The AI... when will �t earn its "I"? - Page 3

Q · #21 December 22nd, 2003, 06:21 PM

I agree that SE IV is a very rich and therefore complicated game and therefore a good AI will be difficult to programm. But from the business aspect a good AI will be a good sales argument for a game. And if you analyse the major mistakes the AI makes you could improve it considerably.
Just one example: in the decision making of the AI one point seems IMO always to be crucially underated: the distance! The AI sends colonizers half way across the quadrant while a colonizable planet is one move away. Probably because the planet value and atmosphere type has absolute priority. The same for attack locations: undefended enemy colonies are in reach but the AI sends the entire fleet on a mission to the opppsite edge of the empire for reasons I can only speculate.
Make all these decision processes of the AI moddable and MM can leave most of the work to us! But that's probably for SE V.

PvK · #22 December 22nd, 2003, 06:42 PM

I think the "attackers turning around and leaving" phenomenon tends to be the AI Supply Minister, which sends all ships back for supply as soon as they get to about 60% supply, regardless of distance to a resupply depot. A tweak to AI empires' supply abilities would probably tend to help them out with that, a lot.

Programming an effective expert system for such a complex game is a huge task. Making it deal with mods is even trickier.

Moreover, expecting an AI for such a game to prove challenging to smart veteran human strategy game players, even after they have a lot of play experience, without giving the AI advantages, is very unrealistic.

PvK

Gryphin · #23 December 22nd, 2003, 07:17 PM

I would love a more challenging AI espcialy since I am a solitare player when I play at all. There is a second reason I play 5 X games.
eXploration - I want to know what is beyond that next warp point / black area / mountain. What is he enemy hiding? What....?
Run the Graphics Pac with Fyron's System Mod, send your frigate the I. M. Hapless out to explore and kiss it and its crew good bye.

CIV II
Can you remember the relentless Zulus that would attack the closest enemy even if it was on a fortifed hill top defended by catapults? They could have easily by passed it and captured the city producing those catapults. Still they were a fun feisty bunch. Then again there was the time they rained nukes on my cites and we had not even met!!!!!! Talk about pissed!

[ December 22, 2003, 17:19: Message edited by: Gryphin ]

Fyron · #24 December 22nd, 2003, 07:50 PM

Explore is the first of the 4 Xs. What is the 5th you mention? That marketing hype of MOO3?

Gryphin · #25 December 22nd, 2003, 08:04 PM

eXwife
(girlfriend / life / etc...)

dHay · #26 December 22nd, 2003, 08:16 PM

Moo3 was trying to hype eXperience. Which you got from Moo3. The experience of a poorly coded game. There were beginner programmer bugs in that code. Sigh.

Anyway, having actually put more than a small amount effort into studying AI and investigating strategy playing AIs, it is more than difficult to make a really good one.

The fundamental rule of programming is, you have to know how to do something before you can make a program do it. So, can you write out, in english (or language of your choice) how to win a SEIV game.
Then, try to write a counter strategy for your first one.
Ad naseum.

Humans are much too smart.

That all being said, I have a question. Is there a way to break into SEIV's AI at the coding level?
Someone in an earlier post said that TDM does not change the data files. Sooo, how is that done? Enquiring minds want to know.

dHay · #27 December 22nd, 2003, 08:34 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by dHay:
Someone in an earlier post said that TDM does not change the data files. Sooo, how is that done? Enquiring minds want to know.

Figured it out. Data fixes only. Sigh.

Fyron · #28 December 22nd, 2003, 09:00 PM

"Data files" refers to the files in the Data folder. TDM changes the AI files, in the various race folders.

Although, I did lie, because TDM does modify the Formations.txt data file, adding several new formations. But it does not change the nature of the game.

Starhawk · #29 December 22nd, 2003, 10:14 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Gryphin:
CIV II
Can you remember the relentless Zulus that would attack the closest enemy even if it was on a fortifed hill top defended by catapults? They could have easily by passed it and captured the city producing those catapults. Still they were a fun feisty bunch. Then again there was the time they rained nukes on my cites and we had not even met!!!!!! Talk about pissed! [/QB]

Oh yeah them and the Mongols, a nice bunch of jerks that would attack the nearest city time and time again and would send fighters bombers, missiles, infantry and everything else they pulled up to attack you.....even if your city was invincible to them :-) I loved blowing their armies up. Though I didn't like their use of nukes :-(

oleg · #30 December 22nd, 2003, 11:12 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Gryphin:
I would love a more challenging AI espcialy since I am a solitare player when I play at all. There is a second reason I play 5 X games.
eXploration - I want to know what is beyond that next warp point / black area / mountain. What is he enemy hiding? What....?
...

The best eXploration element in SEIV and, heck, any other 4X games for me is a no warp game in AIC with AI bonus. Every time I open warp point with 100 strategically located satelites and The Home Fleet on stand-by I know I might be opening a can of worms that will eat all my people alive !