Editable AI - Firaxis / Soren

[SithUK]

Hello,

It seems to me that a lot of people are pleading to have the AI fully open to editing?

I personally do not have the time to edit the AI. From reading the Civ forums both here and on CivFanatics I can see that there are many dedicated and very intillegent people who do. Doesn't it make sense to provide the tools to edit at least all the things that were editable in CTP?

I know the community did a lot of work whipping that AI into shape long after the development team had forgotten about the game.

Is it at all possible to give the AI set piece strategies? We all know that humans can do some nasty attack set pieces (combined invasions etc.). Is there no way to build a database of possible strategies the AI can call upon?

Lastly let me add that I think the Civ3 AI is quite playable. I feel I have more than got value for money! I have no idea if what I have ranted above is possible. Hopefully Soren could pop a reply stating a yes / no / maybe?

Thanks for reading,

SithUK

[Deathwalker]

Though I think openening the AI would be a good thing, some how I doudt there'll do it

[Nym]

Originally posted by Deathwalker
Though I think openening the AI would be a good thing, some how I doudt there'll do it

It would probably be to complicated to modify this core part of the game now.

[DeepO]

Indeed. that would require scripting, instead of using compiled AI. Too late for that now, plus the AI is quite decent, there is no real need to tinker with it. It's just for fun

If it would be open I'd surely have a go at certain routines, not the combat things (I'm sure other people would love improvements here), but I want more specialised worker AI (and the mood-governor could use some shaping too). As it is now, I set about 90% of my workers on automatic, using the other 10 to correct when needed, but certain things you just have to do on your own. It has improved considerably over the patches, but still... laying RR isn't their piece of cake

DeepO

[dexters]

While a option to considerably alter AI may be out of our reach, I hope we can see a more modest AI editing, if not from the fans, at least from Firaxis.

For the record, I find the AI to be quite competent and satisfactory, although as mentioned above, AI's should be capable of multiple invasion strategies.

In most games, if attached on land, AI merely moves it forces over land, and occasionally drops the the surprise attack (usually a small force) behind your lines.
Of course, the AI is known to sign ROPS and attack you where you think you're safe. Good thing.

In Island wars, where enemy AI is on a different island/continent, AI appears to land in random points, usually 1 force landing in one location, while another force lands in another area in a surprise landing.

What could be improved is a set variation on this strategy.

For island wars, AI may or maynot land in two areas. They may land a combined army in one spot. Or they may land in two or three. We don't know, and we're sort of faced with what the germans faced trying to defend the beaches of France. While the number of alternatives are estimatable, defending against all probabilities could be costly, and thus adds challenge.

As far as I've observed, most wars usually have the odd unit destroying an improvement here or there, or maybe a road to a resource. They may send artillery and ships to passively bombard, but there is no active strategy on an invasion force whose sole purpose is to make the player commit forces to fight the invasion.

The AI should be randomized so that they may attack you with the intent of causing maximum damage to your infrastructure, which means, a force going on a rampage destroying improvements. Currently, the AI landings, often defeat themselves by attacking well fortified cities -- and their lust for workers, often lead then into deadly traps. This makes it rather easy for players to either bait the AI, or sit out the assault, and in both cases, the player is in control, they wear down the AI army then send their own "main force" to mop up. If the AI is programmed to sometimes attack with the intent of destroying imporvements, and they refuse to take cities and instead sit around cities destroying improvements and starving the population, the player have no choice but to attack, not only making the game more challenging, with the player attacking fortified and fresh units, it makes for a more intricate war.

Even more interesting is to have an invasion with both strategies going. One invasion attacking cities, another invasion force destroying improvements. And in both cases, AI should have some sort of a switch that allows them to adap and change their strategy on the fly. A rampaging army destroying improvements may try to take weakly defended cities once the player has send his reserve defensive units out of the cities to fight the invasion. Or the army originally set to attack cities may switch to destroying the improvements around the city first, in a siege, then switch back to attacking the city.

Any thoughts on this? Soren, is this possible / reasonable modificaiton for a patch ? :P

[W4r_Machine]

It would be hard for the "common man" to edit an AI as complex as this.

Improvement of the AI is all that is needed, at least that's what i think.

[SABRA]

If we start to edit the AI , will this not lead to problems that could eventually result in lets say a chrash ?

[Sabre2th]

no matter what, firaxis simply can't release the code for it....they wouldn't want to let their secrets out

[Thrawn05]

Originally posted by Sabre2th
no matter what, firaxis simply can't release the code for it....they wouldn't want to let their secrets out

A year or two ago, Rebellion released the code for the game AvP:GE. I've played around with it, changing not only values, but trying to make the AI and in particularly, the AL|EN bots better (at least I think they are ).

For a few months, I've been open with the idea that eventualy, down the road, Firaxis should release the code. I would think when it's 2004, Firaxis sholud consider this.

[DeepO]

Even if I would love it, releasing the source is not going to happen. That's why I said that you need scripting if you want to adapt the AI: this way you'd be able to change / add rules, while not being able to 'spy' on the inference engine design.

Scripting is not something you just include afterwards, either you design for it from the start, or you don't use it. And it will be a lot slower, the AI is reasonably fast now for a complex thing; you don't want to wait half an hour in between turns, do you?

SABRA, surely it is possible to make an unstable AI while playing with it, the biggest risk not being that the game would crash, but that your AI gets stuck into loops: for instance a unit between two cities that each turn will switch the intention to attack between the two cities. So it will go one step forward, one step back, etc. Very hard to debug...

W4r_Machine, it may be hard for 'the common man' to have a go at the AI, but OTOH it is extremely hard to make decent graphics, and this is open for modding. Very few people are good at it, but it brings something to the community if you can play with user-generated terrain. Conceptually I don't see much difference between graphics and AI, so allowing to change one should mean you allow to change the other. However, there are some practical considerations that make it much more easy to make graphics changeable.

DeepO

[W4r_Machine]

Originally posted by DeepO

W4r_Machine, it may be hard for 'the common man' to have a go at the AI, but OTOH it is extremely hard to make decent graphics, and this is open for modding. Very few people are good at it, but it brings something to the community if you can play with user-generated terrain. Conceptually I don't see much difference between graphics and AI, so allowing to change one should mean you allow to change the other. However, there are some practical considerations that make it much more easy to make graphics changeable.

DeepO

AI has very little to do with graphics. I don't even think there's ever a game producer that released its AI coding, game engine(i.e. quake 3) yes, but not AI.

No dought it will add something to the community and add a level of play, but releasing the code is not worth it from the developers side.

[AlrightyThen]

Unfortunately

The type of AI you seek does not exist. Before you see it in games, look for it in 'real-life' military hardware, then consumer products, and even then we're talking autos, PC's, etc.

Games will be low on the list, so right now we are stuck with scripting languages that necessitate computing power. The solution for our immediate gaming future is probably mulit-gigahertz computing.

Hang in there!

[CapTVK]

Why bother fretting about Civ3 AI code when you have complete access to Freeciv AI code now?

Why not help out with that?

http://arch.freeciv.org/freeciv-ai-200207/msg00000.html

[Immortal Wombat]

Originally posted by W4r_Machine
AI has very little to do with graphics. I don't even think there's ever a game producer that released its AI coding, game engine(i.e. quake 3) yes, but not AI.

A full 'release' isn't necessary. The algorithms of the CtP1 and 2 AIs (both different) are open and known, and have enabled the modding community to substantially improve the AI performance.

Of course, that won't be needed in Civ3, but scenario AI are notoriously poor, because the default strategies won't work.

[Thrawn05]

Originally posted by W4r_Machine

AI has very little to do with graphics. I don't even think there's ever a game producer that released its AI coding, game engine(i.e. quake 3) yes, but not AI.

No dought it will add something to the community and add a level of play, but releasing the code is not worth it from the developers side.

Did you read my post?