Targeting efficiency

[johan osterman]

The strategic AI can handle more situations in dom 2 than in dom 1, it is slightly better but it isnt Deep Blue. I hardly ever play single player TBS games so I do not know how it holds up against the AI's of other games. Shrapnels beta testers and Shrapnels personel thought the AI was very good, but an experienced dom player will still no doubt beat th AI in one on one matches.

[Pocus]

Originally posted by johan osterman:
The strategic AI can handle more situations in dom 2 than in dom 1, it is slightly better but it isnt Deep Blue. I hardly ever play single player TBS games so I do not know how it holds up against the AI's of other games. Shrapnels beta testers and Shrapnels personel thought the AI was very good, but an experienced dom player will still no doubt beat th AI in one on one matches.

the important things to consider, as it was the AI main weaknesses in doms I are :
is the AI aware that a supply rule exists.
is the AI prone to ward his armies, somehow intelligently.

in a pbem game we just finished, playing as Ctis, I got invaded by Pythium AI (Grana map). Even at 1 versus 5 I was able to wade thru their provinces, just because I casted each time foul vapor/poison ward, and they were totally caught off guard each time.

This is the kind oh problems that the AI have. The AI on the other hand is very tough when you counter them 'fairly', that is you attempt to have superiority on the battlefield without magic.

[Wendigo]

Indeed, to follow up on what Pocus & others point out:

The Dom I AI cannot stand vs a vet player either strategically nor tactically:

Strategically:
-It doesn't build the right unit-mix to face its opponent (with lack of priest power when facing Ermor being the most notable failure).
-It disregards supply & usually fields starving hordes.
-It does not patrol, nor builds local defense so it is totally open to sneak attacks.
-Cannot equip supercombatants & mages in a competitive way.

Tactically:
-It just bunches its troops in a big mass, disregarding friendly damage due to auras & such.
-Has no scripts for specialized troops like fliers, cavalry or missile troops.
-Does not protect its mages & commanders.
-Cannot deal with ward+battlefield spell combos.
-Cannot deal with supercombatants.
-Does not bloodhunt.

I do think the tactical spell AI is competent though as I have said before, but a vet will likely script the 5 initial spells for maximum efficiency anyway.

Still, this is no different from any other 4X game in pc gaming industry, the more complex the game (and Dom is more complex than any of them), the harder it is for the AI to stand vs a competent player.

But that's why we have MP in Dom anyway, and seeing as I got 2 full years of enjoyable gaming from Dom I will gladly support IW by purchasing Dom II. I have great hopes in this game.

[ October 14, 2003, 11:02: Message edited by: Wendigo ]

[johan osterman]

Originally posted by Mortifer:
Nice list about the AI weaknesses and I agree with those.
Lot of players are playing singleplayer mainly, so the AI must be upgraded. If the devs know that what was wrong with the AI, they can upgrade it. This list is valid, so these things should be fixed/updated.

I tell you something. If the mod tools will be out, you will be able to tweak the AI. How? Simply disable the tricky spells, what the AI cannot use properly. Than the players cannot trick the AI that much.

Anyways these issues with the AI should be fixed and than the AI will kick some ***. I am totally sure that the AI can be tweaked like that.
Just check the list and tweak/update the necessary parts of the AI.

It is a little more complicated than that, for example making the strategic AI counter a player devised combo or supercombatant strategy is almost impossible since there are so many potentionally devastating combos and spells etc that are very powerful in special circumstances. Making an AI that adapts its strategy the way a human does in a game as complex as this is all but undoable, not only would the AI have to 'understand' the implications of the way spells items units interact but also 'understand' when a particular combo or spell etc was likely to appear etc, there is just to many factors to take into account. So making more than incremental improvements in the AIs ability to counter spell combos and supercombatants is very difficult.

Some but not all of the rest has been dealt with. The AI bloodhunts. Protecting commanders is not as important as it used to besince the attack commander/attack magic Users has been replaced with attack rear. Supercombatants might also be somewhat weaker due to changes in the strikeback effect and the removal of the attack commander orders.

[ October 14, 2003, 13:03: Message edited by: johan osterman ]

[Pocus]

Originally posted by Mortifer:
snip : now that the problems are identified, its simple to fix them.

You are a bit too affirmative, in my humble opinion. I think you should try yourself to make a sizable software before saying that anything related to coding is simple.

[Mortifer]

Originally posted by Pocus:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Mortifer:
snip : now that the problems are identified, its simple to fix them.

You are a bit too affirmative, in my humble opinion. I think you should try yourself to make a sizable software before saying that anything related to coding is simple.

---

Aye, I know that it is not easy, but all of those parts can be upgraded with coding. In fact they should be. Well first lets wait for the game, and we can list that what should be upgraded in the AI mechanism.

[Pocus]

Originally posted by johan osterman:
It is a little more complicated than that, for example making the strategic AI counter a player devised combo or supercombatant strategy is almost impossible since there are so many potentionally devastating combos and spells etc that are very powerful in special circumstances. Making an AI that adapts its strategy the way a human does in a game as complex as this is all but undoable, not only would the AI have to 'understand' the implications of the way spells items units interact but also 'understand' when a particular combo or spell etc was likely to appear etc, there is just to many factors to take into account. So making more than incremental improvements in the AIs ability to counter spell combos and supercombatants is very difficult.

true, but you should aim for proven recipes. Some games adapt their forces to the threat, but they generally does this after the threat appears, and not preemptively. For example, it is surely awfully complex to determine in advance if a player is heading toward having foul vapor / poison ward combos, or if he has the potential to field trampling gifted gargoyles with charcoal shields.

But a thing which is very doable is to tag each loss of the AI units with the origin of the loss. That is, the AI should store that it has losts so far 852 units to poison*, and 145 to trampling damages. These numbers can then be tweaked with a 'time distance', that is if the AI loose some 20 turns ago 150 units to poison, it should be less important than loosing these units just the Last turn. Having done that, you can sort the biggest threat, and have the AI focus on alleviating the problem. Solutions to poison can be to give a high priority to druid recruitments, a big incentive to search poison ward, a higher probability of having nature gems on nature mages, etc.
There is not that much differing sources of damages, perhaps 20 maximum. The biggest work is to have the AI tweak his priorities according to the threat represented by these 20 sources.

* : you can have a kill coming for several sources by the way, the system ought to be refined.

Thats just a remark on top of my head, but if you want to engage into serious ai programming, sites like gameai.com or ai-depot.com are must read. You would invest 50 hours of reading in doing so, but it is well worth the effort.

We all have the tendency to reinvent the wheel...

[Wendigo]

Hopefully I didn't sound too negative. I consider the AI correct for what is to be expected from this kind of game, it has far too many variables to acount for & they interact in far too many different ways.

This is why the claims from the betatesters about a killer AI in Dom II came as a bit of a surprise, but hey, I am glad to hear that it has been tinkered with to appeal to the SP crowd: we can never have too many players & sooner or later those solo players will consider making the jump into MP for the enjoyment of us all.

And I should have included bloodhunts in the strategic section & not the tactical of course.

[ October 14, 2003, 13:34: Message edited by: Wendigo ]

[Taqwus]

Mortifer --

It's not just coding that's hard. In fact, coding may be the easy part... It's the design of the algorithm, including formal description of the problem and how you decide what features et al need to be considered let alone what you do with them. If you can't identify what inputs need to be factored in, you can't even begin to code.

[Nerfix]

Originally posted by Taqwus:
Mortifer --

It's not just coding that's hard. In fact, coding may be the easy part... It's the design of the algorithm, including formal description of the problem and how you decide what features et al need to be considered let alone what you do with them. If you can't identify what inputs need to be factored in, you can't even begin to code.

You have personal experience about that?
You sound like you would have...