AI concept of the '80ies ... why?

[GwyrgynBlood]

Scripting languages for AI aren't necessarily hard to write... just depends on how the AI was setup. Kohan series has always had scriptable AI, TA Spring also has it.

Most AIs in strategy games have their AI scripted in some way, even if it's internal. For example, in your average RTS game, the AI generally gets a basic list of what buildings they need to build what units, and then a basic understanding of how many buildings of each type they should have, and then an idea of what relative number of units to produce. Also things like 'how many units should I stock up before sending out an attack force'.

Of course, those AIs are generally very dumb unless a LOT of effort is put into them.


Best example of 'good' AI I've seen is Virtual Fighter 4. Very good AI that is modeled after real players.

[HoneyBadger]

I think atleast we ought to be able to have the computer coming up with good Pretender designs. It should be fairly easy to do this without the use of any true AI at all. Just come up with several designs for each and every pretender available per nation. Preferrably, these designs would be influenced by the forum community, because inevitably, it takes a village to come up with truly dangerous strategies. Based on the design the computer randomly chose, the AI could then be influenced to follow one of several basic strategies, such as from building a lot of sacreds to not building any sacreds at all, depending on the bless effect and the specific nation the computer was playing. It would require a significant effort on the part of the programmers, but not much computer time at all, and if done right, should certainly improve the AI. By the way, has anyone noticed whether or not the AI in the game makes better decisions (or seems to) on higher difficulty levels? I'm still learning the finer points of the game, so I mostly stay on Normal setting.

[Uh-Nu-Buh]

HoneyBadger, I think I said something similar. Maybe what I wrote was invisible though, as nobody has acknowledged it. I will go back to the AS thread and angrily sulk there.

In any case, Total Annihilations had a very interesting AI MOD model. It was a text file of units and weights, different for each race, and different for different types of maps, and completely changeable by the player. E.g. if we were to have this kind of possibility in Dom III, we could have a text file (or xml) that allowed us to say something like (this is simplified):

race 43 (superbadgers)
pretendertype;SC,Magic,Lucky,Random
turns0--24;StratMagicTurtle (slow expansion)
turns0--24;regunit456;30% (badger militia)
turns0--24;regunit457;70% (h inf badgers)
turns0--24;cmdrunit466;90% (badger mage scholars)
turns0--24;cmdrunit465;10% (reg commander)
turns25--48;StratMagicDragon (rapid expansion)
turns25--48;regunit458;50% (sacred badger unit)
turns25--48;regunit459;50% (badgersamurai)
turns25--48;cmdrunit459;90% (badger battle mage)
turns25--48;cmdrunit460;10% (badger priest of light)
.
.
.
etc.

[mivayan]

Uh-Nu-Buh said:
In any case, Total Annihilations had a very interesting AI MOD model. It was a text file of units and weights, different for each race, and different for different types of maps, and completely changeable by the player.

It's a long step from a fully customizable AI, but could still mean great improvements for dominions.

Semi-related: is there a way to set a 'difficult' AI when changing from human to AI, for example to set up a single player challenge? Would be potentially bad for multiplay though.

[Wick]

Once upon a time I was playing Wesnoth as the Undead. My leading troops were ghosts with a chill attack. After driving the Imperials back most of the map I noticed he had started recruiting mermen. I thought that was odd since Mermen aren't that good on land and there wasn't much water then I realized they were strongly resistant to cold damage. The AI was paying attention to what I was doing! I felt so validated as a person! ;-) I also thought he should be recruiting mages that could actually hurt my ghosts instead. :-(

[DominionsFan]

I agree with Arralen. In fact imo we will see very good AIs in a couple of years, when most of the players will have a decent PC to run the AI processes fast enough.
Right now, many people have some low end machines still, running complicated AI processes on those would take enormous amount of time. My brother is playing a football manager game [his kids are also loving it, but they are too young to play, so mainy they are only watching their father as he is playing.. ], and in that game, he can choose what leagues to play in. When he runs 60+ leagues for example, even on a dual proc. high end pc, it takes 10-20 mins to process 1 weekend "turn" in the game. I guess the present day comps are still not ready to run these huge processes.

[Folket]

In general there are three kinds of AIs, neural networks, smells and scent, and Brute Froce.

Anyone played Fields of Battle? That AI is quite powerful and selflearning using Neural networks.

Problems with Dominions is that a Game would have to be played til the very end before the Neural Network could be updated. After programming the Neural network, which will be a pain, you will have to play plenty of game before the neural network would give a good AI. If the programming was powerful enough. In general this would probably be the optimal AI for dominions as it would learn from human players. But the amount of cells and how to program them seems to burdensome.

Anyone played Galactic Civilization or any modern chess games? Those games give good AIs given brute force.

Brute force is about calculating as many moves as possible to find an optimal move. Given the amount of possible moves in dominions, the computer would never be able to calculate far enough to separate move from eachother in terms on how good they are.

Smells and Scent is the easiest AI to implement. You just give the AI some rules to follow and let it react on it's surroundings. I think this is the only way to go with Dominions, so all you can do is give better and more precise rules for the AI to follow.

[Arralen]

mivayan said:
Semi-related: is there a way to set a 'difficult' AI when changing from human to AI, for example to set up a single player challenge? Would be potentially bad for multiplay though.

You might try to re-start the server with one of the following command line switches:
--easyai X Nation ai controlled X=nation number (0-79)
--normai X Nation ai controlled X=nation number (0-79)
--diffai X Nation ai controlled X=nation number (0-79)
--mightyai X Nation ai controlled X=nation number (0-79)
--impai X Nation ai controlled X=nation number (0-79)

[Endoperez]

Arralen said:

You might try to re-start the server with one of the following command line switches:
--easyai X Nation ai controlled X=nation number (0-79)
--normai X Nation ai controlled X=nation number (0-79)
--diffai X Nation ai controlled X=nation number (0-79)
--mightyai X Nation ai controlled X=nation number (0-79)
--impai X Nation ai controlled X=nation number (0-79)

I thought those only affected game creation, but I guess it would be worth a try...