Re: Dominions 2. AI. Suggestions, that how to fix it.
 

I still say that tweaking the main AI would be the best, but I am not sure..I mean these AI personalities sounds good and all, but I think this won't be added. Well not now..maybe not at all. I guess that would take countless time to script, and the success is not sure.
However...if that would boost the brain of the AI.. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

[ November 05, 2003, 20:21: Message edited by: Aristoteles ]

Re: Dominions 2. AI. Suggestions, that how to fix it.
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Well the personalities may not make it becasue its too hard to redo the code to fit them, but if certain things can be easilly tweeked by the devs, or externalized then it would be a fairly simple process I think. I'm not sure you'd want to call the personalities scripts either, that doesn't seem the most accurate way to look at them. Though you could do it that way, just that I don't think it would be very elegant. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Anyway, when you say tweeking the main AI what do you mean exactly? and how would you do it? I think that the personalities or externalized paramaters are tweeks to the main AI. Though I also feel that each nation (and even each theme for a nation) should have it's own AI. Of course if you do this via a series of matricies its not that hard, though it is potentially alot of matricies...

Re: Dominions 2. AI. Suggestions, that how to fix it.
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Thats part of the problem I see. Just for troops it would be a huge matrix. For each race there are different units, plus all the independents, plus different situations such as small game, large game, low resource, high magic, independent strength, which opponent.

Ive helped program an AI for a MUD. Using a programmable client to create a player on the MUD we programmed it into what people thought was a pretty amazing robot "player". The bot program was as large and used as much CPU as the MUD program itself. Luckily by running from a completely different computer as a player that wasnt a problem. Im afraid that trying to create so many different smart AIs (I mean the improve AI code, not the personalities project) would make the game 20 times bigger.

Re: Dominions 2. AI. Suggestions, that how to fix it.
 

It is alot of matricies theoretically. Someone smarter than I am can probably figure out a way to crunch them down. But they are just text files, not that big. For any given game, only a few are needed anyway, unless you are playing with all 17 nations, but even then only 16 are needed.

Sure you need to have made the others, but as far as which are used during a given game, its not that many.

Anyway, it is probably possible to make only a few matricies for army composition, or magic research... and then have a few operators for different nations, or different personalities that modify them. Once the game has started the modified (temporary) matrix is the only one used anyway. The .mob file from MoO3 was pretty big if I remember correctly (the file that stored all the matricies), but once you 'extracted' it you had a series of text files in a series of folders that you could easily open and edit in excel or even word pad. I mean it adds more size to the game, but I don't think it requires more processing power. And I don't think it would add more than 20MB in a worst case anyway.

I guess I don't quite see how this is comparable to a bot.

Re: Dominions 2. AI. Suggestions, that how to fix it.
 

Bah, I didn't want to do this but I'll try... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Do you remember linear algebra? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif (I do and wish I didn't but that's beside the point)

So you have a matrix of units with weights and it looks like this:

Unit Weight
Militia 10%
LI 10%
MI 40%
HI 25%
X-bow 15%

Then you chose a rapid expander type personality and the matrix gets multiplied by:

(.5
1.5
2
0
1)
And then it gets normalized to 100%...

You further have a SC pretender so that multiplies the matrix by:
(.5
.5
3
1
1)
And it gets normalized again...

Anyway, you have a large matrix for unit type, then you have these operators (if that's the right term) for different conditions, like personality, like theme, like nation that multiply the values in the big matrix.

Actually if you did it this way you could have one huge list of all units, multiplied by national operators (to zero out the unallowed units), multiplied by theme and personality operators, multiplied by exisiting indie units (to put back in desired indie units when you get them), multiplied by...

Do you see it now? Its not that difficult to set up, it is difficult to balance http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif The size of these files is tiny, though there may be 100 of them. The tricky part then comes in how you set up your algorythem for which operators are applied to your specified matricies. But again, that's not difficult to concieve how you set up those algorythems, its just difficult to balance... that's where the want to externalize all this comes from, let the players who want to fiddle fiddle, eventually people will arrive at settings that work 'best' and the devs can chose to use them for the vanilla game or not.

Re: Dominions 2. AI. Suggestions, that how to fix it.
 

Aristoteles and Particle...

Actually multiple AI personalities shouldn't take that long to program since for the most part just variables would have to be adjusted such as percentages regarding research, ritual spells, crafting items, etc... Also percentages regarding the use of gold for purchasing of assassins, spellcasters, priests, buildings, mercenaries, province defense, or something else...
Another would be percentages regarding how aggressive, defensive, productive, or (other actions I may miss)...


Once the formula for each is in place the developers should be able to create at least 10 very different personalities.

Another very important feature about this is if one of them has a flaw it won't destroy the game as computer opponents are randomly assigned the personalities before each game.
Whereas if only one AI personality exists and a major flaw/weakness appears gamers have to suffer until the next patch. Let me say again that a single AI can easily be mastered by gamers... multiple unknown personalities will leave gamers guessing as how the AI opponent will behave.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Actually I never do... however during multiplayer games you can't always trust opponents across the internet. That is why I wrote what I did.

[ November 05, 2003, 22:41: Message edited by: NTJedi ]

Re: Dominions 2. AI. Suggestions, that how to fix it.
 

Different personalities? Maybe...but it would be effective, if the AI itself could change the various personalities in-game, depending on the situation.

Re: Dominions 2. AI. Suggestions, that how to fix it.
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Please name one game where the AI is able to do such a thing, or come even close to that. And especially a game as rich and complex than Dominions. (I believe it would be easier for a RTS) Or say how you would do that. You would need an AI able to spy on the human player and then it would have to process that knowledge to find the weaknesses in the human army/provinces/pretender/add as needed, for afterwards change its strategy to take that data into account. And you would have to prevent the player from cheating the AI that way as well.
Lastly, how a single AI scripter is supposed to implement such an AI for Dominions? (Assuming you do have someone who only works on the AI)

I would like different personalities for the AI, as this idea would be much more doable. Maybe it could even be a field in which players could make their tweaks as well.

[ November 05, 2003, 12:33: Message edited by: Alneyan ]

Re: Dominions 2. AI. Suggestions, that how to fix it.
 

we have had it in a couple of movies before....Matrix.....oh, and Terminator....

would be the perfect blend of a sci-fi AI with a fantasy tbs strategy game....

Re: Dominions 2. AI. Suggestions, that how to fix it.
 

Aha. I love this personalities idea. Hopefully the devs will find it good as well.
Randomly assigning it before the game for the AIs?
I have a question. Is there a way to give multiple personalities to the AI than? I mean for one nation? Because THAT would be the best.
Different situations IE. war, research etc. -> different AI personality in use.