86 replies to this topic

[ArkhanTheBlack]

When will the code be released? Would be nice to do some coding again. Though I've exams next week... Won't touch any code until they are over. Unitil then I'll try to get the new WA DOW. It's really nearly a new game.

In my 1vs1 game against the AI, I'm not sure if the AI is really better. I had more problems to adjust to the new purpose and availability of the units.
I'm still laughing about relics fairy tales of the weak IG units which have to rely on early defense and vehicles to survive. In my games they were the new space marines. Hardcore rushes with units with most excellent ranged hitting power. They were eating even LP's and turrets for breakfast. They completly owned my CSM squads. But if I change to melee, the IG gets owned regularly. No real problem any more.
Orks are different to play against with chaos, because I loose with early melee, but own them with CSM squads.

In general, I had the feeling that all units make more damage to their secondary target types, but less to their primary. And although vehicles have more HP than before, they don't seem as tough as before. Though they are still pretty good.

[thudo]

The Guardsmen are no spring chickens. In our most recent build they are brutal. Weird though: they never go for Sentinels. Odd. We have to fix that. I only see Chimeras Chimeras.. and damn it.. more Chimeras. :( Maybe 1-2 Hellhounds and perhaps 1-3 Lemans. Never Sentinels. Don't get it.

One thing that I thought was a bug: More HQs mean more Generators. Couldn't believe it: Relic allowed us to build more Gens if we had more than 1 HQ. I'm indifferent to that.

In general I am mostly happy.. Still work to be done but its some good amount of tweaking..

[LarkinVB]

6 gens / HQ was already in with DoW 1.0 !

[thudo]

Oh F**K off really? Gawd damn I suck.. I never knew that as I never ever bothered with a second HQ nor did I ever see the AI build a second HQ thus more gens. Wow.. Damn... I need to lay off the twinkies more often.

[Malkor]

Malkor is most lucky to be informed he may be getting WA today. It appears Malkor's supplier, EB, lied to him about the release date and he must lop off many heads in rapid succession to make up for this.

Malkor hopes there is a beta tester build waiting for him when he has assaulted winter.

Malkor would also like to mention building additional HQ's for increased power output has been a part of his strategy in FFA's since release and would love to see the AI do the same.

edit: Okay, I have it. While I certainly don't agree with the cheapening of existing tech trees, I can definately say the default AI is nothing short of pathetic.

I can't seem to get Dawn of Skirmishing working with WA, though... it's not enabling when I run the shortcut.

edit II: Got it working. Was a wrong .exe I was pointing to.

That's more like it. Vehicles before the 50 minute mark.



BLARGH Why does the leman russ tank have no projectile or hit effect!? I demand this to be fixed immediately!

And I want the soundtrack, too! These .fda files do me no good.

Also, basilisks have weird targeting... they never auto fire at an enemy, even when you right click on a specific target. I have to use the earthshaker or attack ground commands. :(

Edited by Malkor, 01 October 2005 - 02:05 AM.

[Markoso]

Gave it a run, got eaten up by Chaos. It was a pretty good run, the CC squads were tapping (old term for tying up multiple Ranged units with one squad), the AI was fast to tech, usually retreated if things got hairy, unless it had committed a hero to battle, can only say good things, though it was only one battle (speaking of the sept.30 build).

Edit- Gave up on sleep and gave it another run, managed to break something\discover a bug. AI stopped doing anything after I interrupted it's attempt to build a machine pit by killing it's builder. Usually the default AI would destroy the building, in this case, the AI just...shut down. I wish I'd had logging enabled though I remember how to turn it on, in any case, here's the replay, roughly the 9:38 mark.

http://flypicture.co...one&id=pdD1kKQ=

Edited by Markoso, 01 October 2005 - 04:47 AM.

[oozish]

nICE CATCH MARKOSO!

[Malkor]

I've found some more problems for you to have a look at.

One, allied comps are very lethargic. They never attack (at least with more than one ally), and they're extremely slow in teching. IG in particular is very, very slow in acquiring vehicles. Enemy comps seem much less aggressive as well. Most of the time I find them camping at their LP's.

From what I've seen Eldar is very sharp. They get vehicles fast and tech nicely. Lots of fire prisms early game = nasty.

Chaos, despite being immensely cheapified, are a force to be reckoned with. Horrors though are waaaaay too freaking strong and they can rape just about any vehicles, even baneblades/land raiders, very very fast and they absorb infantry fire like sponges. I hope relic fixes this. It's not fun losing an entire mechanized army to a few squads of horrors. The AI spams predators and the odd time a defiler or two joins the mix. Perhaps consider balancing predators/defilers as they cost exactly the same and defilers seem to be tougher now, plus they are more effective against infantry.

I haven't tried space marines yet. That chaplain looks pretty cool, though. Their AI seems to be functioning just as it was in 1.4, which is good to see.

The IG as far as the AI is concerned of course require some tuning. They get plenty of infantry and are a force to be reckoned with early on, but they are very slow in acquiring vehicles, especially vehicles they actually need (artillery). I have yet to see a leman russ or even a baneblade, yet. They rarely ever attack, either. Contrary to what one may think, those guardsmen are pretty nasty in huge numbers with plasma.

The orks also seem to again be suffering vehicular lethargism. They do get vehicles, but not nearly as fast as the Eldar or SM. I see a lot of killer kans late game but rarely anything but. They should definately get looted tanks as I find they often get shredded without ranged support. I usually just mass looted tanks myself. It's fun to bomb enemies from afar for an hour or two then launch a load of nobz in their faces.

The second major problem I saw is the comps trying to build things (a desecrated fortresses in this case) on unreachable terrain (such as the raised sections in one of the new 6player maps). Also, their main bases seem to be deserted of life, they focus instead on building things at LP's and INSIDE MY BASE. That's right, I've had the comps load up my base with everything from multiple strongholds to 3-4 machine pits and even a pair of sacrificial circles. I see the enemy comp alliances building in each other's bases, too. It sure is fun to assault a dual-defended base loaded with turrets, I tell you.

And I read in the notes that the comps help allies now. That isn't the case, I don't think. I've not once see them move in their forces to allies who are getting blown away, or hell, even their own bases. Half the time they just sit there.

My tech strategies don't work too well when I find 4 enemy armies inside my base whilst my allies are sitting in theirs smoking it up.

edit: I see why they build inside my base, now. Allies have shared building space radius' now

edit II:

Okay, it seems only IG are lethargic in attacking. Chaos/Orks/Eldar/SM are doing fine in that department.

Edited by Malkor, 01 October 2005 - 10:57 PM.

[LarkinVB]

Would be nice to back up findings with a replay. Which build do you play ? I really would like to see some of your observations as I never did in 15+ AI v AI battles

If you are eager to test latest builds send me email to dow@viciousbyte.de and I will add you to the list of hard core testers. This offer is valid for any beta tester who wants my latest code as fast as possible.

[Malkor]

Here's a 3 player FFA I did. (It would be 4 but the SM died pretty early in.) Basically IG vs IG vs Eldar.

This is on WA build 1.5b2.

My major observations for this was that the IG could have used sentinals. I went straight for vehicles, in hopes of being able to get a baneblade and a load of those elite guardsmen guys. Never got the chance, instead spending most of the game picking off wraithlords and hellhounds with sentinels. I managed to hold out against several significant Eldar attacks but as soon as they got an avatar my realitively weak defenses were quite screwed.

Several times the IG attacked me with guardsmen and hellhounds but as you can see I very easily shrugged these attacks off as they had virtually no anti-armor capability, and they never did get any. I myself played kind of poorly as I'm still not very solid in my IG tech build but I think I did better than the comp.

I also noticed they upgraded ALL of their turrets to rockets, making them fairly ineffective against the eldar's insane amount of banshees. Perhaps have them 50% rockets and 50% bolters for most effective defenses.

This was tested on insane.

I've also sent you an e-mail.

Attached Files

•  4P_DREAD_PEAK.2005_10_01.17_24_58.rar   201.31KB   11 downloads

Edited by Malkor, 02 October 2005 - 12:21 AM.

[LarkinVB]

ATTENTION Malkor !

You definatly did NOT play our mod ! Replay showed you still did play Relics AI. How did you install our mod ?

Did you unzip to your game folder\WXP\Data so you get ..\WXP\Data\ai ? I guess not.

Edited by LarkinVB, 02 October 2005 - 12:33 AM.

[thudo]

Yep.. dead giveaway is that AI upgraded ALL turrets to rockets. Thats a No-No that Relic did. We randomize our Turret/LP addons so ya never know what yer facing.

[Malkor]

Well now. That explains a hell of a lot.

I switched my shortcut to the expansion's .exe.... bah. Wish someone had told me. I'll see what's new, then.

Please tell me EXACTLY what I must do to get this to work with WA, please.

Edited by Malkor, 02 October 2005 - 12:42 AM.

[LarkinVB]

Yes. It was also easily to detect due to initial build order and cluttering bases. We only do build an additional HQ at nearest allies base.

Orks lethary is due to messed up code by Relic. They only rate them as tier 2 if orks have 50 available pop ! This might never happen at all !

So most if not all of your findings are due to playing Relics AI :-)

I did send my latest build by email.

I fixed/tweaked BO, fixed embolden, farseer will target squad (not area) with psy storm and allowed high priority build of squads if AIs HQ is under threat.

Edited by LarkinVB, 02 October 2005 - 12:46 AM.

[Excedrin]

I tried 1.5b2 on VoK as Eldar vs Ork and it plays really well. I think that part of it is the map, but this is a great way for me to practice Eldar, which is what I've always wanted in an AI.

http://dow.lerp.com/...ldarvsorkai.rec

Malkor, create a dowai.module with the following contents:

[global]
UIName = dowai
Description = dowai
DllName = WXPMod
ModFolder = Dowai_mod
ModVersion = 1.00
DataFolder.1 = Data
RequiredMod.1 = WXP
RequiredMod.2 = W40k

Then make sure the directory structure looks like:

...\Dawn of War\Dowai_mod
...\Dawn of War\Dowai_mod\Data
...\Dawn of War\Dowai_mod\Data\ai

Then you should be able to select it from the in game mod manager.

Edited by Excedrin, 02 October 2005 - 01:20 AM.

[Markoso]

Yip, that's how I pulled it off the other day. Looked at the WXP.module file and screwed around from there. In any case, I'll try and reproduce the bug I had yesterday, though I honestly can't seem to get logging working for my life ;-;

Edited by Markoso, 02 October 2005 - 02:34 AM.

[Malkor]

Excellent. It appears to be working now.


There seems to be a bug with the comissor that when the AI uses the execute ability, he goes into an endless loop of the animation/sound, is unselectable, and eventually disappears entirely. O.o

edit; Grrr. Stupid crashing to desktop maimed a FFA that would have made a nice replay. :( Don't think it was the AI, though. WA seems to eat up twice as much RAM as the classic DoW did...

Edited by Malkor, 02 October 2005 - 03:43 AM.

[Blodo]

I checked out WA Imperial Guard recently, here's what i observed:

Early game even a intermediate player using cc units heavily (chaos/orks anyone) will eat any IG for breakfast, provided they don't garrison in buildings. Since from what i followed up on relic didn't bother to make the AI enter buildings with squads, a very rough substitute would be grenade launchers. These will throw orks all over the place, theres still chaos and his raptors though. So there is two ways to overcome this:
- either the AI does a fast tech to tier2 with the absolute minimum of everything to get plasma and vehicles, take note the extreme rushers will probably find it easy to pick off while teching BUT if a player decides to slowly capture the map the AI should have some surprises ready in a relatively quick time
- delay tier2 a bit by putting out those extra squads with grenades, and maybe make him retreat less but be less aggresive at the same time. Should make a nice defensive wall out of guards if anyone is gonna try and take them on. Im talking about 3-5 squads of guards minimum.

Tier2 practically requires the ai to build hellhounds to nullify any infantry masses the enemy might have accomodated, and of course sentinels (a lot preferably). This is also the time when the guard squads should start playing offensive. If it's possible it would be advised if the AI wasn't fond of keeping their sentinels back, instead of charging with them into the enemy positions where they get slaughtered instantly.

I'll post more notes when I get to play WA more.

[thudo]

Blodo - yer report was with with the vanilla IG AI I gather.. yeaa.. it needs improving. We've already done that with Larkin doing some sincerely fab optimizing!

Malkor - yea I noticed that "endless loop sound" too with the Commissar + Squad + Execution ability. Does it do that with the vanilla IG AI? I would think so. Btw, anyone notice that when you click on IG vehicles only (not infantry) that when the sound plays for the IG vehicle you clicked on it makes a "coughing sound". Whats that all about? Bug? It sounds like someone clearing their throat.

[Markoso]

Dunno about any of that, but I can say I spent a good amount of time with 1.5b3 trying to reproduce the shutdown bug I encountered earlier, with no success (a good thing in this case ). So, as near as I can tell, Larkin's fix is working atm.