AI and challenging games? |
I played few games since I got the game last week (using latest patch+ balance mod 0.96) and my feeling about the game are pretty ambivalent. On the one hand I appreciate all the possibilities we are given (even tho main improvments (or the firts one to notice) since the previous installments are 3d system map/combat which I like and RTS ground combat which I dont like: and och I almost forgot the excellent diplomatic model which is really GREAT) and excluding that majority what we got in no5 we already had got in 1-4). On the other hand I am hardly enjoying the game. IMHO much worse than spending hours of building your empire and than been wiped by alin civilizations (often happen in GalCiv I and II on higher diff.settings) is when you spent hours building/carefull planning just to find that there is no competition and your opponents are brain dead:( its not fun to simply take one opponent planet after another without any challenge at all:(
Because I dont want to be just another whiner:) here is what I have found along with some comments and of course few questions.
1. INSIDE COMBAT
I hope this can be fixed/greatly improved by updating AI scripts. Havent had time to look into them myself yet, but as soon as I will have less work I am going to do it...
1.1 AI usually split its forces very strange ways, here is the example:
- lots of suicidal attacks (OK AI doesnt know what techs/weaps are on players ships but sometimes the numbers are clear regardless the techs 10vs 1 etc.)
- damaged ships (with reduced movements) either stay at place or slowly retret, ships which AI though are "WEAKER" i.e. group of fighters etc. are reatreating, "STRONGER" ships are attcking... so it splits its forces to 3 which are going to be easily killed one by one )sometimes the retreating group escapes and its killed later). I am not saying AI would have a chance if it ddidnt split its forces and did stand together and fight but for sure it could kill at least some attacking ships instead of not killing any and loose everything it have.
This is what should be probably fixed or at least improved by altering AI scripts.
1.2 This is IMHO more important - AFAIK AI does not think in larger scope - i.e. once the combat starts there is no outer world and all the decisions are made only within the combat itself. Example:
- player has to win (combats when few AI ships face many player ships) or even combats when it is 50/50
- AI has a lot of other ships in the area but outside of combat
- it would be wise to reatreat and form larger fleet/force and than attack player or defend its core planets etc.
- AI will never do it and I fear it is just because of what I wrote that during combat outer world does not exists for AI, if thats true, its probably hardcoded and we can't do anything about it
2. OUTSIDE COMBAT
2.1 strategical decision during war/peace without NA pacts
- lots of this has been already reported (like sending ships ony by one instead of together etc. /low numbers of troops defending planets) and I am not going to repeat it
2.2 there seems to be no real reaction to whats going on
- no significant changes in AI designs according to what player use to wipe its fleets (missiles/no missiles vs PD/noPD ect.)
- no significant changes in AI tactics according to what player used to wipe its fleets
(AI looses combat with lets say 3 XYZ designs aganist player's 5 ABC designs, quess what it will do few turns later? attacks with 4XYZ player's 9ABC ->usually this happen when player is defending the other side of the warp point but for sure I have seen similiar situation at least once when we were both in the same system, if its in the same system it should not attck, if its on the other side of warp point it should either attack with force capable at least to kill initial force (i.e. 6XYZ against initial 5, ok in this example it would be ambushed by players 9, but it didnt even try) or scout the area first with one ship and attck afterwards
2.3 overall AI capabilities to build STRONG and COMPETITIVE EMPIRE
Sadly as far as my game-playing experience gets those capablities are really poor. My first games were on MEDIUM difficulty and I did quit them after few tens of turns when I found there is no competition. After that I tried HIGH diff setting with various AI ADVANTEGES but it was only slightly better and the frustration that there is no challenge as soons as you survive few first turns only deepend:( MB I was lucky and AIs unlucky but I doubt it...
I can not find exact reasons for this, sometimes the composition of facilities on the planets is not optimal (but this again can be probably fixed by improving AI scripts).
One thing I noted (but it probably needs confirmation) is that AI seems to colonize planets in its home system first and because it is usually respecting "empire borders" unless there is war or soem pact, this slows its initial expansion a bit, becasue its is much better to take one planet in as much systems as possible.
Hmmm... thats all...wonder if anyone read it to the end:)
but if soemone did I would be very gratefull to hear any comments and above all possible solutions/improvments regarding this...as I said I played only few games yet and mb some of those things (AI empire building capabilities e.g.) can be a bit better on different settings (more starting planets etc.) or some tweaks. Also I would love to know what exactly means different levels of AI ADVANTAGE (havent found it in manual and TBH couldnt determine (even strimate) it from my current games).
Give the AI all possible advantage.
I must agree. I always play on the hardest setting especially in Moo1, Moo2. If I don’t have much challenge the game becomes boring because I don’t have to really think hard on strategy to win. To be frank it’s what will keep me playing a game.
When starting a new game with SEV you might try setting the starting resources to high and use none for your self. Set your home planet value to bad, deselect all player home planet the same size, select medium or high technology points and use none for yourself. Set computer player difficulty to high and computer player bonus to high.
Another thing I do is select Score Display to “Player can view scores of all players” so I can watch every AI’s research points and never build more research points than the best AI player. Last night I started a new game with these settings and got my butt kicked. That only made me want to play again. Now if we can only fix the game freeze.
Good Luck…
BTY
By the way… What is balance mod 0.96? How do I get it? Does this help AI player turn hang?
How long do multiplayer
How long do multiplayer games take? Do you play in different time zones, do you schedule times to play?
I've always wondered because a single player game for me can take days and sometimes weeks to play.
Your lord and master (below Foamy) LordHavoc
AI Improvements
Inside Combat:
- It is possible to improve the AI's combat capabilities using weapon strategies, and fleet formation options. However, it does take some modding of the AI to do this though. The formation is probably the worse part of combat for the AI, because they really don't know what to do with it, or when to break formation. So they are never very effective with multiple ships.
- Making it think about ships outside of combat seems to be impossible, because ships basically "auto-combat" using their strategies. There is no specific "Eee-combat routine" or "Human-combat routine", there are just ships and orders. The ability to retreat from combat, while may have been a popular request, is really a major handicap for the AI. Maybe someday we can turn it off.
Outside Combat:
- A lot of problem areas in the AI can be dealt with via modding, but it does take some extensive work to script the AI to do certain things. The problem with this approach is, when a player picks up on how the AI works, they will be able to take advantage of it. In the end, no AI can be as good as a player, because they are just too predictable.
- The AI does have the ability to adapt somewhat to enemy actions, but doing this requires a lot more than just switching from ABC ships to DEF ships (research, build times, resource management, etc...). Even worse is that they also see a ton of other AI players, using traditional ships, so they think using traditional ABC ships might be better than DEF ships. You on the otherhand, tailor your XYZ ships according to who you're gonna wipe out, so... they really don't stand a chance when it comes to ship design, and while this too can be somewhat improved if modded to death, don't expect too much (ship design in SEV is WAY too complicated to make good AIs for, this isn't GalCiv2).
- As for asking the AI to build a strong competitive empire, that's just asking a little too much. If you're asking for the AI to learn how to manage population (moving breathers to native atmosphere), or make better use of certain facilities (scrapping a mine to build a robotic factory to improve overall mining), etc... then I can certainly understand. But asking the AI to build and run an empire that can beat a player is pretty much impossible since everything is done with scripting. In this system, a player has a massive advantage in his ability to predict the AI's action, and knowing pretty much everything the AI does, the player can either outdo or counter it even before the AI even knows that the player exists. If that wasn't bad enough, a player also has all sort of tricks (like step-ladder upgrading) up his sleeve and ends up with a massive advantage. The solution is to either increase the advantages that the AI gets during game set-up and pray that it is enough to give you a challenge, or to handicap yourself while playing.
FYI: the "difficulty" of the AI determines how much it tries to do. This should always be maxed because it's not that great anyways, there's no reason to handicap it some more. The "advantage" of the AI is how much resource/research/intel/spaceyard bonus they recieve (exactly how much you can see in your settings.txt). Increasing the advantage basically means more and better ships/units for the AI. It does help them alot, but a lot of times it's just not enough to make up for their shortcomings (since they also tend to lose a lot of ships).
multiplayer, weeee
Your lord and master (below Foamy) LordHavoc
In both games with Pujal, we played a few turns the first day cause we were all on and waiting. Then we would play roughly 2 turns per game cause we have 4 different times zones in the first game. the second i'm not sure about, because we just started last night.
Christian
Progress isn't made by early risers. It's made by lazy men trying to find easier ways to do something.
-- Robert Heinlein
AI in games
Just some things about AI in general. IMO
I've been playing PC games for quite a few years now...more than I care to remember...my first game was rouge, then the ancient art of war, starflight(CGA)etc...the list is endless.
Has the AI really got better in all these years?...alittle, but not enough. Play the ancient art of war and I'm sure the units will act just like the units in SEV. They won't retreat. They will attack even when they have no hope of winning. It won't use the best formations for the situation...etc
AI's basically work on numbers and production. Difficulty ups the production so they have more numbers. A War of attrition is any AI's tactic.
In some strat games the AI has an attack preference list. Which once you learn, you can use it to your advantage or it simply attacks the nearest target, in other games it has some other type of script but in the end, the AI in any game (upto now) will always become predictable
Think about it, when have you ever seen the AI do something cunning in one game then do something even more cunning in the next game?
What can we do for SEV?(remember don't ask too much it's not just SEV that lacks gd AI)
The posts here give lots of good advice and we can wait for more mods. But I think SEV lends itself best to multiplayer...shame they take sooooo long to play!
God! People, stop having real lives and just play computer games...damn it!
Only the Awkward question; only the Foolish ask twice
more challenging games vs AI
Some good points in the previous posts. A few thoughts:
It seems likely that the AIs could be improved to better compare combat potential, maybe by running a limited number of simulations during a turn, of new designs vs the latest known enemy designs, and that would help it's decision 'tree' better determine the necessary forces for successful attacks. I have not explored the AI scripts at all yet, but it seems they also should have a better algorithms to use stored accumulated knowledge about other empires and combat result experience in it's decision making. However, the potential complexity of machine learning in general is unbounded, IMO.
Perhaps adjusting the priorities of the ministers, which all AIs use I assume, and which are probably weighted by race characteristics, could help a lot with things like aggressively exploring and colonizing especially in the early game, emphasizing research, researching sensors early for better 'situational awareness' and efficient exploration, building troops on threatened planets not just WP and fighters, making sure that Forts (space stations etc.) have at least some of the longest range missles, strategic and tactical retreating when threatened by overwhelming forces, etc.
Lastly, a scenario/savegame editor would be absolutely wonderful to have, to be able to set up challenging pre-conditions especially for single human player games. Multiplayer savegames would be 'locked' to prevent editing after the 1st turn.
have fun, RB
AI is just too simple
I would like to see every game have an AI that would react better, but unfortunately that never happens. The only way that an AI would be closer to a human is when the game is made more basic (the more dimensions to choose from, the worse the AI is). Basically in a game like SEV with an almost endless array of doing anything, the AI will always be at a great disadvantage.
One of the aspects of this game that needs to be improved is the AI combat. They just seem too stupid sometimes. In my first game of SEV the first enemy I encountered had depleted uranium cannons on a bunch of ships. Well I happened to have a few frigates with missles(whatever the first missle you get is called). Well with 1 ship (limited by the amount of ordnance storage on the ship) was able to fly around outside the range of the DUC cannons and fire missles at will at trailing ships. I actaully used 1 frigate to attack 15 enemy ships and chased down fleeing ships and killed 10 of them. There very easisly should be a way for the AI to look at this situation and see that both ships with a top speed of 12km/s, and my ships having a further firing range would result in a bad battle. I think a smarter AI battle strategy could easily be modded to make this aspect of the game more fair.
Yes, it seems the AI never
Yes, it seems the AI never figured out how to design ships equipped with missiles and point defence weapons, so most of the time the AI controlled ships make easy targets for the human players.
Balance Mod
Try Captain Kwoks Balance Mod, it improves the AI considerably.
There are 10 types of people in the world:
Those that understand binary, and those that don't.
Give the AI a faster ship with a bigger gun
Until they make the AI smarter I think the real key to a more challenging game is to simply not allow your technology levels to exceed that of the most advanced AI’s (see my previous comment) or even that of an average AI player. Do the 4X all you want, but use self control when it comes to research. We all know that the faster ship with a bigger gun is going to defeat the enemy, but if your forces are more evenly matched then you might even stand a chance of getting your butt kicked by the AI.
Good Luck…
Do what I've done. In the
Do what I've done. In the data file that has the Empire Types (im at work and can't access which file it is. It’s the file that'll have all the advantages and disadvantages you get when choosing Engineer, Farmer, stuff like that. Or maybe it was the one with the political type.)
Ah. Erm. Anyway, go into the file and give something like 50% Bonus to whatever you think the AI has problem with. I did Ship Yard Construction and Research so it can get more ships out with better crap on it.
This has been working real well for me thusfar. I went to drop troops on an enemy planet a few turns into the game and the dropship was accompanied by three ships to defend it. The enemy planet had one ship defend it… But that was taking all my defense ships time. So then I sent the dropship to the planet to send in the troops... The planet shot once and blew my ship to bits. I checked out its cargo and it had around 50 Weapons platforms. Looks like Ill needa do something new this time.
Balance Mod AI
I installed the Balance Mod but didn't like all of it's settings. Is there an easy way to pull just the AI scripts out of it? Which files contain the AI logic?
Balance Mod AIs not compatible with stock
The AI Scripts are specific to the Balance Mod and will not work with the stock game.
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k, thanks anyway tho.
k, thanks anyway tho.
hmmmm
I think that mostly the problem stems from the fact that AI design is just as specialized a field as graphics design and sound design etc... Most programmers can pull a cheap AI design out of their bums but it's never going to be that good just like most people can do some stick figure drawings but that's not gonna be too satisfying either 
I think that too many people are too happy with lame AI but just give it massive advantages... They like to feel the false sense of accomplishment when they finally surpass those massive advantages and win...
If the AI is too weak to compete from the start without any advantages then it's not going to EVER be strong enough because a X% advantage in resources or construction capacity etc is a fleeting one when it's not backed up by the ability to KEEP EXPANDING/EXPLOITING that advantage... This just means that at first you will have a hard time but the exact same problem will crop up every time and you will find that if you weather the initial fury you will exceed the AI's ability with ease and then crush them without any real effort and that means that JUST giving them "more toys" does nothing to really increase the AI's competetiveness.
In other words... Game developers REALLY need to start hiring AI designers like they do graphic designers now if they ever want their games to be a challenge. I have seen a lot of "myths" in this thread that AI's can't ever do this or that... WRONG... they will never do certain things as WELL as a human... but they CAN do them... and there are many things an AI can do far better than any human such as micromanage large amounts of data and process forcast data such as if I colonize this world it can provide X amount of Y resources in Z time period is this better than that other planet? which system can I expand too that will reduce the number of warp points I need to defend... many many things the AI could do but it's not easy for a general programmer to do an AI of that level just like your average person isn't going to be able to make awesome 3D graphics and sound.
Just google for AI development and take a look at what some people have done in the field and you will understand that no game yet made comes even remotely CLOSE to the complexity of the stuff people are designing AI for.
The main problem is that as long as people are happy with mediocre at best AI then that's what people are going to get.
Darwin
I totally agree Dimmurwyrd. Game companies have got into the bad/good for profit and fast release habit of making a basic AI program and then adding bonuses for each difficulty level.
As for peeps being happy with mediocre AI, this comes from the fact that there are a lot of mediocre peeps out there who are happy with cheap wins...GOD/Mother nature please bring back natural selection.
Only the Awkward question; only the Foolish ask twice
EmpireGainedAbilities.txt
Would it be possible to add something like this to EmpireGainedAbilities.txt? I can't seem to get this to work, though. I think Sys_Are_We_Computer_Player may not work.
Any ideas?
Name := AI HACK
Description :=
Number Of Requirements := 1
Requirements Evaluation Availability := AND
Requirements Evaluation Allows Placement := TRUE
Requirements Evaluation Allows Usage := TRUE
Requirement 1 Description := Empire must be computer player
Requirement 1 Formula := Sys_Are_We_Computer_Player
Number of Abilities := 5
Ability 1 Type := Resource Gen Modifier - Radioactives
Ability 1 Description := Radioactive resource gathering increased by [%Amount1%]%.
Ability 1 Scope := Galaxy - This Player
Ability 1 Range Formula := 0
Ability 1 Amount 1 Formula := 5
Ability 1 Amount 2 Formula := 0
Ability 2 Type := Point Generation Modifier - Research
Ability 2 Description := Research generation throughout the empire increased by [%Amount1%]%.
Ability 2 Scope := Galaxy - This Player
Ability 2 Range Formula := 0
Ability 2 Amount 1 Formula := 200
Ability 2 Amount 2 Formula := 0
Ability 3 Type := Space Yard Rate Modifier
Ability 3 Description := Space Yard construction rate throughout the empire increased by [%Amount1%]%.
Ability 3 Scope := Galaxy - This Player
Ability 3 Range Formula := 0
Ability 3 Amount 1 Formula := 5
Ability 3 Amount 2 Formula := 0
Ability 4 Type := Resource Gen Modifier - Minerals
Ability 4 Description := Mineral resource gathering increased by [%Amount1%]%.
Ability 4 Scope := Galaxy - This Player
Ability 4 Range Formula := 0
Ability 4 Amount 1 Formula := 200
Ability 4 Amount 2 Formula := 0
Ability 5 Type := Resource Gen Modifier - Organics
Ability 5 Description := Organics resource gathering increased by [%Amount1%]%.
Ability 5 Scope := Galaxy - This Player
Ability 5 Range Formula := 0
Ability 5 Amount 1 Formula := 5
Ability 5 Amount 2 Formula := 0
Alternative To AI
join IRC: irc.freenode.net #spaceempires and get into a multiplayer game, or look around the forums here and at shrapnel for one. I'd even start a 1 on 1.