What if enemy AI was more diverse/complex?

While working on a certain project (and by “working on”, I mostly mean writing random shit in a google doc), I thought it might be interesting to have different enemies act differently as a whole.

For example, having bandits be generally disorganized, making them hyper aggressive but easy to scare. In other words, they would be opportunistic, but cowardly. They generally won’t work together against your units, just attack whoever is most vulnerable. Thieves would steal stuff from chests as per usual, but might be more aggressive towards your units. Maybe the fighters would become more reckless when at full HP, running straight into anyone they see reguardless of the cost. If their HP is around half or less, they’ll try to flee and, if they have the option, heal.

Soldiers, on the other hand, would be much more organized and have a sense of preservation. They would work together to take down threats, and approach more carefully. They’d still be pretty aggressive in attacking weaker units, but they might back off if they think its too dangerous. They’d work as a unit, move as a unit, fight as a unit. If one gets weak, the others cover for them while they heal. They won’t blindly run into something that will kill them.

The idea being that the AI can change depending on what enemy you’re fighting, and could even change between chapters depending on how things are going in the story. For example, a loosing country’s soldiers may be more reckless/desperate, and be more willing to die if it means taking you down. They might even try human wave tactics.

That said, how would it actually work in-game and, more importantly, how would it feel to play against? Honestly, I’d love to just tinker with LT or something and find out, but… I’m not really well-versed in that sort of thing. I know GBAFE enemies have a few different AIs, but they’re pretty basic from what I’ve seen; not that its a bad thing.

But yeah. What do y’all think?

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As basic as GBAFE AI is, if you know what you’re doing, you can still create somewhat diverse AI patterns via eventing.

For instance, if you want a group of soldiers to not attack until you get close enough, you can just create an event that changes the AI of a specific group of soldiers to become aggressive if you enter a certain area, using different unit IDs to create different enemy groups.

The AI settings themselves (attack if in movement range, attack if in stationary range, move to attack etc.) don’t change, as that type of stuff is very complex to mess with; you just change which setting they’re on based on what is going on in the chapter.

If you want the enemies to “approach carefully” and build up a large group before attacking, you can use escort AI (which is one of the settings); this is what is used by a group of enemy Wyvern Riders/Wyvern Lords in FE7’s Victory or Death, and is what causes them to congregate around a peak before they all rush in on you.

Also, if you want the enemy to immediately change course and become aggressive towards you if they are attacked (usually if they’re part of a group that waits for you to approach, and you attacked first), you can just set a Battle Quote for generic enemies of that unit ID, and instead of text, have an event that changes their AI.

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LT-Maker is in python and AI editing is as easy as changing what the code says. It would be easy to have the game calculate the size of the enemy’s army and the size of your army into numerical ranges for rules like “If we have more than 50% of our force, get overconfident” and “If our foes lose someone, get overconfident for 2 turns”.

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FE works because the enemy have the brawn and you, the player, have the brains. Experiences with PvP FE going back all the way to FETO show that in that kind of environment you have two forces dancing around the edge of one another, with neither side ever offering a concrete opening and so the first to commit invariably losing. So, yes, enemy myrmidon, please do run headlong into my armour. It’s not like the enemy can see the battle forecasts anyway.

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