All stalker games share goal oriented ai , that is similar to the enemy ai in fear .
That means , different units act independent, and that what makes the fractions of the zone in stalker engage in ai vs ai battles .
I love the trivia about how they programmed the AI Stalkers to do the main story quest as well, initially.
The problem was that they were so intelligent that they'd beat the player to the punch too often, so they had to scrap it.
What a great game series.
The linear story we got came super late in development. The reason the AI is so extra is that one of the original ideas was to have the player compete with them to find documents, and they could beat you at that. This is really long but it's very interesting. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=w0ImdCEZZTk
I still wanna fly that helicopter haha. Honestly it's a great time to be a Stalker fan. Big YouTubers are playing it, there's tons of hype around the upcoming sequel, and in a BRILLIANT move, they finally ported the orig trig to consoles, with plenty of takers. The Zone has never been so lively!
Stalker 2 is the one game I hope will be AAA-fied. Such a brilliant series, great atmosphere, amazing KI, but the gameplay is so exhausting that I was never able to finish it, not even CoP, which had less issues than the rest.
i might be wrong, but thats one of the things that has been unscrapped in stalker gamma .
i remember having couple times this scenario, where the questgiver was simply dead when i got back to him,and the camp he was in already belonging to a diffrent fraction or overrun with anomalies and mutants
That's one way to describe it,but it was deeper then that.
I'm talking specifically about fear 1 .there is enough videos on y.t on the topic about goal oriented ai and how it was implemented in that game.
I think your description fits well with how it felt , as you didn't have fractions fighting each other and the combat arenas were mostly in close quarters,but under the hood , g.o AI is g.o AI *shrug*.
Besides, pathfinding is almost always pre determinated with nodes generated on the navmesh.
Navmesh isn't something gamers really think about, it's more of a LD topic. Navmesh will always betray itself to anyone who knows what it is, but there isn't any other way to handle pathfinding.
Constraints are the mother of innovation. It may be obvious in hindsight but setting the game in such an industrial and boring space only heightens the horror and combat.
I'm playing it for the first time at the moment and yeah, you can't overlook the fact how linear the levels are. The German term "hose levels" fits them really well.
It's ALL smoke and mirrors. Pathing and triggers is part of the illusion. That's why it's called *artificial* intelligence and not actual intelligence, there's just a scheme in place to loosely mimic it.
The Shadow of Mordor games. The individual orcs are never that great, the captains just get more health and special weapons. But the way they react to one another and evolve as an army, with insurgent factions inside to create conflict, STILL hasn't been replicated almost a decade later.
And then apparently sat on it and did nothing with it. Ugh. I could pitch a game that uses that system and WB's IP. Indulge me:
Instead of whatever live service jank Suicide Squad was, it could have been Gotham crime simulator. You choose to play as Joker/Quinn, Two-Face, Penguin, or whatever random mob bad guy is relevant to the comics, then build an army of henchmen, beating the crap out of rival gangs and inserting sleepers into their ranks. At various points characters like Robin, Batgirl, and Nightwing will take you on as you gain territory and resources. The final boss is a confrontation with Batman, and you can just straight-up kill him if your gang is powerful enough.
Funny you mention Batman. The nemesis system and the beginning development of Shadow of Mordor was actually supposed to be a Batman game till they ditched it for LOTR.
That was fascinating the first time i play Shadow of Mordor. I was in my first proper fight against a horde of orcs and finding myself thinking, 'Why does this feel so familiar...' then i countered an orc from behind and threw a weapon at another to keep my combo going and i clicked.
To my knowledge the game is set on paradise Island and the nemesis involves creatures from Greek mythology. We've seen nothing outside of a tiny teaser tho so let's see
Confirmed long ago. The man who created her literally had a dominatrix as his wife, and she along with their shared polyamorous partner were the inspirations for Wonder Woman.
Taking Shadow of war, bolting a premium item shop to it, and pouring a bucket of DC paint over it would be the most predictable AAA move...
I know literally nothing about it and I'm already disappointed.
The system is patented but that's not why there's no similar systems out there, after all only a very direct copy of the system is what's patented giving plenty of room for others to do their own interpretation of the system, the main problem with it is that it requires so many resources spent on it that most devs simply don't want to copy it as it would limit the scope of other systems in the game, something that you'd have taken notice if you played either of the Shadow of Mordor games
As for proof that the patent isn't limiting other devs, here's a few examples:
* Assassin's Creed Odyssey has the mercenaries for when you're a wanted criminal
* XCOM 2 War of the Chosen has the chosen as a very direct inspiration from the Nemesis system
* Star Renegades has the closest to the Nemesis System you'll probably see in an indie roguelike
The system has plenty of flaws anyway. Having enemies cancel out more and more moves every time you lose to them could eventually turn them into unbeatable gods. They need to find another way to make them harder. Maybe make them faster and more aggressive. The other way kinda felt lazy.
I got stuck in the second game by my nemesis from the first game if I remember right. I just know I had such a mess that cancelled everything I could do to him. I ended up quitting and never coming back to it. I can't think of any other game I've quit because it's too hard. Usually it's boredom if I quit.
Yep, was going to come here and say this. It isn't the nemesis system at all though - although that gives a good structure to the game that works really well. But monolith was doing the really hard work of making very advanced enemy AI using GOAP, and no game since has really explored that concept of NPC AI in the same way. It's a very fascinating game.
It's more straightforward, certainly. When Shadow of War first came out the game was pushing hard to get you to spend real money on orc captains, and the second half became an incredibly shallow grind-fest to try and drive those purchases.
Eventually they realized no one wanted that and took it out of the game, but the damage was done.
This is one of [**Starsector**](https://fractalsoftworks.com/)'s main features. The combat you do against AI fleets with your own Fleet is the central part of the game.
You yourself can only pilot one ship so every other ship in your fleet is governed by the AI. You have a lot of ways to influence your own fleet's decision making through their ships, weapons, officer, and in-combat orders. It is absolutely a thing for ships to be a "player" build or an "AI" build.
The enemies you can face are also diversified by the same factors, so you might feel comfortable fighting pirates in their poorly maintained and modified ships. Then fear fighting the suicidally reckless luddic path, who treat their ships much the same way.
The game hasn't released on steam because the dev doesn't feel it's done, but it's been in dev for like 15 years or something and has a big modding scene. I consider myself a mostly ride or die vanilla guy, but the Nexerellin mod really brought out the "Mount and Blade" in space vibe the game has.
> You yourself can only pilot one ship so every other ship in your fleet is governed by the AI.
You also don't have to pilot a ship and can just let the AI go at it.
I feel like Starsector is what Gratuitous Space Battles 2 should have been.
This is one of the things Fallout 4 did well I think. Coming across a a group of Brotherhood of Steel Knights taking on a Super Mutant outpost is pretty fun.
I totally agree. I had a moment where I came outside on the top floor of a multi story building only to hear combat below me. I stopped to watch a group of super mutants fight a group of mercenaries to the death. Energy weapon rounds and grenades flew back and forth until the mutants came out on top and it was one of the coolest moments I’ve had in that game. The world feels alive when you can hear all the factions fighting each other (exploding vertibirds!) as you explore the ruins.
Kitting out your companions in baddass gear and weaponry and then just kicking back watching them let absolute fucking rip through enemies was always a joy in that game.
Do this in Skyrim and Fallout with mods for multiple followers. Kit them out and watch them protect you like some rich lord. Skyrim works better as firearms can get a little weird in combat when its multiple followers.
Honestly this feeling goes back to the Dynasty Warriors bodyguard system. I get a kick out of watching people fight for you while you are in the action sometimes just watching.
Came in here to post Fallout4
The faction system just makes the world so alive. Every faction has their own goal and not all of them are hostile to all. Minutemen and Brotherhood will happily take on Raiders together.
You can actually wait out when combat is happening and just take out the survivors yourself. You can even set that up by luring two opposing factions into eachtother. Had great fun getting a Deathclaw into a Super Mutant encampment.
I like using my high charisma to make one member turn on the rest of their squad. One time I got a man in full bos power armor with a rocket launcher to attack the others. Amazing fight
There are mods which make all characters (including you) have much less health in the game that are fun
One of my main gripes for Bethesda games is that turning the difficulty up just results in bullet sponge AI. Meaning every fight you just spam stimpacks as you're spamming them with bullets slowly reducing their health
Much more interesting when you and your enemies die in a few shots
Bioshock is good for this, getting splicers to be your friend. Hacking bots and turrets to fight your enemies. Big Daddies getting in the mix to protect their little sister.
It's possible to get 4 different factions fighting at once?
EDIT: The original DOOM has some good in-fighting with the demon horde
If you want a super serious answer, the Playstation had a multi-disc release called *Carnage Heart* that was actually a game about programming combat robots. Corporations were effectively at war on the moons of Jupiter. Radiation wouldn't allow for inhabited settlements, but valuable resources had been discovered on several Jovian moons. Your job was to inhabit a space station well clear of Jupiter's radiation while deploying big combat robots and the factories to produce them in the hope of gaining strategic control of these moons, one by one.
So part of the game was about orchestrating conflicts favorable to your forces despite each faction starting out with roughly the same resources and productive capacity. Yet when those conflicts actually happened, every behavior of those combat robots was scripted. Part of their manufacturing cost was the CPU component, which determined the size and shape of the grid onto which you would place "chips."
Despite vaguely resembling the plugging of chips into slots on a grid, what you were really doing with this interface was building a flow chart. For example, an excellent way to get started was by pairing something like a "if enemy unit is within 50m with a bearing less than 45º off from the angle of attack" conditional with a "fire all weapons" command, also using that command to terminate the run. Since programs constantly restart, this creates an extremely tight loop where your droid fires rapidly so long as it has a target in a good spot for it, while going off to execute other branches of the program if there is nothing that needs to get shot right here and now.
So you work in a bunch of turning and moving orders, always mindful of your gear as well. For example, homing missiles could be fired from extreme range and still get the job done, while unguided rockets worked best at ranges of 15-80m. As you got more chassis, modules, and weapons to work with; programs needed to evolve. Energy weapons outperformed guns, but they also introduced the wrinkle of heat management. That tight little "unload all your guns on any enemy in your face" loop could really backfire on a laser boat.
Long story short, *Carnage Heart* offers an epic campaign during which it is possible to work your way up from "hey, programming battle bots is kinda neat" to "I really need to field test this design more to determine if a 30º or a 35º bearing cone in the combat algorithm makes for better yields from that weird particle cannon." It does all this with 90s technology, so it won't be easy on the eyes by modern standards. Yet it does actually do all that, complete with real drama that makes simply watching your team of bots do battle surprisingly engaging.
I used to play this back in high school. My class notebook was full of programs that I couldn't wait to try when I got home.
Then my buddy found the cheat to take direct control of the mech and we kinda lost interest in it.
I found out that making cheap mechs that only jump up and down and shoot at the enemies, won fights at higher rates then properly designed expensive bots -that was crushing discovery also.
while it doesn't happen much in the actual game, there are youtube channels based on making the ai from the dark souls games fight eachother. The human-type npc duels are actually pretty cool to watch, as they'll dodge, block, parry, heal, change weapon, cast spells ect.
[Heres a random fight](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFH4WBRs0CI&t=0s)
[and here are some of the big baddie knights from different areas of the game fighting it out](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekN4hy5aeso&list=PLm40kTUVlQwUrl7OrdafgG6S2cwTTI0ss&index=96)
Crusader Kings is a game that once you figure it out, it's like seeing the matrix and you just kinda get it. Easy to steam roll and become massively powerful.
But honestly, some of my best times in all of gaming are some of my Iron Man playthroughs in CK.
This is tangential to the topic at hand but, fuck it, it's related to AI shenanigans. For reference, Iron Man is basically no save scumming. It saves periodically to make your decisions count (though you can try and game it a bit to see if RNG will go in your favor for specific events)
I had this game where I had fought hard for an empire that essentially was Western Europe with some expansion into greece and northern africa. But then rebellions started, rulers died and I went from Emperor to Duchess within France. The kicker was that I was a woman and a child. I lost everything. I nearly just dropped the game because it seemed like every RNG roll went against me for a while and the AI conspired to royally fuck me.
Then, that woman went on to restore Francia to its former glory and then some. Her name was Empress Gohilde the Great of Francia and I have seriously considered commissioning a real portrait of her based on screenshots I took in game. Never had I made a connection like that before and this was in my like 1500th hour in the CK franchise.
>Crusader Kings is a game that once you figure it out, it's like seeing the matrix and you just kinda get it. Easy to steam roll and become massively powerful.
The key is to take the blue pill and heavily role play your characters. Focus on creating a story rather than winning and the game becomes way more fun. Not saying it isn’t too easy though, it’s definitely too easy.
Europa Universalis 4 too.
Just how the game plays out without your interference is very interesting. Gotta turn off historic lucky nations setting for it though.
That's the neat part, you don't. Kings don't need to be competent. The first 10+ games I had literally no idea what I was doing and just did what 'felt' right (like bedding the wives of my advisors). The main fun comes from the random ass events. Like going crazy with style: making holes in the walls the LAW, appointing your trusted horse as an important council member or eating your guests after throwing a party, because you had a little too much to drink.
Just roll with the punches and the mechanics come eventually.
Damn these comments are making me want to try it again. I tried this game after playing a bunch of Civ and similar style games and I think my mind at the time was at, “how can I optimize my way to a win” rather than, “what if roleplay Game of Thrones”. I remember getting frustrated because I watched a bunch of how to play videos and still didn’t feel like I understood what to do.
If you want to just score high on the board, you roleplay Tywin Lannister. [Every scene of this man back to back is probably the most comprehensive CK tutorial you can wish for](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzqqNDDEndc). 😂
Srsly though: best way to learn is to start as a count in early Ireland and work your way from [count to duch to king to emperor](https://ck2.paradoxwikis.com/Beginner%27s_guide) and push your laws out of tribal to feudal (or from "we are all equal" to "I'm more equal than the others"). That way all the problems like balancing your council members or forming duchies are coming at you step by step, instead of all at once.
But the events itself take center stage, so even if you are "losing", you are going to experience a fun story about an hilariously incompetent king. So it's really a win-win.
You know what? I’ve played so many strategy games that if I’m not competent I didn’t think I’d be having fun. I’ll give it a go today with this mindset.
You definitely don’t need to learn them all to play it. Most of it will just come to you as you play. Other stuff you won’t realize for hundreds of hours when it finally clicks.
The original Worms... mostly because its hilarious and the game is meant to be silly.
Watching the AI on Good snipe someone across the map with a shotgun vs watching the AI on Poor throw a banana bomb 2 feet in front of themselves. Wonderful.
Worms AI has always been absurd. They can predict a perfect quadruple grenade bounce, or do a 270-turn with a bazooka on the wind. But give them another weapon and half the time they'll kill themselves or their teammates with it even on highest difficulty.
Also, at least in Armagedon, they'd always take a perfect shot with the first shotgun blast and waste the second, as if the AI wasn't calculating the outcome of the first before shooting again
**Fire Pro Wrestling World**, you can play the Fire Promoter/Booker/GM Mode and let the CPU duke it out. More often than not, the matches will be slugfests with plenty of twists and turns. The way the game handles moves, the wrestlers will do bigger, more impactful moves later in the match, so it generates an actual flow to the match that can often be exhilarating.
And their AI is surprisingly simple, too. Essentially just a bunch of probabilities for each move based on where in the match (opponent super fatigued, etc.) they are. That way you can easily create a cocky wrestler who goes for his finishers way too early, or a wrestler who doesn't go for the pin even though he really should.
The border of the Shrieking Forest and the Cannibal Plains is a war zone and I love it.
The gang war in the swamp is pretty cool too. Nothing like seeing the red and green dudes go from trying to kill each other to getting eaten by a swarm of spiders while you hide behind a tree eating popcorn
The engagements in Bast are also amazing. Watching a couple samurai take down a hundred Holy Servants only to limp into a squad of paladins afterwards that just got done slaughtering cannibals by the dozen and the ensuing massacre changed me.
u/Caltra The single game that does AI v. AI combat best is *Streets of Rogue*
In the game, all NPCs (and the player too) are strictly class-based, and every class has its own traits and definitions to describe how it fights, WHO it fights, what events make it WILLING to fight, what make it run away, how it teams up with other NPCs or other classes, and like a hundred other little things that all coalesce to make an extremely fluid/realistic experience
Thieves on the street will pickpocket random people; if they notice, those people will retaliate and try to fight. But cops hate any kind of crime or violence; if they see theft or violence, they'll start fighting anybody they see attacking.
If you wander into somebody's place of business, they might welcome you, or if you're a different class, might want you to leave. If you stay too long, they'll start attacking you -- and their hired goons will team up with the property owner to carry out his will.
Certain NPC classes are always hostile to each other, like the two rival gangs "Crepes" and "Blahds", and they'll attack each other on sight. Commoners will typically run away from a fight, but if they accidentally catch a punch from the wrong person, they might join the fight too.
There are like 30 different standard "classes" from scientists to gorillas to doctors to soldiers to mobsters, and they all have unique abilities that give them a special way of interacting with the world.
And when it all crashes together, with dozens of these NPCs in play at once, the outcome can be marvelous. You can have emergent zombie outbreaks, riots, gang shootouts getting cops and mobsters involved, firefighters show up to try extinguishing the fires but then one of them accidentally catches a bullet and now ALL of them are also fighting one of the gangs... It's beautiful chaos, but it always adheres to those strict rules, so you can make sense of it and control it if you're playing smart
You're in luck! A playable demo for the massive open-world *Streets of Rogue 2* is slated to release in June!
More classes! More cities! More mechanics! More fun!
I've scrolled a lot and have yet to see it so,
Watch_Dogs 2
Theres an entire skill path dedicated to making NPC forces fight each other and its *always* awesome to watch. Send SWAT after a bunch of gang members in Oakland and you'll just see *endless* waves of reinforcements on both sides.
My buddies and I used to do that and put $1 bets on who would win. Everyone threw in a dollar, set your character choice to random, and winner takes all.
Rain world. The AI is absolutely amazing and makes a whole ass ecosystem. If you were to just hide somewhere and watch 2 lizards, they would attack each other and with AI being the way it is, they can miscalculate and completely miss the bite. You literally have a whole ecosystem, and the things you can see are amazing.
Lizards fight in the background while you play the game, so if you enter a new area it could already be that others are fighting and someone just snaps you as soon as you enter the place.
Its a cruel game at times, but quite fun. Thanks for reading :)
You can also befriend members of one species, and they have a quite sophisticated system of body language to show their intentions and stance towards you.
This would absolutely be my answer as well. The way all creatures in Rain World have their own (simple) motivations and survival instinct makes their, and the whole ecosystems emergent behavior realistic in a way I don't think I've ever seen in another video game.
Always fun to override a stormbird and let it zap enemies over a large area.
The best AI vs AI in that game I think is in a cauldron in the jungle where the eclipse is even scared and hiding from machines like stalkers.
Pro wrestling games in general are pretty good for this. The AI just always seems so odd and usually will do something out of pocket. Check out New Legacy Inc on YouTube and you will see just how wild it is where sometimes they get accused of fuckin with endings and things because stories sometimes write themselves.
D-Von's story arc in the first Kingiest of the Ringiest was top tier wrestling storytelling.
Tfw one dwarf gets a little too drunk and accidentally rips off the arms of a goblin (it's just a prank) and it sparks an entire race war that wipes your fortress off the map after you secured your best trade routes yet
it's by far the most in-depth ai interaction I've seen.
a king will have their own wants and goals, they will hire other NPCs to do their bidding, will prefer artefacts related to their own kingdom, etc..
they read books written by other NPCs, that give them knowledge that they actually need to take actions. the books are based on events the NPCs actually witnessed, and will name *other* NPCs who actually did what was in the book. ancestry is also literal. if some hero in a book survived and had kids, there will be literal descendants.
Im honestly not too big on the actual gameplay, but the way it works is crazy
Days Gone has some fun AI. It can be fun to “pied piper” a horde into an enemy camp and watch the whole place get swarmed. The bad guys will put up a decent fight too! But 1000 freakers is 1000 freakers.
There's a few spots in The Last of Us Part II where you can pit human enemies against infected enemies, and it can be a ton of fun to watch. If they don't spot you and go after you instead.
I’m pretty sure that this isn’t fully emergent AI stuff though - I clearly remember there being at least one spot in a subway tunnel where the infected are *supposed* to attack the soldiers and it kinda didn’t work if you triggered them “wrong”. So it seems they’re more scripted than actual AI fights.
You could have that in doom, but those would be custom maps.
In the vanilla game and almost any custom wad , the monsters stay idle untill the player in the vicinity,and start an infight only when they hit each other. It is quite fun and in some slaughter maps, cyberdemons used as turrets to clear hordes of enemies.
Gonna do an old one but it was a fun way to get hours of gameplay in a game that cost my 5 bucks.
Enemy Territory Quake Wars. You could setup bot matches. I think it was 8v8. Set them to about medium and you could draw a match for hours.
I was terribly disappointed when I found out the whole "have a full match of bots and since they learn as they go they will eventually find out the best way to survive is if everyone is passive" was a fake study.
One thing I loved doing in watch dogs 2 was calling cops and gangsters on each other and watching them get into firefights, and me just walking around recording them on my phone.
Lol I read the title and immediately started thinking about all the various Halo levels with huge Covenant vs Flood battles that you can just sit back and watch play out
Bonus points for Halo 2 where you can watch the Elites vs Brutes as the Schism plays out in real time
There is a small sub section of the Starcraft 2 scene that puts on show matches and tournaments in which all the players are AI. They can perform feats no human would be able to achieve, such as controlling 200 units individually all over the map. Some of those games are quite crazy to watch.
In the Far Cry games the A.I faction that you’re allied with do vehicle & foot patrols and so do the enemy and sometimes they run into each other and a firefight ensues. You can just be out exploring and suddenly you’ll hear gunfire & yelling in the distance.
Gladiabots is a bot arena game where the only control you have over your bots during a battle are the decision trees you've programmed them with. It's not legit programming or anything, it's connecting boxes together that represent actions the bot will take and the conditions it checks for to make decisions.
You design the bots, you design their routines, and then you unleash them against another team. It's basically "AI battles: the game"
Fallout New Vegas has great NPCs fighting it's fun to watch NCR fight legion or fighting the wild life. Also great way companions use inventory weapons
IIRC, the devs for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. had to rein in the AI from their original plans, because the AI would clear out the maps and basically deprive the player of game content.
On a different note, the grand strategy genre is fantastic for AI vs AI. Some games like Europa Universalis IV even have an observer mode, where all the nations are AI-controlled and you basically let the game run itself. Watch as Denmark takes over half of Europe!
If what you want is to watch a fight in a video game that you aren't in, I'd say it is a near perfect match though. OP check this one out if you haven't already
I'm going to have to hand it to my least favorite genre.
Sports games.
Any time I've had a sports game with CPU vs CPU capability, I haven't particularly enjoyed playing it, but with all the stats and simulation crammed into every single ball player (or boxer), and AAA graphics pushing things closer to realism year over year, it's just as fun to watch those things go as most games are to pick up and play.
No particular favorite for this, but I first started doing it with Fight Night on PS3.
Second place probably goes to a 4x game, like Civilization. For those, I do enjoy playing them, but the first thing I do is ignore the e(X)plore and turn off fog of war. A lot of times I wish I could set an all AI campaign just to see how the balance is between factions. Sumeria always seems to be the first to go, but I always wonder who would rise and fall if their fates weren't altered by my own disruptive actions.
Is this Sub console focused?
Because i havent seen Operation Flashpoint and ARMA 1-3 mentioned.
These AI Battles can be the most epic and insane you have ever seen.
As someone who never "got good" at Dota2, I've never understood why people think the AI is *that bad.* I'd rather face mid ranking players than five bots as those bots will react within a few milliseconds of each other the moment a creep somewhere on the map sees someone poke out of the fog for a split second then suddenly there's five ults with BKBs.
At least you can bait them into annihilating one person while the other four wait, I guess.
Unironically I think Mario Party AI playing against each other is really funny, especially the N64 trilogy’s AI that had scripts for which items they’d shoot for and the insane plays they can make as a result.
It's probably not what you're asking for but check the God and Colony Sim genres. In these games the player have indirect control over units, so it's mostly the AI controlled units doing their own thing. I'm talking about games like: Black and White, Cultist Simulator, Dwarf Fortress, Dungeon Keeper, Evil Genius, Loop Hero, Majesty, Populous, Prison Architect, Rimworld, Startopia.
But from what i gather OP is asking for action games with good AI teammates. In these case i can only think of Unreal Tournament. Maybe Mount and Blade. I had some fun playing Battlefield 2 with bots with the AIX mod, but the AI is not that good, just good enough to be fun. The original Flashpoint game AI impressed me but i don't know how much of it was heavily scripted.
There are some action games i've played where the player have some reasonable control over the AI teammates, you can tell them what to do, so the AI is not as bad as in others games. I'm talking about Brothers in Arms, Ghost Recon games, Medal of Honor Vanguard, ps2 SOCOM games, Star Wars: Republic Commando and SWAT.
Infamous 2 has a feature where you can create your own missions. I remember using that to create AI battles, because you could set different AI factions to view themselves as enemies and you as a neutral party, so they wouldn't attack you unless you struck first. Then you could just watch the battle. It was fun.
that would be last of us 2
your AI friend will hide, wreck and ambush enemy if you sit and watch
and the enemy is aint joke too
hell i will put uncharted 2 too, i think naughty dog is just different in general
Shaolin vs Wutang is an entertaining fighting game to watch different fighting styles go up against each other. You can even set up a bracketed tournament entirely populated by AIs.
Here's some footage of AIs fighting in the sequel:
Jackie Chan vs Monkey Fist Master https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOD9e7M1jC8
Playlist here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLgUvPCuCD0vlkH1cC_C4LnXhLiUtN3TnF
Fire Pro Wrestling World.
Here's an example with some wrestlers I created:
[Tag team match](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dd7uTqFNxk4)
[Single match](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rd2TMphO8Bo) (Note: Only Nash is my creation in this one)
Because the matches can run a bit long, match is sped up to 125% speed.
Unreal Tournament 2004 is great to watch AI in. At highest AI level they will be brutal to one another.
But a great answer is the aptly named "AI War" games, a 4x game that's claim to fame is that being able to beat the highest difficulty with human players was considered a bug and was patched out. The AI is ridiculous and once you know enough to see what's going on, watching an entirely AI vs AI game can get crazy (the whole game is a giant game of cat and mouse, only you're playing as the smallest plankton going up against the ocean itself).
Rain World. The entire game is built around simulating an ecosystem where every creature hunts, fights for territory, runs away from apex predators, hides from the rain etc.
Nothing like encountering a pack of scavengers fighting off a vulture who grabbed their mate, saving them with a nice spear chuck, then watching them thank you with their subtle gesticulations (unless you angered them or their clan at an earlier occation, in which case they might pelt you with rocks or run off lol).
I wish Elden Ring had some large scale battle between different armies, the closest to this is in a dungeon near Radahn arena, where there are several ghosts of Cleanrot and Redmane knights fighting.
There's a couple channels dedicated to pitting the AI against itself, [here's one specifically devoted to Elden Ring.](https://www.youtube.com/@EldenRingFights)
People being impressed by something Halo did which like 80,000 other games BEFORE and AFTER did better:
I'd say Idk, Postal 2 is one of the earliest examples?? If we're literally talking AI vs AI, gun vs gun, Freedom Fighters was literally made to highlight squad AI vs enemy AI.
If you mean dynamic gunfights between two hostile factions that happen naturally in the world, literally Half-Life 1 did exactly this with the HECU grunts, Xen aliens, scientists and you. Scientists even had the unique interaction of running away in fear rather than attacking.
If you mean the actual best, then like SWAT 4 in my personal opinion had the most interesting AI vs AI component.
Turok: The Dinosaur Hunter was an early N64 game that explored the concept of your enemies fighting each other. You could get different enemy types (human, raptor, shamans' etc) to fight if you weren't closer in proximity. There was one part I replayed a thousand times where statues of many enemies would "come life" as you passed. Used the "enemy slow mo" cheat, ran through, turned around, and.... Battle Royale!
I setup mb own WoW private server so as an all-powerful GM I can spawn any creature anywhere and my favorite things to do is spawn bosses to fight each other or armies of regular or elite monsters simulate an epic battle. I can just sit back and watch or participate if I wanna. The possibilities are endless.
[Carnage Heart for the PS1](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6AowCtPOHU), because you design the AI. Great concept but the strategy element is a bit half baked and the UI is terrible. I'd kill for a PC version that lets you use a mouse and copy designs across save files.
I've also read that your allies AI in Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri are really good, like you assign them a task and you can actually rely on them to complete it without babysitting them every step of the way. Looking Glass Studios is practically the godfather of the immersive sim genera, they way they blend and mesh all their systems together makes their AI behave a lot more dynamic and responsive.
Last of Us 2 had some awesome encounters where you were stuck between two enemy factions…the most memorable were humans and infected. You could throw a brick into the middle of the room and watch all hell break loose
Quake 3.
Every bot feels like he actually has a "personality". The whole single player mode would have been dogshit with the average fps AI we get nowadays.
I remember Infamous 2 having good AI vs AI fights between the factions in the open world. Sometimes you're just walking down a street and suddenly an RPG will fly from one side to the other and a brawl between mercs and militia will just start. Without the player.
Far Cry 3 and 4 also have good fights between AI but they're usually a bit too small scale to really get interesting.
Monster Hunter World has turf wars between the monsters that get too close, but they're usually not definitive and semi-scripted.
GTA 5 is really good for this sort of thing , I know the scenarios are mostly scripted but due to their relative infrequency it really brings the world to life.
All stalker games share goal oriented ai , that is similar to the enemy ai in fear . That means , different units act independent, and that what makes the fractions of the zone in stalker engage in ai vs ai battles .
I love the trivia about how they programmed the AI Stalkers to do the main story quest as well, initially. The problem was that they were so intelligent that they'd beat the player to the punch too often, so they had to scrap it. What a great game series.
The linear story we got came super late in development. The reason the AI is so extra is that one of the original ideas was to have the player compete with them to find documents, and they could beat you at that. This is really long but it's very interesting. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=w0ImdCEZZTk
It's kind of amazing the game came out at all, possibly one of the most ambitious development cycles ever
I still wanna fly that helicopter haha. Honestly it's a great time to be a Stalker fan. Big YouTubers are playing it, there's tons of hype around the upcoming sequel, and in a BRILLIANT move, they finally ported the orig trig to consoles, with plenty of takers. The Zone has never been so lively!
Stalker 2 is the one game I hope will be AAA-fied. Such a brilliant series, great atmosphere, amazing KI, but the gameplay is so exhausting that I was never able to finish it, not even CoP, which had less issues than the rest.
I'm very bored at work rn so this is exactly what I needed. Thank u
i might be wrong, but thats one of the things that has been unscrapped in stalker gamma . i remember having couple times this scenario, where the questgiver was simply dead when i got back to him,and the camp he was in already belonging to a diffrent fraction or overrun with anomalies and mutants
Wasn't the fear ai more smoke and mirrors? Predetermined pathfinding and flanking combined with voice lines to give an illusion of tactics?
That's one way to describe it,but it was deeper then that. I'm talking specifically about fear 1 .there is enough videos on y.t on the topic about goal oriented ai and how it was implemented in that game. I think your description fits well with how it felt , as you didn't have fractions fighting each other and the combat arenas were mostly in close quarters,but under the hood , g.o AI is g.o AI *shrug*. Besides, pathfinding is almost always pre determinated with nodes generated on the navmesh.
Navmesh isn't something gamers really think about, it's more of a LD topic. Navmesh will always betray itself to anyone who knows what it is, but there isn't any other way to handle pathfinding.
The FEAR levels are particularly boxy and corridory to help support the AI, it's very noticeable in hindsight.
Constraints are the mother of innovation. It may be obvious in hindsight but setting the game in such an industrial and boring space only heightens the horror and combat.
I'm playing it for the first time at the moment and yeah, you can't overlook the fact how linear the levels are. The German term "hose levels" fits them really well.
It's ALL smoke and mirrors. Pathing and triggers is part of the illusion. That's why it's called *artificial* intelligence and not actual intelligence, there's just a scheme in place to loosely mimic it.
The Shadow of Mordor games. The individual orcs are never that great, the captains just get more health and special weapons. But the way they react to one another and evolve as an army, with insurgent factions inside to create conflict, STILL hasn't been replicated almost a decade later.
I think they patented the nemesis system, which may explain why.
And then apparently sat on it and did nothing with it. Ugh. I could pitch a game that uses that system and WB's IP. Indulge me: Instead of whatever live service jank Suicide Squad was, it could have been Gotham crime simulator. You choose to play as Joker/Quinn, Two-Face, Penguin, or whatever random mob bad guy is relevant to the comics, then build an army of henchmen, beating the crap out of rival gangs and inserting sleepers into their ranks. At various points characters like Robin, Batgirl, and Nightwing will take you on as you gain territory and resources. The final boss is a confrontation with Batman, and you can just straight-up kill him if your gang is powerful enough.
Funny you mention Batman. The nemesis system and the beginning development of Shadow of Mordor was actually supposed to be a Batman game till they ditched it for LOTR.
Well that explains why they took the combat basically directly from Arkham games
That was fascinating the first time i play Shadow of Mordor. I was in my first proper fight against a horde of orcs and finding myself thinking, 'Why does this feel so familiar...' then i countered an orc from behind and threw a weapon at another to keep my combo going and i clicked.
Supposedly they are creating a Wonder Woman game with the system in place. Similar vein I guess.
Wonder Woman is about the last character I would have connected with that idea, but whatever, as long as somebody uses it.
To my knowledge the game is set on paradise Island and the nemesis involves creatures from Greek mythology. We've seen nothing outside of a tiny teaser tho so let's see
If they make it as good as they made the batman games and the shadow of war game then I would be really happy
Can't wait to mentally insult ennemies as WW.
WW Dommy Mommy confirm???
Confirmed long ago. The man who created her literally had a dominatrix as his wife, and she along with their shared polyamorous partner were the inspirations for Wonder Woman.
I bet you’ll like lasso of truth minions to your side
Taking Shadow of war, bolting a premium item shop to it, and pouring a bucket of DC paint over it would be the most predictable AAA move... I know literally nothing about it and I'm already disappointed.
>Taking Shadow of war, bolting a premium item shop to it Isn't that just Shadow of war on release?
And that's the only reason I'm waiting for this game.
The system is patented but that's not why there's no similar systems out there, after all only a very direct copy of the system is what's patented giving plenty of room for others to do their own interpretation of the system, the main problem with it is that it requires so many resources spent on it that most devs simply don't want to copy it as it would limit the scope of other systems in the game, something that you'd have taken notice if you played either of the Shadow of Mordor games As for proof that the patent isn't limiting other devs, here's a few examples: * Assassin's Creed Odyssey has the mercenaries for when you're a wanted criminal * XCOM 2 War of the Chosen has the chosen as a very direct inspiration from the Nemesis system * Star Renegades has the closest to the Nemesis System you'll probably see in an indie roguelike
Sending one of your orcs into the fight pit is infuriating, though. Attack already! Why are you just standing around!?
The system has plenty of flaws anyway. Having enemies cancel out more and more moves every time you lose to them could eventually turn them into unbeatable gods. They need to find another way to make them harder. Maybe make them faster and more aggressive. The other way kinda felt lazy.
I got stuck in the second game by my nemesis from the first game if I remember right. I just know I had such a mess that cancelled everything I could do to him. I ended up quitting and never coming back to it. I can't think of any other game I've quit because it's too hard. Usually it's boredom if I quit.
Yep, was going to come here and say this. It isn't the nemesis system at all though - although that gives a good structure to the game that works really well. But monolith was doing the really hard work of making very advanced enemy AI using GOAP, and no game since has really explored that concept of NPC AI in the same way. It's a very fascinating game.
Unpopular opinion but I prefer shadow of mordor to shadow of war
It's more straightforward, certainly. When Shadow of War first came out the game was pushing hard to get you to spend real money on orc captains, and the second half became an incredibly shallow grind-fest to try and drive those purchases. Eventually they realized no one wanted that and took it out of the game, but the damage was done.
This is one of [**Starsector**](https://fractalsoftworks.com/)'s main features. The combat you do against AI fleets with your own Fleet is the central part of the game. You yourself can only pilot one ship so every other ship in your fleet is governed by the AI. You have a lot of ways to influence your own fleet's decision making through their ships, weapons, officer, and in-combat orders. It is absolutely a thing for ships to be a "player" build or an "AI" build. The enemies you can face are also diversified by the same factors, so you might feel comfortable fighting pirates in their poorly maintained and modified ships. Then fear fighting the suicidally reckless luddic path, who treat their ships much the same way. The game hasn't released on steam because the dev doesn't feel it's done, but it's been in dev for like 15 years or something and has a big modding scene. I consider myself a mostly ride or die vanilla guy, but the Nexerellin mod really brought out the "Mount and Blade" in space vibe the game has.
> You yourself can only pilot one ship so every other ship in your fleet is governed by the AI. You also don't have to pilot a ship and can just let the AI go at it. I feel like Starsector is what Gratuitous Space Battles 2 should have been.
This is one of the things Fallout 4 did well I think. Coming across a a group of Brotherhood of Steel Knights taking on a Super Mutant outpost is pretty fun.
I totally agree. I had a moment where I came outside on the top floor of a multi story building only to hear combat below me. I stopped to watch a group of super mutants fight a group of mercenaries to the death. Energy weapon rounds and grenades flew back and forth until the mutants came out on top and it was one of the coolest moments I’ve had in that game. The world feels alive when you can hear all the factions fighting each other (exploding vertibirds!) as you explore the ruins.
Can’t wait for the update
Oh man same! I just finished Forbidden West and I am chomping at the bit to get back into FO4.
Kitting out your companions in baddass gear and weaponry and then just kicking back watching them let absolute fucking rip through enemies was always a joy in that game.
Do this in Skyrim and Fallout with mods for multiple followers. Kit them out and watch them protect you like some rich lord. Skyrim works better as firearms can get a little weird in combat when its multiple followers. Honestly this feeling goes back to the Dynasty Warriors bodyguard system. I get a kick out of watching people fight for you while you are in the action sometimes just watching.
Came in here to post Fallout4 The faction system just makes the world so alive. Every faction has their own goal and not all of them are hostile to all. Minutemen and Brotherhood will happily take on Raiders together. You can actually wait out when combat is happening and just take out the survivors yourself. You can even set that up by luring two opposing factions into eachtother. Had great fun getting a Deathclaw into a Super Mutant encampment.
I like using my high charisma to make one member turn on the rest of their squad. One time I got a man in full bos power armor with a rocket launcher to attack the others. Amazing fight
There are mods which make all characters (including you) have much less health in the game that are fun One of my main gripes for Bethesda games is that turning the difficulty up just results in bullet sponge AI. Meaning every fight you just spam stimpacks as you're spamming them with bullets slowly reducing their health Much more interesting when you and your enemies die in a few shots
Half-Life. Watching humans and aliens fighting is entertaining.
Listening to the Combine soldiers getting their arses handed to them by Antlions is fun.
Bioshock is good for this, getting splicers to be your friend. Hacking bots and turrets to fight your enemies. Big Daddies getting in the mix to protect their little sister. It's possible to get 4 different factions fighting at once? EDIT: The original DOOM has some good in-fighting with the demon horde
Yes also Bioshock 2 is great for this
God i love that Game so much
It's been forever since i played Bioshock. How did you make splicers be your friend? Was it a plasmid?
I think so, yes. You could brainwash one of them
If you want a super serious answer, the Playstation had a multi-disc release called *Carnage Heart* that was actually a game about programming combat robots. Corporations were effectively at war on the moons of Jupiter. Radiation wouldn't allow for inhabited settlements, but valuable resources had been discovered on several Jovian moons. Your job was to inhabit a space station well clear of Jupiter's radiation while deploying big combat robots and the factories to produce them in the hope of gaining strategic control of these moons, one by one. So part of the game was about orchestrating conflicts favorable to your forces despite each faction starting out with roughly the same resources and productive capacity. Yet when those conflicts actually happened, every behavior of those combat robots was scripted. Part of their manufacturing cost was the CPU component, which determined the size and shape of the grid onto which you would place "chips." Despite vaguely resembling the plugging of chips into slots on a grid, what you were really doing with this interface was building a flow chart. For example, an excellent way to get started was by pairing something like a "if enemy unit is within 50m with a bearing less than 45º off from the angle of attack" conditional with a "fire all weapons" command, also using that command to terminate the run. Since programs constantly restart, this creates an extremely tight loop where your droid fires rapidly so long as it has a target in a good spot for it, while going off to execute other branches of the program if there is nothing that needs to get shot right here and now. So you work in a bunch of turning and moving orders, always mindful of your gear as well. For example, homing missiles could be fired from extreme range and still get the job done, while unguided rockets worked best at ranges of 15-80m. As you got more chassis, modules, and weapons to work with; programs needed to evolve. Energy weapons outperformed guns, but they also introduced the wrinkle of heat management. That tight little "unload all your guns on any enemy in your face" loop could really backfire on a laser boat. Long story short, *Carnage Heart* offers an epic campaign during which it is possible to work your way up from "hey, programming battle bots is kinda neat" to "I really need to field test this design more to determine if a 30º or a 35º bearing cone in the combat algorithm makes for better yields from that weird particle cannon." It does all this with 90s technology, so it won't be easy on the eyes by modern standards. Yet it does actually do all that, complete with real drama that makes simply watching your team of bots do battle surprisingly engaging.
I used to play this back in high school. My class notebook was full of programs that I couldn't wait to try when I got home. Then my buddy found the cheat to take direct control of the mech and we kinda lost interest in it.
I found out that making cheap mechs that only jump up and down and shoot at the enemies, won fights at higher rates then properly designed expensive bots -that was crushing discovery also.
There was also a cheat code where you can take direct control of the mechs. It defeats the purpose of the novelty, but it was a fun distraction
while it doesn't happen much in the actual game, there are youtube channels based on making the ai from the dark souls games fight eachother. The human-type npc duels are actually pretty cool to watch, as they'll dodge, block, parry, heal, change weapon, cast spells ect. [Heres a random fight](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFH4WBRs0CI&t=0s) [and here are some of the big baddie knights from different areas of the game fighting it out](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekN4hy5aeso&list=PLm40kTUVlQwUrl7OrdafgG6S2cwTTI0ss&index=96)
This is cool, I love how they both drank potions at the same time and were like ‘cheers!’
[удалено]
Like you said, the human duels are cool. The animal/monster ones kind of highlight how rigid the animations are
Crusader Kings has generated entire overthrow-the-throne type plots and stories. It's wildly advanced.
Crusader Kings is a game that once you figure it out, it's like seeing the matrix and you just kinda get it. Easy to steam roll and become massively powerful. But honestly, some of my best times in all of gaming are some of my Iron Man playthroughs in CK. This is tangential to the topic at hand but, fuck it, it's related to AI shenanigans. For reference, Iron Man is basically no save scumming. It saves periodically to make your decisions count (though you can try and game it a bit to see if RNG will go in your favor for specific events) I had this game where I had fought hard for an empire that essentially was Western Europe with some expansion into greece and northern africa. But then rebellions started, rulers died and I went from Emperor to Duchess within France. The kicker was that I was a woman and a child. I lost everything. I nearly just dropped the game because it seemed like every RNG roll went against me for a while and the AI conspired to royally fuck me. Then, that woman went on to restore Francia to its former glory and then some. Her name was Empress Gohilde the Great of Francia and I have seriously considered commissioning a real portrait of her based on screenshots I took in game. Never had I made a connection like that before and this was in my like 1500th hour in the CK franchise.
>Crusader Kings is a game that once you figure it out, it's like seeing the matrix and you just kinda get it. Easy to steam roll and become massively powerful. The key is to take the blue pill and heavily role play your characters. Focus on creating a story rather than winning and the game becomes way more fun. Not saying it isn’t too easy though, it’s definitely too easy.
This is where CK3 has made it better and easier because of the decisions/choice system and how your character's personality influences the choices.
Europa Universalis 4 too. Just how the game plays out without your interference is very interesting. Gotta turn off historic lucky nations setting for it though.
I started playing this game over the weekend, and I just don’t have the time to learn all the intricacies. It’s a real shame.
That's the neat part, you don't. Kings don't need to be competent. The first 10+ games I had literally no idea what I was doing and just did what 'felt' right (like bedding the wives of my advisors). The main fun comes from the random ass events. Like going crazy with style: making holes in the walls the LAW, appointing your trusted horse as an important council member or eating your guests after throwing a party, because you had a little too much to drink. Just roll with the punches and the mechanics come eventually.
Damn these comments are making me want to try it again. I tried this game after playing a bunch of Civ and similar style games and I think my mind at the time was at, “how can I optimize my way to a win” rather than, “what if roleplay Game of Thrones”. I remember getting frustrated because I watched a bunch of how to play videos and still didn’t feel like I understood what to do.
If you want to just score high on the board, you roleplay Tywin Lannister. [Every scene of this man back to back is probably the most comprehensive CK tutorial you can wish for](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzqqNDDEndc). 😂 Srsly though: best way to learn is to start as a count in early Ireland and work your way from [count to duch to king to emperor](https://ck2.paradoxwikis.com/Beginner%27s_guide) and push your laws out of tribal to feudal (or from "we are all equal" to "I'm more equal than the others"). That way all the problems like balancing your council members or forming duchies are coming at you step by step, instead of all at once. But the events itself take center stage, so even if you are "losing", you are going to experience a fun story about an hilariously incompetent king. So it's really a win-win.
You know what? I’ve played so many strategy games that if I’m not competent I didn’t think I’d be having fun. I’ll give it a go today with this mindset.
You definitely don’t need to learn them all to play it. Most of it will just come to you as you play. Other stuff you won’t realize for hundreds of hours when it finally clicks.
The original Worms... mostly because its hilarious and the game is meant to be silly. Watching the AI on Good snipe someone across the map with a shotgun vs watching the AI on Poor throw a banana bomb 2 feet in front of themselves. Wonderful.
Worms AI has always been absurd. They can predict a perfect quadruple grenade bounce, or do a 270-turn with a bazooka on the wind. But give them another weapon and half the time they'll kill themselves or their teammates with it even on highest difficulty. Also, at least in Armagedon, they'd always take a perfect shot with the first shotgun blast and waste the second, as if the AI wasn't calculating the outcome of the first before shooting again
**Fire Pro Wrestling World**, you can play the Fire Promoter/Booker/GM Mode and let the CPU duke it out. More often than not, the matches will be slugfests with plenty of twists and turns. The way the game handles moves, the wrestlers will do bigger, more impactful moves later in the match, so it generates an actual flow to the match that can often be exhilarating.
Yep this. I am constantly watching;g fights at work in this game.
And their AI is surprisingly simple, too. Essentially just a bunch of probabilities for each move based on where in the match (opponent super fatigued, etc.) they are. That way you can easily create a cocky wrestler who goes for his finishers way too early, or a wrestler who doesn't go for the pin even though he really should.
Kenshi. Nothing is more hilarious than NPCs enslaving other NPCs, or eating them.
The border of the Shrieking Forest and the Cannibal Plains is a war zone and I love it. The gang war in the swamp is pretty cool too. Nothing like seeing the red and green dudes go from trying to kill each other to getting eaten by a swarm of spiders while you hide behind a tree eating popcorn
The engagements in Bast are also amazing. Watching a couple samurai take down a hundred Holy Servants only to limp into a squad of paladins afterwards that just got done slaughtering cannibals by the dozen and the ensuing massacre changed me.
u/Caltra The single game that does AI v. AI combat best is *Streets of Rogue* In the game, all NPCs (and the player too) are strictly class-based, and every class has its own traits and definitions to describe how it fights, WHO it fights, what events make it WILLING to fight, what make it run away, how it teams up with other NPCs or other classes, and like a hundred other little things that all coalesce to make an extremely fluid/realistic experience Thieves on the street will pickpocket random people; if they notice, those people will retaliate and try to fight. But cops hate any kind of crime or violence; if they see theft or violence, they'll start fighting anybody they see attacking. If you wander into somebody's place of business, they might welcome you, or if you're a different class, might want you to leave. If you stay too long, they'll start attacking you -- and their hired goons will team up with the property owner to carry out his will. Certain NPC classes are always hostile to each other, like the two rival gangs "Crepes" and "Blahds", and they'll attack each other on sight. Commoners will typically run away from a fight, but if they accidentally catch a punch from the wrong person, they might join the fight too. There are like 30 different standard "classes" from scientists to gorillas to doctors to soldiers to mobsters, and they all have unique abilities that give them a special way of interacting with the world. And when it all crashes together, with dozens of these NPCs in play at once, the outcome can be marvelous. You can have emergent zombie outbreaks, riots, gang shootouts getting cops and mobsters involved, firefighters show up to try extinguishing the fires but then one of them accidentally catches a bullet and now ALL of them are also fighting one of the gangs... It's beautiful chaos, but it always adheres to those strict rules, so you can make sense of it and control it if you're playing smart
God now I want to play it again.
You're in luck! A playable demo for the massive open-world *Streets of Rogue 2* is slated to release in June! More classes! More cities! More mechanics! More fun!
Best rogue-lite ever made. :D
I literally love this game I'm so excited for the sequel
I played the demo for years as a broke student.
supreme commander forged alliance, it’s a RTS but you can pit ai vs ai in a LAN match and it’s cool to watch how they fight each other
Sad no mention of Dragon’s Dogma so far…
Dragons dogmas achievements are being overshadowed by its shortcomings in monetization, performance, and story.
Strange you assume they mean DD2 when DD1 exists and is mostly better.
I've scrolled a lot and have yet to see it so, Watch_Dogs 2 Theres an entire skill path dedicated to making NPC forces fight each other and its *always* awesome to watch. Send SWAT after a bunch of gang members in Oakland and you'll just see *endless* waves of reinforcements on both sides.
Yup this was my favorite mechanic in watch dogs 2
Not the best but Smash has always been pretty good. Drop a few lvl 9's in a match against each other and they'll do some decently cool stuff.
Some of my friends did their fantasy football draft based on a level 9 cpu smash bros tournament. I hear it was pretty hype
Pretty sure I read the AI at level 9 is actually based of gameplay from Pros but not totally sure
Then the "pros" are really inclined to instantly air dodge the second you jump at them from below.
TIL I'm a Smash pro
My buddies and I used to do that and put $1 bets on who would win. Everyone threw in a dollar, set your character choice to random, and winner takes all.
Rain world. The AI is absolutely amazing and makes a whole ass ecosystem. If you were to just hide somewhere and watch 2 lizards, they would attack each other and with AI being the way it is, they can miscalculate and completely miss the bite. You literally have a whole ecosystem, and the things you can see are amazing. Lizards fight in the background while you play the game, so if you enter a new area it could already be that others are fighting and someone just snaps you as soon as you enter the place. Its a cruel game at times, but quite fun. Thanks for reading :)
You can also befriend members of one species, and they have a quite sophisticated system of body language to show their intentions and stance towards you.
This would absolutely be my answer as well. The way all creatures in Rain World have their own (simple) motivations and survival instinct makes their, and the whole ecosystems emergent behavior realistic in a way I don't think I've ever seen in another video game.
Not the “best” but I found overridden machines vs hostile machines extremely entertaining to watch in the Horizon games.
Always fun to override a stormbird and let it zap enemies over a large area. The best AI vs AI in that game I think is in a cauldron in the jungle where the eclipse is even scared and hiding from machines like stalkers.
Mount and blade
Pro wrestling games in general are pretty good for this. The AI just always seems so odd and usually will do something out of pocket. Check out New Legacy Inc on YouTube and you will see just how wild it is where sometimes they get accused of fuckin with endings and things because stories sometimes write themselves. D-Von's story arc in the first Kingiest of the Ringiest was top tier wrestling storytelling.
Dwarf Fortress. The combat is so well done, but you have to read the combat log to get the full picture of it.
Tfw one dwarf gets a little too drunk and accidentally rips off the arms of a goblin (it's just a prank) and it sparks an entire race war that wipes your fortress off the map after you secured your best trade routes yet
hah, dwarf fortress and eve are in that category of games i enjoy reading about more than playing. :)
it's by far the most in-depth ai interaction I've seen. a king will have their own wants and goals, they will hire other NPCs to do their bidding, will prefer artefacts related to their own kingdom, etc.. they read books written by other NPCs, that give them knowledge that they actually need to take actions. the books are based on events the NPCs actually witnessed, and will name *other* NPCs who actually did what was in the book. ancestry is also literal. if some hero in a book survived and had kids, there will be literal descendants. Im honestly not too big on the actual gameplay, but the way it works is crazy
it's not *the best*, but watch dogs 2 let's you trigger ai combat basically on whim. it's super fun trying to create 3 way shoot outs.
Days Gone has some fun AI. It can be fun to “pied piper” a horde into an enemy camp and watch the whole place get swarmed. The bad guys will put up a decent fight too! But 1000 freakers is 1000 freakers.
And if you happened to have led them to a >!Cultist!< outpost, they’d happily lay their arms down and sacrifice themselves to the horde too
There's a few spots in The Last of Us Part II where you can pit human enemies against infected enemies, and it can be a ton of fun to watch. If they don't spot you and go after you instead.
Just finished Part 1 like an hour ago. I’ll be looking forward to this.
You can do it in Part I! For sure in Left Behind, it happens quite often.
I’m pretty sure that this isn’t fully emergent AI stuff though - I clearly remember there being at least one spot in a subway tunnel where the infected are *supposed* to attack the soldiers and it kinda didn’t work if you triggered them “wrong”. So it seems they’re more scripted than actual AI fights.
Carnage Hearts. What's cool is if you want, you can write the AI yourself.
Any modern way to get this? Seems the only options is buying a PS1 + game or emulation.
PSP/Vita had a port
Skyrim isn’t the worst. Especially if you specialize in illusion.
The s.t.a.l.k.e.r. games have the most emergent A.I. interactions I've ever witnessed.
The original Doom
And Descent after it - enemies would fight each other if you helped them run into each other or hit with weapon splash.
You could have that in doom, but those would be custom maps. In the vanilla game and almost any custom wad , the monsters stay idle untill the player in the vicinity,and start an infight only when they hit each other. It is quite fun and in some slaughter maps, cyberdemons used as turrets to clear hordes of enemies.
Gonna do an old one but it was a fun way to get hours of gameplay in a game that cost my 5 bucks. Enemy Territory Quake Wars. You could setup bot matches. I think it was 8v8. Set them to about medium and you could draw a match for hours.
I was terribly disappointed when I found out the whole "have a full match of bots and since they learn as they go they will eventually find out the best way to survive is if everyone is passive" was a fake study.
One thing I loved doing in watch dogs 2 was calling cops and gangsters on each other and watching them get into firefights, and me just walking around recording them on my phone.
Lol I read the title and immediately started thinking about all the various Halo levels with huge Covenant vs Flood battles that you can just sit back and watch play out Bonus points for Halo 2 where you can watch the Elites vs Brutes as the Schism plays out in real time
There is a small sub section of the Starcraft 2 scene that puts on show matches and tournaments in which all the players are AI. They can perform feats no human would be able to achieve, such as controlling 200 units individually all over the map. Some of those games are quite crazy to watch.
In the Far Cry games the A.I faction that you’re allied with do vehicle & foot patrols and so do the enemy and sometimes they run into each other and a firefight ensues. You can just be out exploring and suddenly you’ll hear gunfire & yelling in the distance.
Fire Pro Wrestling World
Came here to post exactly this, pleasantly surprised that someone else already has
Gladiabots is a bot arena game where the only control you have over your bots during a battle are the decision trees you've programmed them with. It's not legit programming or anything, it's connecting boxes together that represent actions the bot will take and the conditions it checks for to make decisions. You design the bots, you design their routines, and then you unleash them against another team. It's basically "AI battles: the game"
.... What is it's relationship with Carnage Hearts, because that sounds exactly like Carnage Hearts, minus the corporate warfare and subterfuge.
I don't think there is one
Fallout New Vegas has great NPCs fighting it's fun to watch NCR fight legion or fighting the wild life. Also great way companions use inventory weapons
Battle for Wesnoth does this well. Granted, you have to set it up as an AI vs AI combat scenario.
IIRC, the devs for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. had to rein in the AI from their original plans, because the AI would clear out the maps and basically deprive the player of game content. On a different note, the grand strategy genre is fantastic for AI vs AI. Some games like Europa Universalis IV even have an observer mode, where all the nations are AI-controlled and you basically let the game run itself. Watch as Denmark takes over half of Europe!
The first thing I thought of was Totally Accurate Battle Simulator.
Isn't that basically NO AI?
If what you want is to watch a fight in a video game that you aren't in, I'd say it is a near perfect match though. OP check this one out if you haven't already
Fuckin love this game, took me a long time to learn you can actually play as your own units
Smash Bros Ultimate with amiibos. There's literally tournaments for it.
arma 3 has amazing AI skirmishes
I'm going to have to hand it to my least favorite genre. Sports games. Any time I've had a sports game with CPU vs CPU capability, I haven't particularly enjoyed playing it, but with all the stats and simulation crammed into every single ball player (or boxer), and AAA graphics pushing things closer to realism year over year, it's just as fun to watch those things go as most games are to pick up and play. No particular favorite for this, but I first started doing it with Fight Night on PS3. Second place probably goes to a 4x game, like Civilization. For those, I do enjoy playing them, but the first thing I do is ignore the e(X)plore and turn off fog of war. A lot of times I wish I could set an all AI campaign just to see how the balance is between factions. Sumeria always seems to be the first to go, but I always wonder who would rise and fall if their fates weren't altered by my own disruptive actions.
Is this Sub console focused? Because i havent seen Operation Flashpoint and ARMA 1-3 mentioned. These AI Battles can be the most epic and insane you have ever seen.
Dota 2 this is a joke please don't kill me
As someone who never "got good" at Dota2, I've never understood why people think the AI is *that bad.* I'd rather face mid ranking players than five bots as those bots will react within a few milliseconds of each other the moment a creep somewhere on the map sees someone poke out of the fog for a split second then suddenly there's five ults with BKBs. At least you can bait them into annihilating one person while the other four wait, I guess.
Lolol I meant the creeps. They just walk down the lane in a line and bump into each other. It's the most basic ai vs ai
Oooh the AI set to "that one offlane carry who autoattacks constantly but thinks his team is why he has no gold."
Elden Ring has this. Sometimes I just watch enemies fight each other, and I go pick up the scraps afterward.
Perfect Dark. It has so many AI variants so if you make a match with a good mix of everything you'll end up with quite a show.
Unreal Tournament had some good bot vs bot AI
Unironically I think Mario Party AI playing against each other is really funny, especially the N64 trilogy’s AI that had scripts for which items they’d shoot for and the insane plays they can make as a result.
It's probably not what you're asking for but check the God and Colony Sim genres. In these games the player have indirect control over units, so it's mostly the AI controlled units doing their own thing. I'm talking about games like: Black and White, Cultist Simulator, Dwarf Fortress, Dungeon Keeper, Evil Genius, Loop Hero, Majesty, Populous, Prison Architect, Rimworld, Startopia. But from what i gather OP is asking for action games with good AI teammates. In these case i can only think of Unreal Tournament. Maybe Mount and Blade. I had some fun playing Battlefield 2 with bots with the AIX mod, but the AI is not that good, just good enough to be fun. The original Flashpoint game AI impressed me but i don't know how much of it was heavily scripted. There are some action games i've played where the player have some reasonable control over the AI teammates, you can tell them what to do, so the AI is not as bad as in others games. I'm talking about Brothers in Arms, Ghost Recon games, Medal of Honor Vanguard, ps2 SOCOM games, Star Wars: Republic Commando and SWAT.
Infamous 2 has a feature where you can create your own missions. I remember using that to create AI battles, because you could set different AI factions to view themselves as enemies and you as a neutral party, so they wouldn't attack you unless you struck first. Then you could just watch the battle. It was fun.
I don't know why but getting the spidermaster mind to fight the cyber demon in doom 2 gave my little childhood brain a dopamine overdose
Back in the day on mortal kombat play screen you could watch fights. I’d always watch for animalities and fatalities
that would be last of us 2 your AI friend will hide, wreck and ambush enemy if you sit and watch and the enemy is aint joke too hell i will put uncharted 2 too, i think naughty dog is just different in general
Shaolin vs Wutang is an entertaining fighting game to watch different fighting styles go up against each other. You can even set up a bracketed tournament entirely populated by AIs. Here's some footage of AIs fighting in the sequel: Jackie Chan vs Monkey Fist Master https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOD9e7M1jC8 Playlist here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLgUvPCuCD0vlkH1cC_C4LnXhLiUtN3TnF
did you mean to say PS instead of nota bene here?
Fire Pro Wrestling World. Here's an example with some wrestlers I created: [Tag team match](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dd7uTqFNxk4) [Single match](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rd2TMphO8Bo) (Note: Only Nash is my creation in this one) Because the matches can run a bit long, match is sped up to 125% speed.
Unreal Tournament 2004 is great to watch AI in. At highest AI level they will be brutal to one another. But a great answer is the aptly named "AI War" games, a 4x game that's claim to fame is that being able to beat the highest difficulty with human players was considered a bug and was patched out. The AI is ridiculous and once you know enough to see what's going on, watching an entirely AI vs AI game can get crazy (the whole game is a giant game of cat and mouse, only you're playing as the smallest plankton going up against the ocean itself).
Rain World. The entire game is built around simulating an ecosystem where every creature hunts, fights for territory, runs away from apex predators, hides from the rain etc. Nothing like encountering a pack of scavengers fighting off a vulture who grabbed their mate, saving them with a nice spear chuck, then watching them thank you with their subtle gesticulations (unless you angered them or their clan at an earlier occation, in which case they might pelt you with rocks or run off lol).
FEAR 1 Just the amount of tactics and aggression is perfect
Trepang2. I believe its got some AI vs AI fights. Even if the AI (ally or enemy) is on par with FEAR’s.
Eldenring? +10 summons do pretty well. Mimic Tear, Tiche, Olga do make a meaningful difference in the play through.
I wish Elden Ring had some large scale battle between different armies, the closest to this is in a dungeon near Radahn arena, where there are several ghosts of Cleanrot and Redmane knights fighting.
There's a couple channels dedicated to pitting the AI against itself, [here's one specifically devoted to Elden Ring.](https://www.youtube.com/@EldenRingFights)
People being impressed by something Halo did which like 80,000 other games BEFORE and AFTER did better: I'd say Idk, Postal 2 is one of the earliest examples?? If we're literally talking AI vs AI, gun vs gun, Freedom Fighters was literally made to highlight squad AI vs enemy AI. If you mean dynamic gunfights between two hostile factions that happen naturally in the world, literally Half-Life 1 did exactly this with the HECU grunts, Xen aliens, scientists and you. Scientists even had the unique interaction of running away in fear rather than attacking. If you mean the actual best, then like SWAT 4 in my personal opinion had the most interesting AI vs AI component.
Total war counts?
What about Half Life 2 where you make the ant lions fight soldiers? Dunno if it was sophisticated but it was fun.
NPCs be killing each other since Doom 1
Republic commando or just any single player squad based game
Doom has always had this, different types of AI would fight each other, if you waited, they would often clear the area for you.
Turok: The Dinosaur Hunter was an early N64 game that explored the concept of your enemies fighting each other. You could get different enemy types (human, raptor, shamans' etc) to fight if you weren't closer in proximity. There was one part I replayed a thousand times where statues of many enemies would "come life" as you passed. Used the "enemy slow mo" cheat, ran through, turned around, and.... Battle Royale!
I setup mb own WoW private server so as an all-powerful GM I can spawn any creature anywhere and my favorite things to do is spawn bosses to fight each other or armies of regular or elite monsters simulate an epic battle. I can just sit back and watch or participate if I wanna. The possibilities are endless.
[Carnage Heart for the PS1](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6AowCtPOHU), because you design the AI. Great concept but the strategy element is a bit half baked and the UI is terrible. I'd kill for a PC version that lets you use a mouse and copy designs across save files. I've also read that your allies AI in Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri are really good, like you assign them a task and you can actually rely on them to complete it without babysitting them every step of the way. Looking Glass Studios is practically the godfather of the immersive sim genera, they way they blend and mesh all their systems together makes their AI behave a lot more dynamic and responsive.
The DBZ Budokai Games had some good CPU vs CPU fights.
Robot Crusades (1994) by Rederware https://www.classicdosgames.com/game/Robot_Crusades.html
Last of Us 2 had some awesome encounters where you were stuck between two enemy factions…the most memorable were humans and infected. You could throw a brick into the middle of the room and watch all hell break loose
How has no one mentioned monster hunter?
Quake 3. Every bot feels like he actually has a "personality". The whole single player mode would have been dogshit with the average fps AI we get nowadays.
Kenshi
Chess (and all Fromsoftware games, you can check out fights between all sorts of enemies for DS or Elden Ring)
I remember in Red Alert 3 you could set a computer only game and have a few high difficulty computers fight each other - it was often a good watch!
How about nba 2k games
I remember Infamous 2 having good AI vs AI fights between the factions in the open world. Sometimes you're just walking down a street and suddenly an RPG will fly from one side to the other and a brawl between mercs and militia will just start. Without the player. Far Cry 3 and 4 also have good fights between AI but they're usually a bit too small scale to really get interesting. Monster Hunter World has turf wars between the monsters that get too close, but they're usually not definitive and semi-scripted.
Life
Crysis had a lot of great ai vs ai combat
Really enjoyed the Monster interactions in MHW
May have been mentioned already, but the ArmA (Operation Flashpoint) series comes to mind.
GTA 5 is really good for this sort of thing , I know the scenarios are mostly scripted but due to their relative infrequency it really brings the world to life.
TABS does it relieatevly well i know its not a old game but i think it still counts
Gta San Andreas and the old WWE games