Targeting efficiency

[Pocus]

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.

UML courses Taqwus?

[Wendigo]

Originally posted by johan osterman:
[QB]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.
QB]

Well, we certainly do have a crowd of tbs game players that can offer opinions on this.

I do not play as many games as I used to in the past (in part due to RL being more demanding, and in part due to your game stubornly staying in my drive), but I can talk about the AI of a few classics.

MoM: Mom AI was very simple, and depended on bonuses mainly to stand vs the player. The tactical AI made a priority to target heroes, mages & missile units, but apart from that it was realtively simple to beat with inferior/specialized troops. The strategic AI just hyperexpanded relaying on its bonuses.

Kohan: Pausable RTS, so it basically plays as TBS.
The tactical AI retreats its units to heal them when badly damaged, but that's about it. When the AI wants a city it just sends anything it has vs it. AI Units are not tailor-designed to the opponent even on the highest lv as far as I can see, despite the design being far far simpler than Dominions. The strategic AI is correct.

Total War: A very annoying bonus of Shogun:TW was that the AI could 'see' your strategic move, and act upon its knowledge...this was extremely fustrating, you could have 2 defended provinces, empty one moving the army elsewhere & the AI would walk a few peasants from a nearby province & conquer it.
The tactical AI is extremely simple: just rush forward in offence (even walking into a killfield of arquebuses) without flanking maneuvers. In defense it sometimes stays put until targetted.
It's worth noting that missile light cavalry really performs as such in this game, with skirmish orders & keeping distance from the opponent.

All the above were notable games, yet none of them had a particularly challenging AI.

I wont comment on crap like Legion, Lords of Magic or similar, suffice to say that those barely survived a week in my HD.

[Maelstorm]

Reading Johan Osterman's reply.....I had a feeling that the Dominions 2. AI will suck balls once again.

On the old shrapnel's Dom 2. site there was a sentence that Doms 2. will have a very good AI.
On the new site this info cannot be found.

I think that Shrapnel realized that the AI will suck, so they removed that sentence, because lying is not wise for a publisher.

I tell you, that one of the most imprtant thing is the AI in a strategy game, if the game is not a MMORPG. You should think about this.

[Truper]

Hey Johan,

How about a new spell in Maelstorm's (sic) honor?
We could call it Legions of the Clueless...

[Zerger]

Originally posted by Maelstorm:
Reading Johan Osterman's reply.....I had a feeling that the Dominions 2. AI will suck balls once again.

On the old shrapnel's Dom 2. site there was a sentence that Doms 2. will have a very good AI.
On the new site this info cannot be found.

I think that Shrapnel realized that the AI will suck, so they removed that sentence, because lying is not wise for a publisher.

I tell you, that one of the most imprtant thing is the AI in a strategy game, if the game is not a MMORPG. You should think about this.

Hey, maybe wait for the game first?! *shrugs*
Anyways I read something like that on the first site too. I mean about the decent and improved Dominions II. AI.

[ October 14, 2003, 15:05: Message edited by: Zerger ]

[johan osterman]

Originally posted by Maelstorm:
Reading Johan Osterman's reply.....I had a feeling that the Dominions 2. AI will suck balls once again.

On the old shrapnel's Dom 2. site there was a sentence that Doms 2. will have a very good AI.
On the new site this info cannot be found.

I think that Shrapnel realized that the AI will suck, so they removed that sentence, because lying is not wise for a publisher.

I tell you, that one of the most imprtant thing is the AI in a strategy game, if the game is not a MMORPG. You should think about this.

Your colorful desciptions aside I wonder what paragon of AI programming you are comparing the dom 1 AI with? As for as what Shrapnel wrote about the AI I guess it is what they honestly felt. The only TBS I have played single player lately is the TW games, and as far as I am concerned they were not very impessive, and both the total war games have a lot less troops, special abilities and other factors to take into account than dominions. I have never played a strategy game of any kind except chess and checkers where the AI can holds it own on even footing with a competent human. It would also be both more helpful and interesting to hear you voice your specific complaints against the AI rather than the crap you are currently posting.

As for your statement that the AI is most important fact in a strategy game unless it is a MMORPG, dominions is designed from the bottom up to be a multi player game, primarily for network or PBEM play, but I do think the single player experience holds its own as well.

[ October 14, 2003, 15:38: Message edited by: johan osterman ]

[Nerfix]

Originally posted by Maelstorm:
Reading Johan Osterman's reply.....I had a feeling that the Dominions 2. AI will suck balls once again.

On the old shrapnel's Dom 2. site there was a sentence that Doms 2. will have a very good AI.
On the new site this info cannot be found.

I think that Shrapnel realized that the AI will suck, so they removed that sentence, because lying is not wise for a publisher.

I tell you, that one of the most imprtant thing is the AI in a strategy game, if the game is not a MMORPG. You should think about this.

You could actualy find out about things before posting something half-assed like this.
You haven't touched the game, betatesters and Shrapnel-dudes say the AI is good, i trust betatesters and Shrapnel-dudes, i can't understand why saying that AI has been improved makes you think that the AI will "suck balls".

I also wonder if you have played Dom I for more than 2 times...

[ October 14, 2003, 15:18: Message edited by: Nerfix ]

[licker]

Yes yes, we all know that Dom is designed first and formost from a MP point of view. We also understand the complexities involved in creating a 'suitable' AI (suitable is in the eye of the beholder of course) for a game with as many complex systems as Dom has.

However, one thing that Maelstrom said has at least some merit, the majority of play on Dom will be in SP mode, to ignore that market (not that Illwinter is ignoring it) would be sheer folly. If there are asperations for great sales of Dom2 then the SP game needs to be reinforced as being terrific. Look for all any of us knows it is, and hopefully once the community gets their hands on the game there will be alot of new ideas and discussions about the AI.

I will remain hopeful that Illwinter remains as faithful to their fan base as they've been with Dom1, and when and where they can they will make improvements to the AI to further improve the SP experience.

A Last resort is to move to heavilly scripted maps to give a challenge to SPers, however, thats not as good of a result as it is to be able to make continued improvements to the Dom AI.

[Saber Cherry]

Sorry folks, I got a copy of DOM2.exe from a betatester, ran a disassembler on it, and managed to recreate the logical class structure. The results look bad. I'll post the source code of the AI class here:

/*Dominions 2 AI code*/

Class Dom2AI{

//primary AI command
int suck(MonkeyBalls *MB){

//Remember to fill this in by patch 1.3

return 2;
}
}

Well, there you have it. I don't want to draw any premature conclusions, but the only Dominions 2 AI function seems to be... shorter than I had hoped. Oh well...

-Cherry

P.S. I think the DOMI AI is pretty good. And for those of you who are extra sensitive today, the above is intended to be humorous

[ October 14, 2003, 17:17: Message edited by: Saber Cherry ]

[Nerfix]

ROTFLMAO!

I didn't know that function "suck monkey balls" does miracles...

Ok, but we still don't have a real answer about the targeting efficency...