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master_wesley
master_wesley
Join Date 03/2008
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[Idea] AI Personalities

March 21, 2012 4:35:46 PM from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums

I was thinking it would be cool if the AI had a third setting(or replaced the difficulty setting) that described how it behaved like cautious, forgetful, careless or analytical.  This idea is roughly based how the Worms series handles their AI.  I don't believe an AI has to be rational or efficient to be fun.  For example, lets say the cautious AI builds gauss platforms before it builds anything else or it always keeps ships at its capital(even if it isn't remotely threatened).

I think it would take out the guess work out of trying to figure out what type of behavior an AI has other than the "hard" or "easy" settings. For example, lets say a player cannot tolerate how the Careless AI never retreats from battle.  That player probably won't select the Careless AI.  Therefore, a player can better tailor each game to their liking.

Plus it would also add variety.  

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master_wesley
Ravagus
Join Date 08/2010
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Reply #1 March 21, 2012 4:42:37 PM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums

One more variable for the AI to handle in a game that's already hard for it to manage?

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master_wesley
master_wesley
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Reply #2 March 21, 2012 4:51:06 PM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums

Quoting Ravagus,
reply 1
One more variable for the AI to handle in a game that's already hard for it to manage?

I'm not all that sure, heuristics are generally faster than just evaluating a bunch of possible moves.

 

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master_wesley
Ravagus
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Reply #3 March 21, 2012 5:02:06 PM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums

Quoting master_wesley,
reply 2

Quoting Ravagus, reply 1One more variable for the AI to handle in a game that's already hard for it to manage?

I'm not all that sure, heuristics are generally faster than just evaluating a bunch of possible moves.

 

 

I don't know enough about that to say for sure so I'll settle with a maybe.

 

This can lead to some strange AI behaviour. What about a Cautious Aggressor AI? Could be fun to watch a schizophrenic AI though.

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master_wesley
rogue_ghost
Join Date 10/2009
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Reply #4 March 21, 2012 5:07:12 PM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums

watching an AI thats schizo is funny. we already had that with the capital ship loop lol

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master_wesley
master_wesley
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Reply #5 March 21, 2012 5:35:46 PM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums

Quoting Ravagus,
reply 3
What about a Cautious Aggressor AI?

Sorry if my post was overly vague.  What is so weird about a Cautious Aggressor?  Whenever a cautious AI invades, lets have them always send in a scout first to check for mines or set up a mine field in the neighboring gravity-well just in case they have to retreat and to guard against flanking or take an overkill amount of ships into a non-strategic gravity-well just in case if the area gets reinforced.

That gives me another idea, you could have it where certain AIs play against the weaknesses of the other AIs.  The analytical AI could intentional try to lure the careless AI into battle to destroy their fleet because the careless AI wouldn't retreat.

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master_wesley
Ravagus
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Reply #6 March 21, 2012 5:42:34 PM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums

Well the whole point with a Aggressor AI is that they seek battle and attack every chance they get to expand. If it's cautious that will largely negative its fast expansion.

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master_wesley
master_wesley
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Reply #7 March 21, 2012 5:51:43 PM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums

Good point but I did say that it didn't have to be efficient.

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master_wesley
Polistes
Join Date 02/2008
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Reply #8 March 21, 2012 5:54:33 PM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums

I think the cautious ai= steamroller, waits until most the odds are in its after before launching a series of assaults, stops to consolidate its gains then repeat, or maybe fall back to defend its previous conquests.

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master_wesley
Ravagus
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Reply #9 March 21, 2012 5:57:32 PM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums

And I said it could be fun.

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master_wesley
Scudhawk
Join Date 04/2008
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Reply #10 March 21, 2012 6:45:50 PM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums

I read an article somewhere about an AI project a team did. They just gave it the manual for the game and let it makes it's decisions based on the basic principals of the game. This AI outperformed even the hardest difficulty AI programmed for the game. I'm not trying to over simplify creating AI, since it's a lot of work and involves many variables (I've looked at some scripts in other games). To the point it would be interesting to have a setting for the AI that is constantly changing  where it's strategy was never certain, but all of it's motives are simple yet effective. Then again you can get this playing other players.

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master_wesley
CommZ
Join Date 12/2008
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Reply #11 March 21, 2012 6:54:57 PM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums

Yes, but that AI was for Civilization - a turn based game, and the calculations were most likely executed on moderately-sized server cluster.

 

You can't really do this on desktop computer in real time. Or do you think all the AI developers in the games industry are unskilled morons? I have never seen a truly great AI in an RTS game. Never - all of them are just predictable formulaic pseudo-AIs.

 

That said, what I would like to see in SoaSE AI is ability to use most of the game's features somewhat effectively (from frigates to titans, from capital ships to starbases...) and be able to put together meaningful defensive and offensive (!!!!) operations.

 

Then it can be brought to a competitive level by letting it cheat a bit. But cheating AI is useless if all it ever builds are frigates and Novaliths, such AI may be hard, but not fun.

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master_wesley
master_wesley
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Reply #12 March 21, 2012 7:09:10 PM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums

On the tune of a learning AI, the AI could have an array of heuristic or statical procedures to do when it wants to do something specific (it would normally choose the first procedure in the array).  That array could then be sorted based on a preference of that AI and periodic evaluation of the environment. 

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master_wesley
Scudhawk
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Reply #13 March 21, 2012 7:09:22 PM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums

Quoting CommZ,
reply 11

 

Or do you think all the AI developers in the games industry are unskilled morons? 

 

 

I don't know how you got that from my post. I wasn't calling out IC for not doing it like that Civ experiment, just giving an example of how an AI's personality could be dynamic. Without the AI in SoaSE I wouldn't play it at all.

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