Single Player Rant

[Evil Dave]

Like a few other people, I still find the hardest AI opponents challenging. I don't have the time to learn to beat it.

But I look at the AI from a different angle: I've written AI. Yup, actual pieces of software to play games (no, none you've heard of). It's not an easy problem, especially as the complexity of the game grows. Dom3's AI doesn't do so badly, actually. While the tactical AI needs spell blacklists (or at least player-selectable hint lists), it's generally pretty clever. The pretender-building code could be improved, tho.

But anybody can eventually beat game "AI" given enough time. Game designers are limited by two things: the processing power of home computers and the lack of machine learning. Your computer has one, maybe up to four, processors in it. Deep Blue, the big chess engine that beat Kasparov, had 32 and 256 special-purpose chess-playing chips.

Good machine learning systems are a pain to write. They also run very slowly. I've seen them run for hours on 16-processor machines while learning how to run factories. While it would be cool if Dom3 could learn to beat humans, I don't think that's gonna happen any time soon.

[Gandalf Parker]

Evil Dave said:
But I look at the AI from a different angle: I've written AI. Yup, actual pieces of software to play games (no, none you've heard of). It's not an easy problem, especially as the complexity of the game grows. Dom3's AI doesn't do so badly, actually. While the tactical AI needs spell blacklists (or at least player-selectable hint lists), it's generally pretty clever. The pretender-building code could be improved, tho.

In the AI forums its often joked about the difference between AI and AH. Doing AI (Artificial Intelligence) is actually fairly easy and common. Writing artificial intelligence is to get it to go from point A to point B by a straight line. Of course for games that would be too predictable and exploitable. AH (Artificially Human) is much harder. The usual AI line of programming would be to start with absolutes and then gradually add randoms. The usual AH line for game opponents is to start with total randoms and then gradually add intelligent absolutes. (its an interesting comment on humanity that you are closer to playing a human if the AI is random instead of smart)

The game actually does have spell blacklists, and weighted choice lists for spells, and a set sequence that it considers them in. If you want to watch the game "think" you can turn on the debug to various levels using a command line switch and direct the output to a file. If one of the expert players wanted to point out a specific change in the weights or sequence then I am sure it would be considered.

The pretender-building code is a problem. Not too bad considering that it was tacked onto the game, and its linear. It does try to make some smart choices buts a single routine for all nations as far as I know. If you dont allow for the possibility of some harmful choices then certain nations will never be able to win. But the player-done SemiRandom project is helping that. If more people will turn in their smarter pretender/scale designs for specific nations then we can get some games available to us that let the AI play much better.

[Evil Dave]

Gandalf,

What I meant was player-controlled blacklists/hint lists. I've watched Dom3 think; that's one reason I think it's a good job. The problem, of course, is that the AI doesn't know what the player is trying to do. It's trying to optimize a situation it doesn't really understand, so it gets it wrong sometimes (like the recent thread on it making archers and mages berserk).

I'd really like a GUI/configuration file to be able to say, "No, please don't cast this spell in this battle." or "Yes, you may use a pearl to cast Power of the Spheres even against weak opponents, but don't use pearls for anything else.". Really, I want that. Double pretty-please with the devs' favorite sweets on top.

[Hadrian_II]

I think the problem with the dom3 AI is that it does not know complex tactics, but just throws lots of Units at you. If you survived the first 30 Turns on a SP game you are almost sure to win, as the AI from then on just cant cope with you. I think the only game that i met that had some AI that was actually challenging after the early game was in GalCiv II. (as soon as it works in WINE i become really happy)

[Fate]

Many open-source games -including civ-evo and Wesnoth- have opted for open AI editing. In theory this could allow the players to develop the AI as the strategies change.

I think it would be nice if the devs could do one of the following:

A) Add a -info or -i command that dumps all information, including sites, provinces, troops, etc...

B) Add an "unencrypted" option that doesn't encrypt the fatherland file so it can be read.

Then an external AI could read it and output a .2h file as if it were a human. I have never tried making an AI, but I haven't really had a reason to.

[Gandalf Parker]

Ive pushed for open source AI, and some bot-accessable hooks to the game since day one. We have gotten some output changes which have helped but more would be nice.

[Archonsod]

Sombre said:
So you can't really blame experienced MP folk for discounting the opinions that SP people have on MP gameplay issues, such as the balancing of the Vans. If they don't play MP they should just shut up instead of insisting they know something about it because they beat the AI like a red-haired stepchild.

Pretty much sums up the kind of attitude that causes the problem to be honest. What makes you think the balance of Vans is unique to multiplayer? Furthermore, why should multiplayer balance be given more priority than single player balance?
The counterpoint to your argument is MP players should quit whining since the host can decide which nations, units and the like to allow, while we have no control over what the AI decides to use or not use. You can't exactly ban the AI for breaking your rules. Obviously, arguing like this can go on ad nauseum and is counter productive to ever actually finding a solution to the problem. If Vans are unbalanced in multiplayer, then they're obviously going to be unbalanced in single player (and vice versa. The AI mightn't know how to fully exploit the unit, but single player games contain at least one human). It's not a question of deciding which is more important, but deciding how to best fix the situation (and the fix needs to apply to both game types equally, otherwise you'll just get complaints that a nation is being restricted rather than rebalanced).

[Gandalf Parker]

Archonsod said:
It's not a question of deciding which is more important, but deciding how to best fix the situation (and the fix needs to apply to both game types equally, otherwise you'll just get complaints that a nation is being restricted rather than rebalanced).

Excellent points.
Part of the problem would be that a challenging nation run by the AI in SP is apparently too much of a problem in MP. And if its balanced for MP then it allows the MPers to laugh at the crappy AI that the SPers have to play with.

Of course the modders could help out by providing more challenging AI playable nations to fill the gaps that would be caused by balancing for MP play.