AI is now set to “Challenging”.
Challenging is a difficulty level that I’m trying to create where the AI doesn’t cheat but instead soaks up a bit more CPU. The goal is to have something that in a 1 on 1 game will consistently provide a challenge.
In a game with several players set to challenging, winning becomes something that involves serious skill since the AI will make it a point to work together.
I’ve been working on a number of game mechanic tools that let players work together in more tangible ways. When we worked on Sins of a Solar Empire: Diplomacy, we (Stardock and Ironclad) came up with the concept of treaties. I wish GalCiv had had this tool (hell, I wish WOM had it). FE has a number of treat options that will allow players to help friends and diss foes.
But for today’s tests, the goals are to see how well it plays ONE vs. ONE.
These aren’t fair fights. I’ve gotten emails from people who are concerned that the game will be “too hard”. Challenging isn’t the default setting and there are lower levels of difficulty that provide new players a reasonable challenge without getting creamed (i.e. different algorithms get used).
In the XML, there’s a new AI feature called AIintelligence that at Normal is set to 1 and at easier levels is less than 1. I use this number to determine what functions get used. Up to 1.5, the AI plays “fair”. After 1.5, I’ve written functions that let the AI do things that are less fair (like getting better start up conditions, better treasure, etc.).
For you old time 4X players, you can probably imagine all the kinds of things we can do with the AI here that aren’t normally doable in a typical strategy game. Poor Jon Shafer, his Civ V AI stuff didn’t have magic available. We do.
Anyway, let’s start with game 47…
Game 47: Challenging AI
A few caveats:
(1) A lot of new art assets aren’t in my build. That’s why there’s so much brown. So no “blasted lands”
(2) There’s only 1 tactical arena map. I see the same tactical battle over…and over…and over…please kill me.
(3) I don’t play fair. I am playing to kill the AI efficiently, not to “play” the game.
My starting position.
AI stupidly sits by while I attack his city.
Victory in 60 turns.
Score: 21
Not a good showing.
Sovereign should have ducked into town. Why didn’t he?
Coding coding coding…
Game 48:
My start is pretty decent.
The AI is on a peninsula and has no problem sending forces home before me to reinforce. He’s bottled up.
..Fixed a bug with the way the AI determines what item it should equip…
This fix actually just made a huge HUGE difference to the way the AI champions and the AI sovereign function.
Relias proceeds to kick my ass.
Badly.
Now this is pretty ballsy, the AI has calculated that Relias can take us all out by himself. I don’t see how this is possible.
Relias tries to take us all on.
A bad move. I need to look at the calculations here as to why he’s running around on his own like that.
I try to attack him outside the city a bit later and the story is different.
Now, noticing the AI has a good lead here and should be sending more units after me.
Looking at a bug.
It’s often difficult for me to tell whether a Unit is a Unit or whether a Unit is really an army. There are functions that tell this but because of all the performance optimization, there are some glitches in this area that I’m having to fix to make sure I have “live” data and not cached data. You don’t want units to be recalculating their stats very often as it adds up very fast.
Ok fixed.
oh.
Hmm.
It worked.
Oh f..ck.
Defeat in 63 turns.
Ok. enough for tonight.
