Kingdom Rush AI Improvement Mod: Smarter Soldiers

[@haribo_42]

Now we need a smarter enemies mod

[@DanQZ]

Funny story, I did actually consider and discuss it with some people a few weeks back, but we had a hard time figuring out what could be in a "Smarter Enemies" mod but also still leave Kingdom Rush in a recognizable state.

[@Danthepanman1]

They just walk straight to the exit instead of going the longest path

[@furryfan1416]

@@DanQZ waves that change depending on what towers you have build, forcing to diversify a bit? idk havent really played the game lol

[@birdyisblue]

​@@DanQZ send them to college

[@TeslaX106]

@@DanQZ oh that's easy. They don't show up.

[@plagueknight3056]

This mod is one of the best quality of life improvements we've had yet, truly impressive!

[@DanQZ]

Thanks dude

[@furryfan1416]

really feels like a passion project for a game someone spends a punch of time in ngl. well done.

[@KM5-98]

Nice showcase, I enjoyed hearing you explain all the changes you made

[@VeznanEnjoyer]

Such a cool mod ! 🎉 Glad people are still innovating

[@duncanbrewster439]

Awesome changes and great explanations!

[@ParamecioLord]

You indeed worked smarter AND harder than Ironhide. I hope other modders see this and incorporate your AI improvements in their own mods.

[@DanQZ]

Thanks! I think most of Ironhide's design decisions were intentional though; there's no way they didn't think about adding smart targeting. It's just a different preference in gameplay

[@ParamecioLord]

@DanQZ True, as you said, they probably thought that this adds to the difficult and forces the player ato be more mindful of positioning and isolating certain types of enemies.

[@thunderxp4456]

Hey, I've seen you post snippets of it in the iron hide server! Good job on this!

[@therealmorganofficial]

Epic!

[@keithnoir1]

I dont know who you are but love from Italy ❤️ gonna test this mod instantly

[@quintonlim4275]

good job love it! Edi: Honestly these changes makes the bad towers in this game feel great. You mentioned arcane wizard the biggest problem was the instant kill being wasted on worth less enemies. You have to have good stage knowledge to even get any good value out of them biggest example is the swamp thing spam in Rotten Forest.

[@kindatim]

Amazing idea and realization! It has forever been a pet peeve of mine that pretty much none of the big enemy removal abilities actually target big enemies and just default to basic furthest progressed. The ragers' poison having actual smart targetting but still wasting arrows because of their shooting speed is also something that bugged me for a long time. Artillery target densest is a nice touch, as well. Lovely work, I would love to try this out in game 💜

[@Paragon-rq7vl]

What Kingdom Rush was always intended to be

[@deathandkill5816]

That's mod looks crazy i will definitly try it thanks🔥🔥

[@kanseidorifto2430]

"Introducing a new frontier of Kingdom Rush modding..." BRO, I DIDN'T KNOW IT HAD MODDING TO BEGIN WITH

[@DanQZ]

Yeah, there's all sorts of mods like all towers, and rebalancing mods, and mods with crazy new enemy waves and abilities. But those are, as far as I know, all numerical changes and reusing vanilla AI code. I have never heard of a mod that messes with AI before, so I think this a frontier of modding that nobody has ever gone down before.

[@kanseidorifto2430]

@@DanQZ It is most insanely impressive as well, hats off to you for this work

[@DanQZ]

@@kanseidorifto2430 Thanks dude!

[@sandronecromancer]

Kingdom Rush: not-frustrating edition Love the changes and ideas! I wish they implemented them in the core game (I can let kr1 off the hook since it wasn't that serious when it all started)

[@DanQZ]

I think the games are balanced around the dumb AI, since you can to a certain extent manipulate enemy order using your units. However, that turns high level Kingdom Rush gameplay into a ton of "mitigate dumb AI" minigames, which I just don't think is fun.

[@RenPK62]

That's really amazing. WoW

[@str3ss834]

The instant kill now only effects enemies that are harder to kill

[@art00OO0O0]

Wow really good mod❤

[@General_JacksonYT]

I thought it was referring to the barracks and reinforcements being smarter somehow😅

[@biglad1311]

I don't even own a pc to play this but its still really cool

[@ConfusedCatt]

Very cool!

[@gliscaradu1424]

good shit!

[@Kevin_Tapia]

Didn't see axethrowers, does totem of spirits target spellcasters?

[@DanQZ]

I forgor that ability existed 💀 Whenever I get the chance to update the mod, that's definitely getting added, thanks for the heads up

[@Kevin_Tapia]

@@DanQZ ah nice haha

[@pauloneguy18]

oh, i also wanted to see them smarter, bc their totem targeting is awful - totems get wasted very often bc they are just being put on the first enemy (the closest to the exit one) that axe throwers see in their range somewhere on the path.. so instead, the totem of weakness should priorities to be placed directly at chokepoints (at the densiest, like necromancer's plague) and the totem of silence on the spellcasters

[@DanQZ]

@@pauloneguy18 yeah definitely will be in the next iteration of this mod when I get the chance to update it

[@smangy5442]

very cool

[@lorencitomax4212]

How did you made the mod?

[@DanQZ]

Voduke's Archives has links to decrypted game files which you can download, modify, then copy paste it into the steam .exe files using a program like 7zip. If youre interested in modding, Id highly recommend joining the server which I have linked in the description. There's a lot of people there who are very knowledgeable on all sorts of stuff.

[@sandronecromancer]

​@@DanQZ do any mods work with the GOG version?

[@DanQZ]

@@sandronecromancer I'm not sure. Tell me if it doesn't, so I'll know what to do for the next iteration of this mod

[@Plaguedwithdeath]

This is where I would download the mod, IF I COULD! (Average Apple L)

[@hugofernando7539]

Hi. How to play this mod with "KR1 ReBBBalanced towers and heroes (+ ImpossiBBBle difficulty"? Is it possible?

[@DanQZ]

Unfortunately it's not possible yet, but it might be eventually

[@alparslan284]

Wish I could play this on mobile

[@DanQZ]

I hope so at some point! Unfortunately at the moment, I don't know how to do that yet and I don't really have the time to continue working on the mod.

[@forto4169]

Does it work for android? I didn't find the download in the link only some files explaining the mod

[@DanQZ]

Unfortunately it's for PC only. When you click the link in the description, there's a folder there called "Downloads" where you can download the .exe files for each game

[@meaninglesswords1082]

10:45 Why not just put your archmages in the back and use your other towers to filter out weak enemies?

[@DanQZ]

That's a good idea to mitigate its overkill, but it unfortunately still means youre forced to make strange decisions based on bad ai. The archmage is by far best as a dps tower and not a leak catcher lol

[@chaitanyagupta6668]

Another interesting mod. Hmm...

[@ricardoescamilla4661]

Wow

[@asylbekzholdas4760]

Love your voice

[@joshuawadsworth6417]

You might as well prototype your own tower defense game.

[@DanQZ]

Fun story, I actually did this a while ago when I wanted to see what my theoretical custom bloons td upgrades might look like, but I didnt feel like actually learning to mod btd6. So I ended up building my own tiny game engine to try it out. It's nowhere near a complete game but for the purposes I used it for, it was fine danqz.github.io

[@joshuawadsworth6417]

@DanQZ What else would be a good mix up woth tower defense then? I could see some potential there.

[@DanQZ]

@@joshuawadsworth6417 I think that my ideal tower defense would be like an RTS with most of the focus on the towers instead of your ground troops. Kingdom rush already sort of does this, Bloons does it minimally but it's still there in the form of like, necromancers

[@hunganhtran6158]

Can i use this mod on Android?

[@DanQZ]

It only works on Windows for now, hopefully I’ll get to porting to other systems at some point

[@hafidzsiddiq9827]

No android?

[@DanQZ]

Unfortunately not; I don't know how to do it atm and I dont have much free time to keep working on it. Once I can find some time, I'll try to do that!

[@hafidzsiddiq9827]

​@@DanQZthanks

[@griffincrump5077]

Very nice!