ralphtricky
Posts: 6685
Joined: 7/27/2003
From: Colorado Springs
Status: offline
|
quote:
ORIGINAL: Szilard
The AI is very poor. I doubt it will ever be excellent, because that would probably require a complete redesign of the underlying data models. But improvements should be possible without too much effort.
Disclaimer: I have a PhD in AI, and my major interest in TOAW is designing situations for AI vs AI play. I doubt that I represent a huge part of the customer base :)
Anyway, I think it's useful to think in terms of two major AI categories:
- "Tactical" level: how the AI controls individual units within a formation.
- "Strategic" level: how the AI coordinates the activities of different formations.
Conceptually, it's not hard to describe what an excellent AI would look like. At the "tactical" level, it would be reasonable at handling common military tasks such as: forming a defensive line; avoiding being cut-off; withdrawing to a new defensive line; counter-attacking to restore a line; etc etc etc.
TOAW is poor at all of these, IMO partly because it follows the common Jim-Dunnigan-era approach of basing the tactical level on a completely inadequate follow-the-numbers objective model. But even with the poor modelling, I think it should be possible to fix some of the worst problems: eg formations on the defensive having no concept of being cut-off, and taking no action to avoid it.
To get a really good AI, IMO you need to go beyond the objective hex model. I want to be able to paint a line of hexes and tell a formation that it is to defend that line, and paint another as a secondary defense line, to which it should withdraw if the first becomes untenable - etc. For this to work, the AI has to have some understanding of a "line", a "withdrawal", "untenable" etc etc. It requires a lot more smarts than the objective model, but on the other hand without those kind of smarts it can never be a really good AI. It's certainly doable, but it would be a lot of work of a fairly specialized (ie, expensive) nature.
TOAW pretty much completely ignores the "strategic" aspects. Obviously, the ideal is an AI "general" which can set tasks for formations and coordinate them. Now you need an AI which has some understanding of a further layer of abstractions, at the formation level; again, a lot of expensive work to do it well.
But I think there might be a couple of "strategic" things which could be added to TOAW without too much work. In particular, I'd like to see a real concept of "strategic" level reserves, along these lines:
- Ability to designate Formation A as a "reserve" for Formations X, Y, Z ...
- Under certain circumstances, the AI assigns Formation A as a reinforcement for one of X, Y, Z ... by giving it the same orders and objectives. It might be that Formation X on the attack is doing very well, and the AI acts to reinforce success. It might be that Formation Y on the defense is under great pressure and the AI decides to buttress it.
- Once the trigger which led to the assignment of Formation A as a reinforcement no longer applies, the AI returns it to "reserve" status, and it disengages & moves to the rear.
- Ideally, there would also be an event which would allow a formation to be swapped in/out of reserve status depending on its loss/supply/readiness levels, as compared to othr formations.
Obviously, this sketch would need to be fleshed out before it could be implemented, but I think it could result in something which significantly improves both the quality and the realism of the AI.
In particular, the triggers would require the AI to be able to recognize "success", "crumbling defence" etc etc. This would be non-trivial, but it has to be remembered that the goal here isn't the creation of some perfect military genius - just an AI which does stuff which is plausible.
Longer term, I hope some thought can be given to opening up the AI somehow or other to 3rd party hobbyists. It would be great to see an engine which let 3rd parties code up a "counterattack to restore line" or "perform fighting withdrawal to new line" tactical behavior, or a "general-in-chief". I can imagine competitions between different AI's, if enough people got interested.
I agree with most of what you say (except for the second sentence.) I believe that the AI can be made to play an excellent game for many scenarios. Since TOAW doesn't do random maps, that means that the designer can help a lot with the rough spots.
One reason that I took the role of programmer for TOAW is because I have a deep interest in Wargames and Wargaming AI (as opposed to 'real' AI. I've almost got an MS in CS, 20+ years programming experience and a stack of AI books, and I'm working my through 'elmer'(the PO code.)
I believe that the 'tactical' AI actually should play better than it does. I'm looking at why it plays so poorly, and what I can do short term to make it play better. I cant, and won't promise anything, but I've got some ideas, and I'll see how well they pan out in the time before the initial release.
The data structures aren't set up that badly for this work. I've got some redesign to do, but that's more for personal preference than anything else.
I've actually thought about allowing the designer to draw lines, or at least annotate the objectives with a width. That's way down the road, and may never happen.
I could see the potential for a game with this engine which allows you to set formations, draw lines, etc. instead of at the unit level. The AI would have to be pretty good for that to work, though. Something like Combat Mission, but at this level. I don't have the patience to play some of the huge scenarios.
The Open AI idea is also one that I like, but I don't know if it will happen. I would like to see what the Civ4 AI's toolkit looks like before I even look at doing anything along those lines.
I need to add a disclaimer that all this is pure speculation. It's possible that the new version of TOAW may not sell enough that I will want to add new features, there may be other things that can be done which are more marketable, expansion packs may not sell, I may lose interest, etc.
Ralph
P.S. You'd probably appreciate that I'm playing the AI against itself to test out the changes that I'm hoping to make.
P.P.S. If you have any AI vs. AI scenarions, I'd like to use them for testing.
_____________________________
Ralph Trickey TOAW IV Programmer Blog: http://operationalwarfare.com --- My comments are my own, and do not represent the views of any other person or entity. Nothing that I say should be construed in any way as a promise of anything. |
Printable Version
will AI be improved greatly? - 
) and improving the AI. On the other hand, I´m not involved so I may be completely off... 
RE: will AI be improved greatly? - 
Maybe an action/RPG...Dungeon TOAW. How about about a FPS...No, I don't think it could be twisted quite that far. 
New Messages
No New Messages
Hot Topic w/ New Messages
Hot Topic w/o New Messages
Locked w/ New Messages
Locked w/o New Messages
Post New Thread