jsv
Indept
Posts: 26
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Post by jsv on Mar 11, 2012 0:10:31 GMT -5
A question to our beta-testers and other active players. I haven't played many games against high-bonus AI yet, but from my limited experience I have an impression that the AI prefers mid-level summons to high-end ones. In particular, I haven't yet seen any of the following: - The Witch upgrading her commanders to hags and summoning Old Ones. She mostly uses major summons.
- The Druid summoning legendary creatures. He seems to prefer hordes of minor summons.
- The Demonologist summoning demon lords (those are probably not cost-effective comparing to major demons, but still...)
Does your experience agree with that?
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Post by gp1628 on Mar 11, 2012 7:27:48 GMT -5
The AI does do high end things, but not quite the way a player might. It could possibly use some tweaking.
The way it seems to work now (I will not ask for or post an exact formula) is that the AI will use a certain percentage of its resources in such actions. So just in general if the AI has 100 then it will do minor actions with it. If it has 200 then it might do a major action and use the rest for minors. And if it has 500 then it might do an upgrade.
What it does NOT do, that a player might do, is decide to stop doing any actions at all so that it can save up for a major upgrade. Im not sure how something like that should be programmed. "if game continues past xx turns then save to upgrade 1 unit"? And for that to not be a "stupid AI" report it would have to have some sort of check for whether its in a good enough position. Does it have enough xxx to consider it at all. But that check is kindof what it does now. The only thing it seems to lack is that it does its check based only on what it has THIS turn in the treasury. It doesnt make many plans that involve keeping track of something across multiple turns.
The AIs resource bonuses make it more likely. So you tend to only see such end-game upgrade actions if you are playing against an AI on a higher setting and a decent sized map. That would seem to be a good thing if the best it can do is something it tends to do at higher settings?
I can have Johan look into the percentage chances involved if you want. And run a few tests myself.
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jsv
Indept
Posts: 26
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Post by jsv on Mar 11, 2012 15:06:14 GMT -5
Gandalf, thanks for your reply. What the AI does currently is not necessarily wrong. Choosing between minor summon now and major summon later is a risk/reward trade off. And in a game with so many random factors both risk and reward can be hard to estimate. In such situations humans, myself obviously included, make wrong choices all the time. I do not expect the AI to do any better. It would be more interesting though if the AI were making different choices in different situations, based on more that just income value; but I don't really expect this either. At least not any soon. Still, some classes probably should try to save a part of their income for upgrades and bigger summons. Especially the Druid, as in the late game no amount of boars can substitute for one Beholder or a couple of Basilisks. The Demonologist, on the other hand, can do pretty well with major demons only and probably should not bother summoning the lords unless he has no better use for excessive resources. But for most classes the choice is going to be very situation-dependent... Anyway, this is not the biggest concern with the AI right now, I've just been curious. Thanks for listening.
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Post by gp1628 on Mar 11, 2012 15:46:33 GMT -5
Like I said, I will pass on suggestions. If you feel there is a nation which has a specific situation it should act differently in.
But you also mentioned something that is a common joke in AI programming forums (or comment on human nature). That the easiest way to get AI (artificially intelligent) to be more AH (artificially human) is to dump some of the intelligence to make room for more random.
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