enemy AI

Hullu · #1 November 16th, 2006, 08:29 AM

Ah, so the traditional 'buff the stupid ai' is what the difficult setting is about?

I didn't find a mention of the exact effect of the difficulty setting in the manual...

PhilD · #2 November 16th, 2006, 12:39 PM

Writing a good AI for a complex game is a very difficult task, Illwinter's original goal was on providing an interesting multiplayer game, and they all (both of them) have day jobs. All of this probably turned the problem of providing a competent computer opponent into a very secondary problem in their eyes.

The only thing they could have done would be to have moddable AI - but then, this would most likely be opening the door to so many bugs it's not even funny (in the sense that, to provide nontrivial moddability for AI, they'd have to let you write some actual code to be executed by the game - unless it was in the form of making the .trn and .2h file formats into open formats so that people would be able to write external programs for their own AI, but then that would not be modding the AI, it would be letting players rewriting one from scratch)

Hullu · #3 November 16th, 2006, 12:53 PM

I never implied that creating a good AI is easy. But I would have appreciated a paragraph in the manual about the AI difficulty level - since I have/had no idea what it affects, I actually thought they just use more intelligent algorithms. And I'm a little bit afraid I might lose the game I'm on now playing against 20 impossible AIs since I know just simply outwitting them is not enough, I have to also outwit their superior resources

PhilD · #4 November 16th, 2006, 12:58 PM

Actually, depending on game settings (map size, percentage of magic sites, indep strength) outwitting them may not be difficult at all. Even if, like me, you're a below average player, you'll be a much better manager of your empire than the AI - you'll be better at site searching, you'll use your gold and gems better, you'll be better able to decide that such and such provinces are worth defending actively, and so on. The AI is very bad at surprising you.

Now, on crowded maps, it may be different, because the AI's initial advantage in resources may show very fast, and an aggressive AI may well ruin your day.

Gandalf Parker · #5 November 16th, 2006, 02:17 PM

As far as I know, on default settings you are outwitting an AI that has the same settings that you do. its only if you turn it up that you have that problem and I dont see why that would have to be spelled out in the manual.

razorbackjac · #6 November 16th, 2006, 07:29 PM

Thanks for the answers guys,it really helps. The map size is 8k x 8k with 10 AI. The independents setting is 5.

Thanks for your responses.

Hullu · #7 November 17th, 2006, 05:44 AM

Ah, my desire to know the effects of 'difficulty' levels is that I generally start playing games on the 'fair ground' level. Some game manuals don't tell me what this is. It means pump the AI to it's full intelligence, but give it no resource bonuses. Once I master that level I start on the higher difficulties.

It annoys the crap out of me when a manual doesn't tell me the exact effects of difficulty level settings...