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

licker · #1 November 5th, 2003, 07:17 PM

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 · #2 November 5th, 2003, 07:41 PM

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 · #3 November 5th, 2003, 10:07 PM

Quote:

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 ]

Aristoteles · #4 November 5th, 2003, 10:20 PM

I still say that tweaking the main AI would be the best, but I am not sure..I mean these AI personalities sounds good and all, but I think this won't be added. Well not now..maybe not at all. I guess that would take countless time to script, and the success is not sure.
However...if that would boost the brain of the AI..

[ November 05, 2003, 20:21: Message edited by: Aristoteles ]

licker · #5 November 5th, 2003, 10:43 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Aristoteles:
I still say that tweaking the main AI would be the best, but I am not sure..I mean these AI personalities sounds good and all, but I think this won't be added. Well not now..maybe not at all. I guess that would take countless time to script, and the success is not sure.
However...if that would boost the brain of the AI..

Well the personalities may not make it becasue its too hard to redo the code to fit them, but if certain things can be easilly tweeked by the devs, or externalized then it would be a fairly simple process I think. I'm not sure you'd want to call the personalities scripts either, that doesn't seem the most accurate way to look at them. Though you could do it that way, just that I don't think it would be very elegant.

Anyway, when you say tweeking the main AI what do you mean exactly? and how would you do it? I think that the personalities or externalized paramaters are tweeks to the main AI. Though I also feel that each nation (and even each theme for a nation) should have it's own AI. Of course if you do this via a series of matricies its not that hard, though it is potentially alot of matricies...

Gandalf Parker · #6 November 5th, 2003, 11:36 PM

Quote:

Anyway, when you say tweeking the main AI what do you mean exactly? and how would you do it? I think that the personalities or externalized paramaters are tweeks to the main AI. Though I also feel that each nation (and even each theme for a nation) should have it's own AI. Of course if you do this via a series of matricies its not that hard, though it is potentially alot of matricies...

Thats part of the problem I see. Just for troops it would be a huge matrix. For each race there are different units, plus all the independents, plus different situations such as small game, large game, low resource, high magic, independent strength, which opponent.

Ive helped program an AI for a MUD. Using a programmable client to create a player on the MUD we programmed it into what people thought was a pretty amazing robot "player". The bot program was as large and used as much CPU as the MUD program itself. Luckily by running from a completely different computer as a player that wasnt a problem. Im afraid that trying to create so many different smart AIs (I mean the improve AI code, not the personalities project) would make the game 20 times bigger.

licker · #7 November 5th, 2003, 11:50 PM

It is alot of matricies theoretically. Someone smarter than I am can probably figure out a way to crunch them down. But they are just text files, not that big. For any given game, only a few are needed anyway, unless you are playing with all 17 nations, but even then only 16 are needed.

Sure you need to have made the others, but as far as which are used during a given game, its not that many.

Anyway, it is probably possible to make only a few matricies for army composition, or magic research... and then have a few operators for different nations, or different personalities that modify them. Once the game has started the modified (temporary) matrix is the only one used anyway. The .mob file from MoO3 was pretty big if I remember correctly (the file that stored all the matricies), but once you 'extracted' it you had a series of text files in a series of folders that you could easily open and edit in excel or even word pad. I mean it adds more size to the game, but I don't think it requires more processing power. And I don't think it would add more than 20MB in a worst case anyway.

I guess I don't quite see how this is comparable to a bot.