Returning to Bannerlord

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I picked up the game as soon it was available and played the Hell out of it during the early, super-buggy phase. It didn't bother me that it was a mess -- we all knew we were getting into an Early Release situation. Fun was had, life caught up with me, and I ended up dropping the game.

Reloaded it this week, as I had some time to kill and I was remembering Warband fondly. I figured I'd see where Bannerlord's at these days.

Then I watched the AI repeatedly do brilliant things, like have my Sturgian comrades launch their 400 soldier army right at the Empire's 1200+ army. :neutral: Sure, they changed their minds at the last minute and tried to turn around, but by that point they were in spitting distance and it was a little too late.

Or trying a prison break, and watching my wounded buddy sprint right up the stairs and run into a guard who one-shots him. The Prison Break was necessary as the Ransom Broker can't secure the release of your companions, but while in there you can't even issue party commands to try and get your near-dead companion to at least stand still while you clear the room. No, the blithering fool does suicide charges.

I know the game's still not considered 'finished'... but my God, this AI is horrendous. How is it that earlier iterations of the game, over a decade old, did this better? This game has so much potential, but it fails to even live up to the mods that were done for the older version. There are some very nice touches that speak of where this could go, but in the year and a half that the game has been released it remains feeling very much like a shell -- and even the basic elements don't seem to be working yet. :sad:
 
Is the AI ever any good in any game ? "A.I." is false advertising, there's nothing Intelligent about "Artty".

I keep my AI companion armies close via continually forming armies, just to get them near then disband. My caravans keep getting destroyed by HUGE gangs of "pick-pockets" ...errrr

I NEED full control of ALL my companions ..

.
 
I picked up the game as soon it was available and played the Hell out of it during the early, super-buggy phase. It didn't bother me that it was a mess -- we all knew we were getting into an Early Release situation. Fun was had, life caught up with me, and I ended up dropping the game.

Reloaded it this week, as I had some time to kill and I was remembering Warband fondly. I figured I'd see where Bannerlord's at these days.

Then I watched the AI repeatedly do brilliant things, like have my Sturgian comrades launch their 400 soldier army right at the Empire's 1200+ army. :neutral: Sure, they changed their minds at the last minute and tried to turn around, but by that point they were in spitting distance and it was a little too late.

Or trying a prison break, and watching my wounded buddy sprint right up the stairs and run into a guard who one-shots him. The Prison Break was necessary as the Ransom Broker can't secure the release of your companions, but while in there you can't even issue party commands to try and get your near-dead companion to at least stand still while you clear the room. No, the blithering fool does suicide charges.

I know the game's still not considered 'finished'... but my God, this AI is horrendous. How is it that earlier iterations of the game, over a decade old, did this better? This game has so much potential, but it fails to even live up to the mods that were done for the older version. There are some very nice touches that speak of where this could go, but in the year and a half that the game has been released it remains feeling very much like a shell -- and even the basic elements don't seem to be working yet. :sad:
Hum you cannot give orders to the lord in the prison-break (no F1, F2, ….), but you can speak to him at the start, and ask him not to move.
I did one recently in the beta version.
 
I picked up the game as soon it was available and played the Hell out of it during the early, super-buggy phase. It didn't bother me that it was a mess -- we all knew we were getting into an Early Release situation. Fun was had, life caught up with me, and I ended up dropping the game.

Reloaded it this week, as I had some time to kill and I was remembering Warband fondly. I figured I'd see where Bannerlord's at these days.

Then I watched the AI repeatedly do brilliant things, like have my Sturgian comrades launch their 400 soldier army right at the Empire's 1200+ army. :neutral: Sure, they changed their minds at the last minute and tried to turn around, but by that point they were in spitting distance and it was a little too late.

Or trying a prison break, and watching my wounded buddy sprint right up the stairs and run into a guard who one-shots him. The Prison Break was necessary as the Ransom Broker can't secure the release of your companions, but while in there you can't even issue party commands to try and get your near-dead companion to at least stand still while you clear the room. No, the blithering fool does suicide charges.

I know the game's still not considered 'finished'... but my God, this AI is horrendous. How is it that earlier iterations of the game, over a decade old, did this better? This game has so much potential, but it fails to even live up to the mods that were done for the older version. There are some very nice touches that speak of where this could go, but in the year and a half that the game has been released it remains feeling very much like a shell -- and even the basic elements don't seem to be working yet. :sad:
This reminds me of an old song, " I'm going back to Cally, to Cally, to Cally... I'm going back to Cally, Calradia."
 
I totally agree with you, AI in games actually stands for Artificial Idiocy, not the AI movies are about, the one that's going to take over Humanity!
Indeed, it’s just about software calculation. The computer knows all, sees all, auto-aim….while intelligence is the ability to face the unknown, and to miss also ?
The game is just « reading » what the player is doing, and has predefined answers ?
 
Yes but AI varies in terms of how enjoyable it is to play against. Of course the computer always knows where the player is and exactly when hes clicking the mouse -but a good AI programmer creates the illusion of a plausible and hopefully even emergent reaction.

Take Ultima games for example -this was the first time I was really engaged with the AI in a new and almost sublime way. Ultima 7, ( back in like 1993) i grew bored with the main quest and being a young man wanting to indulge my inner video game psychopath -i decided to forgo the main quest and just start robbing people in the woods. I had a ring of invisibility, so id go to a nearby town and mug and usually murder someone and then go running from the guard to my little hideout in the woods. Sometimes id only injure an AI civilian and id hunt them down by chasing their bloody footprints thru the snow. Yes i was an evil bastard ! Anyways the guards would hunt for me for a while -in which id evade using my invisibility ring. They might have still seen my footprints iirc, but eventually they'd tire and go back to town. My criminal rating went up and after a while theyd send ALOT of guards after me -thats kind of an emergent gameplay -the AI adjusts differently depending on what you're doing and this is something alot of gamers are after.

So yes, AI can be dumb, but they can also be interesting, rewarding and downright devious -it all depends on AI design, level design and the creativity of the programming team. One thing ive noticed is that AI used to be alot more daring , but the more daring they are, the more bugs as something will always eventually break as programming has limits - but it used to be that the Public was ok with bugs as long as the overall experience was enjoyable. Nowadays bugs are seen as absolute no-no (especially in AAA titles) so the overall game design team generally put very tight constraints on the AI team taking away much of their freedom and creativity
 
So yes, AI can be dumb, but they can also be interesting, rewarding and downright devious -it all depends on AI design, level design and the creativity of the programming team. One thing ive noticed is that AI used to be alot more daring , but the more daring they are, the more bugs as something will always eventually break as programming has limits - but it used to be that the Public was ok with bugs as long as the overall experience was enjoyable. Nowadays bugs are seen as absolute no-no (especially in AAA titles) so the overall game design team generally put very tight constraints on the AI team taking away much of their freedom and creativity
Yeah, absolutely!
I've been thinking about this thing with AI so much lately... It's like the industry in general doesn't want to improve AI anymore..
You kinda always get the same boring things again and again and few things are really dynamic or even interesting..
To talk about an example, I was very interested on how cyberpunk would turn out (i wasn't part of the religious sect that the hype created around the game) so i didn't watched any trailer, nor any "in-depth analysis" for it...
I was interested because there would be an entire city supposedly dynamic, then well... We all know how that turned out..
That aside, there was other elements like events, car chases and the like...
When the game arrives, it has nothing of that. It was only a story on rails, predetermined.
I'm not a coder, i don't know how hard it is to deal with AI, specially interesting AI... But I find very sad and insulting, that the last game with somewhat interesting AI I've played was Alien Isolation... a game from 2014.. despite all the supposed "advances in AI" that the industry always brag about lately...
 
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