bomber AI? Ai in general... Just a few gripes.

Its ridiculous that a bomber won't blow a hole in a wall , but walk all the way around. There are now only a few types of viable bases, The "v" style with ships blocking entrance. Or the one where the ships protect the ground pounders. how dumb are all troops that walk around a wall that a gunner could break in 5 seconds, And walk directly into ground pounders? And it's also great when the Wd follows a lone jug trying to disarm an irrelevant bomb 1/2 way across the map and leaves you with a pile of skellys in middle that it avoided.

And why does the game show me the same person to attack 3 times out of 10 clicks? Are there really that few people playing here? What gives?

In other similar games, you will find a large variance of bases.... But nope, here you only have a few cookie cutter options.

 

Are you in a Rumble? You will get the same targets a lot more during Rumbles.
Yes everyone was annoyed with crew AI, it seems they calculate how long it takes to get through walls Vs running around them, Bombers will go through walls that others won't because of their extra wall damage, but in saying that some designs can push troops where they want them to go, if you have seen any of those bases that have short layers of walls with each row slightly longer before the main base that push the Bombers all the way to each side. The only way to defend well in PP is to push troops where you want them to go, otherwise every single base will just get destroyed easily.

 

I agree that a bomber's priority should be to attack the wall closest to him... I've deployed bombers only to see them run away and attack defenses... it's almost like you need to either destroy immediate defenses first and then send in the bombers or attack at points that are heavily defended... which to me seems like madness... I want my bombers to gun in a straight line at a wall and kaboom it.

 

Yes walls should be their priority first & then building, every other game has a wall expert, I just had a horrible loss due to all my 20 Bombers dying before getting through all walls, bases are starting to put storages between walls & all 17 Gunners I have die trying to clear surrounding building, then my 26 Skellies won't even attempt to go through double walls, I'm left with a horrible loss, my worst in a loooonnnngggg time, I've been forced to add a second WD now, bringing my crew cost up to 500k Grog. It's a joke at this stage.

 

Not in a rumble, that I expect. This was when I was not in rumble. Kept pulling same bases over and over and over. 3 times minimum out of 10 "nexts"

 

The bombers are calculating the fastest path to the closest target - if its faster to walk around the wall than destroy it, they will. Unfortunately, they don't seem to always group their behavior, since some might already have picked a different path when new bombers are join in - there's no way for the old bombers to re-evaluate their path when a new bomber starts joining them. If you get them near a wall and use kaboom to weaken the wall, they will almost certainly attack through it. When the bombers are stunned or knocked back, they will re-evaluate their path as a group, and be much more likely to break through a wall - especially a damaged wall.

If you're curious about how long it takes them to destroy vs break through various sized walls, try my wall path calculator (its in my sig, and I also have a thread on it in the build strategies subforum). I promise they're doing what they consider at the time to be the fastest method. If its half a second faster to walk around instead of destroying the wall, they're going to do that, and the magic number seems to be a willingness to walk about 6 wall segments to avoid breaking through 1, when not calculated as a group (for max level bombers vs a max level wall and sm)

If it was too easy for them to destroy walls, it would completely cripple a key aspect of defensive strategy. Its still extremely easy to make them do it if you understand how they work (run them by the wall in a big group and hit kaboom - they'll almost always break through after!) but it forces attackers to have at least some semblance of skill.

And there are other bases that work besides using ships to block ph or gp. Putting the three ships side by side along one of the walls is another good strategy, and while many people don't seem to understand the strengths of it and build it wrong, it works well when done right.

 

But time to destroy Vs time to go around should not be the sole factor, if going around takes them past a bunker and a cannon, so they get destroyed before they make it round. we need to be able to deploy in a location that we deem 'safe' so they can go through the wall and into the heart of the base relatively unscathed.

I would be happy to see the defensive strength of the wall increased if midoki also allowed my bombers to reliably attack at the point I aimed them at. We need balance between attack and defense, but we also need the AI to work consistently. Bombers might need to work longer to get through a stronger wall, but at least if I place them properly they will get through, rather than run a 'quicker' route but get blown up, because they run too close to my Juggs because the AI math deems it quicker.

 

If you use kaboom in a group, they will usually go through the wall as it currently is, so just deploy them in a safe spot and kaboom through! No need to change the AI or deal with lots of subjective maths. Calculating how many defenses they have to walk past starts to get too complicated, especially given the really old phones they're still supporting. But at least you know how they work, and you can plan around it or adapt to it. If you want them to go through a wall, they will, right now. I made mine go through a 5 wall thick segment earlier today, despite having a 3 wall thick segment very nearby, and an opening not too far away either! It just takes more skill to make them do it, and thats a good thing.

What I've seen other games do is have units that prioritize walls but they suicide when they attack, with no ability to resurrect the corpse (as it is now in a million pieces). I'd be ok with them adding an expensive unit that does even more damage to walls, is guaranteed to target the closest wall, and commits suicide to destroy it (without leaving a corpse to resurrect) like other games do (maybe a Heavy Bomber). Bombers are kind of a hybrid unit that can also do a lot of dps to buildings though, and can be resurrected, which is what makes them fundamentally different from units in other games that prioritize walls. If the current bomber had a wall priority and didn't die when attacking the wall, it would keep destroying wall after wall until every wall was destroyed, and sure it would be interesting to watch a pack of bombers circumnavigate the base destroying all 175 walls, but they work well the way they are designed as is if you know how to use them.

 

that's all fine and dandy but the problem here is the bomber's only job in life is to go through walls, not around them.

 

If you kaboom they will go through the walls. Kaboom is essentially telling them "hey you guys, I know its faster to walk around, but please, attack here anyways." You have a skill that makes them do exactly what you want, learn to use it.

Imagine this scenario: The bomber is at the Plant in this picture, and its trying to get to the builder's hut

Spoiler

If Bombers didn't care about how long it took them to walk around, and always just bombed straight through any walls in their way, it would bomb through that extremely long chain of walls one by one.
If bombers are allowed to walk around, which is obviously much much faster, they will walk around it. If you try to come up with some middleground scenario, where they bomb through if its at least say 50% as fast as walking around, they might skip the long chain, and go for the medium or small thickness of wall segment.

What path do you think the bombers should take in that picture? Because to me, it seems pretty clear that they should just walk around it.

Now how do you come up with a simple mathematical to decide when to bomb through something versus not bomb through it? To me, "when walking around it is faster do that, otherwise bomb through it" seems to be a pretty good rule. Otherwise, you're going to run into some sort of scenario like this (perhaps on the side of a ship!), where it will be very clearly better to walk around, but it doesn't. Maybe it won't be that extreme, but I know I'd much rather my bombers walk around in a clearly defined and predictable manner rather than sometimes getting stuck on long chains of walls like that. If you don't make it a clear case of "its always going to walk around if its faster" then you start dealing with subjectivity on what tradeoff should be allowed- should it bomb through if its 90% as fast as walking around? Should it walk around if it would take 3x as long to bomb through? 4x as long? That balance will differ from player to player, and someone will always be complaining that either their bomber didn't walk around some extremely thick blockade, or that it tried to bomb through a 5 wall thick blockade when it could have walked one square to the side and not had to bomb anything.

Bombers current behavior is very predictable. They WILL bomb through walls, if you force them to calculate it as a group (Kaboom does this, but there are other ways as well, and when they calculate as a large enough group, its always faster to just bomb through it). They will be even more likely to bomb through it if your kaboom damages some of the walls! This is your way of telling them "Hey, I know it might be faster to walk around, but I really want you to attack here anyways!" Its giving you a way to opt in to that behavior.

 

Fwiw there's a way to code around the issue used in your example. In 'that other game', wallbreakers will ignore walls that don't enclose or partially enclose buildings, and they specifically ignore 'spikes' of walls such as that in your example. They work extremely well

 

A base with an open gate doesn't enclose a building

That was an extreme example though, but you always run into the issue "how far should a troop be willing to walk to avoid destroying one extra wall". If I can walk one square to the right and break through something 1 wall thinner, or 2 walls thinner, or 3 walls thinner... what should the cutoff be? If I'm willing to walk 1 square to the right to break through 1 less wall, should I be willing to walk 2 squares to break through 2 less walls? Because the math there is identical - 1 square walked to avoid destroying 1 wall. I exaggerated it on purpose to show that you need to be willing to let them walk around it sometimes, and unless you have a better system for quickly and easily telling them when they should walk around it (since it should be clear in some cases that they should), the current system is predictable and logical, and can still be coerced to do as you wish.

If you deploy your bombers in a big enough group, and kaboom, they will bomb through that wall right there. I believe you'd need 28 bombers clustered together to make it faster to bomb down through it than walk around it, but if its faster than walking around, they will do it. I've certainly gotten through 5-wall-thick segments in the past, and I'm sure I could get through a 7-wall-thick one with a big enough bomber group.

 

Still assume the bomber is the plant pot:


should the bomber bomb through the 5 wall segment? Should it walk 1 wall to the right and bomb through the 4 wall segment? Should it walk 3 walls and bomb through the 3 wall segment, or 2 walls, or 1 wall, or walk around it?


Should the bomber bomb through the peak of that? Should he walk one tile and skip 2 walls, or another tile and skip 2 more walls, or a third tile and skip another 2 walls, or just walk around it?


Should the bomber bomb through the peak? Should he walk one tile and bomb through 1 less wall? If he's willing to walk 1 tile to skip 1 wall, then he should walk 2 tiles to skip 2 walls, or 3 tiles to skip 3 walls...

I think you can see where I'm going with this. You run into Sorite's paradox, splitting hairs to decide "when is it worth walking 1 tile? how far should I walk to not bomb through something unnecessarily thick?" and to just use the clear cut answer "when it would take longer to bomb through it" makes perfect sense.

For a group of 10 bombers, they're not going to walk to find a thinner segment. They will bomb through the thick piece because its faster to destroy one wall than walk 1 tile out of their way. You just have to use kaboom to tell them to work in a group, since when they're initially deployed, they're calculating their paths as 10 groups of 1 bomber rather than 1 group of 10 bombers. And then it does exactly what you want - it bombs through that thick wall in a safe area without walking around.

 

Love your detailed reasoning. If the OP doesn't accept it, at least know that you helped someone like me understand. Also thanks for the kaboom tip!

 

The gate would render the structure partially enclosed so wallbreakers still function exactly the same. I'm no programmer, and I concede you are far more knowledgeable about coding etc than I, but that doesn't mean it isn't necessarily being over complicated. K.I.S.S. Forgetting the actual bombers we have for a minute, a dedicated wall breaking troop should take the most direct path (eg. as the crow flies) to the closest wall (ignoring those that don't enclose or partially enclose a structure) and start destroying it. Simple. If you drop it infront of a wall that's 5 pieces thick instead of 2 pieces thick, so be it. Just means you need to think about where you drop it next time...

 

I guess its an issue of defining "partially enclosed" then. If I remove the flame gate so there's no gate in the opening, is it no longer partially enclosed? Because I don't mind putting my flame gate elsewhere (perhaps where the bombers would be considering bombing through!).

How do you define partially enclosed? Because bombers will run at a fully enclosed building right now, they get a ! over their head and everything!

Either way, knowing how to make bombers do your bidding, you can make them bomb through a 5 wall thick segment if you use enough, and its just up to the user to learn to control them

I'm not saying I'm not for an "always take the most direct approach even if you spent ten times as long bombing through things" method, I'm just trying to highlight how it also has plenty of flaws and if it changed to that, it would also get plenty of complaints. If the bomber could walk one square to the side and avoid 5 walls and didn't, that would be complained about just as much if not more. Only right now, we can make him behave in either fashion if you know how to work with him - but if you switched to always taking only the most direct route despite taking longer, then you lose the ability to have him take the indirect faster approach.

 

Yeah, I get all that, but I guess I'd rather a troop that was a dedicated wallbreaker...it's sorely missing from this game and the lack of one is a significant contributor to the lack of diversity in bases imo. And if the AI is simple, straightforward, easy to understand and anticipate, and controlled by the player to a greater extent I'm doubtful there would infact be that many complaints...it's a moot point anyway I think

 

I think the AI of the bomber is perfect. You jush have to know how to control them. One of the main rule of using a bomber is first to clear surrounding buildings near the wall using gunner or other unit. After that, deploy bomber in the right place (calculate the pathing), remember a bomber is likely to attack a already damage wall, so thats why as Skye said you can use kaboom! to notify the group of bomber that that's the wall I want you to destroy.

If you change the AI of the bomber to prioritize strictly on wall, it will make the game more easy and straightforward. Just learn to use them properly, trial and error, when you mastered them, they will be one the best unit in your arsenal!!

 

I do know how to use the bomber and can do so effectively and I quite like him most of the time, lol, that's not what any of my posts were about. Like I said in a hypothetical discussion, my personal preference would be to have a dedicated wallbreaker. I disagree that it would make the game any easier than it currently is to have a dedicated wallbreaker - in fact I'm betting it would give base design a shake up so we weren't attacking the same bases over and over again.

Opinions...everyone's got one

 

Or maybe introduce a new unit called "wallbreaker", it's a vehicle like a siege engine or catapult that will prioritize wall. We can only recruit one for each battle, take maybe 6-8 tavern slot. It move very slow have a good amount of hp, prioritize to destroy walls especially that block the path that lead to enemy PH. After it done its jobs ( destroy walls and not be destroyed by enemy defences), it will stop to attack, and then 6-8 (depending on how many tavern slot it used) buccaneers will come out from the wallbreaker to help the battle.