Zaratoughda -> RE: Better Random Game AI, finally (4/21/2009 3:50:22 PM)
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Hmmmm..... I have done some more testing on this and it appears my mod only makes the AI smarter under certain circumstances. The way to test.... is to generate a game as you would normally except no shroud and no fog of war.... and do nothing with your own force but watch what the AI is doing. And.... in the case where the AI gets a starting town with many roads out and no sea access...... it does a reasonable job of initial exploring (not optimal for sure..... takes an extra turn to get going compared to me and then has a tendancy of putting infantry units in with it's armored cars in some cases slowing them down to foot speed.... but it at least does a reasonable job in this case). This is the case where my mod helps.... and I believe it is in turning off the random AI personalities... because with those turned on the AI might STILL sit there.... doing research, building air or whatever... and in any case not exploring. But, I saw one case where there were towns in one direction but roads needed to be built there and the AI..... didn't bother to explore in the other directions but instead took a single-minded approach to building the roads.... building a ton of engineers and, again, not bothering to explore in the other directions until the roads got built. Also, if the starting town is at a port.... the AI will build ships in preference to exploring. Again, not sending armored cars or anything else out to explore the land but instead just sitting there building ships. This also brings into play the other problem that the AI has initially, not sending out ships until it has battleships to protect them which intially is very poor compared to the approach I use of sending out individual cargoships each carrying two armored car units. So, the AI has a problem with being single-minded, and putting a higher priority on things like building roads and building fleets of ships, over initial land exploration and that is not wise. Of course, one can use the mod I have in ARHS, of having initial countries and armies and with that the AI is much more competitive.... with even normal AI being a challange (as opposed to AI+). But, with that you skip all the initial exploration which is otherwise a lot of the fun..... unfortunately that is what the AI is poorest at... even at AI+. Also, in my testing I have seen cases where the AI gets a start with no port access and a lot of roads out and.... on a large starting continent with me starting on a small island and not much else on the map. In this case, an AI+ opponent might be close to impossible to defeat... with it not only having a production bonus but a lot more cities after the initial exploration. So, hard to get a balanced game here, and I don't believe there is much else in the rulevars that I can do to change this (e.g. don't believe I can change the priorities for things like road building and fleet building to be less than that for initial exploration). Not sure what to say at this point.... except would be nice if in some future release or game to see the AI acting more intelligently and having a continuously variable AI strength that one could adjust to their liking as one goes along. Zaratoughda
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