AI nation skills

[NTJedi]

Folket said:
Well, I find that it is not as fun when you know what you are up against.

I find it's more fun knowing I'm up against a thriving difficult opponent compared with spending 40mins to discover nothing but withering weaklings.

[Wikd Thots]

Zeldor said:
Wikd Thots:

Point 1 would be really easy to implement. At least scales.

Pint 3 is indeed very complicated, but it should be like that Human plays every nation in different way and so should AI. I should have gone to cognitive science so I could help with that...

That's true of point one also. It would still end up having to be a list of every nation and the scales it would take. Plus I can come up with 2 or 3 standard scales for every nation depending on how its played. If you think that there is a set of scales that will work without doing an "IF" for each nation then let us know what is it.

But if they did do an if for each nation then it wouldn't matter much since the lag of thinking would only be at the creation of the game. Not as bad as trying to do it for in-game thinking like buying reasonable troops.

[thejeff]

Not necessarily a list of scales for every nation. I want the randomness in there. I don't want the same pretender design every time, nor a list of 2-3 choices for each nation.

But a couple of things ruled in/out would help a lot.
Some general rules like:
Don't take 3 misforture and 3 turmoil.
and some specific ones:
Neifelhiem: take cold 2 or 3
EA/LA Mictlan: high dominion and/or awake pretender
High production with MA Ulm

Don't think of it as optimizing the AI's design, but avoiding stupid mistakes.

On another note:
If the code is well-designed, there should be little to no lag even for in-game nation specific thinking. You don't have a series of checks at every decision point, you have separate, preferably inherited, functions for races that want special handling.
(Of course, it's probably not well-designed. Most code, including mine, isn't. That's not a criticism, just an observation. Large codebases tend to grow haphazardly and need to be rethought from the ground up, but there is rarely time or interest.)

[Zeldor]

thejeff:

There are much less choices for scales on very big maps and bad choices are really not firgiving.

[thejeff]

Granted, that adds more complexity to optimizing pretender design, but there is still merit in ruling out particularly bad choices.
(Some of which is already done, right? I don't see cold 3 Abyssia very often. A race's temperature preference is taken into account. Why not preferences for other scales?)

Or are you saying there's less complexity? One set of scales that is optimal for all nations in a large enough game? Even if that were true, (which it is not, there being some obvious exceptions) it wouldn't hold in smaller games.

[Zeldor]

thejeff:

I am just saying that choosing bad scales for a smaller map has a smaller influence than taking them on huge map. You can survive 1:1 game with Death 3 if you use it for example to have super awake pretender or nice bless. But try using it on 500 province map against 20 opponents. And AI should take it into consideration.

[thejeff]

Or since it can't handle the SC pretender or a bless strategy it should avoid taking the bad scales even on small maps...

[HoneyBadger]

In addition to the NI maps, someone ought to create mods for the various nations that eliminate units the AI shouldn't be creating, within it's own nation.

[Sombre]

Not a lot gets done waiting for this 'someone' person to do stuff.

[HoneyBadger]

Well, I'd elect myself, but I've got no working computer to use. Won't have, for a year plus. That and I'm not a very good player anyway, so the AI doesn't need that much help squashing me.