I don't know what it is with developers and excuses, but they seem to go hand in hand. That's all anyone ever hears, is excuses and justifications. Until of course someone else creates the so-called uncreatable, then the next year the market is suddenly flooded with copycat product and it's on to the next set of excuses, until someone else with vision expands the envelope again. First of all, the perception of WW's AI being pathetic is not all subjective. It might be a good point that some AI is subjective, yes, but WW is so far away from that stage that there's no point going there. The kind of thing that everyone talks about when it comes to the poor AI is fundamental stuff that needs to reduce the insane amount of micromanagement required in all WW "strategy" games, even now in 2003(!). Examples just off the top of my head: - when a group is standing guard, and something approaches, if one engages, have them all engage. Don't just have them stand there like idiots while the enemy picks off the group one by one by the edges. - units should have some common sense based on their abilities. You can have a group of snipers lying in wait, with a column of enemy infantry and a tank approaching. Say the tank just happens to be the first thing that comes within the snipers' view detection, then they'll all just fire on it like morons, not only wasting the valuable first shot each, but fixating on the tank while the rest of the infantry walks right up and minces them. The same occurs with any units, making every battle an idiotic exercise in micromanagement. A player should be able to have a mixed group, and be able to send them into an enemy's mixed group confident that they'll display some common sense in selecting their own best targets, based on their abilities. This is something that should have been addressed years ago. - Units should display some tactical ability again based on their strengths. Laser tanks have extreme mobility as an advantage...well unless you micromanage them during the battle, they won't use it. They'll just stand still like idiots and fire. What they should do is bob and weave on their own...just basic, basic tactical common sense. Same applied for any unit...each should have some rudimentary intelligence based on its abilities. Snipers for example should focus on separate targets each, to an extent, not all just fire together on the first infantry that appears. And so on. What would make this even better is to have it linked with unit veterancy, with their tactical skill and intelligence increasing with veteran level. Ooh that would rock. - Pathfinding as a group is still frustratingly stupid. Units getting stuck and basically blowing a whole plan (and often a game) to hell, units dancing with each other while the rest of the group is engaged, etc. etc. - Another example of basic tactical intelligence: stealth. As it is, stealth strategies in the game are almost nonexistent...WW games are just games of brute force. Click as fast as you can, build as fast as you can, and send your screenfuls of units against your opponent's screenfuls, until one is left standing. Stealth isn't used because the stupid AI doesn't make it worth it. Your whole plan and your whole game are almost invariably destroyed by one stupid unit. The Atreides tank that succeeds in being snuck into the enemy base loaded with engineers, only to fire its peashooter at a passing mino just when you turn your attention away for a minute and steps away from deploying. The Ix infiltrator group that you've somehow, with hairpulling micromanagement, gotten behind enemy lines and into their base, only to have one of them just go wandering off because it's one pixel off and decides to take a tour of the base with its pathfinding. And so on...the examples are legion. Anyway I just realized this message is already too long and can be infinitely longer. Suffice it to say that the AI is a joke, and everyone knows it, excuses notwithstanding. The only question is if WW will actually listen and try to improve it, or they'll just go on cranking out the same game with new costumes every year or two. So far it's been a consistent and disappointing choice #2. And on a final note, let's cut the shit about CPU cycles. That might have washed 10 years ago (which is about when Dune 2 was released), but not anymore. Let's see...Moore's Law would put those 10 years as having, what...roughly 100 times(!!) the CPU power? Let me type that again: 100!. That's 100 of the computers you had at your disposal for Dune 2, now powering a single computer. So what have you done with it? Practically all of it has been spent on graphics. The AI is only marginally better than Dune 2...it's only the graphics that are real eye-openers compared to that era, and the ironic thing is that with the advent of such high-powered 3D cards, you ironically have more CPU to spend on other things now, not less. So please. The only question of resources you need to worry about is getting someone with enough clue on the team to be able to understand how to be able to use that power, instead of just safely doing the same things over and over. Someone who understands AI and can start taking it to the next level - a level we should have been seeing at least 5 years ago if not more. But will WW do this? Doubtful. What do they spend their oh-so-crunched development time doing? Take a look at most of the screens for Emperor and really look. Pretty arrows, zooming maps, scrolling glyphs...in short, a lot of pretty graphical bullshit. That's what WW focuses on...the meaningless and pretty. So again, please cut the shit about min-specs. Not only are customers frankly in a position to not give a shit, but it's an empty excuse when the misplaced effort is so blatant. Anyway this has been long enough, but it could use saying (although WW has heard this plenty enough over the years and it's fallen on deaf ears to begin with). As to the Fog of War being a "hardcore gamer" option, that is so idiotic that I can't even be bothered to argue it. Suffice to say that WW games had little enough "strategy" in their Real-time strategy to begin with; clueless design decisions like removing FOW just makes them even more laughable. Whatever newbie hordes prefer for online play, there's no excuse for removing the option altogether (from campaign play), and it's misrepresentation, since it's listed as a feature. :P
