Allied AI is more defensive. It'll only fire one shot, which leaves more APs to retreat further to better cover. However, this leads to the soldier constantly moving back and forth. That's OK for allies, but it makes for an annoying enemy to fight against. So, the normal AI tries to take cover, without moving out of range - that leads to less back and forth movement. I don't think it's a problem, because the objective is to make the AI challenging, but not unbeatable.
...
The enemy will randomly adopt a "defend buildings" ploy for 20% of the battles. That means they will wait for the enemy inside the building instead of charging forward. I could change it so they use the "defend buildings" ploy only when they realise they are over-powered.
I completely agree with you that the AI should be beatable on skill levels easy to hard. But on very hard skill level in my opinion it should be almost impossible to win for causal palyers (as I am). Even for me the very hard skill level is too easy, especially when allies are involved, as they will always draw the enemies attention (and bullets). So I can stand back and make use of my sniper skills :-) When I play without allies things become much harder though.
To make it more difficult on this skill level you could improve some enemy AI skills:
- better nade skills.
- more tactical variety: it's really challenging to beat the enemy when he is camping inside a building. They could do this more often. And they could also use the allied tactics of "back and forth" sometimes. It may be annoying, but it is also challenging to beat an enemy who is well covered in his shelter.
- more discipline: the majority of the enemy soldiers sticks to their strategy. Anyway at the end of the match I always find some enemies who are hanging around somewhere else and not taking part in the battle at all. When the AI chooses to attack, all available soldiers should be involved.
- more discipline: when the enemy decides to camp, he should stick to this strategy and not be distracted when he spots my soldiers. Frequently all enemies begin to rush when I send a single soldier.
Maybe on this sill level the allied AI could also be reduced to prevent a player (like me) from using allies as human shields and avoiding direct confrontation with the enemies.
- anti-camping skills: when I camp inside a building the enemy AI is great. They approach quickly and from different sides, which makes it really hard to defend. Anyway if crouching behind an object (fence etc.) the enemies keep trying to shoot at me, altough there is almost no chance of ever hitting (the old problem: there seems to be a line of fire and a hit probability, although there isn't). AI has already improved, as some enemies now try to flank when they realize that they are suffering casualties without ever hitting. However, they aren't really determined to flank: only few enemies follow this strategy and they only do it half the way, they still stay on the other side of that fence and don't get a better chance of hitting my soldiers. So again, maybe you could adjust the enemy AI to make all or at least most of them follow the new strategy of flanking.
Bug: At the end of the allies' turn the enemy had an interrupt. Then it was my turn, but the interrupt-message would not disappear and it was impossible to select and of my soldiers. So I had to restart the match. I got a message in my console, but I am not sure when and if it has anything to do with it: <<ran out of objects!>>