When I say "cheating" I'm not saying something like "omg this quest is too hard they rush too early" and such. Though to be fair, it was a very tough quest for a beginner like me to handle but whatever.
What I mean is that the reason the AI can rush early on and keep harassing you even when you're killing their villagers is because they can literally spawn units out of thin air to attack you with. They spawn units out of thin air over and over and over. You can kill ALL of their units and destroy ALL of their buildings, and force them to resign, and they will still keep on spawning units in the upper part of the map to attack you with. I even recorded some video of this happening with fraps, this is my first time using youtube so I'm not too familiar with it but I'll post the link in here as soon as it's done uploading.
Now I'm all for a tough fight and an AI opponent that isn't a pushover, but I think this sort of fake difficulty just detracts from the game. Surely I'm not alone.
Edit: Ah, that was faster than I thought. Here's the link:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwYfsl1fbuE
|||hahaha funny find|||
Yeah I noticed the same thing happening on a quest (not sure which one.) I was destroying part of their town when I noticed a huge number of units spawning just outside my LoS so I killed surrounded the area with some of my archers. I watched for 15 min as groups of enemies spawned out of thin air, only to be slaughtered by a barrage of arrows.
I found it kinda funny, but it did seem slightly unfair that AI had such an advantage.
** I LoS the whole map just in case there was a few enemy barracks I missed, but there was nothing.
So, how do you beat this one now? I've gotten stomped in the last 2 minutes in three tries so far. At some point, I end up throwing all my military at definding the towns and can't mount an attack. It's definitely harder than it was before.
|||The main problem I was having (besides infinite enemy spawns) was that the enemy starts the battle with a catapult or two already in their possession despite being at age 1. If you leave it alone then it'll start tagging along when they start harassing the yellow villages and reduce them to pulp very fast. I left a token defense of units (mostly tox) defending the villages and rushed small groups directly at the catapult once I found it until it was dead, which made defending the map much easier.
As far as general beginner advice goes, remember that your town center, barracks, archery ranges, etc. should always be producing units. Don't get so caught up in watching skirmishes or moving troops that you forget to refill the queues when they run out.
|||I've been in the beta since the beginning, so I'm not a beginner in that way. I've managed to destroy the catapults, but it takes so much resource to do that and also keep a token force alive at the villages that I spend all my time and resources doing that and can't mount an offensive attack. Or if I do start an offensive attack, the endless supply of opponents eventually gets to one of the villages. I definitely haven't found the right balance yet.|||This used to be a good one to coop, but coop is bugged in it now, one of the devs reported.
Makiing spawning extra troopsis a whole lot easier than making a smarter, more resourceful or creativeAI. And if you think about it, is it any different than you using Bandit Cavalry or Bandit Archers to turn the tide? By the way, the Bandit Cavalry is an excellent choice for this quest, helps to take out those catapults. I am not certain if the AI starts with catapults, I did not see them until partway into the match and after the AI had already sent several waves at the villages. And the AI certainly made some additional catapults from their siege shop after I destroyed the first 2 I saw.
|||"Makiing spawning extra troopsis a whole lot easier than making a smarter, more resourceful or creativeAI." RF Gandalf
Nail on the head^.
And for the challenge I have no problem in how the game presents the challenge to me.
AoE players from old versions may remember (if they even noticed) how on different difficulty levels the AI started out with more resources than you. In the case of most difficult, a lot, iirc. My friends who played the game with me also called this "cheating". I did not think of it in that way because it definitely brought the challenge up to the next level, and eventually (even if it took 100 attempts to achieve) was beatable.
(When quoting a post you have to create your own quotes on this msg board? Yikes- hope I'm missing the option and it's somewhere)
|||Makiing spawning extra troopsis a whole lot easier than making a smarter, more resourceful or creativeAI. And if you think about it, is it any different than you using Bandit Cavalry or Bandit Archers to turn the tide? By the way, the Bandit Cavalry is an excellent choice for this quest, helps to take out those catapults. I am not certain if the AI starts with catapults, I did not see them until partway into the match and after the AI had already sent several waves at the villages. And the AI certainly made some additional catapults from their siege shop after I destroyed the first 2 I saw.
It is definitely easier than making a smarter or creative AI, and also lazier and results in a worse game overall. It's completely different than the bandit consumables because they can do it as many times as they want with seemingly no cost or cooldown period, while the bandit consumables do cost the player resources in their capital and have strict time limits between uses.
The problem I'm having is that this infinite unit spawning makes me feel like the AI is not playing by the same rules that everyone else is. Now when the AI starts with an already entrenched position, that's different because it's a part of the storyline and it makes each quest unique. It makes sense in the campaign because you're attacking their bases. But once we're past these initial starting positions and resources, I fully expect the AI to create units from town centers and barracks (and pay the resource costs) just like everyone else. Otherwise, there's no point in strategy such as "harass their villagers early" or anything like that, because the villagers aren't actually doing anything. If they can spawn units out of thin air then their woodcutters and gold miners and fishing boats are essentially just for show.
You ever play a chess game on your computer against an AI? Imagine that instead of designing a good chess AI, the developer just took the lazy route and let the AI place as many queens on the board as it wants, whenever it wants. It's still chess, sort of, and you can pretend that all the extra queens "add challenge" to the game, but we both know it's fake difficulty and the game would be much better if the devs put in the extra effort in.
And about the catapults, if the AI doesn't start with them then they at least spawn within 30 seconds of the quest starting. You can send your scout up to check.
|||What I mean is that the reason the AI can rush early on and keep harassing you even when you're killing their villagers is because they can literally spawn units out of thin air to attack you with. They spawn units out of thin air over and over and over. You can kill ALL of their units and destroy ALL of their buildings, and force them to resign, and they will still keep on spawning units in the upper part of the map to attack you with. I even recorded some video of this happening with fraps, this is my first time using youtube so I'm not too familiar with it but I'll post the link in here as soon as it's done uploading.
Ok, I thought I was imagining this thing with villagers and units just showing up out of nowhere, now I know Iam not crazy.
|||Agree with this completely. I can handle the AI already having a full base, or the AI starting with more resources than me - that often makes sense from a story position. But when the enemy can just magically throw waves of free units at you, it really ruins the experience.
If I manage to deestroy an enemy army, that should give me some well earned breathing room while they rebuild- not just set me up for another wave.
- Scott
|||I don't see what's wrong with this, actually. I mean, aside from the fact that it is sort of funny how they spawn units for you to kill, there's essentially no difference from spawning a dozen unit every 30 seconds to them macroing out of 12 barracks in 30 seconds with infinite resources. (at least, until you destroy their barracks)
In fact, they do this in SC2's campaign so often that it isn't remotely funny, except they have the decency to spawn outside the map and move them in. ex. In Utter Darkness and All-In, especially in Brutal.
|||If the ai was fighting on the same rules as human players, you would win every single time purely by abusing their puny robot brains. It's not possible to make an ai as smart as humans in a game with this many situations and options, especially not a seperate one for each map/quest. Starting the ai with bonus resources/extra buildings/free units or other boosts is the only way to create a proper challenge. It's been done (at least on the higher difficulties) in every rts that's ever existed, especially in the campaign, where if the computer started with the exact same stuff as you every mission would be the same. Directly spawning units is probably the most extreme form of this "cheating" just because it works whether or not you harrass their mining and kill their villagers, which is why I'm sure it wont be used in the skirmish hall. The ai in that will most likely just get extra money.
EDIT: Oh yeah, and about Starcraft 2. Don't forget nydus worms! In a normal game of sc2 a nydus worm lets you transport your units around the map through the nydus network building, like a subway system. But in the campaign BOOM nydus worm pops out of nowhere and spawns increasingly large waves of units to attack you untill you destroy it. It's the exact same thing as this mission in aoeo, but it's done a bit better since at least they have an excuse for where all these units are coming from. Maybe for future uses of instant unit spawning they could make the units arrive on a boat or teleported by a camel wizard or whatever.
|||sounds like the quest Defense of Arsinoe and We killed these guys already.
I managed to beat "We killed these guys already" and some odd reason it became easy all of a sudden.
I played AOE for years upon years and never seen crap like this, not even in Chosen Wars.
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