Comments on: Experiments In RTS AI

By: teo

teo — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 20:48:06 +0000

Good AI isn’t AI that’s not cheating
Good AI is AI that is fun to play against

By: Duoae

Duoae — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 10:58:15 +0000

I used to play DoW with two of my housemates on a team against three or four enemy AI – usually all Ork.
The thing we discovered was that the AI seemed to concentrate on one or two of the allied factions, using the other two or three to ‘feed’ that major faction resources and space. At least, that’s how it appeared to work.

I’d go back and check now if i could but (stupidly) Winter Assault deleted and/or made the game incompatible with replays from the original DoW… which was quite annoying.

By: malkav11

malkav11 — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 19:53:15 +0000

RE: Making the AI fight itself – I used to do that in WCII. It was pretty awesome. I’d edit everything so that it produced almost instantly for basically no resources, then set all the AI players to rescuable allies with one peasant/peon each. For whatever reason, this meant that that one peasant or peon would be rescuable, but everything it built after that would not…and all of the rescuable factions hated each other with an insane passion…but not you, the player. So there were constant streams of units wreaking utter carnage on everything. I always wanted to do likewise with a more interestingly differentiated game, but Starcraft and WC3 defeated my efforts on that count.

By: FngKestrel

FngKestrel — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 18:37:44 +0000

That’s a good article. While it doesn’t go into detail about what the AI is actually thinking about at a given moment, the overall analysis is interesting.

@Andrew You’re probably right. I’d like to see the AI perform on a different map that’s more spread out and see if the results are different.

By: Andrew Armstrong

Andrew Armstrong — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 17:25:36 +0000

The skirmish AI mod is good for DOW.

And someone actually went and looked at Starcraft’s “AI”? It’s a linear script! It builds the same things whatever the map! It falls down as Terrans because, as units go, they are generally weaker forces used to attack with in their build order! They also suffer where there is less space to build – you need a very neat and tidy mind to spread out the dozens of Terran buildings needed for 200 pop cap (or anywhere close to it).

(Even basic AI changes to the default Starcraft AI can make it more competitive, to be honest, since the original’s build orders are odd at times).

I think the “Insane” option performs better only because their build lists are slightly larger (they make more troops before attacking), as far as I remember.

The main thing the AI does well, as in any game with abilities, is micromanage when to use them automatically. Same with Dawn of War, same with World in Conflict, etc. etc.

Ahh well, frankly, I hope Starcraft 2’s AI isn’t hardcoded, else it’ll be a similar boring situation of predictable AI attacks. :)

By: Belo

Belo — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 13:39:33 +0000

DoW is kinda wierd sometimes. I’ve had epic battles at some points, an then I’ve had others where it would seem the AI didn’t do anything except build a dozen power generators…

There’s a DoW mod I messed around with at some point that makes AI changes, ‘Dawn of Skirmish’ I think it was called. Seemed to make the AI more willing to ‘play’ around with you rather than zerg you as soon as it could.

By: Homunculus

Homunculus — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 13:30:05 +0000

If you're feeling particularly voyeuristic, you can set up Soulstorm to fight itself. Murder each other for my entertainment, little space men and monsters. *munches grapes*

By: Man Raised By Puffins

Man Raised By Puffins — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 12:34:05 +0000

@Fazer: The original link works fine for me.

@brog: The guy who wrote the article acknowledges that, but it also seems that he gets similar Protoss dominance on normal difficulty where the AI doesn’t have effectively unlimited resources.

Fairly interesting find this, cheers RPS.

By: Fazer

Fazer — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 12:18:17 +0000

I can’t edit previous post no more and the link was interpreted by the browser and is shown in a wrong way. Just type “shamus young starcraft” in Google and go to a copy link to the second result.

By: brog

brog — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 12:14:42 +0000

I’m not really surprised that Protoss AI wins when everyone has unlimited cash. It’s not really a fair test.

By: Fazer

Fazer — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 12:02:09 +0000

The link is broken or their server is down. Pitty, it could have been an interesting read.

It can be read through Google’s copy of the page, although with no pictures – http://209.85.135.104/search?q=cache:DzZNMMdv_08J:www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=1597 Shamus Young starcraft&hl=pl&ct=clnk&cd=2

By: Mike

Mike — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 11:12:35 +0000

It’s not the blow-by-blow dissection I was expecting, but still a pretty interesting read.