The AI can only be written in if conditions, cannot perform mathematics, cannot save data/ values, lacks some important commands like auto-rebuild-farm, confusing and redundant commands in controlling various actions, etc.
To describe the present AI structure, I use these words: Disabled, Bulky, and Redundant.
Any comment?
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Replies:
Kaziglu Bey Mortal
posted 12 June 2001 02:17 AM
EDT (US)
1 / 4
And except for some situational behavior patterns it is still the most fun AI to play against that at least I have seen in a classic-RTS game. But this place is about AoM so lets see what the changes to the AI and its presumed custom scripting possibilities behaves.
No AI has ever been truly smart. We have just recently been able to construct a computer system that handles a relatively rigid game like chess really well, and that with a lot more computing horsepower than a home PC.
For Ensemble's third real-time strategy (RTS) game, creatively code-named RTS3, we've spent almost a full man-year so far developing a completely new expert system for the CP AI. It's been a lot of work taking the expert system (named, also creatively, XS) from the in-depth requirements discussions with designers to the point where it's ready to pay off. We've finally hit that payoff and have a very robust, extensible scripting language.
Quote:
The language has been so solid and reusable that, in addition to using it to write the CP AI content, we're using it for console and UI command processing, cinematic control, and the extensive trigger system. We also expect to use XS to write complicated conditional and prerequisite checking for the technology tree; this way, the designers can add off-the-wall prerequisites for research nodes without programmer intervention. Finally, we will also use the XS foundation to write the script code that controls the random map generation for RTS3. The exciting aspect of XS from a tools standpoint is that we will have XS debugging integrated with RTS3's execution. For fans who used the Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings (AoK) expert-system debugging (a display table of 40 or so integer values), this is a huge step up, since XS will significantly increase the ease with which players can create AI personalities.
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In our RTS3 project, we're going to use the XS scripting language to control the level of difficulty. Since we have an idea of how long we'd like each game to take, our AI designers can check things such as game time, how many of the CP's units have been killed, how many of the human player's units were killed by the CP, or the score of the game to see who's "winning." Armed with that information, they can scale back the quality of the AI to make sure the game doesn't drag out long after the outcome is really determined. If you start to augment that ability with other features such as game history logging, you have the makings of a good opponent that quickly scales to your initial difficulty level and continues to give you a challenging game even as you get better.
If anyone has any new info, please post it here.
Proof of purchase of a legitimite copy of AoE3: pic1 - pic2
ES_DeathShrimp Immortal
posted 02 August 2001 02:56 PM
EDT (US)
3 / 4
Random thoughts:
1) AI is expensive. We don't give a lot of complexity to CP strategic analysis because we can't afford the CPU bandwidth. It is not so hard to make AI that thinks. It is hard to make AI that thinks quickly.
2) The more versatile and powerful the AI, the more complex the scripting language has to be to support it.
3) A lot of detailed tactical analysis on the CP's part is invisible to the human player. They might not notice it switching strategies or timing its Villager production well. All they know is when they attacked it or it attacked them, whether it responded like a human or responded like a computer.