AI (ver1.0): Hosted by mindlace

[Ralph]

For those of you who think my previous post were to pessimistic: Well, i certainly hope you guys are right.
Nothing would please me more than a CIV-3 game-AI that could give these know-it-all hardcore CIV-addicts out there some “What the HELL happened?” and “Oh NO! Reloading a 10 turns before saved file just isn’t gonna help” - type of surprises. That really would be nice – wouldn’t it?

Anyway, i have some suggestions here about AI golden rules:

A GOOD CIV-AI should always pursue long-term strategies (like building terrain- and city-improvements) because it WANTS to – and short-term strategies (like building military-units) because it HAS to.
Time and time again i see AI-controlled factions in SMAC doing it the other way around, and that just dont work against most advanced players.

A GOOD CIV-AI should ONLY allow wars between AI-controlled Civ´s if the human player is behind (or equal to) it in terms of POWER and SCIENCE.
If the Human Player (= HP) speeds ahead in above areas, the AI should immediately terminate all “internal” quarrels, and instead concentrating on competing with HP. By that i DONT mean that alliances/treaties with HP should be terminated, or that everyone suddenly goes to war with you. Some of the more aggressive civ´s perhaps starts a military build-up of 15-20 units against you, before launching it, while the more peaceful ones concentrates on building terrain- and city-improvements, besides upgrading their garrison-units. The latter more peaceful approach is absolutely vital for any late-game competition that goes beyond minor “controllable” border-quarrels.

A GOOD CIV-AI NEVER let its military units wandering around aimlessly just showing off their presence (VERY common in both CIV-2 and SMAC). Any mid- and late-game AI-units (when most of the map is uncovered) should EITHER be garrisoned OR engaged in worthwhile battles. Important AI golden rule.
By “worthwhile” i mean launched military build-ups of at least (= absolute minimum) 5-10 units. Often more.

Above are just 3 examples. Feel free to contribute with your own “A good Game-AI should...” golden rules.

[Ecce Homo]

A good civ-AI should use all abilities that the human civ can use. In Civ 2, the AI does never transform terrain, use Carriers, have nearly as many Diplomats/Spies as a good player, use rivers for movement or build the Apollo Program.

[Seeker]

In regards to ideas about mini-AI personalities to remove micro-managing, look at the old example of KOEI's Genghis Khan or Romance of the Three Kingdoms game, where you would appoint lords for regions of your empire who all had different attributes like economic skill, war skill, and loyalty. In civ cities or continents could be used in place of provinces. A major part of the game would be selecting good leaders and trying to bribe or assasinate enemy leaders.

[yin26]

-=*MOVING THE THREAD UP*=-

[Cerebuz]

Anybody know anything about how you evaluate the landscape and represent strategy points in code?

And I too think mini personalities (Intelligent Agents) are the best idea yet.

/Cerebuz
strategy_gamer@hotmail.com

[Flavor Dave]

A few things that, to this non-computer guy, seem pretty simple, and that would greatly improve the AIs. Ralph, what do you think?

1. Come up with an optimum food-arrow-shield ratio, and have settlers/engineers try to achieve it. Often I've stumbled across an AI late in the game with size 7 cities, but lots of mined hills, some of which can't be used b/c of lack of food. Or the opposite situation, huge cities with lots of trade, but lacking the shields to build universities, stock exchanges, etc. And do you ever see AIs late in the game with RR'd forests? They must "irrigate" them all into plains or something. Sometimes appropriate, often not.

2. Attack in force. Number of units should be proportional to the size of the target city, or the game era. Also, when launching an assault, the AI should use a random number to divide its force. If the random number is .70, then 70% of its attack points will go in one wing of the assault, 30% in the other. Actually, to really be done right, there should be some way to keep this ratio, generally, 75% or more. Perhaps, use two random numbers, and take the one furthest from .50. Anyway, as it is now, once you see the AI attack coming, you can denude all of your other cities, b/c that's where the attack is coming, period. It would be much tougher fighting the AI if you had to worry about an attack coming somewhere else the next turn.

3. Limit the number of fortresses, and make sure they are manned. Some kind of logic loop like--after a city has an attacker and a defender, build another defender to go into a fortress. Once this defender is started, the settler/engineer assigned to the city builds on the following priority. 1st, must have roads. 2nd, prioritize this way--special resource hill, mountain, hill, river, forest, other special resource. Finally, no more than X fortress per city radius. Perhaps, City Size/5--as the city goes from 5 to 6, build a fortress, as it goes from 10 to 11, same. And, +1 fortress if the city has a WOW.

4. No more destroyer attacks!! It works once (if that), then you build the coastal fortress, and the AI is throwing away 42 or 36 shields (deity).

5. This might be hard, but program the units in fortresses to retreat to the city if they survive, but in yellow or red, and have the city's defender take its place.

[Kris Huysmans]

Why not use a learning AI ?
I think you cannot buil a strong AI with computer instinct.
But when you build an AI based on learning neural networks so that he learns of his bad chooses you will have a strong AI.
When you see that the university of Louvain(Belgium) has succesfull build an neural network to buy and sell stocks. Then I think it will be possible to build a neural network that learns civ so good that it will win the world championschip.
the best way to learn looks me:
Let the computer neural networks plays agains Beta testers to learn.

<font size=1 color=444444>[This message has been edited by Kris Huysmans (edited June 05, 1999).]</font>

[Eggman]

Please teach the computer when it is intelligent to ask for a ceasefire (like when it is over the barrell) and when it is not (when it has a huge force of reserve troops to counteract your attack). In Civ2, using the "capture a city or two, accept the ceasefire which the computer will ALWAYS offer, regroup and attack next turn" strategy was, well, silly. Even worse with the UN wonder.

Also, in all my Civ2 games, it seemed obvious that the computer player would build militaries that were 90% defensive infantry and only a few offensive units. If you crushed his offensive army, the CP would become a non-threat for a long time. If you managed to spook the computer player, they built NOTHING but defensive units, stacking them as high as 12-15 in some cities. Considering how I used to overrun their defensives eventually with artillery and especially howitzers, this is a stupid strategy. Clue the computer in that they need a balanced military. 10% offensive just ain't gonna cut it. While I like winning, being attacked effectively every once in a while would be nice.

Teach the computer to leave troops in reserve for counterattacks. I can't believe how many times I destroyed the computer's defense when I bought out (or nuked, if I was in a bad mood) the nearest border city which happened to have almost all of their offensive units. Of course, it didn't really matter since I have never seen the Civ2 CP counterattack, even in the worse situations. I had a size 25 city defended by a damaged howitzer of all things with no chance of reinforcements, and they begged for a ceasefire...

Of course, the worst I have EVER seen is when the Americans attacked my Souix border town. They destroyed the 2 defending riflemen with artillery over railroads (I was surprised! It was good strategy!) and then NEVER BOTHERED TO OCCUPY THE CITY! When I later crushed their empire, their cities were stuffed to the brim with various infantry (and no offensive units, BTW) with some cities in double digits. But the computer apparently never considered that, well, maybe I should unfortify a unit or two and grab that city from my scientifically advanced neighbor that I just declared war on in a surprise attack. Nah...

[yin26]

-=*MOVING THREAD UP*=-

[Zen0n]

Funny thing
When I'm the only one who knows the nuclear fission or/and I'm the only one who has completed the Manhattan Project, I go to enemy city, plant a nuclear device and the message appears "Mysterious nuclear blast in city of ..." .Nothing happens. It's very nice, but I'm the only one, who could do this atrocity. Please, let the computer know that.

[yin26]

-=*MOVING THREAD UP*=-

[EnochF]

Ja, der entire purpose of buildink a Doomsday Veapon is lost... if you keep it a secret! Vhy didn't you tell the vorld, eh?

That should be a new rule. One-sided nuclear deterrence. Once the human's got the Bomb, the AI should play it safe for a few years while they're building nukes of their own.

[yin26]

-=*MOVING THREAD UP*=-

[Ove]

I have posted this on the OTHER and DIPLOMACY also, but this deals mainly with AI agents.
They don't have to be terribly bright, they just have to evaluate their own priorities and then present and compete for the Ruler's (AI or Player) acceptance.

AI ministers/governors
The ministers in CIV2 were an amusing interruption of the usual chores (micromanaging cities, micromanaging units, etc.). They didn't really give any useful information, they just complained if you were not doing what they thought should be done. Who is the ruler here?

It would be better if they were able to act upon directives from you (or each other, depending on how much power you grant them) as an extra (micromanagement-reducing) layer between you and the city/regional menus. After they have been given tasks or general directives, they present you with their suggested solution(s) which you may accept/modify/decline.

example:
You have given your diplomacy minister a directive to improve relations with your neighbour.
Diplomacy informs you that your neighbours insist on a special trade relation in which they will buy weapons for food.
The ministers of trade, production and military tries to dissuade you from that course of action, because; you will lose money, your production facilities are already engaged with other orders and it is dangerous to arm your neighbour.
You instruct diplomacy and trade to make the deal anyway, but to delay the weapon shipments. Production are ordered to commence the weapon production and turn them over to military who will use them to make an attack army that can crush this insolent neighbour.

Diplomacy's directives could be shaped like this:
MISSION (to Persians):
x Improve Relations o Provoke War
Get
o Territory o Bases o Passage rights o Technology o Money o Goods o Trade agreement o Prohibition against Slavery/Ethnic/Pollution/Drug/Religion/... o Acceptance of Slavery/Ethnic/Pollution/Drug/Religion/...
Give
o Territory o Bases o Passage rights o Technology x Money (200 gold) o Goods x Trade agreement o Prohibition against Slavery/Ethnic/Pollution/Drug/Religion/... o Acceptance of Slavery/Ethnic/Pollution/Drug/Religion/...
Willingness to achieve mission goal(s) (1-10): 7
Willingness to offer gift(s) (1-10): 5
Who can sign agreement? o Agent x Emperor
Duration of mission? o Immediate o Fixed # of turns x Until an agreement is reached

[Urban Ranger]

You guys are all mad.

The suggestion to use heuristic algorithms is a good one.

There are many suggested the use of a script to drive the AI module. The one fatal flaw of this is speed. A worse suggestion is to use JavaScript/Python/etc. They are even slower. Maybe for those of you with boxes that run on 4 Pentium Pros (or at least 2 PIIs) don't care, but there are still those out there with low end (e.g. Pentium 166) machines. Using any sort of script will force the game to a crawl on those computers.

Darkstar suggested using an API approch so he can write his own AI routines. That's a lot of effort that does preciously little. How many of Civ3 customers have such inclinations and how many have the actual skills? Photoshop is a program that allows external plug-ins. Consider how much more it costs.

The client/server model is also silly. If you can only run one game at a time, why bother with the effort? Just slap the whole bloody thing on a Wintel box and be done with it. If the server can run multiple games at a time, it will be a lot more complicated, both in terms of code and pricing struture. Would you have things like a 25-user Civ3 server? Would the servers be sold seperately from the clients? Again, there seems little to be gained.

I think what is needed is a look at the AI
algorithms. The actual implementation doesn't matter all that much.

The AI algorithms should be modelled after top Civ players. Not just Sid and Brian but people who spend hundreds of hours with the games and can kick the computer players blindfolded.