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AI's SA is FUBAR

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AI's SA is FUBAR

... wtf?

from Sins Forums
So I'm sitting back and not trying very hard, never building anything more than light frigates, and seem to be able to whoop any number of AI in any scenario. I was thinking perhaps one of the skill levels was broken, so I went to go fiddle with it - I had it set to (E)xpert, so I cycled through to (M)edium and (H)ard and I was wondering why the heck there was no novice setting.... then it slowly dawned on me...

OK so a week passes, and now I'm playing on (H)ard (damnit!) and though I actually have to TRY, I am still whooping butt in all scenarios. I know the difficulties faced in programming a good non-cheating AI, so I'll chip in my two cents in regards to what *I* am doing that the AI doesn't seem to be.

(1) The AI's Situational Awareness is fairly messed up. If I send a small decoy fleet to one end of the AI's empire, engaging his capital ship, while I send my real fleet to the other end of his empire... actually capturing profitable planets, the AI seems reluctant to divert forces to the 'real' fight. The fight that matters.

similarly,

(2) The AI seems to fight just as hard for a dead asteroid as they do for a fully stocked terran planet. If I have reinforcements incoming that I think will turn the tide of the battle, I will retreat my currently engaged forces so that they may all fight together.

(3) I will often leave a 'bait planet' out in the open that the AI tries to tackle. Especially in early game when the AI doesn't seem to have any planetary-bombardment frigates, they will leave their fleet there trying to take out the planet (and my construction frigates) for 10, 20 minutes sometimes. This of course gives me ample distraction-free time to send my military units elsewhere or to build up a force to dislodge my opponent.

possibly the worst of the AI abilities,

(4) it's ability to make an educated guess on the outcome of a battle. I can usually glance at the battle and say - OK, we both have a Kol capital ship at full health, he has 22 light cobalts and I have 19 light cobalts. Time to retreat!.... The AI cannot make this decision when the tables are turned. The AI should do a simple "projected outcome" balancing the economic impact of the fight. The AI is PARTICULARLY bad at estimating it's chances of success against Valsari Missle Turrets (especially with several missle upgrades). If the AI comes out the loser, RETREAT and bolster the force with a few reinforcements and try again. If an OVERWHELMING force approaches, the AI retreats - but if it's a close fight it falters.

this is compounded because

(5) I focus-fire on the AI's capital ships first, causing severe economic impact. With even just 15+ light frigates joining cap ships in the fray, you can usually take them out before they retreat. Thanks to my surviviing capital ship's special abilities, I am able to take out the accompanying AI cobalts without taking too many losses. The AI rarely focus-fires on my cap ships, or if it does, I recognize it early enough to retreat my cap ship.

(6) Speaking of retreating cap ships, Once the enemy capship is dead I'm able to re-enter my damaged capship without fear of losing it. AI seems to rarely withdraw it's capships strategically; it either runs away, and STAYS away for quite some time, or it dies in my hands. The AI loses much too many capships and should be more willing to pull back, even if only for a few minutes (to escape my focus-fire).

(7) The AI doesn't seem to put much weight into economy. Most games like this I play the capitalistic way: make as much money as you possibly can, as fast as you can, because you can BUY anything else you need once you have the cash. I usually end my small one-star campaigns with nearly 200,000 bucks and nothing to spend it on. The cash reserve comes in handy though - in the heat of the battle, I'm able to churn out replacements for every ship I've lost from a planet one or two jumps away, essentially leaving the enemy fighting an invincible force. Looking at the allied AI players I sometimes have, they seem to spend every cent they have the first chance they can get. I like to keep enough in the bank (especially late-game) to entirely replace my fleet should it become destroyed.

because of the this lack of focus the AI has on economy,

(8) It seems every time I wipe out an AI fleet, I can count on not being disutrbed by that AI force again for 10-15 minutes. Immediately I'll round up all my forces on that end of the star system and move it to the other border, where I can feel safe in knowing the next attack (from another AI I had previously defeated) will come next. I am essentially able to 'turtle' with a single defensive fleet across a star system.

(9) AI has a habit of hanging out in my border systems, where I invariably have several defensive structures, instead of moving *just one jump farther in* to the jucier planets with no defensive structures. They scout them all the time (I ignore scout ships) so they *KNOW* there's a big prize ripe for the taking, but they seem bull-headed and unwilling to move forward unless they can take out my 6 missile turrets and 3 squadron hangars first. *rolls eyes*

Hopefully that'll help the devs make the AI a tiny bit harder Right now I'm satisfying myself by simply making the teams 4-on-2 and trying to keep my teammate alive (usually by feeding him cash regularly); so I am still having a lot of fun with the game and love it to bits.
12,122 views 39 replies
Reply #26 from Sins Forums Top
Unless it's dial-up, you should at least consider trying. I can play online with my satellite connection, 1.5Mbit when the stars align and massive latency. As long as I wait till it's at 75% strength or so(hughesnet severely oversells so it's worthless crap around dinner time) the game runs great even with two second latency.

It's some outstandingly stable netcode from the looks of it, and the game pace is such that even a two second lag isn't particularly difficult to adapt to.
Reply #27 from Sins Forums Top
and the game pace is such that even a two second lag isn't particularly difficult to adapt to.
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unless you are playing against me
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Reply #28 from Sins Forums Top

AI has been a hot potato in many cases.

Those who have no experience with just how sucky it can get without proper scripting and cheating, may just be silent for a bit, because I have an idea just where this is going.

The 'oh noes don't make it cheat I want to win easymode crowd' may find that the setting 'easy' is for them. For the rest of us, we want painful short lives at the end of a gun, and if I can't get that, the game becomes boring fast.

Good AI's today are painfully few. And this game will suffer under probably having a mediocre AI that is probably not gonna understand half the options available to it..nor will it understand abstract concepts like 'when to retreat' 'when a battle is winnable or not' etc etc.
Heck, it will probably not even understand what unit to use how...or how to keep things in somewhat formation. Even my own ships seems very villy nilly on the subject.

Thus to sum it up...careful listening to the 'no cheating crowd' they rarly know what they're talking about..and they have no clue about what having a challenge means.

I rarly think a game is fun when outcome is certain.

Janster
Reply #29 from Sins Forums Top
I prefer adaptive artificial intelligence to cheating stupidity. You're the only one talking about it being a desire for an easy game. I want to win because I play superior to an intelligent opponent that thinks up ways to challenge me, not because I find exploits to counter the cheating advantage of it.

Seems yarlen was right that noone pays attention.

Don't get all worked up about the AI sucking. We told everyone the new AI didn't make it into the initial release of Beta 4. Ironclad is currently slaving away on the new AI and when it's ready it will be many times better than what everyone's seen so far.
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Reply #30 from Sins Forums Top
I want to win because I play superior to an intelligent opponent that thinks up ways to challenge me, not because I find exploits to counter the cheating advantage of it.
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Damn straight. AI, if you recall, means Artificial Intelligence, not "spam massive waves of frigates until the human's computer melts from the strain, he heads for the online mode in frustration, or he figures out that I don't actually think, I just spam frigates at the nearest planet, so he doesn't have to defend anywhere else, and that my defenses aren't mutually supporting, they're just blobs with massive spots everywhere you look, so he just needs to hold fast at the planet I attack, while he eviscerates my empire with even a decently manged fleet". I, for one want to see flanking attacks, diversions followed by concerted attacks, holding actions, and precision attacks that inflict crippling damage through superior target selection. I'd much rather see the computer beat me by taking the undefended planet the majority of my trade runs through than by burying my fortresses in amorphous blobs of frigates that block out the sun. And that is something I feel that the people behind GalCiv 2 have the skills to do. So let's give them friendly reminders, sit back, and revel in the glory of something which will be

many times better than what everyone's seen so far
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as Yarlen said in his inimitable understated style. I, for one, can't wait
Reply #32 from Sins Forums Top
Civ4. Perfect example of ai, very nice job, a few holes, but over all well done. It takes a lot of practice to beat the standard setting(documented as an equal footing), and after that if you're still bored you can play cheating ai. There isn't any actual difference in the ai from one setting to the next, it's just progressively boned at lower levels and you're the one boned at higher ones.

Unfortunately, it does still have lots of holes, unit usage is horrible, it has a dozen units on defense where half a dozen different ones would have been better, and sends huge stacks on offensives while accomplishing what a much smaller stack of better thought out units would have. It doesn't have to cheat to be a challenge though, it just needs to cheat to challenge someone good. It plays to counter your strengths instead of ignoring them, building lots of spearmen against a cavalry heavy army, foregoing axemen in favor of swordsmen if you're defending in your cities with just archers, but selecting that weaker unit if you're infantry heavy. It's still a little stupid, but not completely devoid of intelligent choices.

Most games on the other hand just give the ai massive resource advantages and have basic scripting into when to attack and what to attack with. You can't defeat the civ ai by building the perfect counter and killing wave after wave of free units, you actually have to think. In the cnc games, you could always build the perfect defense, usually consisting of longer range weaponry in the right spots, and then minimize your casualties to a miniscule fraction and kill them off when you built up a big enough force.

Despite being a far more boring game, I've played a lot more ai from civ4 than I have all the cnc games combined, cheating can make it hard, but it never makes it interesting. Being on the edge of death all game is wonderful, but only till you build v2 rockets and tesla coils behind a wall and kill wave after wave of light tanks without a single casualty while taking a crap, eating dinner, going to bed, on vacation. It doesn't really matter what you're doing at that point since the ai will always do the same thing. Then again, the ai in red alert eventually bound itself up and couldn't move units anymore as long as you didn't attack it, so surviving till that point meant you could stop playing for a year without any defenses at all and still be alive if it didn't crash.

What sins needs is not a cheating ai, it needs a good ai. One that forms good fleets, uses them against good targets, adapts to your own composition when found, and exploits weaknesses not only in a lack of defenses, but a favoring of defenses. Flak frigates and cobalts against a planet defended by 7 hangars is perfect, sending lrm frigates is pointless. The reverse is true if instead of 7 hangars, there are 28 gauss platforms. It needs to grasp and take advantage of them, not just send twice as many frigates against the bombers as it could actually afford to build. Cheating after it's competent is just fine for harder difficulty settings, it's not a solution for stupid though.
Reply #33 from Sins Forums Top
Also, it should take advantage of mutual support and any lack thereof on the opponent's part. A repair station in the middle of a group of gauss cannons clustered to protect some hangars is much more dangerous than the three separately, and more importantly, can slow the enemy down much more than if the hangars are just hidden behind a loose group of cannons that can't mass fire to defend themselves. I want to see the AI take advantage of mistakes like that by, say, rushing a gaggle of frigates to beat on the hangars from an angle where the cannons can't defend themselves while the fleet's bombers pound enough turrets to dust that the fleet can go back to what it needs to do after a minimal expenditure of time and effort. Just another thought. Of course, the tightly bunched defenses can't protect everywhere, so the ai will need to weigh the disadvantages and possible avenues of attack, and come up with a plan to match the situation.
Reply #34 from Sins Forums Top



Lol I HAD TO!
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LOL!! I was waiting for this to come out of the woodwork
Reply #35 from Sins Forums Top
Heh, I wash the floor with standard CIV 4 AI, my friend washes the floor with anything but emperor level AI.

Games like these need a strong singleplayer performance, infact take a lesson from Space Empires V, no SP = no game. It just takes too long to play SE V multiplayer tbh..
This game here might be less a victim, but still.

The AI may cheat, to become stronger..but it can still make attacks, Sword of the Stars AI can cause the game is relativly simple in strategy, do VERY nasty attacks on you....however in fleet battles, its a bit more stupid.

This game is a lot more complex, the AI no matter what the devs say is going to struggle.
I've heard devs tell me about their brilliant AI before (moo3 anyone) and seen the result...so I hope these devs are realistic, and scripts it properly, admits that AI is something thats frigging hard to code and that we need it to yield resistance, NOT invent the wheel all over again.

Thank you

Janster
Reply #36 from Sins Forums Top
Don't get all worked up about the AI sucking. We told everyone the new AI didn't make it into the initial release of Beta 4. Ironclad is currently slaving away on the new AI and when it's ready it will be many times better than what everyone's seen so far.


I was paying attention.. But without seeing the new AI I wasn't sure if my little list of issues have been taken care of. If the new AI comes out and it whoops my butt *and* it fixes up all the little mistakes we've all mentioned.. then great!

But I'm betting the new-and-improved AI doesn't solve every problem
Reply #37 from Sins Forums Top
Emperor isn't even the top difficulty, it's not even a 2-1 advantage. That's the sign of a good ai. Most games can't compete with the typical player even burning twice the resources, very few people can beat diety ai in civ4, and usually only under very specific settings even then. First you make it think, then you make it cheat for higher difficulties to placate us masochists.
Reply #38 from Sins Forums Top
My friend wins on emperor mind you, he's currently doing the ladder CIV 4 thingie.

But its a challenge...and thats the IMPORTANT thing.
Sometimes cheating provide that challenge..

I'm currently playing a game of SE V and I can tell you just HOW much this shoddy AI has been ruinous for this otherwise excellent games development.

But the devs gotta understand, that NOBODY has made a good AI when the game is very complex so far, best attempt now is Supreme Commander expansion pack AI, I hear it actually attacks the player now...compared to vanilla version.

Now there is a company with 10x resources of this game...

Janster
Reply #39 from Sins Forums Top

Even though I realize nobody will pay attention to this...


Don't get all worked up about the AI sucking. We told everyone the new AI didn't make it into the initial release of Beta 4. Ironclad is currently slaving away on the new AI and when it's ready it will be many times better than what everyone's seen so far.


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without cheating right?






Lol I HAD TO!


LOL!! I was waiting for this to come out of the woodwork
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