Worst Game AI [Archive] - Straight Dope Message Board

HPL

01-16-2003, 12:58 AM

I seem to remember that the Police cars in Grand Theft Auto were notrious for ramming the back of my vehicle repeatly and blowing themselves up as a result, while at the same time, failing to notice an army tank holding a mutiple felon that has just wrecked half the city because you presumably painted it a different color and put a different set of plates on.

Many shooters have problems with the fact that you can fire off machine guns and rocket launchers, but unless someone sets off an alarm, there are enemy troops that will be caught unawares regardless (Ummm, the machine gun fire doesn't make you wonder if something's wrong?)

 Theif had a part where you need to break into a prison to rescue someone. At one point, you hear a guard whistling constantly, not far from other guards. If you knock him out, I wondered about the fact that the other guards didn't seem to notice the whistling had stopped. Same with guards walking a patrol route. Wouldn't someone notice when they guard failed to pass by after so many minutes(particulary if they normally passed another guard.

Maybe not so much poor AI for most of these, but rather, really stupid guards and enemies.

Skip

01-16-2003, 06:13 AM

The sidekicks in Daikatana. It was probably the worst thing about the game. If they died you restarted the level, and that's all they were good at. Getting themselves killed. They'd run into empty elevator shafts, and had the tactical brain to step into your line of fire as you unleashed bullets-o-death from your gun.

Legomancer

01-16-2003, 07:50 AM

The NPCs in Arcanum were terrible. One of the main ones was a fellow with healing powers. In Arcanum, casting a spell fatigues you, and if you get fatigued enough, you fall unconscious. He would happily cast healing spell after healing spell on me until he dropped unconscious. He'd do this in combat, instead of attacking whatever I was fighting, killing it, and then healing me. They were frustratingly stupid, and good primarily as pack mules.

MSU 1978

01-16-2003, 08:56 AM

Oh those darn NPCs in Fallout! You give Ian a gun and ammo, and the moron insists on knifing your opponents! That halfwit Katja won't use a gun to save her life, no matter what you give her. And Dogmeat goes off on suicide missions while the rest of the gang is attacking a single foe.

The Civ I AIs were notorious. Circling triremes off your coast, attacking fortified units on mountains, not expanding their empires.

Legomancer

01-16-2003, 09:06 AM

Originally posted by MSU 1978
Oh those darn NPCs in Fallout! You give Ian a gun and ammo, and the moron insists on knifing your opponents! That halfwit Katja won't use a gun to save her life, no matter what you give her. And Dogmeat goes off on suicide missions while the rest of the gang is attacking a single foe.

Or, at the other extreme, they'll fire a submachine gun burst when you're standing between them and the target.

Give them a break, though, they're descended from Ace in the game Wasteland, who would ONLY fire off entire clips at a time.

Munch

01-16-2003, 09:12 AM

Then there's the Command & Conquer AI, who would see a line of sandbags and sit tight.

smiling bandit

01-16-2003, 09:19 AM

That isn't the worst of Fallout. Whenver they did use automatic weaponry, they invariably shot you in the back.

MrMyth

01-16-2003, 09:49 AM

Medal of Honor:Frontline on PS2.

German soldiers take no notice when you blow off the head of their comrade - who was standing six inches away.

Kalashnikov

01-16-2003, 10:07 AM

I agree the cops in GTA are really stupid. For one thing, they're constantly crashing their cars into each other. They also "think" 2-dimensionally - you can go on top of a building (via obvious stairs) and they will surround the building, but they won't even try to come up the stairs.

Some people say that the "Pay 'n' Spray" shops bribe the police to ignore theri customers. What I wanna know is, if you go into a parking garage, ditch your car and come out in another one, how do the cops still know its you?

dead0man

01-16-2003, 11:43 AM

Any Single Player mission in ANY Delta Force (by Novalogic) game. For a "modern" FSP they have some really stupid AI. 3 bad guys walking a circle around the base, in theory defending it. You pop one, the other 2 will invariably drop to a knee and LOOK AT YOU VERY SCORNFULLY! They may occasionally shoot in your general direction, then stand up and run, until you shoot at them again. They do the whole drop to a knee and give you an evil glare. If you set the AI level to its highest setting, they still do the same thing, except they have a near PERFECT shot.

gonzoron

01-16-2003, 11:53 AM

I haven't played that many recent games, but I have found this humorous in Dynasty Warriors 2: If a gang of soldiers is running toward you, led by a captain, and you shoot the captain with your bow, he drops, and the others stop and wait for him to get up again before continuing to run toward you.

Orbifold

01-16-2003, 01:06 PM

The bad guys in "Ratchet and Clank" have an interesting feature: if you're at just the right distance away from a pair of them, you can kill one and the other won't even notice. Even if they're standing right next to one other, facing you, with nothing in the way to block their view. It really suprised me to see that kind of behaviour in a game that new.

"Hey, my partner just exploded. That's odd. I wonder if it has anything to do with that guy with the smoking blaster pistol standing over there?"

Legomancer

01-16-2003, 01:10 PM

I should also point out that in many of the Infinity Engine games (Bladur's Gate, Icewind Dale) you can get out of an enemy's range of sight, cast an area effect, persistant damage spell (Spike Stones, Cloudkill) and they'll just stand there and take damage until they die.

wolfman

01-16-2003, 01:56 PM

One of the Hockey games, I think it was NHL97 had the worst AI for any sports game ever created. It was so much worse than the previous years. The defense just couldn't cover a man worth a shit , and you constantly got two and three on nothing breaks. They realized it before release and dealt with it by making the goalies gods. I realized that it didn't matter how well the shot was set up or far out of goal the goalie was(he would just hold his stick behind him and block 5 concecutive shots with it) it was like the lottery. Just take as many shots as you can and hope the computer decides to let one of them score. In one playoff game overtime game I had like 347 shots and no goals(the computer had 135 shots and no goals)

typhoon

01-16-2003, 02:03 PM

Originally posted by Munch
Then there's the Command & Conquer AI, who would see a line of sandbags and sit tight.
In Warcraft II, the computer couldn't attack walls. Of course, you could only build them in multiplayer games (and it generally wasn't worth the trouble).

banks

01-16-2003, 02:15 PM

My favorite Fallout NPC experience was in Fallout 1, in the scoripion cave, when the Ian the NPC follower backed me into a corner and refused to move. My only recourse was to pummel him to death.

My friends and I had great fun creating dialouge for them.
Me: C'mon, Ian, move. I'm stuck here.
Ian: No, I'm happy here. Really.
Me: See, Ian, I'm not happy. You've blocked me into the damn corner. Move.
Ian: Can't you see I'm busy here? Standing ain't easy.
Me: Move! (punch)
Ian: No!
(repeat ad infinitum until Ian dies)

Lesson of the day- Some NPCs take setting their following distance to "close" a little bit too seriouslt.

slortar

01-16-2003, 02:15 PM

I immediately thought of the Mortal Kombat series of fighting games. I recall one time I beat Scorpion by the genius tactic of...crouching and repeatedly punching him in the nads. He'd give a demonic yell, fall down (or otherwise enter the "pain" animation) and then get right back up and get punched in the nads again.

Of course, the flip side of bad AI programming immediately showed itself in the next match--I'd get crushed. The game had NO differentiation. You go from "taking candy from a drunk shriner" to "demon overlord of doom" in one match. Awful.

D_Odds

01-16-2003, 02:18 PM

Originally posted by Legomancer
I should also point out that in many of the Infinity Engine games (Bladur's Gate, Icewind Dale) you can get out of an enemy's range of sight, cast an area effect, persistant damage spell (Spike Stones, Cloudkill) and they'll just stand there and take damage until they die.

Or my old favorite, a thief could set traps, rest, set more traps, rest, set more traps, rest and then turn an enemy hostile and watch it blow up (Baldur's Gate 2 without Throne of Bhaal expansion).

I also liked stranding customers in RollerCoaster Tycoon to keep park count high. Kidnapping could help you win

Evil Death

01-16-2003, 05:40 PM

Rainbow Six - the game where elite counter-terrorists could be stopped in their tracks by a four inch protrusion from a wall.

DreadCthulhu

01-16-2003, 05:45 PM

I remember a football game for the Sega Genesis back in 1993 or so where if you were playing the Detroit Lions, you could run Barry Sanders in for a touchdown every single time, no matter what the difficulity level. By the end of a game against the AI, I would often have Sanders up to 1000 yards of rushing for the game.

SlickRoenick

01-16-2003, 08:57 PM

Settlers III, that's enough on that topic.

Bryan Ekers

01-16-2003, 09:01 PM

The Nazi guards in the original Castle Wolfenstein were dopes.

DKW

01-16-2003, 10:31 PM

Police 911 -
Okay, I'm an unarmed innocent bystander, I find myself caught in the middle of a raging firefight between cops and yakuza gunmen, and I want to live (and the yakuza aren't paying any particular attention to me, so I don't have to worry about that). Depending on my location, I immediately do one of the following:
* Run like hell away from the scene as fast as humanly possible (in a straight line, of course).
* Take cover behind something big 'n sturdy.
* Drop flat and crawl either 1) away from the scene as fast as humanly possible or 2) behind something big 'n sturdy.

Needless to say, the nimrods in the game generally do one of the following:

* Run directly into the field of fire.
* Run back and forth across the same five feet over and over and over.
* Run lockstep side-by-side with the crooks (sometimes right at you).
* Drop to their knees in the open, cover their heads, and shake a lot.
* Just stand there (usually right in the path of a crook) and do nothing.

Konami's done more to kill sympathy for innocent bystanders in shooting games than any other company I know of. ("It's not an innocent victim, it's natural selection!")

Mike Tyson's Punch-Out[b] -
A number of total pushovers here, but two really stand out.

Don Flamenco (first time): Punch anywhere. Blocked. Dodge the Flamenco Foolishness, hold up, and pummel his face. Repeat until he's down. When he drags his butt off the canvas, he'll immediatly go for the Flamenco Not A Chance In Hell. Hit him with a left to the body four times. 10-count, fight over.

King Hippo: Wait for him to open his mouth for that big downward punch thing. Hit him in said mouth, than nail his belly eight times. Repeat. Repeat again. Repeat once more for good measure. 10-count, fight over.

[b]Rollergames -
This one's a tad obscure, but it's such a good example, I just had to put it here (it was an arcade game, BTW). Sometimes, at the end of either of the guy's rounds (first and fourth), the two "jetters" will go into a quick one-on-one fight. If you're facing the CPU, here's how to beat it:
1. Wait for him to get in range. As soon as he does, kick.
2. After kicking him, throw a punch. It'll connect, and he'll back off and approach again.
3. Repeat 1 and 2 until you've successfully wiped the floor with him without taking a single hit.

buckgully

01-16-2003, 11:20 PM

The teammates in SOCOM: Navy Seals are some of the worst AI I've seen in a while, at least since Deus Ex's badguys.

They'll have silenced MP5s, and silenced M9s, and there will be a bad guy facing away about 30 feet away. Do they shoot with the submachine gun? Do they shoot with the pistol? Do they sneak up and cut the guy's throat with a knife?

Nope. They stand up, run, and hit the bad guy with the butt of their gun. This does not knock out the bad guy. This makes the bad guy turn around and light up the whole team with an AK-47, which sets off all the alarms and half the time ends the whole game.

Also, never tell them to throw a grenade. "Throw" in their vocabulary apparently means "drop at your feet and blow yourself up".

The worst problem is that they don't stay put when you tell them to. At least the teammates in Rainblow 6 stay still when you told them to, allowing you to go in alone and clean up.

Munch

01-17-2003, 07:55 AM

emarkp

01-17-2003, 04:02 PM

Starcraft has serious pathfinding problems. If you send an army off to attack, and they get slowed down going through a narrow spot, the units at the rear will start wandering off looking for a different route, often getting killed/separated from the main force.

Additionally, when playing against the computer (single player), you can send one of your peons into their peons and the collectors will begin attacking yours (and stop harvesting resources). You can even run your peon around the whole map and the computer will follow with all of his peons, while you happily build up enough to go wipe him out (which doesn't require much at that point).

il31415li

01-17-2003, 04:39 PM

The Civ games have already been mentioned, but Civ Call to Power stands out as a particularly bad AI. After you get to the technology level of warwalkers and sea cities, and it stays at the samurai and cavalry level, suddenly a switch is thrown. Now the computer suddenly has warwalkers and fighter planes (literally within one turn), and in addition it can rush buy or build any wonder in less than 5 turns. AI that pulls literally impossible tricks in its quest to win are the worst kind of all.

Drastic

01-17-2003, 05:30 PM

The flipside of the Deus Ex enemies is that they'd balance their rock-stupidity with flashes of total area omniscience.

The rudimentary behavior of the other drivers in Driver drove me batty, as they all followed the same script--namely, oncoming civillian cars would deliberately steer into you.

wolfman

01-19-2003, 02:41 AM

Thought of another one: Oregon Trail.

Me: Hi. Would you like to buy an ox?
AI: Sure! Here's an axle!
Me: Would you like to buy an axle?
AI: Sure! Here's 3 oxen!

And my favorite:

Me: Hi. Would you like to buy a bullet?
AI: Sure! Here's 10 bullets!

Are you talking about the original Oregon Trail on the Apple II back in like 82? If so I congradulate you on your memory. I played that game all the time, and was the envy of school because I could always get a perfect shot on the deer on high speed, and I don't even remember that.

Berkut

01-19-2003, 03:28 AM

Total Annihilation
Best game ever, but damn the AI sucked. I remember several games where I frantically built up a huge army, and stormed the enemy base only to find a single solar collector and a his commander trapped behind a rock or something.

If you played a map where it was a battle between two islands, I would often build a ship and sail over there only to find a bunch of tanks looking woefully across the water at me. You could almost see the look on their pitiful metal faces as I shelled them from offshore.

Johnny Angel

01-19-2003, 06:25 AM

Infinity Engine:

Nobody seems to mind you casting web or entangle, so I often do that before combat begins. Dragons can be take out by staying out of sight range, casting fireballs at the edge of sight range until you're out, resting, and repeating. Thieves can sneak, backstab, run around the corner, sneak again and backstab again when the enemy runs around the corner again. I did Planescape: Torment almost entirely with backstabs using Nameless and Annah. After Baldur's Gate, enemies got harder to `pull' one at a time, because they'd return to their spot after a certain distance. But that just made it easier to avoid bad pulls.

In Icewind Dale II, there are war drums that can summon worg riders. If the enemy doesn't see your archer, they don't notice arrows hitting their drum.

Fallout Tactics:

If my sniper takes somebody's head off, the guy next to him often doesn't notice. Sometimes you have to get those super mutants to step on three or four mines before they die. I plant them, and my snipers lure the suckers onto them. A super mutant will walk on one, and keep walking until he's gibbs.

Fallout 1:

I kept the dog alive through the whole game by occasionally locking him in a room. But Ian died in the last battle because he can turn a door knob. So much for opposable thumbs.

The librarian never seems to realize that you're selling her the same stack of submachine guns over and over. That's okay, though, because she also mysteriously never runs out of reading materials that can only be read once.

You cannot save the life of that guy in The Boneyard. I have gone through heroic measures, but if somebody doesn't kill him, he kills himself.

You have to rush over that bridge by the weaponsmiths, because that's a great place to get trapped by your own party.

Daniel

01-19-2003, 09:32 AM

Reminds me of the enemy in a siege in Heroes of Might and Magic III.

Maybe it only happens on Normal setting, but they fall for the same land mine trick Johnny mentioned.

When you upgrade your castle to its strongest level of defense, that includes three archer towers and a moat. One of the town types has, instead of a moat, magic land mines (these are invisible, so if your enemy can't count to three, they take him by surprise; then again, your entire moat disappears if he casts "despell").

The enemy hero always does the following: blast a hole in your castle wall with his catapult, then send his monsters walking in. But they do it in the "I can only walk in cardinal directions" style of walking up to the wall, then walking along it until it gets to the hole; of course, this sets off every single landmine from the monster's starting point to the point of entry. Monster upon monster falls victim to this . . . um . . . strategy.

Odesio

01-19-2003, 09:49 AM

Originally posted by DKW

[b]Mike Tyson's Punch-Out[b] -
A number of total pushovers here, but two really stand out.

Those aren't examples of bad AI. Each boxer in MTPO had a specific pattern and if you learned it you could beat it. The first time I encountered King Hippo he kicked my ass all over the place. Of course once you learn his pattern he's a pushover but still.

Marc

Tuco

01-19-2003, 10:14 AM

Driver - if you drive through a red light, the police will deliberatley ram you until your car explodes, thier AI just seems to be 'ram him until he dies'.

Ground Control - this was never a hugely popular game (couldn't undrestand why, I loved it), so I'll give a little background. It's a 3D RTS game where you control tanks + troops, and you have an APC that represents you - if this dies it's game over. Another thing this game had was friendly fire (see where I'm going with this?) so if you positioned one tank inbetween the enemy and another tank, then the front tank will take damage from your tank. Now, imagine you send a selection of tanks with your APC near an enemy in a row, you would hope that the APC would just drive straight to where you tell it (normally on the end), but NOOOOOO - clever APC driver just HAS to drive to the wrong side of the line then around the FRONT of all your firing tanks! So now the most important unit in your army is getting shot at by the enemy and your own troops.

I've lost count of how many times a unit I'm supposed to be protecting has been lost to friendly fire, sometimes by a friendly NPC tanks aswell.

Firebat023

01-19-2003, 11:49 AM

Not counting early games, I'd have to give the worst AI award to the "human-like" behavior of Blood 2. They would walk into walls and keep walking. They'd somersault all the way to you without firing a shot (hilarious, but terrible). And if some turd had a sniper rifle and you were in a twelve mile range, you were done sir done.

Dave_D

01-19-2003, 04:09 PM

Well I got caught by one in BattleField 1942. I was trying a single player mission.(So I wouldn't be totally clueless when I went online) Anyway I spawn into the battle and look for a vehicle. At first I see a bunch of my army's tanks and jeeps and they're all driving away. Ok, my bot team mates got there first so I start running around and quickly notice a fighter plane. Anyway I hope in it and it's a tail dragger so obviously I can't see what's in front of me. Gun up the engine and start down the runway. After a second or 2 I have enough speed so my tail comes up of the ground. Of course I see one of the idiot bots teammtes a half second in front of me, driving right at me down the runway in a tank. Suffice it to say the tank won.

Alphagene

01-19-2003, 07:34 PM

Alpha Centauri is one of my faves but had some serious AI problems.

Air units could end the turn away from a city, but it needed to be inside a city by the next turn or it would crash. The AI would frequently send out a fleet of a dozen air units to attack a city, but they'd always use the maximum number of moves to get there. Meaning that anytime you placed one of your units in its flight path back (even if it is a ground or sea unit) it would have to fly around your unit (since it could not attack it), using up its movement points before landing back in its home city. I've destroyed entire air forces without losing a hit point this way.

Of course the down side of a crap AI was AutoImprove Terrain, a traditional weak spot with Sid Meier games, apparently. The formers would always move around looking to improve your terrain even if it was improved as much as possible. And if you had mag tubes, no movement points would be used up. Ever. I think the computer would finally stop moving the damn things after it moved in about a thousand circles.

Lumpy

01-19-2003, 08:50 PM

Back in the day I liked to play in a Multi-User Dungeon (MUD) called Omicron (a variation of another MUD called DikuMud). I discovered the following bugs that could be considered poor AI:

Wally of Wally's Magic Shop was such a fanboy that he would buy magical items from you for more than he charged for the same item! This meant that you could acquire unlimited amounts of what he carried by selling some of them back to him.

Among these was the Staff of Sleep, which had a comparitively weak Sleep spell. But since none of the NPCs considered casting the spell an attack, you could keep trying until you finally got lucky, and could put even the most powerful character to sleep eventually, if it wasn't programmed to attack you on sight.

The Steal command could actually be used by any character- you simply had zero chance of stealing from someone undetected unless you were a Thief and could enter the Thieve's Guild for traing. But someone under an enchantment of Sleep (see above) couldn't wake up to stop you. So my Warrier could walk up to Jupiter, go through 50 or 60 Staffs of Sleep until I finally put him out, then rob him of 600,000 gold.

I could then go to the Pet shop, and buy a pack of 100 trained wolves. Then I'd find the Palaquin of Knights, sic the wolves on him, then move out of the way until they'd killed him (losing 70 or 80 of the wolves in the process.) I then scavenged his body and acquired Silver Palaquin armor and sword that would allow me to safely fight enemies 10 levels above me.

Johnny Angel

01-19-2003, 10:09 PM

In the old gold box games, enemies didn't have any notion about avoiding areas made hazardous by spells. They'd approach you through your cloudkill until they dropped. If they didn't have anywhere to go, they'd use up their movement points moving back and forth through your blade barrier until they killed themselves.

In Elite II, once you had the biggest ship in the game and filled it with shields, you were invincible. You just sped up time, and waited for the enemies to commit suicide trying to ram you.

Duke

01-19-2003, 10:28 PM

I once had a pro football game called Front Page Sports Football. I don't remember what version it was, but it was the last version before they got NFL licencing, so you had to create your own league and teams, which I thought was cooler anyway.

Anyhow, in certain situations, if your quarterback pump-faked, the DBs would start running away....and would continue to run away, even if you decided to scramble. Sometimes your QB would be running down the field and the DBs would actually be running away from him.

The other weird thing about the game is that the computer didn't like being shut out, so if they hadn't scored by the last 2:00, there would inevitably be some impossible play, like a 60-yard field goal or an 80-yard run where all your players tackled the ballcarrier at least twice and he still wouldn't go down.

Master Wang-Ka

01-19-2003, 10:34 PM

The game is "Freedom Force" from Irrational Games. Real-time strategy with individual superheroes or superhero teams. Perhaps the best superhero PC game ever invented.

Interestingly enough, the AI isn't bad. In fact, in some parts of the game, it's devilishly clever!

... and then... there's Nick Craft.

Nick Craft is a teenage superhero groupie, who at one point will begin following members of the Freedom Force around while they go out to fight crime, right? He'll stand on the sidelines and cheer on his fave heroes!

Unfortunately, there are a few missions in the middle of the single-player game where this is nuts.

You see, these missions AUTOMATICALLY FAIL INSTANTLY, if Nick is in any way injured.

You can't stop Nick. You can't pick him up, you can't interfere with his movement. Nick will lock onto a hero when the level begins, and do his best to follow the hero around. Nick always knows where that hero is, even if the hero flies away, and will do his best to get within ten feet or so of that hero.

Nick will merrily trot into the middle of a firefight between the Mighty Man-Bot and a dozen gun-wielding thugs, and get shot to pieces before anyone can do anything. Whoops. Level failed. Try again?

It gets worse. Mentor has a superpower, "Instinct Dominance", which causes a target to become enraged and attack the nearest other person. This can be fun when dealing with a mob of bad guys who haven't seen you yet -- just use ID repeatedly on each badguy individually, and sit back and watch them beat each other stupid. Easy, right?

Not on this level. Any thug who falls prey to Instinct Dominance will immediately seek out and attack Nick Craft, regardless of where he is, or how far away. Whoops, Level Failed. Try again?

It becomes a race to kick the crap out of every single bad guy you encounter, FAST, before he gets to the kid.

And if you succeed... you have another level where you get to do basically the exact same thing... only this time with the flying Latino superhero, El Diablo, instead of Mentor and Man-Bot. Again, Nick will charge up to bat-wielding thugs if they're between him and El Diablo, and will hang out in dark alleys, if that's how he can get as close as possible to Diablo while Diablo is fighting on a rooftop, or flying around the city. Oh, and he still shows his customary merry willingness to charge into the middle of a firefight. The only thing he doesn't actually do is try to follow El Diablo off a rooftop. Whoops, Level Failed. Try again?

Then again... this may be intentional. If Diablo succeeds in trashing the bad guys without permitting Nick to get himself shot, we then cut to a cinematic, in which the mighty Minuteman and Mentor are confronting the superpowered gangster, Pinstripe. Pinstripe cuts loose at Minuteman with his tommy gun. Nick flings himself in front of the bullets, natch.

...and then, you're suddenly in control of your heroes. Your mission? Defeat Pinstripe and his gunmen before Nick dies.

At least you don't have to keep the little bastard from flinging himself into gunfire any more.

(and, of course, this scene is necessary, to set the stage for Minuteman to save the kid's life via a blood transfusion that turns the boy into the superpowered sidekick, Liberty Lad. Still, I sure wouldn't trust a kid that dumb with superpowers...)

Ludovic

01-20-2003, 12:32 PM

A lot of these are good, in terms of generically stupid AI.

But if you want a glaring example of a case where the designers had to try to make the AI stupid, look at the original version of Masters of Magic.

The computer would hardly ever place units inside its cities. Instead, it would place a huge army, One hex outside the city walls.

Badtz Maru

01-20-2003, 12:40 PM

Originally posted by banks
My favorite Fallout NPC experience was in Fallout 1, in the scoripion cave, when the Ian the NPC follower backed me into a corner and refused to move. My only recourse was to pummel him to death.

My friends and I had great fun creating dialouge for them.
Me: C'mon, Ian, move. I'm stuck here.
Ian: No, I'm happy here. Really.
Me: See, Ian, I'm not happy. You've blocked me into the damn corner. Move.
Ian: Can't you see I'm busy here? Standing ain't easy.
Me: Move! (punch)
Ian: No!
(repeat ad infinitum until Ian dies)

Lesson of the day- Some NPCs take setting their following distance to "close" a little bit too seriouslt.

I guess that's why Fallout 2 allows you to push people out of your way.

owlofcreamcheese

01-20-2003, 12:57 PM

Originally posted by D_Odds
Or my old favorite, a thief could set traps, rest, set more traps, rest, set more traps, rest and then turn an enemy hostile and watch it blow up (Baldur's Gate 2 without Throne of Bhaal expansion).

I think thats sorta realistic really. if I was a real trained trap expert and spent a whole month (or week) setting up traps in a real room in real life I could probobly set up a fairly fatal web of stuff to kill whoever entered.... breaks the balence of the game but seems realistic to me

Inky-

01-20-2003, 01:10 PM

In Quake II I used to love to lure the baddies into range of those monsters with the mechanical legs and the railgun, who'd forget all about you and mow down his own collegues.

Also, I seem to remember that the baddies had a fondness for walking undernieth elevator shafts, then happily standing there as the elevator repeatedly hammered them into the ground.

Daniel

01-20-2003, 01:57 PM

Okay, this doesn't count as AI, but it's a computer "opponent's" programmed behavior for which the response isn't exactly intuitive.

In Star Control 2, all of the aliens really acted alien to you or to one another, so you had to kind of figure out a different strategy for allying with each of them (or with specific members of their race . . . sometimes neither type of alliance was possible).

One of the aliens -- I forget its name but the music was awesome -- was the last of his race. You wanted to ally with him, but he kept thinking you were the enemy and he'd cut off the convo and just attack you.

Now, his ship is weak and very easily destroyed, so there's no way he can win. He's on a suicide mission, and even though you'll survive any outcome, strategically you HAVE to retreat. Thing is, his most devastating attack is to blow himself up, so you have to retreat FAST, about five or six times, before he'd realize that his enemy was always too proud to retreat and therefore you must be something else.

Kind of like the Nick Craft scenario. I never figured that one out on my own. But since the designers made the character so prone to suicide, I'm sure most people (like me) just gave up and let him kill himself before realizing there actually was a way to ally with him.11

Max_Castle

01-20-2003, 04:22 PM

Wing Commander (Origin) - There was no line-of-sight checking for the wingman's AI. If you got on a bad guy's tail and started shooting him, your wingman could come up behind you and shoot YOU, not realizing you were between him and the bad guy. I've seen this problem in some other flight games, but WC was the worst.

Rainbow Six (Red Storm) - Your squad mates could get inseperably tangled on narrow passages or ladders.

:wally

Cervaise

01-20-2003, 05:11 PM

I've been playing a lot of Civ III lately, and the only thing that really bugs me is how automated workers will cheerfully build their railroad right up to an enemy's border during wartime so they can be kidnapped. You'd think the game's programmers would have thought to have the citizenry behave differently during wartime, but no. And because of the unlimited movement of the railroad, the workers will unexpectedly appear out of nowhere, and since they've used their movement allotment you can't move them back, so you have to frantically stick a military unit on top of them to prevent them from being swiped. Come on, guys, how hard would it be to tell your workers not to go within, say, three or four squares of the enemy border while bullets are flying?

Dryga_Yes

01-20-2003, 05:34 PM

Those are all good, but the single dumbest AI ever has to be from the unpatched version of Age of Empires. I have no idea how they managed to do it, but they must've made some desperate last-minute change before shipping it and not had time to playtest it properly.

Anyway, if you played against the computer, he'd surrender after a few minutes. No matter what you did, no matter what difficulty you played on, he'd surrender. If that's not stupid AI then I don't know what is. :)

panamajack

01-20-2003, 07:07 PM

I think the worst game AI was probably Shodan. The one in Neuromancer was pretty mean too, but Shodan had legions of killer androids in addition to the nasty ICE.

Okay.
In Heroes of Might & Magic, if the computer opponent was approaching with a large army to attack a city, you could cut your losses by packing up your defending army and sitting right outside the city walls. The computer would attack the city first, then split the army and leave the city. It was much easier to kill both armies in halves than if they'd stayed together. Or even if the hero was defending the city.

Also, a single flying defender could hold a castle against slow-moving attackers without spells, since the flyer could just move away while the castle defense killed the opponent's armies. The computer player would note that it still had superior forces and would not break off the attack until it was nearly wiped out.

In Escape Velocity, there was a manuever that became known as 'Monty Pythoning' *. Combat was top-down 2D in a rather large space, and if your ship was just faster than the opponents, you could get at the right distance and match their speed (while they chased you), and then fire weapons at them. They wouldn't shoot until they got closer and they wouldn't break off chasing you until it was too late. You could also get ships to expend all of their single use ammo (e.g. missiles) by staying barely in range of the weapon, then moving safely away when they fired.

* Because you are 'running away'.

JohnT

01-20-2003, 07:13 PM

You know, I'm learning a lot of new "strategies" here. Keep up the good work! :D

HookerChemical

01-21-2003, 12:33 AM

Originally posted by HPL
I Theif had a part where you need to break into a prison to rescue someone. At one point, you hear a guard whistling constantly, not far from other guards. If you knock him out, I wondered about the fact that the other guards didn't seem to notice the whistling had stopped. Same with guards walking a patrol route. Wouldn't someone notice when they guard failed to pass by after so many minutes(particulary if they normally passed another guard.

Maybe not so much poor AI for most of these, but rather, really stupid guards and enemies.

Yeah, the Thief guards lose points for not noticing their friend had stopped whistling, but they gain a few points for being able to pick out the sound your footsteps a dozen other people walking on the same floor.

Tuco

01-21-2003, 04:51 AM

Originally posted by Dryga_Yes
Those are all good, but the single dumbest AI ever has to be from the unpatched version of Age of Empires. I have no idea how they managed to do it, but they must've made some desperate last-minute change before shipping it and not had time to playtest it properly.

Not as bad as Age of Empire II - where if you allied with a computer player, it would always surrender after about 3 seconds!

smiling bandit

01-21-2003, 07:01 AM

Anyway, if you played against the computer, he'd surrender after a few minutes. No matter what you did, no matter what difficulty you played on, he'd surrender. If that's not stupid AI then I don't know what is.

Not as bad as Age of Empire II - where if you allied with a computer player, it would always surrender after about 3 seconds!

Really? That never happened to me.

I nominate CivIII for worst AI. It is so bad that programmers had to make the computer cheat, blatantly and badly, for there to be any challenge. The computer gets free units and production and science. Without building any structures. In fact, often, the only thing it will ever build is a library.

Skeezix

01-22-2003, 09:05 AM

Not stupid, but psychotic:

Master of Orion II, the... v1.30 patch, I think. The penultimate patch released, anyway.

All the computer controlled empires would, pretty much at random, become aggressively hostile towards you, and declare war on your civilization.

It didn't matter that they couldn't reach any of your planetary systems, or you outgunned them 20 to 1 in single ship encounters, or even if they had no operative space fleet at all. Or, even if they had been allied with you for the previous 10 or 12 game turns, and you currently had several fleets of warships orbiting multiple undefended systems in their empire.

The final patch, of course, fixed this, but the damn game was unplayable in single-player mode until it was released.

VineFynn

04-15-2011, 07:33 AM

I've always had an issue with Empire Earth 2 AI. They never seem to deploy sea units, other than the occasional battleship.
You see, using the intuitive warp planner, I used this is coordinate attacks with the AI quite effectivly while attacking over land. But when I direct them with targeting an attack over sea, they will simply send 1 or 2 helicopters over to the said target every 10 minutes. They wouldn't send merchant marines (or transport choppers), not even fill them up with troops who are desperately attempting to find a path over the ocean without utilising transport. Nor will Hardest AI attack me other than with choppers every five minutes over the ocean. Even if they have a whole blooming continent to themselves. They even have the merchant marines, they just don't use them :smack:.
It anger me to see such a good game ruined by poor programming of AI.

Sitnam

04-15-2011, 08:11 AM

Sure your SOCOM teammates would constantly run through you fire, but so do morons on just about every multiplayer first person shooter.

Diplomacy has to be the worst, that game is all AI and the developer was asleep there, that game is unplayable.

Cuckoorex

04-15-2011, 08:31 AM

In Elder Scrolls: Daggerfall, if you were turned into a were-creature you could go into a town and slaughter some innocents, bringing out the town guard, who proceed to attack en masse; but since they have no silver or magical weapons, they can't kill you and you can simply slash away until a pile of the town's finest lay dead at your feet. They might as well have made the guards' sound files change into sheep sounds.

In GTA 3, those lovable police will also get so furious at you that they'll send their squad cars hurtling at you at top speed, often mowing down dozens of civilians themselves in the process, and if you're heading down a hill and make a quick stop, oftentimes you'll be treated to the sight of two or three squad cars literally flying overhead as they overshoot you and end up crashing or wiping out dozens of more civilians. MUWAHAHAHA!

In Hitman, all you need to do is don the uniform of one of the thugs of a gang completely comprised of Asians and hardly anyone will notice that you're the sole bald white guy walking around.

Alka Seltzer

04-15-2011, 09:16 AM

Plants Vs Zombies, the zombies just shamble from right to left every 8 years or so.

GoodOmens

04-15-2011, 12:13 PM

The PC version of Blood Bowl by Cyanide has some really questionable AI choices. First, the computer doesn't seem to understand the idea of half-time or game end. If it has the ball on the last turn of a half, it will happily run the ball carrier forward 6 squares instead of, you know, passing to the catcher who is in range for a TD. Even if that potential catcher is surrounded by opponents, at least there's a chance to score.

Also, every now and then a computer player decides to try his acrobatic skills and goes for 3 or 4 dodges in a turn, often for some meaningless goal like a 1-die block. Often this is a dwarf blocker or other non-agile sort. The results are either amusing or infuriating because he succeeds about 80% of the time.

Lastly, the computer makes strange choices as to the ballcarrier. Goblin teams seem to love giving the ball to their chainsaw-weilding Looney. Dwarf teams can't seem to figure out that the Doomroller can't pick the damned thing up, ever. Trolls are not good catchers.