Idea for MM to improve AI's strategy

[jc173]

Some people have brought up the issue of the AI not being able to attack unless it considers a system to be contested. I was thinking of some ways to change this, and wanted to know what people thought about this. Most of this would have to be patched in to the exe file, but should require a large amount of coding though.

In addition to considering planets in contested systems as attack locations the AI should try to get reconaissance data on all systems within 2 or 3 warps of its border belonging to the enemy empire. Once it has the recon data it shouldn't be hard to run a recursive search of worlds with in range of its border.

Basically I think MM could add a new field in the AI_settings.txt file that would specify a point threshold, call it attack threshold for now, for a planet behind enemy lines to be considered for attack/capture. We could use a similar one for the AI to decide whether or it should try to capture a planet instead of just destroying it. Also in this settings file there would be several fields that specify what point value a particular characteristic would add to the attack and capture thresholds. People could mod the attack and capture point thresholds for each race to taste and they could also modify the points for each characteristic if they wanted to.

Things the AI should look at when calculating the attack and capture thresholds, MM could probably code this in terms of abilities and looking up certain settings from planet_size and the settings files in case people mode any of those settings. Also by refering to facilities in terms of abilities should allow AI's to consider destroying or capturing some of the race specific facilities that may be important to the other guy.

Presence of a resupply depots, big bonus to attack and capture points.

Presence of a space port , moderate bonus to attack and capture.

Presence of a space yard, big bonus to attack and capture.

Large population (maybe 80% of max pop for a large planet) plus small bonus to attack, moderate bonus to capture.

High resource value plus moderate bonus to attack and capture.

Presence of significant orbital defenses (large number of sattelites and or space stations) small penatly to attack.

Large number of resource extraction facilities moderate bonus to attack, large bonus to capture.

Large number of research or intelligence facilities: small bonus to attack, moderate bonus to capture.

Planet is a homeworld large bonus to attack and capture.

Also to support the Civil war idea if MM decides to implement that at a later date the characteristic of being regional capital or whatever could also be added in.

Just a few ideas, let me know what you all think.

[Barnacle Bill]

Good idea!

While they are at it, though, they need to fix the "piecemeal attack" method the AI uses. Example - in my most recent game I played a very non-expansive method concentrating on internal development rather than exploration/expansion. The Sallega found me pretty early and keep sending single ships to attack planets heavily defended by weapon platforms. They started out with sending single escorts to my homeworld. They worked up through the sizes to sending light cruisers. When I started building orbital stuff at the homeworld and colonizing other planets in system, they switched targets to the colonies w/o any ships & bases. However, I've been landing WP's on the turn of colonization So far, every ship they send has been swatted without causing any damage. Had they every waited 10-20 turns and collected the ships into a single fleet, instead of sending one ship every 2-3 turns, it would have been a different story.

In the MOO games, when the AI decided to attack a system, it would assemble what it thought was a good-sized strike fleet in a nearby system before launching the attack. Sure, you could disrupt it by a pre-emptive strike on the assembly site, but it was still a lot more effective than SE4. I'd like to see the SE4 AI select targets as prosed in this thread, but then assemble a reasonable strike fleet based on its recon of the target before launching the attack.

[Q]

jc173 I support your ideas especially the proposal that the Ai should attack also systems of the enemy that are not marked as contested.
BarnacleBill check the Sallega AI settings file:
Turns to Wait until next attack := 6
If this value is increased it should correct the premature attack.

[Taqwus]

Curiously, in my present game (255-system cluster galaxy, 1.35 + ModPack... and a race w/o any advanced traits, heh), I've seen both behaviors. Rage normally uses fleets approaching 20 ships in size, while the Ukra-Tal tend to send in singletons and pairs, or occasionally 4 at a time. It might be just that Rage has a larger production base than the Ukra-Tal (when we were allies shortly before I became Mega-Evil, they were in second place and the UTs were fourth), but their behavior does seem a bit different.

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-- The thing that goes bump in the night

[Barnacle Bill]

Q:

Does the "turns to wait for next attack" make them assemble a fleet, or just control how often they will send in a lone ship?

I'd like to see the AI take what it knows (i.e. has already seen about the target's defenses) and assemble a fleet that can take them, and not come back until they have that big of a fleet. Otherwise, they are just wasting ships. If I hit an enemy planet, and it was defended by several WP's, I certainly wouldn't go back there without a fleet that could take those defenses. Of course, the defender could further beef up the defense while I'm gone, but it is assuredly not very likely to weaken them. I'd use single ships to probe for recon, then assemble a sufficient force to take the defenses I detected before I launched an actual attack. If I sent a single ship in to an enemy planet and found it too heavily defended by immobile forces (WP's, satellites, bases), I'd just sit outside their weapon range and click "end turn" 30 times, then go home & get some friends It should be a simple set of rules to make the AI do likewise.

[Daynarr]

BB, the parameters that are most critical for AI to make fleets are located in fleets.txt file. Here are some specifics:

quote:

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Fleets Div 1 Max Amount of Ships:= 20
Fleets Div 1 Max Amount of Planets:= 0
Fleets Div 1 Num Fleets:= 3

---

These lines tell AI how to distribute its ships in fleets. By moding these lines you can make AI build few large fleets or lots of small fleets. Good races to compare here are Narn and Xi'Chung. Mephisto has made Narn create lots of fleets with less number of ships in them, which suits their defensive strategy quite well. OTOH I have made Xi'Chung build only few large fleets, which they need in order to be successful in their attacks.

quote:

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Fleets Percentage of Ships For Fleets:= 85

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This line tells AI how many of existing ships to put in fleet. By reducing the percentage you can make AI have lots of 'freelancers' going around with their own individual orders.

quote:

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Fleets Dont Use For Num Turns:=30

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This is the line that, most likely has caused AI to attack you with single ships. It tells AI not to use fleets for the specific amount of turns since the beginning of the game. This line must be carefully balanced because if you make AI use fleets too soon it will have problems with exploration and colonization (Sergetti had this problem for a while). This is because AI will position all its fleeted ships above some planet and try retrofit them all the time, so no ships will be doing the exploration. What value to use here depends greatly on AI research; if AI researches quickly some low-cost weapon (like DUC), it will design and retrofit more often, so larger value is better. OTOH if AI researches something like Missiles at the start, lower value should be safe.

In order to make AI use fleets like it should all these values need careful tweaking.

[dogscoff]

Nice idea. Assigning a preference for attack / capture would go a long way to giving each AI a distinct "personality".

You're right though, I think it would need a major code change. Mind you I don't see why that should stop us suggesting it. All my favourite suggestions require hard code changes=-)

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"Pinky, are you pondering what I'm pondering?"
"Uh, I think so, Brain, but we'll never get a monkey to use dental floss!"

[Barnacle Bill]

Daynarr:

Have you all ever considered creating a modder's database collecting what everyone has learned about the effects of the various game settings. Most of them seem kind of cryptic, and it looks like a number of individuals have learned some of them through experimentation. It would be great if all that knowledge could be collected into a single document!

[dogscoff]

quote:

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Originally posted by Barnacle Bill:
Q:
...I'd just sit outside their weapon range and click "end turn" 30 times...

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Does anyone else think MM should include a command in the tactical combat to do this automatically - ie "resolve combat peacefully" or something. The existing resolve combat button destroys ships and planets I might otherwise want to capture in a later attack, as well as putting your own ships at risk.


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"Pinky, are you pondering what I'm pondering?"
"Uh, I think so, Brain, but we'll never get a monkey to use dental floss!"

[Nitram Draw]

I agree that this would be a good option. If you fight only in tactical you could change all you fleet orders to "don't get hurt" and then when you clicked resolve combat you would run to the corner. I usually fight tactical but if the combat is overwhelmingly in my favor I use strategic and switching the fleet orders is a pain.

[This message has been edited by Nitram Draw (edited 01 May 2001).]