I know that many of us have our complaints about AI for RTW. However, I never really thought about what exactly AI is.

I am doing research right now on how to get a computer to tell me how far apart different items are on a circle, and then score those items placement versus a master. And it is @#*$@#( hard! I can’t program computers to save my life so I have to find what others have done, and I stumbled across the most interesting thread on what AI actually is. One of the people brought up the super chess playing computers, and how he thought they were AI (heck, so did I!). But another person told him that no, they were not ‘true’ AI capable of developing new thought processes, but they are merely huge, complex search programs. I thought that was interesting. It made me think about the total war games.

I played STW to death (my computer could not handle MTW until this new one). And while the computer was never really horrible (no ramming generals onto my spears, unsupported….), it also never really surprised me (that I can remember). I know it was not as easy as RTW, but I put that down to fewer units meaning less thought having to be done to figure out what to do with A as opposed to B, C and D. Now I wonder if maybe the computer was just better at searching, less programming having to go in.

Now for RTW…maybe the searching procedures were just neglected in favor of making it pretty. But that does make sense. I know how hard it is for me to get a computer to search for a bunch of pixels, I can’t imagine how bad it would be to program a foe on a 3-D battlefield with terrain, different unit types (a huge number really!).

That made me wonder, are there any games with RTWs tactical complexity (I think the strategic ineptness is inexcusable, I don’t see how the strategy could be harder than tactical!) but still have a solid search/AI or whatever you want to call it? I know everyone says MTW has a better AI, but I have not yet been impressed. It is not a moron, but it is not ‘good’ yet. Anything else out there?

Azi