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AI feedback (trying to be constructive)

AI feedback (trying to be constructive)

My impression is that the unit balance has changed substantially, in favor of axes (cleave) and spears (impale). The ability to damage multiple enemies at once is amazing. It's also fun.

The computer players and town defenders tend to use hammer/mace style units a lot. These have not improved much at all - an ability that does double damage, then causes you to skip a turn, is only good if it kills with the double damage, otherwise the skipped turn eliminates the entire benefit.

From a balance point of view, improving the ability on hammers/maces (eg to 50% more damage, no turn skipping) would be a good thing. Or remove that ability and give them overpower.

 

From an AI point of view, the computer players need to use more unit variety, and maybe even design units, based on the where they will be built (different fortress towns have different bonuses). And they need to specialize fortresses to build better units; good amounts of essence, and enchanting the fortress to make troops better when they are making troops.

 

The combat tactical AI needs to use abilities that damage more than one thing at once (examine their options, work out what is likely to cause most total damage, or most total kills). They might even benefit from considering their opponents abilities, and position their units to prevent the enemy using cleave and impale (and fireball) to kill multiple things at once.

102,206 views 34 replies
Reply #26 Top

Strategic

Problem1: AI city not constructing

Reply #27 Top

I second that a "recorder" might be desirable...I also have some ideas about how this might work. I am not much into programming, so I do not know if it would work in practice or not (and I also do not know the mechanics in GalCiv and, shame on me, I actually did not test the beta of LH yet). Here is my naive ideas:

1. let the game reserve some resources for a "recorder" (say 2-5GB on your hard-drive)

2. set a number of games the game is "watching"

3. let the AI evaluate your strategy and implement a counter in the next game or even replicate your (!) strategy for a specific faction (evaluation could also be done if I am not playing the game)

4. give feedback how well the AI did in countering your efforts or using your own strategies

5. repeat feedback loop every 5 (10, 20...) games.

I guess (or hope) a very basic mechanism could be implemented by giving the AI a core set of strategic rules and then let it choose based on individual play-style with some simple Bayesian-updating heuristics (works wonders in reducing SPAM e-mails). In principle that would mean every player ended up with its own "AI" or at least an (optional) refinement that is tailored to his own style of playing.

Besides the technical issues, I see the following problems:
- you need a "reset" button, because players might delieberately "confuse" the AI in the watching phase or the AI will be locked-in if players fundamentally altered their play-style, the AI will also end up totally wrecked on some occasions (remember its a heuristic).
- updating and patching will become a mess
- the rich content and to high number of variables might prevent the use of such a system.

In essence such a system would be based on stochastics rather than a set of pre-determined rules and it gets better with every game it "records".

Best,
Kobito

PS: I got lost looking for a concept how the AI actually works in the Dev Journals. I remember having seen something where frogboy commented on his evaluation of the AI and how to improve (a video, maybe). The search function was not helpful, because it had so many hits about people's feedback for the AI. Can anyone provide a link?

Reply #28 Top

Quoting Mistwraithe, reply 14


Quoting Morkleb, reply 7How about as someone else mentioned trying to get the AI to plan an attack before declaring war and thereby surprising and threathening a player the moment the ai declares and perhaps now and then catching a player unawares? For me just the uncertanity of having a friendly ai player mobilizing units near my borders not knowing but suspecting an attack is fun. Is this hard to do?

I think that is a great idea (in fact it might have been my post which you saw but unfortunately there was a problem with that thread  ). The gist of it was that a large part of what makes the Civ 5 AI threatening is that when it declares war on you it is already too late to start preparing. The AI will already have its troops in position and they all start rolling over your border the same turn they declare war. If you weren't prepared you're highly likely to lose a town.

If FE/LH could do the same then my current feeling of "no need to worry much about the AI, its little threat" would largely evaporate. That in turn would force me to have multiple armies (rather than just one or two doom stacks), defensive garrisons, etc which would make many more aspects of the game meaningful.
End of Mistwraithe's quote

Definitely want this ^ anything that makes the AI more challenging is always welcome. It really bugs me when some players whine the ai is too hard or the ai cheats. hell let it be hard and let it cheat that's when I'm having the most fun.

Reply #29 Top

I would also like to see city defenders have dual class. They can start out as archers and then close as melee when the time is right. This would increase defense of the city and not make the defenders so one dimensional either or.

Also this is the first game I can recall that you have to defend OUTSIDE your keep or castle or city walls....what's up with dat?

HOMM has it, AOW has it (in spades cause you get 4 walls), MOM has it, never played Disciples does it have it? Even in Civilization you got WALL bonuses to combat....is that in this game? Sid Meiers Alpha Centauri also has wall bonuses. Have I missed building wall bonuses in this game? What path are they under? Civics?

Reply #30 Top

Quoting Nick-Danger, reply 26

Strategic

Problem1: AI city not constructing

End of Nick-Danger's quote

Drives me crazy.  The question is, WHY wouldn't it be constructing something? I can't think of any reason that would happen.  

I've got a lot of AI tweaks going into the next beta.  It's amazing how...stupid the AI can get due to some oversight in a seemingly unrelated area.

 

Reply #31 Top

And now that you can focus on how to spend your unused production (money, research, etc.), this really should always be chosen.

Reply #32 Top

Yea, in the example given, the city had no city improvements at all. Something is messed up.

Reply #33 Top

Quoting joeherbert48, reply 29

I would also like to see city defenders have dual class. They can start out as archers and then close as melee when the time is right. This would increase defense of the city and not make the defenders so one dimensional either or.

Also this is the first game I can recall that you have to defend OUTSIDE your keep or castle or city walls....what's up with dat?

HOMM has it, AOW has it (in spades cause you get 4 walls), MOM has it, never played Disciples does it have it? Even in Civilization you got WALL bonuses to combat....is that in this game? Sid Meiers Alpha Centauri also has wall bonuses. Have I missed building wall bonuses in this game? What path are they under? Civics?
End of joeherbert48's quote

 

Just a city by itself will not have those kind of defences.  There's walls and forts you can build which give bonus to defenders. Then there's bonuses from city level ups. Even provide extra units.

Reply #34 Top

Quoting Frogboy, reply 32

Yea, in the example given, the city had no city improvements at all. Something is messed up.
End of Frogboy's quote

I have seen it once before. The time it happened the city had 0 production, 0 gildar, 0 EVERYTHING, including population. I don't even know how you get that to happen, but as a result the city also had 0 growth so it couldn't even escape the black hole of misery. I was about to cast Sovereign's Growth on it to see if I could get someone to come to it but it got razed by monsters (was an AI conquered city and so was poorly defended with lots of monsters set free by the stupid AI). Initially I thought it was an Unrest bug but rush buying some buildings to deal with it didn't help.