AI Suitability
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I do most of my play against the AI and I suspect that many others do as well. I want to discuss what scenarios the AI can handle well, poorly or not at all. In many cases, existing mods can be be altered to create mods the AI handles better.
The AI is good at determining what attacks will succeed and avoiding dangerous counterattacks. It has no strategic judgement other than defend your capitals and factories and move toward enemy capitals. Improvements are being made to the AI, but I don't expect its fundamental characteristics to change. The nature of TripleA makes it hard for an AI to formulate a long-range plan. Placing capitals can direct the AI, even the capitals have no effect on game play.
In most situations the Fast AI performs as well as the Hard AI. The Hard AI does better if there are complex interactions between units, or units with significant differences from the standard boardgame-based unitsets.
The standard purchase/combat move turn structures slows the AI. Putting combat move first is better, without actual impacting game play.
The AI ignores national objectives. In many cases this is a not problem as the objectives are an additional reward for doing things the AI would try to do anyhow. Counterintuitive national objectives like and the penalty for Western forces in Soviet areas can't be handled by the AI. They could reformulated by using political relationships to stop allies from moving in.
User actions are handled fairly randomly the AI, although it makes a stab at reasonable ones in games using the Global map. You could have conflicts always occur by certain turn as in the global game or use events to achieve the same effect.
Another problem area are non-PU resources. For now, the AI largely ignores them and makes no effort to create or secure them. For good AI play they need to removed.
Large numbers of units will always slow the AI. My rule of thumb is don't have more than a thousand units.
In future posts on this thread, will discuss specific scenarios.
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@RogerCooper ive been having a good battle with the new AI in Domination 1914 no mans land. there really arent any factors the AI doesn't understand in that map other than tech so I started the game giving all factions science tech. this should keep the games variable and interesting but so far I'm only one game in doing it this way.
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The AI will sometimes buy tech if it has lot of PU's. By I agree that giving science tech improves solo play.
This game has 2 problems for AI play.
- The AI will not buy 0 move combat units like trenches. Future AI may improve that
- The AI will overestimate the effectiveness of gas unless played at the Hard AI level
If I was to create an AI version of this scenario, I would lower the attack value of Gas but eliminate the suicide feature of the unit.
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@RogerCooper not seeing either of those traits def seeing buying of trenches and not seeing buying of gas units by AI
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@RogerCooper said in AI Suitability:
The standard purchase/combat move turn structures slows the AI. Putting combat move first is better, without actual impacting game play.
That is quite intresting. I try that. Thanks.
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@RogerCooper said in AI Suitability:
The AI will sometimes buy tech if it has lot of PU's. By I agree that giving science tech improves solo play.
This game has 2 problems for AI play.
- The AI will not buy 0 move combat units like trenches. Future AI may improve that
- The AI will overestimate the effectiveness of gas unless played at the Hard AI level
If I was to create an AI version of this scenario, I would lower the attack value of Gas but eliminate the suicide feature of the unit.
There may have been some recent improvements in the AI, allowing move 0 combat units to be bought. The AI is probably confused by Gas being capturable.
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@RogerCooper i had rarely seen ai buy gas before as well not sure if I ever saw it buy trenches before but it definitely buys them now
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I will like to see the AI ignore neutral players, right now they see neutral players as targets and stack up crazy. e.g. WW1 maps where neutrals enter the war in staggered rounds. I see
50 units waiting to conquer a neutral with 10 units. -
@RogerCooper Nice topic
Do you have a hidden agenda? like to gather info on “the current state of the AI and how it handles”? Maybe you will work on a "what to improve list" to post at GitHub? That would be sweet
Or is the purpose of this thread purely to get tips and tricks on how to optimize map XMLs to most effectively accommodate the current AI?
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@Lord-Bevan said in AI Suitability:
I will like to see the AI ignore neutral players, right now they see neutral players as targets and stack up crazy. e.g. WW1 maps where neutrals enter the war in staggered rounds. I see
50 units waiting to conquer a neutral with 10 units.An interesting problem. I wonder whether the political relationships can be managed so a neutral is ignored.
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@Frostion said in AI Suitability:
@RogerCooper Nice topic
Do you have a hidden agenda? like to gather info on “the current state of the AI and how it handles”? Maybe you will work on a "what to improve list" to post at GitHub? That would be sweet
Or is the purpose of this thread purely to get tips and tricks on how to optimize map XMLs to most effectively accommodate the current AI?
The later. The current AI is optimized for the A&A boardgames and we can't expect it to handle every weird thing a scenario designer can come up with. I can see some things being improved in AI but we are not going to have an AI successfully analyze when you should declare war.
The basic objective is to create a fun-to-play scenario that the AI can handle any nation with, that it is as close to the designer's original intentions as possible.
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If somebody has a scenario they like, but they AI does not play well, post about it here and I will try to come up with an AI-suitable version.
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The standard purchase/combat move turn structures slows the AI. Putting combat move first is better, without actual impacting game play.
Where to put purchase then? After non-combat i guess?
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@rogercooper Could you take a look for Aggression 1941?
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@torpedoa yes, "purchasing before combat" or "PBC" is an option every map should have imo. i think a version of "1941" has that option, to me it makes sense, cause i can see where i moved everything and know exactly what to buy, it is especially useful when buying for navies.
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@schulz The AI seems oddly unaggressive on land. I will investigate. My guess is that the AA ability of most units is confusing the AI.
That is type of AI bug which should be fixed in the game engine. A workaround would be put an immobile, capturable AA gun in every territory.
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@rogercooper said in AI Suitability:
The AI is good at determining what attacks will succeed and avoiding dangerous counterattacks. It has no strategic judgement other than defend your capitals and factories and move toward enemy capitals.
So does that mean that if i put more capitals on some AI owned territories, the AI will be "stimulated" to care exceptionally more about that territory?
And by putting more allied/player capitals i can "stimulate" the AI do go for specific areas on the map?
My map atm for my 149BC Mod
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Yes, capitals will cause the AI to try to capture the area, defend the area and move towards the area.
I did a mod of the Axis & Allies: D-Day game and until I made the victory objectives capitals, the AI was unaggressive.
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@rogercooper I would like to learn if it is easy to fix it in the game engine. I am considering to add a version with full AI compatible.
Giving every territory AA is a bit problematic because I wouldn't want to use them due to scarce placement spots especially in Europe.
Bringing back v3 aaGun's is another issue. With that Air and naval costs will have been increased which I don't want. Because whole point is keeping them as cheap as possible to have higher variety and reversibilty.
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@torpedoa Are you sure you want to use the NWO map for an Ancient scenario? Beside having to rename all territories (but here I don't believe there is any well named map for the scenario anyways), New World Order is a very well known map with quite clearly "Cold War" era borders. I would not even consider using it for a World War 2 game, really. I suppose you will cut the North America continent and most of the Atlantic Ocean?
How about the Ancient Times map, instead, even though the names are very bad?
