AI

[O'Hea]

I think the real difference between Shogun/Medieval and the later games was the AI's awareness of the environment. The computer was able to recognize advantageous terrain and take advantage of it, and if you maneuvered to take that advantage away they would respond. From Rome on, the AI either stands its ground or advances straight towards you. It really has no concept of maneuver or of the significance of a hill, or a river, or a valley. And the "Art of War'-inspired AI is unlikely to affect this, since even if they do manage to internalize some of the Art's principles, it'll mostly affect strat map behavior.

[TinCow]

I ran across an article on S2TW's "Sun Tzu" AI claims by an AI programmer. The general gist is that it's all marketing fluff because the basic elements of Sun Tzu's Art of War are already used by nearly all AI designers. So, essentially, CA is just claiming that they're doing the same thing that everyone else has already been doing for a long time. Nothing new but the marketing.

[Gregoshi]

I ran across an article on S2TW's "Sun Tzu" AI claims by an AI programmer. The general gist is that it's all marketing fluff because the basic elements of Sun Tzu's Art of War are already used by nearly all AI designers. So, essentially, CA is just claiming that they're doing the same thing that everyone else has already been doing for a long time. Nothing new but the marketing.

Yeah, in MW2, I remember seeing those birds flying over the trees where the sniper was.[/sarcasm]

Some good points in the article and maybe the Sun Tzu claim for S2TW is fluff - or maybe not. Any game wanting to use Sun Tzu also has to have the elements built-in environmentally for the AI to act upon his "common sense" - at least in some of the cases. The birds I mentioned in sarcasm being one such point. The game requires more than just AI programming to utilize Sun Tzu effectively. While some of Sun Tzu's rules are generic, others are more applicable and match perfectly to the older forms of warfare such as STW/MTW/RTW. And, while one can read Sun Tzu and say "yeah, no duh!" and roll one's eyes at the obviousness of it all, how many of us actively apply these rules to our battles (in history and in game) aside from the most generic of them? Knowing them is one thing, using them is something else. Same would hold to the AI/game programmers.

Besides, I think we have a host of STW players here aside from me who might contest the author's claims that everybody does it in there games.

Er, sorry if this comes off a bit snippy. Didn't mean for it to but it probably is.

[ReluctantSamurai]

I've seen several topics here debate 2D vs. 3D maps.

My own take on that is that it really doesn't matter which is used...obviously 3D looks much better and will more than likely be the type used for Shogun II. But there are two things about the 3D maps, as done since RTW, that greatly impact how the AI will perform, and there are several gross omissions by CA, as well.

1. The addition of roads guaranteed that combat will no longer be for control of a province, like STW I, but simply a set of skirmishes for the rights to siege.

2. The addition of cities, and the placing of income and population in them, guaranteed that the majority of battles fought will be siege battles for control of a provinces population and resources.

Both of these additions greatly increased the decision-making processes needed by the AI on the campaign map, and AFAIAC, the AI has never been able to fully cope with. I see no good way to compensate for #1 except to adhere to one of the most basic rules-of-engagement: if an army moves into any non-allied territory, it must stop its' movement upon entry and there is an immediate DoW by the country intruded upon. While this doesn't affect path-finding problems (which any good map-maker should be able to spot through play-testing) it will certainly put an end to some of the stupidity like dumping an army on a foreign shore where they stand around for years doing nothing because there is no automatic DoW for doing so.

If resources were placed outside of cities, and population loyalty could be controlled by having a garrison in the province rather than the city itself, perhaps there would be far less boring sieges.

If basic ZOC rules were applied, then there'd be less of those time-wasting battles in AI vs. rebels, where the rebel army continues to retreat two or three hexes. As a corollary, basic movement rules should apply, as well. A slower-moving army cannot retreat in the face of an attacker with more mobility, except where terrain might permit.

All of these things might go a ways towards reducing the number of decisions required by the AI each turn perhaps helping it to make better ones.