RE: Question on AI difficulty (Full Version)

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UndercoverNotChickenSalad -> RE: Question on AI difficulty (4/10/2004 10:12:40 PM)

I think there is a certain incompetance humans have that is impossible to program [:'(] Something about pros being predictable but a newbie might do something so ridiculous that it catches you totally by surprise [8|]



mogami -> RE: Question on AI difficulty (4/11/2004 5:50:57 AM)

Hi, One of the great myths with non chess players is that by doing the unexpected you can confuse the masters. There are reasons for a person becoming a master. First they understand the game and know what is possible and what is just silly. Making crazy moves against a master is a certain means of losing badly. Against a master you need to make simple logical solid moves. You need to know why you are making your moves and what the position will and will not allow. You can't "outsmart" or "confuse" the master all you can do is not allow him any weakness or crack in the position he can exploit. The master understands the only valid reason for an attack is a weakness in the enemy position that he can operate against.
It is not possible to foresee what positions might arise 400 turns into a 1600 turn game. The AI cannot be programed in advance to do "unexpected" things. "Unexpected" usally means unjustified, risky and plain old stupid.
To make the AI "smarter" it would need to be programed to assign a numerical value to all the possible situations in existence at the start of the turn (it would need to recount each and every turn) It would then need to examine all the possible changes (each and every turn)
Making the AI able to this is not hard. But then you would only be making 1 turn every 3 days and the computer would need to be allowed to stay on so the AI could think between turns.
Preprogramming strategy will only produce a set of human players that have learned to exploit the plans. The plans would have no bearing on the actual course of the war.
A few examples: Some Allied players will run from the SRA when the war begins. They will transfer all the airgroups to bases the Japanese will not overrun. All the ships will run to Ceylon or Darwin. LCU's will be evacuated where possible. This Allied player will remain only at a few bases far from Japanese power and wait for reinforcements to arrive. Risk nothing and go slow.
Another Allied player will mass what forces are present in SRA at start and look for a target he can defeat. He will hope to catch underescorted Japanese TF's outside Japanese LBA but he will fight.
A third Allied player will direct everything in SRA to attack the nearest Japanese target no matter what.
The non smart AI will need to have instructions to handle each type and it will need to know how to recognize what type it is encountering and how to tell if the opponent changes style. (Style is a good word. I think instead of historical hard and very hard the settings should be called select AI style because the historical level only refers to weapon accuracy and effect and not the operational course of the war. Styles would be Cautious, Balanced and Aggressive. Cautious means the AI will not be likely to take risks and will strive to have a numerical advantage at points of contact. Balanced will be a mix of the two and aggressive means the AI will only be interested in killing the enemy no matter what the cost (it will still look for the safest means of doing this but it will direct it efforts towards attacking the human player where it feels he is the weakest)
Here no pre instructions are required but the human player will have to select how much time the AI gets per turn to think. The more time allowed the better the AI should preform. (all other things being equal the more time you give a calculator to calculate the better it's calculations will be)



ZOOMIE1980 -> RE: Question on AI difficulty (4/11/2004 7:43:10 AM)

Once again you make a poor case. I've programmed various AI algorithms for over 20 years. You have the basis mostly correct, but the resourse claims are ludicrous. The notion that it would take an AI 3 days per turn to assign value to all the possible actions it would need to take each turn is ridiculous. The notion that a "smart" AI need consider 400 turns in advance is also nonsense, even against a "master". Also completely undefined is just what, in context of this game, is a "master". How long does it take a player to play a 1600 turn game to become a "master"? At best, a few players will play enough to get "good". Most will get to be merely reasonably competent.

I absolutely guarantee, one dedicated professional could develop a chess-like AI that could look 15-20 or so turns in advance and give 80-90% of all the people that will ever buy the game, a truely challenging game against a very intelligent API and be able to do with the AI taking more than several minutes on a PIV 3.2GHZ machine, to calculate it's best response. Certainly less than hour or so. Much less for lower intelligence settings.

But even forgoing that genre of AI, while tedious, a dedicated developer could develop enough preprogrammed strategies each with several possible strategic branches during the course of the game, based on general human opponent strategy, to keep even proficient players somewhat off gaurd, and keep the AI from being overly predictable.

What I continue to see from the development team here is an attempt to justify why the AI is well down the priority list of the game. Hopefully, after the realse, if successful enough with enough cash flow, that someone will decide to put some significant effort into an a major AI upgrade patch down the road.



pasternakski -> RE: Question on AI difficulty (4/11/2004 7:50:57 AM)

And please take a look at what Brad Wardell's people have done in terms of having the AI working in the background while you take your turn. I think that this may be one of those revolutionary breakthroughs we are looking for.



mogami -> RE: Question on AI difficulty (4/11/2004 8:08:56 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: ZOOMIE1980

Once again you make a poor case. I've programmed various AI algorithms for over 20 years. You have the basis mostly correct, but the resourse claims are ludicrous. The notion that it would take an AI 3 days per turn to assign value to all the possible actions it would need to take each turn is ridiculous. The notion that a "smart" AI need consider 400 turns in advance is also nonsense, even against a "master". Also completely undefined is just what, in context of this game, is a "master". How long does it take a player to play a 1600 turn game to become a "master"? At best, a few players will play enough to get "good". Most will get to be merely reasonably competent.

I absolutely guarantee, one dedicated professional could develop a chess-like AI that could look 15-20 or so turns in advance and give 80-90% of all the people that will ever buy the game, a truely challenging game against a very intelligent API and be able to do with the AI taking more than several minutes on a PIV 3.2GHZ machine, to calculate it's best response. Certainly less than hour or so. Much less for lower intelligence settings.

But even forgoing that genre of AI, while tedious, a dedicated developer could develop enough preprogrammed strategies each with several possible strategic branches during the course of the game, based on general human opponent strategy, to keep even proficient players somewhat off gaurd, and keep the AI from being overly predictable.

What I continue to see from the development team here is an attempt to justify why the AI is well down the priority list of the game. Hopefully, after the realse, if successful enough with enough cash flow, that someone will decide to put some significant effort into an a major AI upgrade patch down the road.


Hi, I don't think I suggested that the AI would need to look 400 turns in advance. I think I said a programmer could not pre programe strategy 400 turns in advance because he will not know what transpires in those 400 turns.

Why don't you help out and post strategy they can pre program for the AI to play Allies or Japanese for scenario 15 (the complete war Dec 41 to June 46)
It would help if you could define all possible courses the war could take because having the AI following a pre planned stategy that has no relation to the current on map situation is worse then having a merely stupid AI.

Also I was not saying there were or would ever be masters of WITP. I said novice chess players that think they can confuse master chess players by making "unexpected" moves lose the game faster then if they stick to simple but solid moves. It does not matter if the master can predict them as long as they do not present him with a weakness that he can then exploit to his advantage. A master will see and recognize a weakness and "unexpected" moves are where they generally occur.

I don't mind being rebutted but I do mind be rebutted using points I did not make. I'm sorry if I was unclear.
I play high dollar ,high rated chess machines. At their fastest settings they are all at least 400 points (USCF rating) below what they play at their slowest settings. Just don't play where you try to out calculate them. Play solid closed long term positional chess and watch them suffer breakdowns. (Rookies open the position and then try tactics against a computer) Also most chess programs have an opening libary where the past 300 years of grandmaster chess is stored. The program just checks for positons that match one from it's libary. (so it is not really understanding or thinking just plagerizing history) It is illegal for a human player to consult such a libary during a game. In matches where the libary is removed the program has a dramamatic drop in results. Chess programs have scored their highest in "Blitz" games where they can use their libaries and calculating powers in tactical games to advantage. They remain almost hopeless when deprived of the libary and are forced to play slow closed strategic games. (They are suckers for material sacrifice and will never be able to understand the positional nature of such sacrifices because the grandmaster can not explain it only knows from experiance what it means and how to exploit it. )



Mike Scholl -> RE: Question on AI difficulty (4/11/2004 5:47:52 PM)

MOGAMI One thing you are forgetting in your arguments here is that compared to
WITP, Chess is a VERY SIMPLE game. I'm not talking in terms of strategy, just in
terms of possibilities. Chess you move one piece at a time, which can interact (take)
at most one piece at a time. And can move in a few well-defined and limited ways.
In WITP, every asset on a on both sides can be "in play" at the same time, some con-
strained by various forms of geography, some not. Some pieces "carry" other pieces.
The combine in different ways in attacks on one or several other pieces at the same
time.
Good Chess programs are available, Great ones are possible but not readily available.
But a just "good" AI Program for WITP would need about 100 times the resources as
a "great" chess program just to keep up with the millions of possible variations that
can arise. It's a neat goal, but not realistic currently.



pasternakski -> RE: Question on AI difficulty (4/11/2004 6:24:29 PM)

Well, let's think about the complexity of chess for a moment. There are only 32 pieces, it is true, and only 64 squares on which they can stand.

What makes chess a tremendously complex game for the computer to play is the range of possibilities over the course of several moves. Human players discard tens of millions of those threads of play without even thinking about it. The computer, on the other hand, has to consider every single one of them.

WitP is a very different proposition, it seems to me. Each "piece" has a limited role and capability. The computer is not really looking at a game map and is not calculating on the basis of what it "sees" and "knows." It is merely applying coded formulae in lockstep fashion to generate a result that can be translated, through the game's graphics, into something the human player can see and interpret. This makes the AI very much a closed system. What I suspect can be done to improve AI play is to loosen the formulae that are applied and add alternative sequences that can be triggered either by the existence of certain preconditions or, in some instances, even randomly.

Of course, I don't have the slightest idea of what I'm talking about.



Mr.Frag -> RE: Question on AI difficulty (4/11/2004 6:38:13 PM)

quote:

Of course, I don't have the slightest idea of what I'm talking about.


[:D]

Worthy of a tag line!



Mike Scholl -> RE: Question on AI difficulty (4/11/2004 8:10:56 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: pasternakski

Well, let's think about the complexity of chess for a moment. There are only 32 pieces, it is true, and only 64 squares on which they can stand.

What makes chess a tremendously complex game for the computer to play is the range of possibilities over the course of several moves. Human players discard tens of millions of those threads of play without even thinking about it. The computer, on the other hand, has to consider every single one of them.

Of course, I don't have the slightest idea of what I'm talking about.


And if WITP had only 64 hexes, and 16 pieces on a side, it WOULD STILL BE MUCH MORE
COMPLICATED for the computer. Instead of looking for the "best move" for one piece,
it has to find the best move for ALL of it's pieces, some of which will be acticing in unison
to accomplish a single mission. Then it has to analyze the other side's potential moves
for ALL of it's pieces, and how the potentialities will relate to what it's trying to do. As
WITP has a LOT more "squares", and a LOT more "pieces" Not to mention that ALL of
your opponants peices can move simultaneously with ALL of yours! So while you were
probably making a "funny" I think you got your last statement correct.



Mr.Frag -> RE: Question on AI difficulty (4/11/2004 8:16:55 PM)

Don't forget the obvious point ... there is no fog of war in chess.

You get to see all the information all the time and there are only 6 pieces with very specific rules of movement, not 16 on each side ... a rook is a rook is a rook. Does not matter who owns it as it does not move differently for white or black.



pasternakski -> RE: Question on AI difficulty (4/11/2004 8:18:10 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Mike Scholl
So while you were
probably making a "funny" I think you got your last statement correct.


At least I didn't miss on everything.

I still disagree with this analysis. The various units in WitP are not "pieces" in the sense of chess pieces. They have significant limitations on the number of different things they can do, and these are strictly dictated by the game's code. For example, a ship can be either in a TF or in a port. The difficult part, of course, is getting the AI to have some grasp of the overall situation in order to do things that aren't ineffably stupid.



Mike Scholl -> RE: Question on AI difficulty (4/11/2004 8:25:42 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: pasternakski

At least I didn't miss on everything.

I still disagree with this analysis. The various units in WitP are not "pieces" in the sense of chess pieces. They have significant limitations on the number of different things they can do, and these are strictly dictated by the game's code. For example, a ship can be either in a TF or in a port. The difficult part, of course, is getting the AI to have some grasp of the overall situation in order to do things that aren't ineffably stupid.

And you are saying that there are NO limits on the moves of chess pieces???? Last time
I played there were pretty rigid limits on what chess pieces could make what moves.
And I've yet to see the chess rules that say "OK.., both sides plot moves for all your
pieces for this turn---and then execute them simultaneously! Not trying to put you down,
but I still think your arguement pretty much DOES "miss on everything".



pasternakski -> RE: Question on AI difficulty (4/11/2004 10:44:17 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Mike Scholl
Not trying to put you down,
but I still think your arguement pretty much DOES "miss on everything".


You know, Mike, your mother never loved you.



Mike Scholl -> RE: Question on AI difficulty (4/11/2004 11:55:37 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: pasternakski

You know, Mike, your mother never loved you.


Yea..., and your's swam out to meet troopships. If this is the level of your intellectual
discussion---I can do with out it.



pasternakski -> RE: Question on AI difficulty (4/12/2004 12:11:50 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Mike Scholl
Yea..., and your's swam out to meet troopships. If this is the level of your intellectual
discussion---I can do with out it.


How did you know - were you waiting to pull her out of the water?

Look, my friend, I was just trying to inject a little levity into a discussion that had gotten too serious and gone on for too long. I have said all I have to say about the compexity of chess vis-a-vis wargame simulations and do not want to Brady it to death. Suffice to say that we disagree and that I believe customers who want to play against the AI deserve better than "Well, it's tough to improve on, so we ain't gonna."

Just remember. In four turns, a queen in chess (alone on the board) can make 16,400 different sequential moves (mom was never that talented, especially around sailors).



Mike Scholl -> RE: Question on AI difficulty (4/12/2004 1:55:52 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: pasternakski

Look, my friend, I was just trying to inject a little levity into a discussion that had gotten too serious and gone on for too long. I have said all I have to say about the compexity of chess vis-a-vis wargame simulations and do not want to Brady it to death. Suffice to say that we disagree and that I believe customers who want to play against the AI deserve better than "Well, it's tough to improve on, so we ain't gonna."


So why didn't you just say this. I have no argument with the idea of wanting designers
to provide better AI's. Our point of dissagreement lies soley in the nature of this game.
I just don't think current capabilities will allow that much improvement in an air/sea/land/
logistics/tactical/strategic game. Too many variables. If Gary can pull it off.., Great.
But I don't think players should get their hopes or expectations raised. It will still be a
great e-mail game with real opponants. And there are still realistic "improvements" out
there to be made. I just don't see the AI as one of the areas we can realistically hope
for much improvement in at this stage, and don't want to see 2by3 hounded into trying
to do so. If you have some coding ideas that will lead to such a breakthrough I'm sure
every game designer would love to hear them..., and I'd love to play them.



ZOOMIE1980 -> RE: Question on AI difficulty (4/12/2004 8:13:45 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Mogami

quote:

ORIGINAL: ZOOMIE1980

Once again you make a poor case. I've programmed various AI algorithms for over 20 years. You have the basis mostly correct, but the resourse claims are ludicrous. The notion that it would take an AI 3 days per turn to assign value to all the possible actions it would need to take each turn is ridiculous. The notion that a "smart" AI need consider 400 turns in advance is also nonsense, even against a "master". Also completely undefined is just what, in context of this game, is a "master". How long does it take a player to play a 1600 turn game to become a "master"? At best, a few players will play enough to get "good". Most will get to be merely reasonably competent.

I absolutely guarantee, one dedicated professional could develop a chess-like AI that could look 15-20 or so turns in advance and give 80-90% of all the people that will ever buy the game, a truely challenging game against a very intelligent API and be able to do with the AI taking more than several minutes on a PIV 3.2GHZ machine, to calculate it's best response. Certainly less than hour or so. Much less for lower intelligence settings.

But even forgoing that genre of AI, while tedious, a dedicated developer could develop enough preprogrammed strategies each with several possible strategic branches during the course of the game, based on general human opponent strategy, to keep even proficient players somewhat off gaurd, and keep the AI from being overly predictable.

What I continue to see from the development team here is an attempt to justify why the AI is well down the priority list of the game. Hopefully, after the realse, if successful enough with enough cash flow, that someone will decide to put some significant effort into an a major AI upgrade patch down the road.


Hi, I don't think I suggested that the AI would need to look 400 turns in advance. I think I said a programmer could not pre programe strategy 400 turns in advance because he will not know what transpires in those 400 turns.

Why don't you help out and post strategy they can pre program for the AI to play Allies or Japanese for scenario 15 (the complete war Dec 41 to June 46)
It would help if you could define all possible courses the war could take because having the AI following a pre planned stategy that has no relation to the current on map situation is worse then having a merely stupid AI.

Also I was not saying there were or would ever be masters of WITP. I said novice chess players that think they can confuse master chess players by making "unexpected" moves lose the game faster then if they stick to simple but solid moves. It does not matter if the master can predict them as long as they do not present him with a weakness that he can then exploit to his advantage. A master will see and recognize a weakness and "unexpected" moves are where they generally occur.

I don't mind being rebutted but I do mind be rebutted using points I did not make. I'm sorry if I was unclear.
I play high dollar ,high rated chess machines. At their fastest settings they are all at least 400 points (USCF rating) below what they play at their slowest settings. Just don't play where you try to out calculate them. Play solid closed long term positional chess and watch them suffer breakdowns. (Rookies open the position and then try tactics against a computer) Also most chess programs have an opening libary where the past 300 years of grandmaster chess is stored. The program just checks for positons that match one from it's libary. (so it is not really understanding or thinking just plagerizing history) It is illegal for a human player to consult such a libary during a game. In matches where the libary is removed the program has a dramamatic drop in results. Chess programs have scored their highest in "Blitz" games where they can use their libaries and calculating powers in tactical games to advantage. They remain almost hopeless when deprived of the libary and are forced to play slow closed strategic games. (They are suckers for material sacrifice and will never be able to understand the positional nature of such sacrifices because the grandmaster can not explain it only knows from experiance what it means and how to exploit it. )


First off, I largely disregard the chess analogy as appropriate, at least in the notion that every unit on the map is a chess peice and every hex a square. You people seem totally incapable of thinking outside the box when it comes to creating a decent AI for a turn based wargame, basically because you simply do not want to be bothered at this late date.

From what I've seen on this forum during this discussion is CLEAR indication that the majority of potential purchasers will NOT be playing this game via e-mail, or hot-seat, but playing solo. That should be input enough for you people to devote a significant amount of time after release for a major AI patch upgrade.

And such an improvement is not anywhere NEAR the difficulty you are making it out to be. Like I've said, I've worked on AI's for the Air Force and Army off and on for over 20 years. The job can be done, and it can be done to perform reasonable on today's computers and there are a LOT of AI advancements out there, if you care to take time to research them.

Most, the VAST majority of the purchasers of this game, will be solitare players. They deserver better than a 1985 vintage AI.



ZOOMIE1980 -> RE: Question on AI difficulty (4/12/2004 8:32:17 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: pasternakski

Well, let's think about the complexity of chess for a moment. There are only 32 pieces, it is true, and only 64 squares on which they can stand.

What makes chess a tremendously complex game for the computer to play is the range of possibilities over the course of several moves. Human players discard tens of millions of those threads of play without even thinking about it. The computer, on the other hand, has to consider every single one of them.

WitP is a very different proposition, it seems to me. Each "piece" has a limited role and capability. The computer is not really looking at a game map and is not calculating on the basis of what it "sees" and "knows." It is merely applying coded formulae in lockstep fashion to generate a result that can be translated, through the game's graphics, into something the human player can see and interpret. This makes the AI very much a closed system. What I suspect can be done to improve AI play is to loosen the formulae that are applied and add alternative sequences that can be triggered either by the existence of certain preconditions or, in some instances, even randomly.

Of course, I don't have the slightest idea of what I'm talking about.


If the chess analogy holds at all, it holds only in the broadest sense. At least at the first level of improvement I could envision for an AI. Based on what I know, the analogy adds up to WitP having about half dozen squares, about a dozen or so "peices", and only about 20 or so moves for the entire 1600+ turns of the game.

At least, that's how I'd start. And the drill down in future phases. And the notion of working in the background in a separate thread while human is making their move is the exact type of resource management I'm alluding to.



Raverdave -> RE: Question on AI difficulty (4/12/2004 8:34:02 AM)

I am inclinded to disagree that the vast majority of players will use the AI, this is based on what I have seen with UV. ZOOMIE1980, I am sure that Matrix would welcome you to work pro bono on AI, all you have to do is offer.



pad152 -> RE: Question on AI difficulty (4/12/2004 9:34:58 AM)

Just due to time restrictions, most people will play WITP in single player mode.

I'll bet most people aren't willing to wait a half an hour for the computer to plan it's move. Read the editor doc that was posted it will give you some insight into the computer AI.

The truth is, there is no such thing as an AI, there are expert systems but no intelligence behind them. The biggest problem with expert systems is the people doing the programming aren't the real experts when it comes to the subject matter. A good expert system can do some very clever things, like fly a plane for example, but it's not intelligence.

Computers get faster and faster, but aren't getting any smarter. We are still stuck in the stone age when is comes to software.



soeren -> RE: Question on AI difficulty (4/13/2004 11:34:37 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Damien Thorn

Does anybody remember the game "Archon" back in the Atari 800 (and maybe Apple II) days? It was a chess-like gmae with tactical combat. The AI was very good, both in where to move and the execution ofthe combat phase as well. All that in a 48k game.


One of my favoured games back then. Make's me feel old just to think about how long ago that's been.[:)]



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