After the big series of patches taking us from V1.2 to V1.2.15, we've been entering a phase of looking at some much needed improvements to AI behaviors. It is astounding just how many little and big things upsetting the decision making were found in this deep-dive, with some classic cases of "how did this even work to begin with" thrown in there.
The AI foundations are pretty much rock solid, but the decision making built on top of that was less so.
With this patch we've come a fair way of addressing many of the flaws the AI had, now making for much more dynamic, fun, and challenging gameplay in this latest iteration. In fact, when I play-tested the final tutorial, using old assumptions on how it would approach this, I got completely nuked from orbit, not even making the top 10. AI leaders now use their resources much more wisely and don't give you big-cheese opportunities.
An aggressive lead-out by the AI across a long cobble sector on the Steinvej Classic.
That doesn't mean the AI is now perfect, we still have lots of room for improvement especially in AI tour management of resources and role distribution. However, we do think though that this set of changes will make for a much improved game experience and will get close to rounding off the V1.2 release with plenty of fixes and polish.
Here is the change log for V1.2.16! And we snuck in a little .17 hotfix thing as well.
AI Fixes & Improvements
- Hotfix 1.2.17: Fixed other groups blocking your sprint with momentum
- AI will attack reorder over the finish correctly again
- Fixed Leader AI sometimes not wanting to attack at the end of classics
- AI is much more aggressive during classics
- Attacking riders going for the race win should no longer fall behind the peloton
- Fixed AI sometimes wanting to move only a single node on difficult terrain when at low stances
- Lots more small AI tweaks, reducing inefficiencies and making it get into better positions, being more competitive overall and making for more dynamic racing.
General Fixes & Improvements
- Tactics screen interaction with the game pause now is more user friendly manner
- Added backend functionality to allow loading of custom AI teams (coming to editor soon)
- Catch-up now showing team move information UI
- Fixed Attack Per Turn being able to drop to 0 (now capped at 1)
- Fixed pins and 'favourite star' overlapping in rider information UI
- Fixed times being difference between in-stage and final result
- Fixed Peloton moving incorrectly with negative terrain modifiers
- Fixed Peloton ignoring valid moves for following relay riders
- Fixed tooltip text for Dalluha
- Fixed situation where final GC order was different after stage completion
- Fixed DNF marker sometimes being inconsistent with who gets DNFed
Editing AI teams for custom races will be possible soon in the Race Editor!
Going forward with V1.2 we have one more big feature up our sleeves that currently is in testing and polishing: adding a full team editor to the custom race editor tool. That will allow you to create databases with both custom races and teams, choosing which team participates in what with which riders. All riders being customizable, of course.
On the side of things we've started working on the backend for some major V1.3 features... but more on that another time.
For now, we hope you enjoy this latest iteration of The Cyclist and let us know how the AI changes are playing out for you.
Cheers!