Overview
Over the past few weeks, I have heard a lot of people on Steam and the Official Wargame Forums complaining about the ‘cheating AI’ and that ‘it gets more points’. As a modder, I know the actual bonus that the AI get, and the modding community learns little by little how the AI in Wargame Red Dragon works.
The AI Bonuses
Have you ever wondered what the difference between ‘Easy’, ‘Medium’, ‘Hard’, and ‘Very Hard’ AI is?
Easy:
x2 Unit Availability
+10% Money Income
Medium:
x4 Unit Availability
+1000 Initial Deployment Points
+20% Money Income
Hard:
x6 Unit Availability
+1500 Initial Deployment Points
+30% Money Income
Very Hard:
x8 Unit Availability
+2000 Initial Deployment Points
+40% Money Income
These facts have been stated by COMThing when W:RD was released, and I have seen for myself for confirmation. If you are a modder, this is in the file: NDF_Win.dat/pc/ndf/patchable/gfx/gdconstanteoriginal.ndfbin
How the AI works:
From what we know, every unit in the game comes with an ‘AIStratModule’ in the game files. These only contain some numbers and can be very similar or the same as another unit’s. What these numbers actually mean – the modding community is unraveling it little-by-little.
There seems to be code that tells what the unit what type of unit it can attack. For instance, a tank can not target an aircraft, so if the AI spots an enemy aircraft, it will not spawn a tank in responce. However, it might deploy an AA vehicle or Air-Superiority Fighters. Many of the AI’s actions are best off a Action-Reaction basis.
Also, the game files indicate some kind of priority system with each unit having a rank in priority.