One excellant idea I heard (I think Vel mentioned it as a suggestion for Civ3 somewhere, and I really liked the idea) was that of a Playbook (like in football). Now turning it into my idea...
The AI can have Plays made available to it (added to it's PlayBook), which it can use as a high-level way of planning invasions/defenses. This is one thing, more than any other, that AIs seem to suck at in every game I've played. It can build up forces, plan a base, and collect resources with the best of 'em, but when it comes to actually launching an attack...man-o-man, do AIs suck.
When considering how human players play, they use abstract plans, much like a football "Play".
The AI could even, one day in the distant future, develop and refine Plays on it's own by generating a history of all the decisions the AI made during a game, then (perhaps with assistance from a human) evaluate the decisions it made and find out how some of it's plans worked. So if something went really Badly, but something else went Well, and it wasn't just random-number luck in either case - it could try a different course of action, and thus learn from previously played games.
But in the more immediate future, a Play would consist of something such as "If Target has some power amount in comparison to me in the late middle ages, and I think I have suchnsuch chance of a successful campaign against them, then act really nice to Target and perhaps give them (ultimately useless) gifts while building an attack force of high movement attack units and a garrison force to defend areas I take, but leaving behind suchnsuch sized Sally Force to deal with any counter-attacks or counter-invasions...then Kill Them."
There really aren't that many Plays that even humans use, but AIs rarely even manage to use those effectively. A few examples would be:
Raid-n-Sue: Hit a weaker country fast and hard with a relatively small attack force, then move in a good defense force to defend from a counter-invasion, then use your superiority to negotiate a quick and beneficial peace agreement.
Scorched Earth Blitz: Attack with a large and exclusively fast attack force, raping and pillaging (and razing) whatever you take. The key is to keep moving and do as much damage as possible to cripple the enemy force before they have a chacne to counter-attack, then retreating back to your own (defended) territory before you take any heavy losses.
Then you can later form a more standard attack force and conquer the force you are now much more powerful than.
Diversion, Attack, Assault: Launch a small diversionary strike, but large enough to draw some forces towards it. Then land your previously unknown forces from the sea (or from land if your diversion was via sea) in a relatively distant local to cause your enemy to have to pick where he'll send his forces.
Then after waiting a bit to give him chance to think that the main invasion was coming from the sea and going there, and possibly tryin to take back what you got in your original invasion, throw the rest of the units you held behind at the enemy a little bit away from your diversionary force, and maybe adding a few defensive units to your diversionary force to keep it from being crushed.
The result is leaving a very good chance that your enemy will be totally confused as to where it should send it's forces first, possibly forcing an error of spreading too thin and loosing on multiple fronts, or sending too little defense to some fronts and overdoing others causing hard losses in the those undefended areas.
Requires a pretty big force to pull off, and is risky, but if the target bungles defense it could loose in a Big way.
And many other such plans. Just even basic plans, even if they are sometimes overly rigid, would really take a lot of load off the AI to simulate things that might happen in the future and make it seem a whole lot smarter.
There are also plenty of thumbnail sketching type tactics that are used by players to determine such things as chance of success or failure, and such simple rules could be used in the near-term in lieu of more sophisticated solutions.
The AI can have Plays made available to it (added to it's PlayBook), which it can use as a high-level way of planning invasions/defenses. This is one thing, more than any other, that AIs seem to suck at in every game I've played. It can build up forces, plan a base, and collect resources with the best of 'em, but when it comes to actually launching an attack...man-o-man, do AIs suck.
When considering how human players play, they use abstract plans, much like a football "Play".
The AI could even, one day in the distant future, develop and refine Plays on it's own by generating a history of all the decisions the AI made during a game, then (perhaps with assistance from a human) evaluate the decisions it made and find out how some of it's plans worked. So if something went really Badly, but something else went Well, and it wasn't just random-number luck in either case - it could try a different course of action, and thus learn from previously played games.
But in the more immediate future, a Play would consist of something such as "If Target has some power amount in comparison to me in the late middle ages, and I think I have suchnsuch chance of a successful campaign against them, then act really nice to Target and perhaps give them (ultimately useless) gifts while building an attack force of high movement attack units and a garrison force to defend areas I take, but leaving behind suchnsuch sized Sally Force to deal with any counter-attacks or counter-invasions...then Kill Them."
There really aren't that many Plays that even humans use, but AIs rarely even manage to use those effectively. A few examples would be:
Raid-n-Sue: Hit a weaker country fast and hard with a relatively small attack force, then move in a good defense force to defend from a counter-invasion, then use your superiority to negotiate a quick and beneficial peace agreement.
Scorched Earth Blitz: Attack with a large and exclusively fast attack force, raping and pillaging (and razing) whatever you take. The key is to keep moving and do as much damage as possible to cripple the enemy force before they have a chacne to counter-attack, then retreating back to your own (defended) territory before you take any heavy losses.
Then you can later form a more standard attack force and conquer the force you are now much more powerful than.
Diversion, Attack, Assault: Launch a small diversionary strike, but large enough to draw some forces towards it. Then land your previously unknown forces from the sea (or from land if your diversion was via sea) in a relatively distant local to cause your enemy to have to pick where he'll send his forces.
Then after waiting a bit to give him chance to think that the main invasion was coming from the sea and going there, and possibly tryin to take back what you got in your original invasion, throw the rest of the units you held behind at the enemy a little bit away from your diversionary force, and maybe adding a few defensive units to your diversionary force to keep it from being crushed.
The result is leaving a very good chance that your enemy will be totally confused as to where it should send it's forces first, possibly forcing an error of spreading too thin and loosing on multiple fronts, or sending too little defense to some fronts and overdoing others causing hard losses in the those undefended areas.
Requires a pretty big force to pull off, and is risky, but if the target bungles defense it could loose in a Big way.
And many other such plans. Just even basic plans, even if they are sometimes overly rigid, would really take a lot of load off the AI to simulate things that might happen in the future and make it seem a whole lot smarter.
There are also plenty of thumbnail sketching type tactics that are used by players to determine such things as chance of success or failure, and such simple rules could be used in the near-term in lieu of more sophisticated solutions.
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