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

[Alneyan]

Originally posted by cpbeller:
but they could change their "personalities" mid-game though?

if so, impressive....

Let me add: "Depending on the situation" after your question. That is what was asked for Dominions. (That is the same for you Von Schmidt) Games with "personalities" exist, the problem being to script for a single person a working AI able to anticipate and outsmart the player (that is, able to change its tactics and priority, or personality, during the game, depending on what is going on), and even without using plain cheating. (Say, omniscient AIs)

I never liked Warlords myself, but this AI is said to be good. Then you are right, it comes close to what was asked, with a less complex game.

[Karacan]

Originally posted by cpbeller:
but they could change their "personalities" mid-game though?

I am pretty sure if an incident where an "Expansionist" became a "Razer" type of personality, burning down the cities down and pressing onward, rather than trying to hold them, which was the behaviour I expected from an "Expansionist". (The names are made up now, it's been a long time since I played Warlords, but you'll get the essence.)

Anyway, that's all cool, but let's talk about different personalities and changing them when there's a good one to build upon.

[MStavros]

Originally posted by Alneyan:

quote:

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Originally posted by cpbeller:
but they could change their "personalities" mid-game though?

if so, impressive....

Let me add: "Depending on the situation" after your question. That is what was asked for Dominions. (That is the same for you Von Schmidt) Games with "personalities" exist, the problem being to script for a single person a working AI able to anticipate and outsmart the player (that is, able to change its tactics and priority, or personality, during the game, depending on what is going on), and even without using plain cheating. (Say, omniscient AIs)

I never liked Warlords myself, but this AI is said to be good. Then you are right, it comes close to what was asked, with a less complex game.

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Yes Dominions is more complex, but script these AIs are not impossible, but it will require time.

I don't think that we need different personalities. An upgraded AI, yes.


1. The AI is massing weak troops
2. The AI wont protect his pretender/commanders/priests/mages
3. The AI wont build forts
4. The AI's battlefield tactics could be better
5. The AI is making very odd things. IE. wandering around with his pretender alone etc.
6. The AI won't stay in a province, it is always moving his armies.
7. The AI won't make complex strategic maneuvers. IE. Making a focused attack against a province.
8. The AI won't equip his supercombatants..at least I've never seen that in the demo.


Upgrading/fixing/enchancing these won't require different personalities. A core AI [like the current Doms 2 AI] could do it, if the scripts will be tweaked.

[ November 05, 2003, 13:51: Message edited by: MStavros ]

[NTJedi]

MStavros ....

A 'single' upgraded AI for all computer opponents will not work in the long-term because gamers will eventually find flaws/exploits/weaknesses. These will eventually be posted and the developers can't patch the game forever! If human players don't know what to expect from AI opponents because of different personalities the game will be more challenging.

The only other option would be to allow gamers/map_makers a mod tool for adjusting/improving AI strategies.


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edit: adding story
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EXAMPLE of Dominions_II with a 'single' AI personality:

Experienced Gamer vs AI:
So here's today's story if anyone is still playing the game as single players. I brought my 400 troops to his Last fortress while small armies sat on the borders since we all know the AI throws 90% of its men into the fortress when the pretender god is threatened. Next turn walked in and killed him... time to move on.

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EXAMPLE of Dominions_II using a randomly selected AI personality out of 10 others:

Experienced Gamer vs AI:

Hello everyone again... today the AI really caught me by surprise since I believed him to have the Arch-Mage personality... fudge was I wrong! As I blindly marched my 400 troops to finish off his pretender god there was 3 strong assassin armies that came out of hiding and stole two territories right next to my fortress. With both our pretender gods surrounded it looks like both of them will be dying. Yikes!

[ November 05, 2003, 14:34: Message edited by: NTJedi ]

[Particle]

Jedi...what about: do not use exploits. You will cheat yourself, not just the AI.
The suggestion is good, but it would take huge amount of time to script IMHO. Upgrading the AI itself will be a hard task as well, but of course a must have.

[licker]

I don't think 'personalities' are that hard to do, nor to switch during the game. In fact earlier in this thread I explained one way to approch it with the externalized AI parameters (MoO3 did this, and it actually worked, though MoO3 had other problems...)

The scripting of the personalities isn't even that difficult if you don't try to get too fancy with it. The personalities are basicly templates that provide the AI with %s of resources to spend on commanders, army and magic. Within those two broad catagories there are several subcatagories. For army its balance of light troops, medium troops, heavy troops, and summons of those classes (you can break out archers and support as well), for magic its what schools to research (for particualr spells) based on your existing ability to use the schools, and how much do devote to research v. summoning (tied to army) v. other spell (direct damage, search, overland...), for commanders its what ratio of Mages to priests to assasins/scouts to infantry/cavalry leaders...

There are alot of matricies to be made, and there are alot of values to add in, and there are even alot of interdependancies between the matricies, but once you've mapped that out, the actually application is easy. Then its up to the devs and players to tweek and mod to find what values work best for what races.

Kris has mentioned (elsewhere) that he thinks its an interesting idea, but he's not sure how much of it can be easilly done given the existing Dom2 code. I know they are taking this seriously, but it is a very tricky thing to do, especially since the Dom2 code wasn't first written with this in mind. Anyway, keep up the suggestions, and try to be more specific then general, there's been enough generalities over the Last few weeks to kill a horse

[Gandalf Parker]

I think this might be the best direction to go. Multiple personalities written by the programmers is probably a faster action than externalized scripting for Users. Possibly even faster than improving the AI thinking of the game in general.

One big advantage is that the "wrong decisions" of the AI player can be minimalized by not allowing it to go too far in a particular direction. And the challenge can be improved by having the AI player change its tactics even if the tactics it switches to is not a particularly good one.

In this situation even a bad tactic has an advantage of being a surprise. Such as, Arcos might be given a preference for using the "build a mage then spend the rest on elite troops" style. The "buy lots of cheap units and rush outward until they are all dead" strategy would be bad for them. However, pursuing the mage-research thing wouldnt be good to do TOO much of and having a 5-turn run of barbarian horde tactics can be a good thing for them to do occasionally. On the other hand Ermor might be better with a preference for horde and an ocassional mage/research shift.

So the disadvantages of any strategy can be lessened by shfting to another for short periods without having to try and come up with perfect smart decision-making for the AI. Probably not what you wanted this to do. I know it can be done better. Im just pointing out a possible advantage.

[ November 05, 2003, 17:11: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]

[licker]

I agree with you Gandalf, though I'm not sure that randomly swapping strategies is the best way to go. I think that there can be a rubric by which the AI can decide if a certain strategy is more needed at a certain time. An example of this would be in the early game, where expansion is key, basically you'd want all AIs to be expanders (though their means of expantion could differ) until they reach boarders of other nations. At that point you have a decision point, do I aggressively attack my neighbor(s), do I hunker down and focus on research or summoning, or building an elite force, do I ignore my neighbor and continue picking up indies, ...

The decision made *should* be able to be influanced by looking at the current compostion of the AIs nation. If the nation is filled with poor provinces more wieght to an early offensive, if the nation has rich provinces, more weight to building up a superior force, if the nation has high gem income, or lots of indie mages them more weight to going down a magic path.

This is another area where externalizing the inputs to make these decisions would be useful so that modders can tweek them to get more aggressive AIs for various nations. Different nation need different weights for these decisions to start with (and the use of SCs should be in there too somewhere...).

I think these discussions are getting more useful all the time Lets keep working on specifics, the Devs have asked for that time and time again

[Mortifer]

Humzzz I like the idea as well, the question is: this can be added to Doms II.? The AI will be really better or just more diverse?
IMHO the key is, that the AI must be lot more effective. It will be more effective this way?
Frankly I have no idea.

[Gandalf Parker]

Originally posted by Mortifer:
Humzzz I like the idea as well, the question is: this can be added to Doms II.? The AI will be really better or just more diverse?
IMHO the key is, that the AI must be lot more effective. It will be more effective this way?
Frankly I have no idea.

I think it would definetly be more effective. Many of the things on the list of AI suggestions seem to be that the AI does too much or not enough of something. With a system like this it can be gauranteed to change that. Maybe not to the perfect level but at least not completely not happening. With so many different races and different game paramters Im not sure it would ever be possible to achieve a smart AI.

Rule #1 of AI programming. If you cant beat them, cheat.

Rule #2 of AI programming. If you cant be smart, be random.

Rule #3 of AI programming. If you cant please the Users with #1 and #2 then declare the AI to be for tutorial purposes only toward the MP part of the game, and give up.

(HEY! calm down. Im only half serious)

[ November 05, 2003, 20:08: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]