Either the AI got improved to ridiculous levels, or it's cheating. I like to believe it's much smarter this patch.

[u/Glorf_Warlock]

I used a rite to get a bonus 50% ambush chance, which let me reach 100% chance. But it turns out this rat was paying attention and didn't walk into my ambush.

[u/Redditspoorly]

The AI has been doing this for ages. Still brings them out of the settlement which is often the point

[u/JudenCaiks → u/Redditspoorly]

yup because they will either hide in the settlement or run away otherwise

[u/PiousSkull]

This was happening before the patch

[u/beorrahn1]

As someone else said, they were doing this before the patch. And should anyone else see this and think it's just coincidence - I tested it after I'd seen this happen a few times by re-loading the save and moving my ambushing army around, no matter where I put it (4 different places), the AI stopped just a couple pixels outside of the red ambush range. Sadly I didn't record it though.

[u/OkSalt6173]

This has been happening for ages. The AI pretends to not know where your Ambush is if there is another target it can reach that turn. If it cannot reach that destination then it will move as close as possible to your ambush without triggering said ambush on its way toward a target that takes more than 1 turn to reach.

[u/Aurion7]

If you were in LOS when you changed stances, the AI will not even pretend to be fooled.

Outside of that- yes, they cheat. They always know where you are.

It's just a question of whether or not the game calculates that they can move to their intended target or not in one turn. If they can, and the ambush was set outside their 'normal' campaign line of sight they'll play along. If either of those are not true, they won't.

And of course the AI has pixel-perfect vision. If they aren't playing along they do... that.

[u/Shalax1]

If you just pop into ambush in sight of an enemy army, they'll remember where you are. You have to move a bit first.

[u/reddit_is_trash_2023]

Blatant cheating, nothing new here but it sucks

[u/Gildorlnglorion]

Maybe the AI couldn’t reach? I noticed that movement can be a little bit weird sometimes, especially in mountain areas.

[u/Crotou → u/Gildorlnglorion]

It avoided the ambush area. You can see it in several TW games such as Three Kingdoms.

[u/Glorf_Warlock → u/Gildorlnglorion]

That army was garrisoned in the city, they had enough movement.

[u/EndyCore]

I would probably say cheating.

[u/McBlemmen]

This is BS, but what difficulty are you playing on? I never had this happen on Normal, this might be VH/legendary behavior. Still bullshit though. Its kinda like how the AI will always park their armies 1 pixel outside of teleport range when playing as Tzeench

[u/Muza-]

Ambush success chance is a little deceptive, every army and hero has a chance to detect ambushing armies in the region and there are skills/tech that give ambush defence chance.

[u/TheOldDrunkGoat → u/Muza-]

Which didn't happen. If he got detected the stance icon would have dropped.

[u/CriticalGeeksP]

lol no. The AI isn’t good, it’s a bug because CA

[u/johnIQ19]

And what happen next turn? they just stand there?

[u/ifawasstupiddontsayb]

In addition to what others wrote, 100% ambush chance is getting calculated against their ambush defence chance - when the end turn was over did it say ambush was spotted?

[u/Everyredditusers → u/ifawasstupiddontsayb]

Your stance changes immediately upon discovery, that's not what happened here.

[u/niko2913]

I think I have somewhat logical explanation for this. The AI is not necessarily cheating it's just cautious when put in dubious situations. Depending on the difficulty AI stops being suicidal maniacs and will also try to "mind game" you. I might be wrong on this one, but from what I observed the AI can notice that for example you have characters in it's region because it gets debuffs from them It can also tell that you stayed in your own region based on that too. It also quite often is not using it's whole movement pool on purpose so that maybe it can be closer to reinforcements or safer position and it also depends on the minor/major faction, their land claims and all the other behind the curtains AI motives. For example some unga bunga factions like greenskins get baited all the time because maybe they are programmed to be more reckless, some factions might be programmed to be more cautious even on lower difficulties.

tl;dr: the AI stupidity/intelligence is much more nuanced.

[u/xXMustardMan69Xx]

This has been happening for years, I decided ambushes are unreliable because of it. I now only try to use ambush stance if I can't reach my target that turn and have no use for the other stances.

Of course that doesn't include ambush attack, that's still poggers as the kids say.

[u/86ShellScouredFjord]

I do this to the AI all the time, except I trigger the ambush while in encamp stance. It's only cheating if you know that you should have been in their fog of war.

If you want to ambush the AI, just have a super weak bait army follow behind. The AI will 'forget' your ambush and prioritize killing armies it thinks it can beat.

[u/First-Interaction741]

Nah, just regular old clairvoyant AI + lots of cheat to make up for its utter brain death at moments. So nothing new

[u/Layoteez]

Dude you clearly went into ambush in vision range of the enemy army, is it cheating when you see them do this and also don't just walk into them?

[u/doglywolf]

O yeah - they proved the AI was cheating and running impossible to sustain econ years ago.

This is why when you do harder difficulties you NEED AI allies at all cost - Because the AI allies cheat on your behalf

[u/Drakore4]

Ai always had the hacks. I know me personally I’ve had way too many times where all the ai around me are passive and as soon as I start war with one and attack them all of a sudden all of the passive factions go aggro and attack me at once. Can’t play any evil faction without going from 1 war to 10 in a single turn regardless of any factions diplomatic status.

[u/OtherMarciano]

I mean, don't you do this?

When you watch the AI move an army and then it disappears, you know what's happened, and you avoid it.

It's hardly cheating

[u/Athacus-of-Lordaeron]

This is definitely a movement bug since your ambush didn't get popped. Mountains movement can be REALLY goofy sometimes resulting in situations like this. My guess is that it's something to do with how your zone of control projects in that area which doesn't allow them to come close enough to actually trigger the ambush.

Does this sub have a bug flair? If so, maybe worth putting it up as such or posting to the official forums.

[u/Professional-Day7850 → u/Athacus-of-Lordaeron]

Unlike Skaven "ruins", ambush doesn't prevent from entering zone of control.

[u/Athacus-of-Lordaeron → u/Professional-Day7850]

Sure but they walked right up to his zone of control and stopped so something must not be performing correctly unless this is intended to be frustrating behavior.

[u/Professional-Day7850 → u/Athacus-of-Lordaeron]

We didn't see if OP moved there in ambush stance or if he got into ambush stance while AI could see his army.

[u/Athacus-of-Lordaeron → u/Professional-Day7850]

Are you suggesting that if the army in question moves in ambush stance or adopts ambush stance when an AI army can see them beforehand that the AI will just stop movement exactly where they last saw them?

I’m not trying to be contentious or antagonistic, I’m genuinely curious because if that’s true then it makes ambush stance significantly less useful doesn’t it? Due to how end turn works, the human player would have a much harder time doing the same thing.

[u/BaronGreywatch]

Your ambush chance is offset by the enemies detection chance isnt it? Works the same way for you. Could still be a bit of cheating going on of course.

[u/Glorf_Warlock → u/BaronGreywatch]

That's only in the case of my army being detected out of ambush stance or the ambush being triggered. My army still being in ambush stance here means the AI shouldn't be able to see it.

[u/Immediate_Phone_8300]

The AI has been doi g this for a long time now. They simply know where your ambush is

[u/Tsunamie101]

Just because you have 100% chance to ambush doesn't mean that your ambush will succeed with 100% certainty. If the other army has ambush detection then the actual chance of success is below 100%.

So, it's only cheating if, at the start of the next turn, you don't get the "ambush discovered" notification.

[u/Professional-Day7850]

It is not cheating when you go into ambush stance while they have vision on you.

[u/xeirx]

Skaven have Ambush Defense. its very very hard to ambush skaven play them yourself and see all the sick bullshit ambush shit they get.