldn't have that limitation. I think until they can develop Westworld quality AI, there are always going to be ways to exploit their weaknesses.

 

[abc123456]

Maybe they shouldn't be shooting at their extreme maximum range and should hold fire until the target is closer and they have a better shot. That would prevent this tactic, but then the player could still cheese them by standing at the edge of their effective range and picking them all off with his own bow, since he wouldn't have that limitation

I know about the warband horse circle draw arrow tactic and people must have talked about it all the way back in warband days.
Still I love this game and just drawing attention to the matter hopefully there is a solution.

Hold fire until target is closer.
If player draws his bow, enemy archers move closer to shoot back.
If player runs back, archers run back.
So make the achers' movement dynamic, adjusting to the player.

I am no game or AI programmer, but in my head that sounds ok? I am not sure about the performance implications though.

 

[Lord Irontoe]

Yeah, it could certainly be better. I just don't know how much can be expected of this level of AI. They seem to have conflicting goals there. They want to stay in their defensive position while still trying to kill the target. Their strategy would work pretty well in a normal situation where your whole line was advancing on them. Then all those missed shots would be hitting other soldiers. But they always get confused dealing with stray enemies, which is why horse archers always wreak such havoc on formation. If its possible for the devs to make them smarter about their overall situational awareness, they should definitely focus on that as a main priority. I just wonder if this is the limit of their capabilities.

 

[abc123456]

Yeah, it could certainly be better. I just don't know how much can be expected of this level of AI. They seem to have conflicting goals there. They want to stay in their defensive position while still trying to kill the target. Their strategy would work pretty well in a normal situation where your whole line was advancing on them. Then all those missed shots would be hitting other soldiers. But they always get confused dealing with stray enemies, which is why horse archers always wreak such havoc on formation. If its possible for the devs to make them smarter about their overall situational awareness, they should definitely focus on that as a main priority. I just wonder if this is the limit of their capabilities.

I know for certain it is not the limits of AI capabilities we have today because we have seen some incredible machine learning algorithms applied to games like Starcraft and Dota and even For Honor. Just a matter of priorities, resource management and design choices by TaleWorlds.

 

[Lord Irontoe]

I know for certain it is not the limits of AI capabilities we have today because we have seen some incredible machine learning algorithms applied to games like Starcraft and Dota and even For Honor. Just a matter of priorities, resource management and design choices by TaleWorlds.

That's probably true. I think sometimes that TW overextended themselves trying to create so many new complex systems for the game, and should've been focusing more on the stuff that really makes a difference, like the battle and campaign ai. I can do without a living economy, but good AI is essential in this kind of game.

 

[Brentimus Maximus]

I loved to do this when I was outnumbered in Warband, however, if I hadn't upgraded my horse and Armour, half the time they'd knock me off my horse and finish the job before my troops could back me up.

 

[Because]

Personally I'd say that it is a fairly niche exploit in a single player game so I'd say that there are more important things to worry about. Plus you have to take a lot of arrows to make an enemy army actually run out of arrows. It would only work on a single wave as it would be tricky to do if the enemy has waves. Also unless you are fighting a smallish niche enemy force like forest bandits, most other forces will have infantry or horseman that will make it very hard to pull this tactic off.
Most importantly it also involves a player standing around and actually spending time getting shot at by arrows, if there are players happy enough to spend that much time playing watch the arrow just to draw out the arrows of a on foot missile only enemy let them. Me I think I'd at least opt to do it on a horse and be shooting back ; ) (albeit with the risk of getting me or my horse shot to bits).

 

[benchwarmer]

Archers seems worthless toward the moving targets.
They can't hit a darn thing when things are moving. Especially moving sides or in angles.

Javelin throwers appears they will predict where are you going to be, rather than targeting at where are you at.

 

[RyeBread]

The more complexity you give to an AI the more problems you create. The simplest solution would be something like, if an AI has taken 4-5 shots at a single target without hitting any target, either switch target or hold fire. This might even make archers more efficient in sieges, stopping them aiming at a target in an awkward position they can't quite reach. However, that solution itself would create new exploits and problems that you would need to add another layer of complexity to solve.

With a game as sandbox oriented as Bannerlord there is always the option for the player to make the game completely boring for themselves. This is a common problem in game design because people tend to play games in a way that favours a winning strategy over having an enjoyable experience. But we're also kind of lazy, and for the amount of battles in a typical hour of playing Bannerlord, I doubt many people will use this exploit regularly.

 

[abc123456]

Personally I'd say that it is a fairly niche exploit in a single player game so I'd say that there are more important things to worry about. Plus you have to take a lot of arrows to make an enemy army actually run out of arrows. It would only work on a single wave as it would be tricky to do if the enemy has waves. Also unless you are fighting a smallish niche enemy force like forest bandits, most other forces will have infantry or horseman that will make it very hard to pull this tactic off.
Most importantly it also involves a player standing around and actually spending time getting shot at by arrows, if there are players happy enough to spend that much time playing watch the arrow just to draw out the arrows of a on foot missile only enemy let them. Me I think I'd at least opt to do it on a horse and be shooting back ; ) (albeit with the risk of getting me or my horse shot to bits).

• there is no reason why this can't be put into the backlog of todos, up to TW to prioritise when
• this issue also works on troops with infantry and horseman. I have seen this happen with infantry in a circle formation around their archers waiting and wasting arrows.
• this issue also works on troops with javelins. I have seen infantry only troops with throwing weapons wasting their throwing weapons too.
  • waiting for throwing weapons to exhaust is faster than arrows so people could wait a bit

So, important to note this exploit also works with throwing weapons too like javelins, throwing axes, etc.

 

[Aggrobiscuit]

Should be easy to fix the AI. If there's a single target, they should stop firing and conserve ammo at like 75%

 

[Ananda_The_Destroyer]

Should be easy to fix the AI. If there's a single target, they should stop firing and conserve ammo at like 75%

Hah hah yes, maybe they can come refill my arrows too while I slaughter them all.

 

[Aggrobiscuit]

Hah hah yes, maybe they can come refill my arrows too while I slaughter them all.

Well if you're firing at them, obviously they should shoot at you.

 

[guiskj]

I know for certain it is not the limits of AI capabilities we have today because we have seen some incredible machine learning algorithms applied to games like Starcraft and Dota and even For Honor. Just a matter of priorities, resource management and design choices by TaleWorlds.

It is important not to confuse coloquial AI with "true" AI. What most people call AI in games is nothing but scripted behaviour. True AI is non-deterministic, specially when it comes from the realm of Machine Learning (a subset of Computer AI)

True AI is often not suited for Video Games for two reasons:
1- Machine Learning and Neural Network construction is as much an art as science. Good developers on these areas are scarce and expensive.
2- True AI is alien. It is not great a mimicking human behaviour. Computer Neural Networks are not Neurons, and their input/outputs are not our 5 senses and muscles. When DeepMind made history by deafting a Go champion (a game thousands of years old and one of the more complex games ever created by humans), it was noted that it behaved in a way that no human had ever tried to play Go before. Something similar happened with the famous Dota loss to DeepMind's AI. Several big players noted how it behaved in ways they had never thought of playing before.

AI is hard to code. Be it the coloquial one or true one. Changes to small behaviours can lead to unpredicted fallouts in other areas. The scenarios are so vast that is often not feasible to create exhaustive automated testing.

Unless I am mistaken, Bannerlord uses Agent-Oriented programming, which is different from the far more common Object-Oriented or Functional programming paradigms. I am only tangentially familiar with the concept, but I would imagine it is not as straight forward to automate testing as the two others.

Automated testing is the important part here, because without it software changes become costly and risky. So don't fault them too harshly for iterating "slowly" on AI issues.

 

[Virthuss]

This strategy works on both way. Align your archers and if the enemy is a Khuzait with mounted archers, your troops will empty their quivers trying to shoot them.

There should be a option to tell your troops on which enemy to focus, for example the cavalry targeting the archers.

 

[Askorti]

There should be a option to tell your troops on which enemy to focus, for example the cavalry targeting the archers.

When you give command of a group of troops to the AI, you get reports that they intend to attack a particular enemy unit. It makes me wonder, whether what you talk about is already implemented but unavailable to the player directly, or if those reports are just bs.

 

[Brentimus Maximus]

There should be a option to tell your troops on which enemy to focus, for example the cavalry targeting the archers.

That would be pretty cool!

 

[somethinglightthat]

My opinion is that if archers are firing on the same target and that target is a player and damage is not being taken by the archer(s) accuracy and damage increases over time with the intent of killing a player that does this.

I'm sure you'd have to fine tune that idea but you get the point.

 

[abc123456]

This strategy works on both way. Align your archers and if the enemy is a Khuzait with mounted archers, your troops will empty their quivers trying to shoot them.

There should be a option to tell your troops on which enemy to focus, for example the cavalry targeting the archers.

Actually there is a command to tell your archers to hold fire, so it doesn't work on both ways.