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

licker · #1 October 29th, 2003, 07:32 PM

Yeah, your way of looking at it is probably a little bit better than what I described. Each style will have all the sub-style included in it, but each sub-style will have a weight attached to it. Those weights are what will change based on the inputs.

There still needs to be an overriding goal though, victory through might, through magic, through dominion (blessings), ... then the weights for recruitment, research, artificing, ... are doled out. Further each area would have sub areas depending on the top style, so recruitment would have heavy, medium, light, research would have the different schools weighted (or just scripted for a particular spell or combo), artificing also by gem income and combos...

This still doesn't adress the strategic moves made, but it does give a better (maybe?) framework from which the AI can make those moves. Without the right resources and backup no amount of brialliance on the map will help the AI become competative with humans (unless you start giving it massive cheats...)

ywl · #2 October 29th, 2003, 08:02 PM

Some ways that I think will improve AI's skill:

1) As other people mentioned, get better units other than a large number of miserable militia or slingers. This will probably help a lot.

2) Use human pre-designed pretenders. AI use insensible pretenders. We can easily make a wide variety of pretenders, catered to the play style of AI.

3) Teach it how to use super-combatants. Among various human tricks, this one seems to be the easiest to teach AI. Put a few items on a big creature and send it out. This, combined with human-design pretenders might help AI use their pretenders more effectively.

4) Castle? I don't think AI build castles on important provinces.

5) Other tricks? For example, it's quite easy to tell human to aim for "Storm" & "Wrathful Sky" combo. How easy is it to teach AI to aim particular spells like these?

There are strategies that are simple but very effective. For example, a Jotun with a simple Wyrm and maximum scales, keep building Woodmens, Seithkona and aim for Evocation 7. Another example is to use a basic Prince of Death for Ulm, aim for "Boots of the Behomoth". Put the heavy Ulm armors and the "Boots" on the PoD and send him out.

Are there any ways to script such strategies for AIs? Or should we start designing a scripting language for Dom AIs

?

DominionsFan · #3 October 29th, 2003, 10:47 PM

WOW guys, these are cool ideas! I bet that IW will like them!

Zerger · #4 October 29th, 2003, 10:56 PM

Good suggestions...I wonder...how is the strategic AI works? Any devs can give us some infos?

licker · #5 October 29th, 2003, 11:14 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Zerger:
Good suggestions...I wonder...how is the strategic AI works? Any devs can give us some infos?

Yes it would be good to get some Dev feedback on this issue. Many of the suggestions made may in fact be impractical with the current implementation. I'm hopeful though that scripts do exist that are triggered by various inputs. In that case it should be easier to both modify the scripts (and add new ones) and tweek the inputs to get a better focused AI.

At the least I hope the AI is using some killer combos, if not I hope that ability can be scripted in for them

MStavros · #6 October 30th, 2003, 12:02 AM

Yeah some dev feedback would be nice.

One more thing: in my games the AI never built any forts! Is this normal? [I can see this from the graphs]

Gandalf Parker · #7 October 31st, 2003, 02:12 AM

I would love to see a scripting language for AIs. Ive said since before Dom 1 that games like this should have one but its probably just my MUD background talking.

It would be great to have player-made scripts. For some that would mean that the great players could create smart scripts for their favorite race so that we solo players could play "them" without playing MP. Or at least get a feel for how we would do against their tactics (a script cant be as good as a player). Of course some scripts would suck but for me (Fanatic of Random) that would be fine also. We could have scripts for playing styles of barbaric horde, home defender, slow careful expander, diplomatic, backstabber, aggressive expander, comes in waves, elite units only, etc etc etc. Then I could write a script to randomly select from the pile for each game (I love it). Player-made scripts will always allow far more variety than one set of programmers straining to think in styles different than they wouild play themselves. OR at least (as it has in some other games) it lets them say "we gave the players the means and they didnt do anything with it".

The problem is that the variables and hooks needed for such scripting to work usually has to be written into the game from the beginning.

[ October 30, 2003, 12:14: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]