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Strategy games where the AI doesn't cheat?

DakaSha

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gp1628 said:
DakaSha said:
gp1628 said:
Gandalf thats a load of shit. The game itself tells you that it gives gold and recource bonuses. The AI doesnt seem very smart because it is SHIT. It has nothing to do with 'random surprise element'. Its just shit. It pics random scales and magic paths in a game where random scales can mean (as you put it yourself) death before you even reach them.
I love dominions 3 but its computer opponent cheats and is STILL incredibly easy to beat on impossible (as long as you survive the first turns the ai sends armies 5x the size of yours due to said cheating)

People dont even fall for the bias you show for the AI on the shrapnel forums (which is full of dom3 fanboys). It is generally accepted that the AI is trash.

Bullshit. Obviously you are talking from the forum you espouse which is full of multiplayers. The game supports more solo players than MPers so the AI must have something going for it.

Logical fallacy

Most MPers train for MP by playing their test games with the Independents set way high, which trashes the AI. For best AI test you have to play with Indepts low. Then see if the AI doesnt do better.

Played like that and with better independents. Ai is trash

As far as cheating, it depends on your point of view. I dont consider the AI starting out with bonuses to getting bonuses to be cheating. Its just another game balance like each of the nations getting a special ability. AI gets gold and resource boost.

lol?

In fact, many of the soloers say to turn the resource, gold, supply settings higher for improving the AI.

Uhm... yes because it sucks ass and needs the (cheat) boost?

In most game programming forums the concept of the AI cheating refers to the AI using knowledge that the player doesnt have.

Nope. Cheat does not receive a different meaning in programmer circles. Cheat = cheat. Moot point anyways because if you want to call it a 'balance' feature or 'boost' it doesnt change the fact that the AI cant do well without the [INSERT WHATEVER YOU WANT TO CALL IT HERE] (Or even with it for that matter)

Its very easy to let the AI cheat in order to make it better. The AI is part of the game program, so anything the game knows the AI also knows. Getting an AI to act only on AI knowledge such as finding out where the enemy is or who is in the lead is very difficult.

Yes. It is very difficult. And Dominions is the perfect example of just how difficult it. The AI sucks badly.
 

coldcrow

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Bullshit. Obviously you are talking from the forum you espouse which is full of multiplayers. The game supports more solo players than MPers so the AI must have something going for it. Most MPers train for MP by playing their test games with the Independents set way high, which trashes the AI. For best AI test you have to play with Indepts low. Then see if the AI doesnt do better.

As far as cheating, it depends on your point of view. I dont consider the AI starting out with bonuses to getting bonuses to be cheating. Its just another game balance like each of the nations getting a special ability. AI gets gold and resource boost. In fact, many of the soloers say to turn the resource, gold, supply settings higher for improving the AI.

In most game programming forums the concept of the AI cheating refers to the AI using knowledge that the player doesnt have. Its very easy to let the AI cheat in order to make it better. The AI is part of the game program, so anything the game knows the AI also knows. Getting an AI to act only on AI knowledge such as finding out where the enemy is or who is in the lead is very difficult. Thats usually the programmers definition of non-cheating AI. Acting on player level information.[/quote]

Did you even understand Dominions 3 at all? Or did you just LARP around in it - which is fine by itself but makes your point about AI and strategy moot.
Dom 3 is about finding good spell/unit combinations and constantly strengthening your position. Praising Dom 3 AI makes me think you never used any kind of Fear/Awe or any other buffed commander. Also never used any kind of evocation/summon spamming mages. Also no kind of group/army wide buff spells which enable even small groups to beat large armies.
Ever seen an Eagle King spamming shock wave/bolt etc? Ever seen 2 hannayas with a few onis casting darkness then proceeding to spam banefires?
What do these examples have in common? Small investment beating a larger one.

The Dom 3 AI does not EVER do that at all.
 

DakaSha

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coldcrow the AI is great because it does random shit you cant predict!
Thats always been his argument when praising the dom AI xD

Of course if a player did that shit you would think they are borderline retarded
 

gp1628

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DakaSha said:
coldcrow the AI is great because it does random shit you cant predict!
Thats always been his argument when praising the dom AI xD

Of course if a player did that shit you would think they are borderline retarded

Now you are putting words in my mouth. I dont think I have ever said that the AI is great. I can talk bad about the AI also. But Im not going to be just a gamer and snipe while failing to understand the other side of the coin.

The intelligence in AI is difficult to achieve. The more complicated the game, the more difficult. The previous posters example about Eagle Kings being a great example. Do you know what kind of code it would take for even that one nation to see the problem with that one unit doing that one spell? Much less 73 unique nations.

The AI in Dom3 is a single AI for all nations with limited IF statements for special cases. It is not a total zero. If anyone bothered to read the debug files that the game can create for any turn they would see that. Its quite extensive. But that one-fits-all AI can only handle early game, maybe mid-game with some boosting. By late game the variants have become too specific for good actions. It makes up for its lack with randoms.

Even as it is now, on the max game settings it can take 10 minutes or more to process a single turn. That is pretty extreme for solo play. I dont think the game would survive having better AI. IMHO

The game has been, and continues to be, contiually patched and upgraded for free. If anyone bothers to read the debug files and come up with a specific change then I will submit it to the devs for consideration.
 

felicity

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You just admitted in your own words that Dom3's AI is shit. Can only handle early game? Goes into retard mode by mid game? Only one generic basic AI, no specific setup for each nation? 10 mins for AI processing every turn? Thanks for the revelation bro. I'm sure many will heed your warning on the shitty AI.

And yeah the patches... Dom2's AI didn't even know how to build castle and no patch fixed it until the patch that's called Dom3.
 

DakaSha

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gp1628 said:
DakaSha said:
coldcrow the AI is great because it does random shit you cant predict!
Thats always been his argument when praising the dom AI xD

Of course if a player did that shit you would think they are borderline retarded

Now you are putting words in my mouth. I dont think I have ever said that the AI is great. I can talk bad about the AI also. But Im not going to be just a gamer and snipe while failing to understand the other side of the coin.

The intelligence in AI is difficult to achieve. The more complicated the game, the more difficult. The previous posters example about Eagle Kings being a great example. Do you know what kind of code it would take for even that one nation to see the problem with that one unit doing that one spell? Much less 73 unique nations.

The AI in Dom3 is a single AI for all nations with limited IF statements for special cases. It is not a total zero. If anyone bothered to read the debug files that the game can create for any turn they would see that. Its quite extensive. But that one-fits-all AI can only handle early game, maybe mid-game with some boosting. By late game the variants have become too specific for good actions. It makes up for its lack with randoms.

Even as it is now, on the max game settings it can take 10 minutes or more to process a single turn. That is pretty extreme for solo play. I dont think the game would survive having better AI. IMHO

The game has been, and continues to be, contiually patched and upgraded for free. If anyone bothers to read the debug files and come up with a specific change then I will submit it to the devs for consideration.

:thumbsup:
 

Disconnected

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gp1628 said:
Even as it is now, on the max game settings it can take 10 minutes or more to process a single turn. That is pretty extreme for solo play. I dont think the game would survive having better AI. IMHO

The game has been, and continues to be, contiually patched and upgraded for free. If anyone bothers to read the debug files and come up with a specific change then I will submit it to the devs for consideration.

I don't really know what I'm talking about, but...

Two kind of related problems with Dom3's AI is that it can't look up and can't determine what a good choice is, so instead it checks what choices it has and picks one pretty much at random, and that it can't look up and can't determine good synergies, so when it happens to employ them it's pretty much coincidence.

I can see how even a terrible AI would need enormous amounts of thinking time to determine what a good choice is, in a game like Dom3. There's truly enormous amounts of variables involved. But I don't see any particular reason it should have to either.

One of the reasons humans are so much better, and occasionally faster, than strategy game AIs, is that we can determine sets of things that have good synergies, and don't have to re-determine what those are from moment to moment. An AI for a game like Dom3 could have a table (and potentially many sub-tables) of such things, with a couple of different values for each set, based on world awareness, funds & existing pile of playing pieces. With an approach like that the AI wouldn't need to try to do a whole lot of thinking, it would just have to check what it "knows" at a given point in time, and look up what to do based on it.

An approach like that would probably also make AI improvements easier, since it would largely consist of refining/expanding the possible choices, rather than inflating the process of how it makes decisions.

An AI like that would perhaps not be amazingly great, and most likely lack a lot of flexibility. But it would be very fast and unlikely to do anything outright foolish. And honestly, Dom3's AI as it is can't claim either. It's slow as shite and about as brilliant as a black sack of broken light bulbs. No offence intended, I too adore the game.
 

coldcrow

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What?

The only reason dom 3 has no good AI is that it is written by basically one dude (other one doing art imho). For example it would be a major deal for the AI to code just a few basic lines of play instead totally random crap. Like aformentioned lightning spam. Or: if caster/army = undead/demon then cast darkness. or code to mass some archers and cast windguide + flaming arrows. All this stuff can be countered but it would give the AI at least some power, especially if the aI employs several different tactics simultaneously.
Dominions 3 is a great game but to cite as an example for any kind of good/worthy AI is inadequate.
 

gp1628

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Feel free to submit a change.
Most efforts I have seen have made it pretty clear to the person that its not likely.

Altho some, like changing the priority of one spell over another, have gone thru. As long as it is able to be generally used for all nations in all strategies (striving for lack of IF statements)
 

ValeVelKal

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Aug 24, 2011
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All classical AGEOD games qualify.
Actually, not only does it NOT cheat, but it will probably beat you fair and square for quite a long time. THEN you can allow it to cheat by giving him a scouting bonus or something like this (you control its advantages), which it will use to beat you again.
 

DakaSha

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everybody always talks os highly of the AGEOD ai.. i downloaded it.. grabbed all my units.. sent them into the enemy RTS style.. and won. in fact i won incredibly

Uninstalled
 

ValeVelKal

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DakaSha said:
everybody always talks os highly of the AGEOD ai.. i downloaded it.. grabbed all my units.. sent them into the enemy RTS style.. and won. in fact i won incredibly

Uninstalled

Well, some historical setup are completely unbalanced - say the "Saxony Assault" in Rise of Prussia, in which the Prussian has 4 times the forces of the Saxon, and where the map is so small that there is no supply / division of forces issues between several front. Mad rush is enough - it is a "tutorial" scenario, sort of. Same with the Finnish Civil War in RUS as the Whites.

Also, in RoP, you need to have the latest patch, as early AI did good until winter arrived.

In any case, if you did that in any Grand Campaign (more than 2 years scenarios), I salute you.
 

DakaSha

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i dont really know what scenario/campaign it was. Doesnt matter to me.. i shouldnt have won :P
could very well have just been a fluke but it isnt my-type-of-game anyways so i dont care. just found it hilarious after reading about how good the ai is supposed to be :P
 

Burning Bridges

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Well, you should at least remember which game it was, don't you? Also what do you mean with "won"? You mean you won a battle or the whole scenario? And why do you play single scenarios, if you can play the campaigns? I have never even bothered to try one of the short scenarios, except the Galvez scenarioi in WiA. Simply because the campaigns can keep you absorbed for weeks.

For now I would rule out Dakashas opinion as someone who makes great claims and doesn't remember a darn thing.

Look, all AGEOD games, AACW in particular, are set up in a way that it's actually a very, very bad idea to
instantly attack the most important cities. In fact the AI sometimes does exactly that, and when I see an army under Jackson or Longstreet before Pittsbugh or New York I know that I will have won the war in 12 months. Armies so far from home eventually lose cohesion, use up their ammo/supply and eventually get defeated. You can even capture a lot of CSA material afterwards, which you don't need and they cannot afford to lose.

However, I also don't think that the AI in AGEOD games is as great as some people make it. Such claims should always be taken with a grain of salt. It is however a very complex system, and initially the AI makes fewer faults than the player, so it is a very good AI. In any case it is so complex that it's always fun to play against the AI, although lately I got fed up with winning every campaign, too. Of course there are difficulty settings to make it more unfair, but that's not my definition of fun.
 

Burning Bridges

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Raghar said:
Easily. AI is easy to do for a complex game. When a game had a lot of interconnecting variables, players are screwed and can't play optimally. While AI doesn't need to play optimally either, it can handle that load of stuff much more easily. Look at normal players, when they are pressed from multiple front, they are screwed. When theirs attacks are preempted, theirs tactic goes out. When normal players would need a long term strategy, they are unable to do it properly.
That is actually a very good point. And I think it's the reason why the AI in AGE games gets such a good reputation.

So developers, make complex games, with an AI that can moderately play the game, and praise for the AI will come all by itself.
 

Burning Bridges

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Finally, going through this thread again, I get the impression some of you guys have really strange notions about game AIs.

A good AI is any AI that can competently play a game, but computed solutions will have a certain pattern. It will be strong at the beginning, when the player is still learning the game, and the way the AI plays.

But you don't seriously expect the AI to keep an advantage over the player, even after he has adapted to the playing style of the AI, do you? If that's what you want you should play against humans, because computers are not on that level yet. For example in the Chessmaster games I can beat AI with much higher ELO ratings, simply by playing them over and over and over. And vice versa, in MP you notice that some players initially use patterns learned against the AI, and will have to re-adapt quickly against a human, because these strategies suck when you know them.

So the problem is not the strength of the AI, which is often fairly high, but the predictability of its implementation. Perhaps this could be improved even with the current technology. For example I think it should be possible to randomly update the AI with new modules, that drastically alter the playing style, without the player knowing which one is active. And perhaps someone will come up with such a system one day. But I think presently AI is simply not high enough on the agenda to justify such efforts.

Let's not forget that better AI = more replayability = less sales.
 

DakaSha

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You pretty much just sound like a pretentious retard.

For now I would rule out BB's opinion as someone who tries to sound extremely knowledgeable but really doesn't know a darn thing. (Except for the extremely obvious comments in his posts that everybody is well aware of)

:smug: See what I did there? I pulled a you.

Anyways as i said.. it may well have been a fluke. Dont shit your pants about me dissing yo game. :retarded: It may be awesome. I just dont care and that (possible) fluke was hilarious.

Anybody that actually thinks the point up there about complexity in games and how it effects AI is true needs to never talk about the subject ever again. Dead serious
 

DakaSha

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god i have to admit not remembering shit though. thats pretty bad. just know i laughed
 

Burning Bridges

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Has it struck your self esteem or what? Hey, no problem to post something stupid once in a while. But next time, if you're not prepared even to answer the simplest of questions, better not post such crap in the first place.

Anybody that actually thinks the point up there about complexity in games and how it effects AI is true needs to never talk about the subject ever again. Dead serious
This time, can you back that up with arguments please? Or do you always just "know" things?
 

Kraszu

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Burning Bridges said:
Let's not forget that better AI = more replayability = less sales.

No, mp games sell good, and they are the most re-playable games. It can make somebody buy less other games but I doubt that any single developer cares to make they competition do better, and nobody can make a game every month all this: they are making shorter games to sell more games sound like conspiracy theory with no real basis.
 

felicity

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But you don't seriously expect the AI to keep an advantage over the player, even after he has adapted to the playing style of the AI, do you? If that's what you want you should play against humans, because computers are not on that level yet. For example in the Chessmaster games I can beat AI with much higher ELO ratings, simply by playing them over and over and over. And vice versa, in MP you notice that some players initially use patterns learned against the AI, and will have to re-adapt quickly against a human, because these strategies suck when you know them.

Deep Blue?

Chessmaster is not a good example since it's primarily a game. Maybe try a chess program like Fritz which is designed with the express purpose of making its AI as strong as possible. Anyway chess is irrelevant in respect to video game AI as chess is a special case. It is very unlikely that any video game AI would receive the same devotion from its developers as do chess.

Ultimately even the best video games AI have patterns which can be exploited by human as you said but this is the least of my complaint. I am more concerned about the gameplay. Does the path to victory require in-depth planning or creative thinking? Will there be no challenge left once you have grasped the basic mechanics? Some games lure you with their complexity but once you have figured out the ins-and-outs there is no game left because the AI can't pose a challenge. On the other hand there are games that take virtually no time to learn yet they can provide consistent challenge. Challenge and complexity shouldn't be mutually exclusive but it seems in this case it very often is.
 

gp1628

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Not to paint a target on myself but I agree with Burning Bridges points much more than I do with Dakasha
 
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I don't even know or care what the argument is anymore. Viva l'apathy!
 

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