Future AI

Ive been thinking about what the future might have instore for us regarding
the AI in Total War games.I know at the moment it is not much of a challenge
for most players, but in the next game, or more likely the one after that,it
might well be.

My fear is that it will not improve by playing more like a person, but more
like a machine. It will calculate exactly when to charge for maximum
casualties. When a flanking manoeuvre will cause a rout. How long a unit in
melee will hold out before needing reinforced. How much time a unit will take
to go from A to B. It will be doing all this and a lot more with all the
units on the battlefield. A good human player will make these calculations as
well (at least subconsciously), but will be using guess work to make a
decision. Yes i know my heavy infantry will beat his milita, but how long
will it take? Will i still have time to flank the enemy army with this unit
before my battleline breaks? I dont know, but the computer will!

Im a chessplayer and have used dozens of chess programs over the years.
They all had one thing in common, they played like computers. Today any
good chess program can hold its own with the best players in the world, but
they still dont play like a human. They win by outcalculating there opponent.
Will it be the same with the next generation AI of total war?

AI is the the weak point of most computer games. Flash graphics
sell games, but the AI will catch up some time. Will we like the result?

Until there is a huge change in computer technology I don't think we'll be seeing AI which can truly play like a human. The solution is to play against other humans.

With modern internet connections providing ever more bandwidth we have the technology so that for the immediate future, there will more of a step towards multi-player games. I think we'll also start seeing more and more RTS and FPS games move into a kind of persistent, player controlled world like an MMO.

Very difficult subject....I would like to see a variation of strategy from the computer player...mistakes yes..but also bold and intersting chance moves...if they dont work...dont mind..just to see something unexpected would be nice.

Pre defined personalities some counter attacking, heavy defensive....fake attacks...it is possible IMO. Currently the pc plays with a pretty predictable fashion...clearly there are danger zones where they start to respond if you get too close.


The problem at the moment is that this is very close to the units in general...leading to a very artificial feeling when playing the pc. Also it doens't appear to me to start off with a clear strategy....and this is a crucial point..if you dont have a plan..how can you pull it off?

There is a significant and varied source of well documented generals and leaders with battle winning..and losing strategies....you need only go online for a while to read up on it...putting that into a game is likely the hard part.

I really have no idea how complex the AI coding is..or difficult..but as an end user we can all make suggestions as to what we would like.

I think your really on to something with the personalaties idea, it would be great for their faction leaders/hiers personal traits have an effect on the style of play, then their generals. like someone like stalin would send waves of cheap troops at you in frontal attacks where as someone else might send high quality troops in raids on unprotected armies ect. same with generals, some might favour lots of archers and ambushes others might be glory hounds and charge horses into spears. it would really add something to this style of game. i am sure however that to code that would be insane, the amount of calculations would be a tad complex.

Yeh Beren, look at the AI battle setup, they always have cav on both flanks. Any player (at least MP) would mass his cav on one wing to attack on that side while preventing the other wing from charging by massing the spear troops (or any anticav) on the other.

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Originally Posted by IRONxMortlock

Until there is a huge change in computer technology I don't think we'll be seeing AI which can truly play like a human. The solution is to play against other humans.

With modern internet connections providing ever more bandwidth we have the technology so that for the immediate future, there will more of a step towards multi-player games. I think we'll also start seeing more and more RTS and FPS games move into a kind of persistent, player controlled world like an MMO.

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I do have to disagree. Being an former elite World of Warcraft player (the most "interactive" game out there) I must say solo-player games has a very bright future.

While you are 100% right that interaction with other players beats an AI any day you kind of forget the no. 1 problem with player versus/with player games, you have to interact with other people.

You have to sit and wait because someone needs a WC break, you get beaten to a bloody pulp because someone else screws up, the guy you are depending on turns out to be a 11 year old semi-retard communicating by 1337 5p34K (if you dont know what that means, kudos to you!).

Also, I'm not even that sure a player always beats an AI when it comes to challenge.

Look at todays real time strategy games such as starcraft, command and conquer and so on. In ALL of these games rushing is a must, because basicly you dont have the patience to sit and build up in the HOPE that the opponent will give you a good match. You try to roll him over quick so you can get an easy win and move on to someone more challenging, if you cant roll over him, that's when the game starts.

Playing versus a player I have found actually LIMITS your choice of strategy as you have to mainstream to be competetive, while an AI offers you a chance to do things just for the hell of it. If you lose no one will laugh and call you lamer.

Also, I have found that no matter how much I like interactive games, I do at the same time NEED breaks, playing Total War or The Sims (errrr..... I of course mean watching my GF play it, I would OF COURSE never play with a doll house... I'm not gay! I am secure in my heterosexuality!).



What I'm saying is, solo games will ALWAYS be popular, because you dont always want to have to deal with other people, and you dont always feel like playing to win.

I can assure you I dont play this game to "win", it's to damn easy. I play it because it is relaxing and I have, well, fun :)

my 2 swedish crowns...

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Originally Posted by IRONxMortlock

Until there is a huge change in computer technology I don't think we'll be seeing AI which can truly play like a human. The solution is to play against other humans.

With modern internet connections providing ever more bandwidth we have the technology so that for the immediate future, there will more of a step towards multi-player games. I think we'll also start seeing more and more RTS and FPS games move into a kind of persistent, player controlled world like an MMO.

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That was talked before, with the EXTREME TIMES between turns, it would take forever to play a campaign game with 6 people.

To cut a very long story short all I want is a VH challenge when the game is set to VH.

Is that too much to ask?

The key pre-requisites for an effective AI are 'Situational Awareness' and 'Behaviour Modification'. Chess programs do quite well only because the improvements in processor technology now allow them the assess the possible consequences of every potential move they can make virtually to the end of the game and then choose the option that gives them the best chance of success. This gives chess programs a massive advantage in situational awareness that most human players could never match. However, in most other games the AI's level of situational awareness is extremely limited and most AI's are restricted to very simple reaction triggers.

In my current MTW2 Turkish campaign for example the Hungarians were beseiging the Turkish held fortresses of Bran and Sophia, and whilst their two main armies were busy I slipped another army between them to assault the lightly held Budapest. This army was fully visible to the Hungarian AI, and even drove off a few small Hungarian armies during its advance, but it was not until it was within one turn of Budapest that the Hungarian AI's situational awareness noted this army as a threat and it immediately lifted the seiges of both Bran and Sophia to try and save its capital and faction leader. Much, much too late, especially as my army had trebuchets, however, the AI simpy failed to register the threat at all until it was too late suggesting that there is no situational awareness routine that thinks ahead of the immediate snapshot taken during the current turn.

Likewise, very few AI's currently have the ability to modify their behaviour over time. To be really challenging an AI needs to constantly monitor its own performance and that of its opponents and test alternative strategies to improve its game. At present we see the AI in MTW2 constantly repeating the same losing strategies that it tried last time and repeatedly putting together army compositions that are pre-destined to fail against our own. A human opponent would learn from its mistakes and at least try something different so AI routines really need to have some system for monitoring their own performance over time and seeking to improve.

I don´t know what to do with the AI on battle map, maybe make them use special formations or something depending on odds, battleground, general command ability or something...
But on Campaing map i think they can´t be stopped from doing such goofy things as giving up 2 sieges to save capital they would lose anyways.
But maybe give them more aggressive goals?
In next Total War game, what ever it will be, give all factions goals they really go for. Like if it would be Imperial: Total War, when Napoleon emerges or something he immediately takes control over France and then continues attacking Europe to every direction he actually went to.
And some national behavior changes, such as English and French hating each other, this way affecting Diplomacy, Or Scottish totally hating English and wish to take control over Ireland and Scotland and then continue to England at all costs.

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Originally Posted by Didz

The key pre-requisites for an effective AI are 'Situational Awareness' and 'Behaviour Modification'. Chess programs do quite well only because the improvements in processor technology now allow them the assess the possible consequences of every potential move they can make virtually to the end of the game and then choose the option that gives them the best chance of success. This gives chess programs a massive advantage in situational awareness that most human players could never match. However, in most other games the AI's level of situational awareness is extremely limited and most AI's are restricted to very simple reaction triggers.

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Sorry to nitpick, but you understate the complexity of chess. To an extent that stands out to me even though I play very little chess and suck at it. I'm also not very good with math. Regardless, "Situational Awareness" is a lot easier to implement in chess than M2:TW.

For a really casual 5 minute estimation of the impossiblity of assessing the consequences of every possible move to the end of the game, read the below "spoiler". Anyone who knows more about how Chess AIs work or is just better with the associated math may correct me or actually do the math involved and enlighten us all. :clown:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

For the first move of a chess game, you have 20 possible moves. After that, it only get's more complicated especially if you open up diagonals for the Queen and Bishops early. Remember, that you have evaluate your opponent's moves too. That's around to 100 total moves for a long game. So, 20+ to the power of 100 different positions to evaluate.

BTW, I'm also assuming that someone wins the game or a draw is reached byt agreement or stalemate instead of the 50 move rule. (After either player has made 50 moves, during which no pieces have been taken and no pawn has moved, the game is considered a draw. IIRC)

Memorywise the most efficent way of recording the position (that I can think of) of the pieces is recording the square it is on(1-64 for the bard squares from a1 to h8, with 0 being out of play), for each piece. thats 7 bits (practically a byte) for 32 pieces. So about 32 bytes.

So, in a very simplified way, we can say that the memory requirement for calculating a full game of chess is a lot more than (and we are rounding down a huge amount for simplicity sake here) 32 * N to the power of (about) 100 bytes, where N is the average number of available moves during a game. (Propably only 25-35 due to end games being simpler)

If you round that down further to a single integer followed by zeroes, the number would propably have around 140 zeroes in it. A gigabyte rounded in that fasion has only 9 zeroes. My hard drive's free space has only 11 zeroes in it. :sweatdrop:

No point in going on with that.

To be sure, chess AIs see a long way into the future. Freeware PC chess programs go 9 moves (for each player for a total of 18) deep in a few seconds, super computers built specifically for chess can do a lot better.

The advantage that humans have over computer (according to one of my computer science professors) is our ability to handle large chunks of related data (like a chess position to an experienced player) as easily as small ones. (like a number between 1 and 10) Also we can perform more complex operations on that data. For example, in chess, a human player has an easier time disregarding obviously bad moves than an AI, who has to study every move to a deep level before it can disregard it or it risks missing good sacrifices that can lead to a forced mate or forcibly recuperating material with interest.

To summarise, I've heard (from a person that actually plays chess) that someone at IBM actually calculated that their newest super computer couldn't have calculated all the possible moves in chess, even if it had been calculating to this day since the big bang. To me that sounds like an overestimation, but I wouldn't be at all suprised if it was true.

AFAIK, the focus of current Chess AI development is in finding better algorithms for evaluating moves and positions. "Short cuts" to attaining "Situational Awareness", so to speak.

The problem here is that Medieval 2 is a lot more complex than chess in terms of the amount of possible "moves" and the fact that the state of the game, the outcomes of possible actions and pretty much everything involved in strategic decicion making is a lot harder to abstract into something mathematical that a computer can calculate in M2:TW than it is in a simple, strictly logical game like chess that has only 2 players.

Also, the mathematical nature of chess makes tracking a player's behaviour and weak spots easier. I have a massively hard time playing white against a Sicilian Defence and as a result, every time I play e4 as my first move, I get served with c5 and eventually take it in the *&% :furious3: :laugh4:

Despite the fact that it needs more work, just getting the AI on M2TW to the level that it is in now is a great achievement already, IMO. Due to the complex nature of M2:TW, I think that the easiest way to improve the AI would be to concentrate on "Behaviour Modification" in lieu of situational eawareness.

Ramela,

One of the other big differences is that, as M2TW is a multi-faction game the AI, much like the human, can only work a few turns in advance for real moves. What he human does that the AI doesn't is to set goals and evaluate how relevant those goals are to the current situation.

As an example, as Milan several of my goals are;
1) Take Venice
2) Buy or Take Balogna
3) Take Florence

The order of those goals being achieved is dependant on what the AI does, how it moves its troops, and the results of several multi-outcome encounters. If I can't buy Balogna off the Germans, I'll have to change my strategy and take it later.

I would not be surprised if the first five turns of a M2TW game have more possible outcomes than an entire game of chess.

This means that the concept of setting goals and working to resolve those goals often is much more efficient for a human (or computer) than working out possible moves (the chess "Looking ahead"). As a result, I'm sure that by working out multiple AI scripts and having each faction leader adhearing to one of these we should have a net effect similar to a human player. Of course since the AI can all of a sudden decide on a very different style of play mid game, that can be a real challenge for a human to keep up with.

well, technically the number of possible moves in a game of chess is believed to be infinite

which means that no program or computer, however powerful, could simply calculate its way to victory

in fact most good chess playing programs have the benefit of centuries of human analysis of the game of chess built in, with standard openings and past grandmaster games on which to base their quantitative analysis of the "strength" of a move. these provide a guiding framework which help the program to select which candidate moves to spend its time considering..

this should put into context the stage of development of game playing AIs that play other games like M2TW.

chess AIs have a head start of several centuries of human knowledge. it's unlikely M2TW (or any similar computer game) will be played for as long and be studied so deeply and comprehensively by so many highly intelligent and talented human players (we at the Guild can only do so much!)

this is not to say that it's impossible to create a challenging M2TW AI, but it should go some way to showing that the level of AI achievement is actually quite high when you consider the starting point - weeks or months of testing, rather than centuries, have gone into creating a set of rules to guide this AI in playing M2TW.

@ John, I actually referred to the nuber of factions and "moves" as a problem for making any kind of "situational awareness" for the AI, as those things make M2:TW infinetly more complex than chess, which has been studied.

Personally, I dislike forcing pre destined goals on AIs because take away from the "every game is different" aspect that I like in games, but I agree that making the AI more goal oriented approach is neccesary. Plans carried out only half way are worse than no plan at all. In Didz's example the AI should have (propably) accelerated his time table for assaulting Sofia and Bran, hopefully sack them and then decided whether to go for defence of the homeland or continue the assault to Constantinopole and/or Thessalonica.

I think behavioral modification, possibly even copying the humans behavior and not just reacting to it, could be useful here.

@ phonicsmonkey, I think the number of moves in chess are not infinite if you use the "After either player has made 50 moves, during which no pieces have been taken and no pawn has moved, the game is considered a draw" -rule, since due to pawns moving only forward, sooner or later you will run out of pawn moves and eventually you will run out of pieces to take.

For more useless thought play on chess, read the below. As always, if I messed up, feel free to prove it and enlighten me. :smash:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

If we waste the maximum amount of time before we move a pawn or take a piece (49 moves per player, +1 for the move that takes a piece or moves a pawn, for 99 total per cycle) in order to make as many moves as possible, for example by making meaningles knight moves before taking a piece or moving a pawn, we run out of pawns after a pawn on each row has moved until it reaches the opposing pawn, becomes taken, after which the opposing pawn makes his way to the other side of the board and turns into a piece.

As far as I can tell, that's 8 (rows) * 10 (maximum number of pawn moves on a given row, 4 for one pawn to reach the opposing one + 6 for the opposing one to reach the other side) * 99 (time wasted plus the pawn move) moves.

Then there is a total of 22 non-pawn, non-king pieces. (the original 7 per player + the 8 pawns that eventually turned into pieces upon making it to the opposite side) After wasting the maximum amount of time, we eventually have to take one before we can waste more time, so that's 22 * 99 moves more.

And then finally, with only 2 kings on the board, it takes another 99 moves for the 50 move draw rule to kick in. That's a total of 103 * 99 (= 10 197 ) moves maximum for a single game of chess.

Since we were keeping a lot of pieces on the board, the average amount of possible moves would be higher too. That's a lot of stuff to calculate for a machine.

I also left out opening databases, end game databases and search tree pruning from my post on purpose. for simplicity's sake.

I agree that for the reasons you state M2:TW's AI will never see the kind of development that goes into machines like Deep Fritz, which is why I think highly of any computer game that has an AI at all. :)

Except, technically M2:TW is not an AI, since it couldn't pass the "Turing Test" against anyone who has played for a significant amount of time. :clown:

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Originally Posted by ramela

M2:TW infinetly more complex than chess, which has been studied.

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Studied by who? and what are their qualifications?

I think the suggestion that M2TW is infinitely more complex than chess needs to put into a more realistic perpective. Also are we talking about the battle map or campaign map?

If its the battle map then I don't think so. Every group of units is essentially acting as a whole and not individually. It is only an impression that you are controlling 1000's of units rather than 20 or less. Furthermore, each unit moves one tile at a time. There are no units that magically transform to the opposite end of the map in an instant such as they can in chess (eg bishop, queen etc) unless its a bug. Finally most units are more or less identical with only minor variations. Cavalry are cavalry, infantry are infantry and archers are archers. Just how many different variations can exist. Not many.

The campaign map is of course much more complex but not infinately more complex by any means. The available pieces on the campaign map do not all interact with each other but rather with only a select few if lucky, diplomats for example only interact with other diplomats, generals, princesses or settlements and they only open a diplomacy screen with a dozen or so options. Also it is essentially a two player game with player Vs AI. Any AI Vs AI interaction is more coincidental or chance or for player amusement rather than any greater plan or strategy for the AI. Too watch AI Vs AI is one of the saddest things in TW games!
But its probably the huge size of the game board and the no. of tiles that create the impression of complexity but consider that barely 2-3% is used at any one time. Again there are no units that instantaneously transform to the other end of the campaign map as they do in chess.

So a finite number of pieces present, each able to be moved only a set number of tiles per turn and each piece having a very limited response and interaction overall. I think any well trained chess player would laugh at the suggestion that M2TW is infinitely more complex.

I meant that chess has been studied. By many very qualified people, I would Imagine.

EDIT: In terms of "pieces" and possible "moves" M2:TW is much more complex. (How many agents, military units and so on do you have on your firt turn as the Milanese? What about turn 10? How many different tiles can you leave each of them on at the end of turn?) I used the word "infinite" as short hand for "too great a difference to understand and describe".

Also, I am talking about computational complexity, specifically in terms of arithmetic computation that a computer uses. Humans are a lot more suited to analysing large masses of data like the position of several armies with 1-20 units around several settlements. Computers are not very suited for evaluating such data. A Chess position is still very complex and thus a human has the advantage in that respect too, but a chess position is sufficently simple that a computers raw number crunching power comes into play here.

Still, it takes a super computer specifically engineered for calculating chess positions to beat the human world champion. A proof of how complex chess is.

Luckily for CA, since M2:TW revolves around attacking armies and settlements, focusing on those simplifies AI design a lot.

I think the best thing CA could do is create a few different "personalities" to play against. Their should be a faction focused on Income, factions that are warlord like and a possible "Sweden" that stays Neutral at all cost. Just an idea.

I don't think anyone was suggesting that MTW2 was a simple as chess, the point I was making was that because Chess programes have developed a level of situational awareness they are able to make better decisions.

The real issue with MTW2 is that its situational awareness is practically zero, as per my example of the attack on Budapest. Therefore, its ability to plan appropraite actions and counter actions is also practically zero. Everything that happens to the AI in MTW2 is a virtual surprise and it has no way of planning its long term goals as suggested by John.

By comparison I was given a pretty good demonstation of situational awareness and goal planning by the AI routine that drives the Combat Mission engine only last night.

Just for a laugh, I decided to set up a custom battle which pitted my two King Tiger tanks against a bunch of low quality US infantry. My first mistake being to allow the AI to choose its own mix of infantry units. Needless to say it chose a lot of bazooka teams, proving that it had considered the opposition and planned the best army composition it could within the limitations I had imposed upon it. Something which MTW2 doesn't do for a start.

When the battle started my King Tigers positioned themselves hull down on the ridge guarding the objective, giving them a commanding view of the open ground to their front and flanks beyond which were the woodlands from which the enemy were expected to emerge.

Six turns went by and not a target appeared, until with a sudden 'whoosh' from a copse just below the slope a bazzoka round bounced of the front armour of the nearest Tiger. That was a bit of a shock and both tanks pounded the small copse to matchwood with 88mm HE and machine gun fire until the US Anti-tank team tried to run and were finally cut down.

After that there were a lot of sporadic sightings of US infantry running back and forth amongst the trees and the tanks were kept busy engaging multiple targets along the edges of the woods. By now it was turn 22 and the worst seemed to be over, I was thinking of advancing down the slope and mopping up the few remaining infantry contacts.

Suddenly, there was a dull plop and a mortar round dropped onto the ridge next to one of my tanks. I shrugged, a small calibre mortar round was no threat to my tanks armour, I figured it was just the AI getting desperate, but as the number of rounds increased I realised that they were not trying to damage my tanks, the rounds were 'smoke', they were trying to blind me.

As the ridge gradually became enshrouded in smoke, my tanks found themselves unable to see anything, and assuming that this was a prelude to some sort of massed charge by grenade weilding infantrymen I decided to reverse further down the slope and get clear of it so that my tanks could see what they were firing at.

As the Tiger on the left reversed down the slope there was a sudden 'Whoosh' sound to its rear and bazooka team which had inflitrated behind my position and located itself in a small wood put a round straight through the rear engine compartment. They had actually been sitting there waiting for the Tigers to reverse down the slope into them.

Fortunately, my other tiger had chosen to reverse along the road and had so had avoided the trap, but the enemy infantry had now moved forward and taken the objective and once the smoke disspated I had no chioce but to advance and re-occupy the ridge. As the remaining tiger advanced it caught yet another US bazooka team sneaking across open ground towards a farmhouse on the left of the road, presumably to set-up another ambush, and managed to elminate them. It was then forced to button-up by heavy machine gun fire from the ridge and found itself under attack from multiple anti-tank teams of several different angles. Inevitably, a lucky hit penetrated the side turret armour and the battle was over.

By comparison with MTW2 this was a challenging battle, and the AI showed not only good situational awareness, in its army compostion but was obviously working to a good tactical plan that made the most of its limited assets. I suspect it was using the 'universal knowledge' cheat but thats one of the lesser issues with AI routines. I'd certainly be much happier if the AI for MTW2 gave a similar level of challenge.

chess:
all valid points - and all points i think ai folks have discussed b4 - about other wargames - that chance and variance add EVEN more factors and that even seemingly simple chess has so many variations...
even the 'risk' map of stw/mtw is difficult to picture ai scripts for once you try to imagine all the branches - this addresses the 'have a plan' issue the other fellow brought up - full circle; back to the point that chess ai's use pre-defined 'base' strategies (which i did not know)

ai vs human players -
the warcraft fellow made 2 good points; one is that humans are not always available or desirable; and sometimes no better
but i also feel that alot of the ai work ignores that the greatest asset mmo's HAVE is the non-artificial intelligence which i s NOt in short supply...

i have always hoped the campaign game would evolve to where a triggered battle might be POSTED online for an opponent - and ranked players would qualify for certain rank 'bad guy' generals. Its probably DOABLE... but would it interest anyone BUT me?

ANCIENT ART OF WAR
was a pc game for DOs that had several different computer opponents each with a somewhat different ai script - they actually acted differently; not just more or less difficult (if i recall correctly).

MTW - im not sure about m2tw - had broad strategies defined for the powers - i was never sure how really different they were.

But i think further developing THAT would assist with the predicatbility the one player spoke of.:2thumbsup:

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Originally Posted by The Badger

i have always hoped the campaign game would evolve to where a triggered battle might be POSTED online for an opponent - and ranked players would qualify for certain rank 'bad guy' generals. Its probably DOABLE... but would it interest anyone BUT me?

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The lack of a multi-player campaign option has always been my biggest dissappointment with the TW series and probably the reason it has never been as massive as it could have been in the wargame community.

The Badger, I do remember The Ancient Art of War! What a great game it was... I may even have it somewhere deep in an archive on my HD... :-)

The opponents there were supposed to act differently, yes. Their descriptions gave hints about their styles of warfare. I don't remember if they really followed the patterns though.

@ ramela - you're right of course, the number of moves in a chess game is not infinite...this is quite a useful description of how a chess program works:

http://computer.howstuffworks.com/chess1.htm

the key to it is the evaluation function, which is the piece which guides the machine down particular paths and thus focuses the calculations on good candidate moves, making the program efficient

built into the evaluation function is the accumulated knowledge of chess analysts down the ages

presumably the M2TW AI has a similar evaluation function to rely on when considering a "move", but it will be based on a far less developed pool of knowledge about how to play M2TW successfully

CA game developers might well know how the game is designed to function, but are presumably not "grandmasters" of the game any more than the original inventor of chess could stand up to someone like Kramnik

Maybe for future games CA should be taking more notice of pizzaguy and his insane blitzing strategies in guiding their AI's action...

I'm not sure any program has ever been or will ever be able to pass the Turing test convincingly....even the most sophisticated chess computers can be recognised as such by top players...

I am honored to have been name-dropped!

It would be funny to have the AI set to "pizzaguy mode".

In the overly optimistic hope that someone might program such an AI, allow me to share my weaknesses:

1. Leaves cities undefended. In other words, two rival "pizzaguy" AI's would conquer each other's territory in record time, crippling both factions, and displacing each other, if they were evenly matched.

2. Doesn't use navy. Leaves ports wide open for blockade.

3. Never defends coastal cities, as the typical AI is too stupid to attack from that direction. The AI is too ground-dependent. Unless you are Sicily, in which case everyone will arrive by sea because they hate you.

4. Doesn't build fancy troops. Generally, a good human controlled army would wipe the floor with my pathetic rabble, unless they also programmed the AI to battle like me.

So, as you can see, the pizzaguy AI would be just as weak, if not more so in some areas, as the regular AI. But at least it would attack you, dang it! And ferociously so, too! And it would not stop until your entire kingdom was a smoldering heap of rubble and corpses floating in blood!

@ pizzaguy

What you are describing as your stile isn't very different what the AI does when its get in the I hate the human player mode. The AI doesn't blitz like you do but leaves its cities hardly defended, collects all the units it can get, including the most crappy ones, and attacks like crazy.

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1. Leaves cities undefended. In other words, two rival "pizzaguy" AI's would conquer each other's territory in record time, crippling both factions, and displacing each other, if they were evenly matched.

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so does the AI

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3. Never defends coastal cities, as the typical AI is too stupid to attack from that direction. The AI is too ground-dependent. Unless you are Sicily, in which case everyone will arrive by sea because they hate you.

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so does the AI

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4. Doesn't build fancy troops.

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I hate to repeat myself but: so does the AI

May be you are the ultimate AI :laugh4:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

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Originally Posted by Monsieur Alphonse

@ pizzaguy

What you are describing as your stile isn't very different what the AI does when its get in the I hate the human player mode. The AI doesn't blitz like you do but leaves its cities hardly defended, collects all the units it can get, including the most crappy ones, and attacks like crazy.


so does the AI

so does the AI


I hate to repeat myself but: so does the AI

May be you are the ultimate AI :laugh4:

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I've never seen the AI attack you with 4 full stacks of troops, from multiple fronts, dismantle and sell off your infrastructure, let the city revolt, and continue smashing through your territory. Certainly not in one turn in a coordinated strike. That would be devastating.

I've seen me do that, several times.

I have noticed the AI does defend some cities with a nearly full or full stack o' troops. I never do such a ridiculous thing. I'd move my army outside the city, let the foolish invader take it, and then trap them inside. I've never seen the AI do that, intentionally.

I do that all the time. If I happen to have a stack inside a city, which does happen when I am training one.

I also recommend striking by sea, if not defending my own shoreline. Because the AI never attacks by sea (properly), I never saw any need to defend my shoreline. I also take advantage of the AI's foolishness in this area and suddenly attack by a massive invasion by the sea (using mercenary ships, mostly).

So from the description above, I might seem like an AI clone, but I assure you, I do things a little differently and far more aggressively and successfully than the current AI.

Also, I have never seen the AI actually switch territory with anyone. Like France ending up in Germany and Germany ending up in France, which would happen in my playing style was copied into AI form, because I don't bother defending my cities and I wage an all-out trade-hits assault to the death.

I know Pizza.

But the way you described it, did remind me of the AI. :tongue:

You may think you know Pizza, or perhaps you think you know pizza better than Pizza knows pizza. Well know this: Pizza knows pizza. Pizza knows pizza better than you know pizza, or even Pizza, who knows that Pizza knows that you know pizza, and knows that you know pizza better than you know that Pizza knows pizza better than you know pizza.

Who knows pizza better than Pizza knows pizza? No, Who does not. Pizza taught Who everything he knows about pizza. Therefore he who knows Who knows pizza better than Who knows.

Do my mad, bloody conquests across Europe make more sense now?
This is becoming increasingly irrelevant to the thread.

:elephant: This is the only way to demonstrate how insane I am.







:weirdthread: :hijacked: :focus:

Sorry, that was pretty strange. But I do have a twisted sense of humor, and I couldn't resist. I was inspired by the line about Dismounted English Chefs.

Back to the topic.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Kadagar_AV

I do have to disagree. Being an former elite World of Warcraft player (the most "interactive" game out there) I must say solo-player games has a very bright future.

While you are 100% right that interaction with other players beats an AI any day you kind of forget the no. 1 problem with player versus/with player games, you have to interact with other people.

You have to sit and wait because someone needs a WC break, you get beaten to a bloody pulp because someone else screws up, the guy you are depending on turns out to be a 11 year old semi-retard communicating by 1337 5p34K (if you dont know what that means, kudos to you!).

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No offence to any WoW players out there, but WoW is pretty much famous for being a haven of the younger generation who really have little respect for their fellow gamers. If you were to try and mmorpg such as EQ, or one of the older, more established games, the difference is fairly noticeable.

I'm not maintaining that we are idiot free, just that the prevalence of stupidity is not there.

In fact, I know several people who only keep their EQ account running to socialise, they don't really play much anymore.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Lupiscanis

No offence to any WoW players out there, but WoW is pretty much famous for being a haven of the younger generation who really have little respect for their fellow gamers.

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The average WoW player is in their late 20's early 30's. Though I admit that there is a definite 'kill kiddie' period just after the schools turn out and before mother makes them go to bed of about 3 hours a day. Most players just log off and do something else till their gone.

I tried D&D Online;

And many of the players I met and played with were adults who had fled the WOW crowd -
I htink the Manga/Comic fantasy of WoW appeals to the RASalvatore fan base -

unfortunately for 'grittier' gamers such as myself; the company chose their most warcraft-like (steam technology; cannons; magically created automatons) and ended up appealing to the same fanbase.
Then they increasing changed D%D rules to please the MMO's -ers -
which to me was like trying to out-pizza pizza.


many a spiel i threw about the DROW escaping to haunt me there too-
above ground no less...

Sigh.

Anyway;interestingly; I noticed the AI at DDO was also under constat discussion.
In my opinion it was fine for running aggressive brutes & minions-
not so much anything with ANY sense.

I even asked for a "looking for boss" feature (main villain played by a human player)and generated no interest

The nifty thing to me about STW was it INNOVATED. It was the game that was what some many of us had waited for...

The thing I think is that if there are more variation in the AI strategies

so a pizza guy script...
a "not -so -zerg" script...

...it would be more likely to hand down surprises - whats worse than a bad AI?

a predictable ai.

In closing; I'd like to have you taste test this...
Its not a pizza and i'm not a Dismounted English Chef however

Notice the survey asks if we want a multiplayer campaign?

What if the current campaigns you could use your internet connection to throw on -whichever gamespy, xfire whatever- a "boss wanted"- game
- a game joinable by a human player to run the battlein your campaign.

eligibilty based on score/ranking allows the player to join only generals of rank "x"..
maybe you're not in the mood for a full game but want to play a single battle? you get on and the list of games has a list of campaign battles "looking for boss" (enemy generals really)

..that i suggest due to relative ease.

Its not a campaign fix BUT it would be interesting no?

My main point i suppose is all these discussions about the AI always make me say - even tho this ISNT an MMO precisely -
that we could very well make use of the EXISTING intelligence all around us-
quite a commodity to not utilize...:idea2:

I really do like the Civilizations 4 AI and it can be quite challenging or sneaky at times, and each leader has different personalities and so I don't see why they can't build as complex an AI thats in civ 4.

Due to my son monopolizing my MTW2 disk on his PC, I have gone back to playing RTW and was surprised to find that its AI is giving me much more of a run for my money.

I have lost several Gallic towns to AI led seige assaults and even lost a few battles. The overall score is still 107/28 but thats a lot better than anything the AI has managed on MTW2.

Well...

To be honest; I no longer play England b/c altho the 'patched' AI is a little better about using fleets to invade; it just never put me in any real danger.

The King of Portugal did land near Wales... ALONE..
which i found inexplicable-
but never were the home Islands in any real danger -

being able to attack without fear of reprisal simply made the campaign too easy.

If its any consolation; when i played Sicily; in the mediterrean the AI was at least occaisionally harassing me if i let my garrisons grow too weak.

So i assume it was an opportunist; and not capable of the several-turns long course of action that would be required for anyone other than france to pressure me.

I'm sure the multiple 'personality' AI was intended; I just don't see that it is
actually implemented.

I just finish reading all the posts and I must admit this is a really interesting conversation. I thought about it myself a little bit, and because AIs are most of time incapable of giving a challenge for the wits of players, one way game designers use to "improved" it (that I totaly hate) is to give the Ai unrealistic bonuses. (Like in Napoleon's Last Battle, having 4 of my Elite Battalions of the Young Guard defeated, in a direct firefight, by 3 Landwher Battalions only to find out at the end of the battle that the Landwher Battalions lost only 10 men together:furious3:)

Any who played STW and MTW might remember a feature which disappeared with TRW. It was the possibility, before the start of the battle, to choose a formation for your whole army with a simple click ( you simply had to right-click on the Army Formation Icon and then choose a formation. You could then tried as many as you wanted until you found one that suited you)

With that feature reimplanted, it would be easy if associated with "general" personalities for family members and even captains (aggressive, balanced, defensive; frontal assault, cautious, indirect, those are taken from the Gethysburger game) also taking into account who's being the defender and the attacker. to "ramdomise things and give interesting battlefield deployments for the AI (also adding one more reason to find the type of personalities your enemy has before engaging him)
Also, this would go well with many traits such as good attacker/defender ;poor attacker/defender, "bad at the walls(meaning the general might prefer to sally out) and could also lead to new ones, hidden or not, such as: lost last battle or won a "pyric" victory because of a frontal assault, this character now prefers a more cautious way of engaging the enemy.


But this is more Behavior Modification than Situational Awareness I admit. However, Ai does have limited Situational Awareness as shown in RTW by the fact that your battle advisor warns you from threats such as engaged cavalry being charged, sending cavalry to engage spearmen from the front and even engaging the enemy's best troops with your missile troops.
Maybe that could be modified and improved.
Like giving the AI a basic understanding of tactics for its whole army, not just specific units or events, such as the protection of its sides and rear, the importance of morale (keeping soldiers and units in formation, avoiding to move or charge units through others unless they are fleeing, all this to avoid confusion which used to reduce morale in STW) and the use and impact of terrain upon his battle plan and deployment (battle plan and deployment being mostly dictated by his personality)

Anyways, here some ideas to comment on and extrapolate from. Feel free to use them as you see fit.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Patriote

Any who played STW and MTW might remember a feature which disappeared with TRW. It was the possibility, before the start of the battle, to choose a formation for your whole army with a simple click ( you simply had to right-click on the Army Formation Icon and then choose a formation. You could then tried as many as you wanted until you found one that suited you)

With that feature reimplanted, it would be easy if associated with "general" personalities for family members and even captains (aggressive, balanced, defensive; frontal assault, cautious, indirect, those are taken from the Gethysburger game) ...

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That was a very good point - and I'm willing to bet (relatively) easy to implement - and you're right so much of the battle ends up consequent of the start formation (AI tendency to 'shuffle' hill to hill not with standing...)

Patriote; could a small burrowing animal seek your indulgence to repost this in the 1.3 WishList thread?

Quote:

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Patriote; could a small burrowing animal seek your indulgence to repost this in the 1.3 WishList thread?

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No need to it The Badger, I will post myself a few ideas on the wishlist including a link to this thread, thats good enough for you ? :2thumbsup:

If you already post, thats ok too :smash:

Not sure if you guys are aware of this...I only became aware of it myself quite recently.

BUT:

MTW2 has the ability to remember and maintain any army formation you choose.

To set-up the formation you want just place your units where you want them during the deployment phase, or at any other point during the battle.

Once your troops are in the formaiton your want them to maintain merely press CTRL+A (to select all your units) then Press G (to group the entire army).

Now when you order your army to move all the units will keep their positions relative to each other. Its best when ordering the army to move to pause the game first as it sometimes takes several tries to get the armies destination perfectly lined up where you want to be.

Provided that the Army remains grouped all the units will stay perfectly aligned in their formation (as long as you don't order them to run, as units that can't run, like artillery, get left behind)

Note: Cavalry charges, skirmishers etc.

Some units will inevitably get out of formation during battle, either because you order them to charge or pursue, or because they are in skirmish mode and evade an attack.

However, as long as you keep the Group active the units will always remember their correct position in the formation and return to it when you move the army as a group.

If you wish to modify the formation e.g. to have your archers deploy behind your spearmen instead of in front, all you need to do is move the units where you want them cancel the group and press CTRL+A and G to store the revised army formation.

Yes I knew it and this is a great feature to creature special formations such, as in RTW, forming a line with phalanxes but having lighter units facing to the side and one to the rear to protect so that the lighter troops will arrive there first, re-align themselves and wait until the slower phalanxes arrive (:yes: great great)

However, we were rather talking about pre-determine formations as the Arrowhead, Crane and some others weird names I can't remeber. This would bring both realism and accuracy to the game if they would add historical formations ( limiting army to the formations they historically used) but also shorten the time required to deploy in your army (such in RTW when you have to do the chessboard formation everytime...) while giving the army nice and varied starting deployments (some people did great mods for the AI, at least in RTW as far as I know and it gives a good challenge):2thumbsup:

Thanks Didz
But yes i use that as well -
however the part that impressed me was the point he made that the PRESET formations (as in MTW) could be used by the AI

and that the "general personality" - a new trait?-
would influence the AI's choice of formations...

I know another modder already worked on AI placement variations -

and in another thread - or was it this one?-
it was discussed that multiple 'possible' AI "personalities" (scripts) would make the AI less predictable...

I think his suggestion was just a nicely elegant way to connect all those seemingly tangential discussions - using traits and an unfortunately forgotten feature.
( in other words not requiring some huge overhaul).