is something wrong with my AI? (Full Version)

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smartspick -> is something wrong with my AI? (10/2/2010 11:33:45 PM)

I love anything having to do with Hannibal and I was very excited about this game and the hyped up AI. I played on the hardest level and captured Rome in 4 turns, and I tried again hoping it was a fluke and againt capture Rome in few turns on the Hardest level using different tactics. To be honest I haven't had any close calls. Hannibal annihalets the Roman legions and can concentrate forces. The AI seems to be forgetting to concentrate forces and it launches premature attracts to my lift my siege of rome. I'm kinda dis pointed seeing how this game was only one side ( Carthage) and single player and the all the hype about the AI, i was hoping to get a real run for my money.



mercenarius -> RE: is something wrong with my AI? (10/2/2010 11:51:37 PM)

Well, it's possible that you experienced a fluke but it's also possible that you have uncovered an Achilles heel in the AI.

Can you post a saved game as an attachment that shows the game when Hannibal set up his siege?

I'll look into this, of course, but a saved game would really help.

Naturally I am sorry that you haven't had much fun and I'll do what I can to rectify the situation.



smartspick -> RE: is something wrong with my AI? (10/2/2010 11:58:11 PM)

Thanks Mercenarius, I do not regret buying the game, I appreciate your work with this subject matter, I can tell there was a lot of passion in the making of the game. I will upload a save game, let me start one up.



smartspick -> RE: is something wrong with my AI? (10/3/2010 12:05:14 AM)

Mercenarious, it will not allow me to upload the .dat file on here, it says it is "unsupported". But i have the file ready for u to take a look at, it is typical of the first time I beat the AI in a few turns on the most difficult level as well.



NefariousKoel -> RE: is something wrong with my AI? (10/3/2010 12:18:48 AM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: smartspick

Mercenarious, it will not allow me to upload the .dat file on here, it says it is "unsupported". But i have the file ready for u to take a look at, it is typical of the first time I beat the AI in a few turns on the most difficult level as well.


Zip the save file and then upload it. The forum settings only allow a couple different formats.. generally zip files and a couple image types.



smartspick -> RE: is something wrong with my AI? (10/3/2010 12:59:27 AM)

it wont let me upload even a .zip file!



mercenarius -> RE: is something wrong with my AI? (10/3/2010 1:43:57 AM)

Yes, I see now that we can't attach .zip files to posts here. Please try sending me the file in a pm. If you can't pm me at all, please post something here and I'll have an administrator look into it. You should be able to attach a .zip to a pm.

Thanks for your patience. Again, please post something here if you can't get the pm to work.

By the way, did you start your games using the "Standard Move" option? It shouldn't matter that much to the problem that you have uncovered. But I am curious. Either way, I am eager to see your saved game. [:)]



n01487477 -> RE: is something wrong with my AI? (10/3/2010 1:45:44 AM)

Usually ... and I don't know in this forum thread the Zip files should be uploaded to the tech section ... the normal forum area does not support zip ...

So make a new thread in the tech area and give it a go [;)]

[edit] Yep the tech section supports zip files.



mercenarius -> RE: is something wrong with my AI? (10/3/2010 2:02:45 AM)

Thanks!



gwgardner -> RE: is something wrong with my AI? (10/3/2010 2:18:01 AM)

Four turns to defeat Rome with a siege? Could you please walk us through how you achieve a victory in four turns?

The only way you could possibly defeat Rome in four turns is to attack the city, not siege it. The city has 8 garrison units at minimum guarding it. Hannibal can probably arrive max with about 15 divisions. The innate defenses of Rome, plus its garrison, are absolutely devastating to a direct attack.

I just don't see how a four turn victory is possible. Please enlighten us.




smartspick -> RE: is something wrong with my AI? (10/3/2010 2:29:56 AM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: gwgardner

Four turns to defeat Rome with a siege? Could you please walk us through how you achieve a victory in four turns?

The only way you could possibly defeat Rome in four turns is to attack the city, not siege it. The city has 8 garrison units at minimum guarding it. Hannibal can probably arrive max with about 15 divisions. The innate defenses of Rome, plus its garrison, are absolutely devastating to a direct attack.

I just don't see how a four turn victory is possible. Please enlighten us.





I shall enlighten you. What ends up happening is the following. I DO NOT ATTACK ROME. I siege it. The AI sends a large army to attack me and the Garrison of ROme attacks me as well, in other words, both the garrison and the relieving army combine. I destroy them all in the battle and that means I occupy Rome. Its happened twice, and I've played the game throught only twice, both times on the highest difficulty. On one it was 4 turns, on the other i think turn 5. THough not longer than that.



smartspick -> RE: is something wrong with my AI? (10/3/2010 2:33:54 AM)

I repeat I Never assault ROme, I siege it. I defeat the relatively large sized garrison because I fight them in a "defense of siege" battle.



smartspick -> RE: is something wrong with my AI? (10/3/2010 2:38:06 AM)

I think, the AI sends too small of a relieving army, and it combines with the garrison in the 'defense of siege' battle and I destroy the Garrison without their bonus of behind behind the city walls. I think this is the problem. The AI should bring a bigger reliving army and not have the garrison sally.



mercenarius -> RE: is something wrong with my AI? (10/3/2010 3:21:07 AM)

I have received and reviewed the saved game of the early siege. Here is what I think:

1) You might want to try playing the game without the Standard Move option because that will add some variety and might make your usual strategy a little harder. It's something to try, anyway. If you do decide to do that, please let us know how things go.

2) I do intend to tweak the AI upon player feedback and there is some room for improvement in the AI's logic, particularly when Rome is under siege.

3) You have discovered a small Achilles Heel in the AI in this way: it's so early in the game that the AI doesn't realize how dangerous Hannibal is yet, and doesn't gather a large enough relief force. Players who besiege Rome later in the game will experience the effect of Hannibal's reputation and the AI's response to it. And then the AI will usually gather a better relief force.

4) The AI at the hard level is probably not reacting quickly enough in electing better leaders. I will have to think about this a little and see what would make a good change. I don't want to do anything major in the next patch, of course, but I can include a few tweaks to the AI in it. I am working on the next patch anyway because of the two bugs that were reported recently.



vonRocko -> RE: is something wrong with my AI? (10/3/2010 3:45:31 AM)

I just won in 2 turns. With standard setup, max difficulty. As smartspick suggested, I moved Hannibal directly to Rome on the first turn. I lost 5 units to attrition, then I besieged Rome with 6 units. They had 8 militia and 2 others. On the Roman turn, a rank4 general, with 3 units attacked hannibal. I defended the siege and won.This left Rome with 1 unit, and hannibal with 2. On my turn,I had a card that took out the last Roman unit, and hannibal just walked in! I think I would have won a battle even without the card. I have a save but can't upload to my post. I also tried again and won basically the same way.
I never saw this before because it never occured to me to go for Rome immediately. Anyone should be able to recreate this, and the strategy seems to work rather easily. This is a bummer, the game was top price!



Erik Rutins -> RE: is something wrong with my AI? (10/3/2010 4:01:05 AM)

As James noted, this is an Achilles heel we simply did not find earlier. I regret we missed it, but it will be addressed and does not reflect the overall performance of the AI - it's basically a way to get around the AI's current system of evaluating Hannibal's threat.



mercenarius -> RE: is something wrong with my AI? (10/3/2010 4:02:52 AM)

Well, I do hate to close an exploit that the players have come up with. But unless the players don't want me to, there are ways to improve the AI as I posted above. I realize that this may seem like cheating in a way. But I don't think that it is.

However, be that as it may, please try a game without the Standard Move and tell us what kind of results you get. I think that the variety that comes with that will keep you from feeling that you aren't getting your money's worth. At least I hope that it will. [&:]



vonRocko -> RE: is something wrong with my AI? (10/3/2010 4:17:11 AM)

Yes, the non-standard setup is a whole new ballgame. If only because Hannibal can't reach Rome. I'm sure this can,and will be corrected. It's a good game.
Thanks[;)]



smartspick -> RE: is something wrong with my AI? (10/3/2010 11:13:32 AM)

Glad to see we are working together to address the issues. I'll start playing on the non-standard move.



Toby42 -> RE: is something wrong with my AI? (10/3/2010 4:57:17 PM)

Well, I just tried this. I beseiged Rome on the first turn. Scipio reinforced Rome and sallied out. The Romans eliminated Hannibal after 4 rounds of combat???



mercenarius -> RE: is something wrong with my AI? (10/3/2010 5:24:50 PM)

I guess that you should have retreated. [;)]

Edit: That was an attempt at wry humor, not sarcasm. Maybe programmers should not make jokes.

Thanks for testing this. What the original poster did was to win a couple of battles and then besiege rome with a failry large army around the fourth turn.

BTW, How many troops did you have remaining when Hannibal's army got to Rome? Because Hannibal should need to make two extended moves to get there on the first turn.



Toby42 -> RE: is something wrong with my AI? (10/3/2010 5:37:30 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: mercenarius

I guess that you should have retreated. [;)]

Edit: That was an attempt at wry humor, not sarcasm. Maybe programmers should not make jokes.

Thanks for testing this. What the original poster did was to win a couple of battles and then besiege rome with a failry large army around the fourth turn.

BTW, How many troops did you have remaining when Hannibal's army got to Rome? Because Hannibal should need to make two extended moves to get there on the first turn.


Eight were left after losses and attrition. I forget how many Scipio brought to the party! Scipio reinforced by sea. I was impressed with that manoever. And yes, I should have retreated[8D].

Great Game by the way!!!



vonRocko -> RE: is something wrong with my AI? (10/3/2010 5:58:40 PM)

Yeah, with a good general, attrition, or the right cards, it seems rome can beat this, but I won 4 times like this till the romans hit the right combination. The key appears to be what general they send. The romans won in the 5th game because they finally sent scipio.



gdrover -> RE: is something wrong with my AI? (10/3/2010 8:00:11 PM)

Here are a few ideas on slight tweaks that should help this issue and also help make the game a bit more realistic:

* Only one Extended March allowed per turn (using a card or attrition)

* Storming a City results in at least one unit lost (if a unit was lost during the assault, no extra casualty is required)

* Roman City militia only sally out if the roman forces outnumber the seige force 1.25 to 1 (including them). otherwise they stay put.

* The AI will only relieve the seige of Rome if the total forces outnumber the seige army 1.25 to 1 (unless the city is about to fall).

* The AI will return armies that are overseas (Spain, North Africa, and Sicily) to Italy if Rome is under seige by an army that is greater than all Roman non-militia troops in Italy


Hope this helps.

Regards,

Glenn



gdrover -> RE: is something wrong with my AI? (10/3/2010 8:04:18 PM)

By the way, I just played my first Hard level game this morning before reading this thread. I took a conventional approach (not the blitz method listed here), and won on turn 10.

The AI did not adequately reinforce it's main Italian army before trying to lift the seige. There was still an army in North Africa, and troops in Eastern Italy that could have been brought in for the attack.

That said, the battle was still somewhat tense, as was my decision to lift thhe seige and try to fight the relieving army in the open field vs. defending the seige. if the AI was a little better about gathering enough troops before relieving the seige, it would have been a VERY tough fight.

Great game! I've played it 7 times this weekend. :)




mercenarius -> RE: is something wrong with my AI? (10/3/2010 11:24:29 PM)

Those are some good observations and suggestions. Right now I am working on tracking down those two odd bugs that were reported by ojnab_bob and Mario Vallée. But I also have in mind the problems with the AI countering the "blitz" strategy that has been discussed here. I think that I have a few fairly easy tweaks that should close this vulnerability.

I don't know exactly when the next patch will be released. I do want to try to see if we get any more odd bug reports in the next week or so. But I fully expect to include the AI improvements in that patch as well.

I appreciate everyone's input on this matter. Naturally I am a little embarrassed that my AI got broken but I am glad that people are interested in trying. [:)]

I agree about additional extended marches, by the way. I was just a little leery of adding more rules. Personally, I like something like a doubling effect: first extended march requires one card; A second one would require two cards; a third would require four cards. But I just didn't want to add another rule. The manual is pretty long as it is.

Perhaps no additional marches at all would be a good solution. I'll have to think about it. It does have the virtue of simplicity.



LarryP -> RE: is something wrong with my AI? (10/4/2010 1:09:08 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: mercenarius

... But I just didn't want to add another rule. The manual is pretty long as it is.


And an excellent manual it is too! This game has wonderful in game help and also an excellent PDF manual in two formats. I bought Civ-5 a couple weeks ago, and Hannibal this weekend. I have enjoyed Hannibal much more than Civ-5. From the tutorials on, everything is done very well.

I would buy every future game like this, and I hope there will be more. [&o]

Sorry about hijacking this thread. I couldn't contain my emotions. Back to your regular programming... [;)]



mercenarius -> RE: is something wrong with my AI? (10/6/2010 7:03:14 AM)

LarryP

Thanks for the kind words!

Now, for the original issue: the next patch should improve the performance of the AI in dealing with sieges of Rome, especially when they occur early in the game. We hope to release a beta form of that patch no later than Monday the 11th (U.S. date).



gdrover -> RE: is something wrong with my AI? (10/6/2010 9:38:13 PM)

Great support!

I continue to play regardless. I just don't try to blitz Hannibal to Rome, but rather take the 'normal' approach of:

1) Conquer Cisalpine Gaul
2) Try to draw the Romans into attacking Hannibal with a large army in the open
3) Reinforce Spain and defeat the Romans there
3) Take Genua and Pisa
4) Reinforce Italy with the Spanish army and the forces in Carthage
5) Move the massive army to seige Rome

This tends to work if I can execute it in the Advanced game.

Sometimes the AI player and the Carthaginian Suffet conspire to unhinge this in some way, but it's a good basic plan.




smartspick -> RE: is something wrong with my AI? (10/7/2010 6:10:50 AM)

Thanks Mercenarius, keep up the great support!



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