THE BIGGEST CHALLENGE WITH STRATEGY GAMES

One of the things I've noticed over the year while playing turn-based strategy and real-time strategy games over the years is that one of the biggest problems with these games is the issue of creating an AI that is challenging, but not so good at the game as to be overwhelming to a human player. A struggle that often results in developers creating games that either feature an overly passive AI or one so aggressive that it makes dumb mistakes that can be easily exploited by the player.

A good example of the issues with an overly passive AI can be seen Rome: Total War on normal difficulty. The AI tends to be so lacking in aggression that the AI often fails to take advantage of potential weaknesses in the player's defenses. As a result the player tends to be rather free to amass so much military and economic power through conquest that it becomes impossible for the AI to really challenge the player in the mid to late game. Instead the player just begins to effectively steamroll over every other power in the map do to their superior economy which allows them to pump out a nearly endless supply of troops.

On the plus side, I suppose at least Rome: Total War manages to be rather addictive. Sadly this isn't the case with XK Scenario: Humans, Refuted a game that used to be hosted on this site, but has been removed sometime after my Let's Play and review. In that game the AI just refuses to move a lot of its units resulting in the player being able to readily snipe most of the enemies by using weapons with superior range. As a result the game is extremely boring. On the plus side, it was rather short so the player didn't have to devote several hours to battles where the AI has apparently decided to commit virtual suicide by refusing to participate in the game.

On the other hand, the issues with overly aggressive AI can be seen in an exploit in Medieval II: Total War. In order to perform this exploit you need to lay siege to castle with only infantry units inside. The infantry units will try to counter your siege by sallying forth to defeat the player in a hurry and since they didn't leave anyone to garrison the gate as a result of their decision the doors to the castle will be left wide open. You can then lead the AI on a merry chase to the corner of the map and then swing around and avoid them in a bid to rush to the town square. After all, if you can hold the town square uncontested for 3:00 you can instantly win the battle without suffering a single casualty.

Another prime example can be found in Seven Kingdoms: Ancient Adversaries. In this game if you set the AI to highly aggressive it becomes so focused on war it fails to properly build it's economy. As a result I've seen massive empires that readily dwarf mine in terms of population and military might be toppled by taking out a single fort on a mining town in the boonies. This potentially results in the people in the village revolting due to their loyalty being pushed to the brink by the AI in order to earn more money. And when the revolt is violently put down by the king it can result in even more results in response which leads to more violent put downs which leads to more revolts and so on until the kingdom's entire economy has collapsed. And with no money in the bank and no money coming in the AI is unable to build forts or pay for its troops so its forced to tear down its own buildings and turn its massive armies back into peasants. And with the army gone it's pretty easy for the player to send a small force to snipe the enemy king. Albeit this tactic is only usable on sea maps where you can keep the AI's armies at bay by sniping enemy ports with your galleons before they can produce any transport ships.

Honestly, I'm not sure how you really going about fixing these sorts of issues. Since it seems like hitting the sweet spot is kind of like trying to straddle a fence to a certain extent.

Though, I'm curious if people agree with this being the biggest challenge with creating a solid strategy game or not.

"Well there's always the thing where difficulty levels are tailored for different kinds of players"

I suppose, but in most cases the AI doesn't really get any better as the difficulty goes up so much as it gets various bonuses to compensate for its weaknesses. This tends to result in the early game being harder in a lot of cases while the late game tends to be rather easy. Since at that point the bonuses aren't as useful. At least that tends to be the case with Total War from what I've heard.

"but there might have been various morale bonuses and the like in the real time mode as well."

Yeah, in Rome: Total War and many of the other games in the series the AI units are given morale bonuses on the higher settings which is why certain units will almost never break when used by the AI on Very Hard. I think the AI units are also given a slight stat boost, but I'd have to double check that one.

". I've found that in single-player RTSes I basically always have to exploit peculiarities of the AI like this to get anywhere."

I don't know if you'd have that problem with Seven Kingdoms: Ancient Adversaries". Albeit there are techniques for exploiting the AI in that game. Like if you blow up the target of an AI attack before they can get there they will simply turn around and go home. Which means you can readily avoid attacks by simply blowing up your forts and war factories if your too weak to repel the AI's attacks.

Albeit I only tend to rely on those kinds of tactics when in scenario mode. After all, a lot of the scenarios put you in a bind where the various AI kingdoms can readily kick your teeth in. So you've got no choice but to exploit the AI's blind spots in order to win.

On the other hand, I have no trouble keeping up with the AI during normal play. After all, the AI tends to be rather shoddy at capturing independent villages. This is because the AI will generally attack an independent village shortly after putting a claim on it. As a result a large swath of the villagers are put to death in order to scare the other villagers into submission. A rather wasteful tactic considering you can readily convert villages by putting the people in them to work once their resistance to you has reached 50% or less. Plus the rate a village gains new villagers is increased as the population goes up. So you want to capture the village as intact as possible if you want to truly see a population explosion within the confines of your territory. After all, the bulk of your finances in this game will come from taxes.

In fact, the main tactic for beating the AI in "Seven Kingdoms: Ancient Adversaries" tends to revolve around spamming weapons which you support with taxes from your various villages. Albeit, I tend to move my villages to a central location in order to make defending them a lot easier. Plus putting them in a central location means I can collect taxes a lot faster as well since the villagers loyalty will go up faster as well since I'll have more generals using their leadership stat on them to influence them.