The AI... when will ìt earn its "I"?

[Fyron]

The biggest challenge to programming an AI for a game like SE4 is the fact that it has to be able to cope with random and arbitrary changes to the data files. Games that have 0 moddability are often able to (not any guarantee) have stronger AIs because programming time does not have to be spent making it adaptable to changes to the data files.

[Atrocities]

It has been my experience that if you play with medium/medium or medium/high the AI does put on more of a challenge.

[Grandpa Kim]

Gryphin, my opinion is more of a state-of-the-world perception than one directed at any specific niche of any specific industry. You have hit on one world-wide attitude: If it's too hard, it's okay to do a poor job. The other is money: do as little as possible to make as much as possible. Both cases mean "I'm breaking my promise".

I work in new housing and believe me housing and computers are running neck and neck in screwing the public.

I am not a programmer either, but I know my limits. I cannot program to my own satisfaction. Those who have chosen that profession have taken on that job. Now, gentlemen, please do your job!

But I do have some ideas about how to program an AI. I think before you get down to specific cases, you must give the AI a plan to work from. Give it goals, make it aware of common (and not so common) problems and provide general solutions. For instance running out of supplies is a common problem. The current solution is to send the ship(s) back to a resupply depot. There are at least four other solutions to that problem! This is a beginning only, but something the AI can always fall back on.

I'm sure the programmers out there can pick this to pieces... and that's the problem. Rather than say, "Damn it! There's got to be a way to make this work." they say, "It's too hard." You can take out the word programmers and replace it with any profession you like; it will still be true.

Okay, enough of that rant... and thread hijacking.

[Wardad]

no AI yet...

It's an Algorithm Stupidity System.

[geoschmo]

I think some people generally think that this kind of programming then it easier then it really is.

Consider for example the programming needed to create a quality chess playing AI program. There you have a game with a much simpiler rule set. Two players, 16 pieces of only 5 different kinds on an 8 by 8 grid. Most pieces have only 2 or 3 rules determining everything they are capable of doing in the game. Seems like it would be easy no? In fact programmers thought it would be easy. But it took decades of work by hundreds if not thousands of programmers world wide to come up with a program capable of beating even a moderatly skilled player. It was only in the Last few years that one could defeat the best players, and even now it doesn't beat them every time.

Se4 by comparison is much more complex. Exponentially more variables, just in the stock game, not even taking into consideration what can be done with mods. It's not suprising that the AI is much more difficult to program. It's actually suprising that it's as decent as it is.

It's no suprise that the game industry has gone towards real time strategy. With real time strategy it's much easier to give a human player a tough game because humans can't think as fast as computers can. This does wonders for masking repetative or illogical behavior by the AI. With a turn based strategy game the human player can think about their moves as long as they want before comitting to them. Remeber, computers, even the big ones, aren't smarter then humans, just faster. Make them wait on us the computer doesn't stand a real chance then.

Geoschmo

[ December 21, 2003, 23:37: Message edited by: geoschmo ]

[JurijD]

Well I have some experience in programming AI and I have to say that there are 2 basic strategies in providing a chellenging AI for computer games.

1. You create several strategies for the AI based on what humas do and let it combine those strategies in a random way hoping it will make something smart.

2. You try and pre-program almost all possible eventualities in a game and the "AIs" responces.

For a game such as SE IV the second option is not even to be considered and the first one is mostly implemented. BUT the major drawback is that the AI doesn't learn. The biggest problem in creating an AI isn't in programming its tactics and strategies... those can be simply random combinations of several hundred pre-programmed ones.. the biggest challenge is making some kind of algorithm that EVALUATES the EFFECTIVENESS of the strategy chosen and makes changes to it in order to achieve better results.

Good results in this area have been made in the field of genetic algorithms and neural nets but the thing is that these approaches are not developed enough to take on the wast scope of decisions needed in SE IV. People tend to underestimate the human brain when it comes to AI. Remember we have something like 10^13 neurons in our brain and more than 10^16 connections between them... thats a lot of "adaptable code". And we had a couple of billion years to get where we are now. It would be silly to expect us to pre-program something even remotely so versatile on a couple hundred megs of CD space...

I think that the future of AI in games such as SE IV is to get the AI on aditional CDs apart from the Game itself. The AI could be (in theory) developed if you put several million adapatable and self-changing genetic algorithms to compete against each other on many millions of games... then eventually you'd get something that is worth comparing to humans. But noone can really answer how long this process would take or how powerful the computers would have to be. But for now its the only way as we are not intelligent enough to write the program ourselves... but with some luck and enough processing power we could make it happen randomly.

[Roanon]

I agree, Geo, but only partially. Being a programmer myself, I know how difficult it would be to programm a real AI. To be as creative as a human, as resourceful, considering all options and possible strategies derived from whole sets of options, thinking ahead a few turns and choose the best way to act for multiple units as a strong, simultaneously striking force, persuing a final goal consisting of numerous single targets and objectives - impossible with the technology at hands right now.

AI able to ACT like a human - ok, lets put that aside. But what I, too, consider as "not doing a job" is really *stupid* AI that does not even know how to REACT properly. There are a lot of simple problems - own fleet out of supply, enemy fleet near own planet, enemy planet in friendly system, etc - that the current AI has no real Algorithm for to cope with. Instead, it seems that each turn each fleet decides anew what to do, independent of all other fleet actions, unaware of longtime major problems and the overall global situation but reacting to nearby local events happening Last turn, mixed with a good shot of the random generator. This could have been done better in nearly all games I know. Though this also is not simple - for small companies like MM it might just be too expensive, but I cannot accept excuses like this from big companies obviously spending like 100 times more money on graphics and design than on AI programming.

Yes, it might be possible to play a challenging game vs. the AI. But this is always happening like an elderly grandpa engaging in hand-to-hand combat against a young strong brutish bully - and winning finally. Looks challenging, is not. And advices like "if you want it more interesting, tie the grandpa one hand on the back and blindfold him" may sound interesting, but he still is winning, and this just makes it more ridiculous.

Thank god (and Geo!) for PBW !!!