For Backers Only: AI building stuff

You were right. Apparently those files were formatted using some other json formatter and not json lint. After opening up jsonlint, everything had a different order.

EDIT: IT'S FIXED. Now just to tell the AI to scout and we're golden.

Hey @sorian When the AI looks at platoon_templates and platoon_builds does it read the file form the bottom up or from the top down? Also must the platoons in platoon_templates and platoon_build be in the exact same order?

I'm asking because when I try to tell the AI to build bot/tank only platoons it stops building any kind of platoons and I'm not sure why.

So.. The Platoon_x_builds and platoon_templates seem to be very fragile things. In fact they seem to be so fragile, that sometimes they stop working without any reason. Yesterday it was working, today no. I did no changes to any of the files (I only changed Fabricator_economy_builds). What gives?

EDIT: I've found a bug wit the AI (and it's nothing that I did). Is seems that unless the AI has both tanks and bots readily available to build platoons it WILL NOT build platoons, even though it's set up to do so.

It WILL however build platoons of mixed bots or tank (but not of these don't become available early it seems).

Code:

{
    "platoon_templates": {
        "Land_Attack_Small": {
            "units": [
                {
                    "unit_types": "(Tank & Mobile) - Fabber - AirDefense - Construction - Artillery - Heavy",
                    "min_count": 0,
                    "max_count": 3,
                    "squad": "Fast"
                },
                {
                    "unit_types": "((Tank | Bot) & Mobile) - Fabber - AirDefense - Construction - Artillery - Heavy - Scout",
                    "min_count": 0,
                    "max_count": 3,
                    "squad": "General"
                },
                {
                    "unit_types": "((Tank | Bot) & Mobile) & Artillery",
                    "min_count": 0,
                    "percent": 0.35,
                    "squad": "Artillery"
                },
                {
                    "unit_types": "((Tank | Bot) & Mobile) & Heavy",
                    "min_count": 0,
                    "percent": 0.5,
                    "squad": "Close"
                },
                {
                    "unit_types": "((Tank | Bot) & Mobile) & (AirDefense | Construction)",
                    "min_count": 0,
                    "percent": 0.2,
                    "squad": "Defense"
                },
                {
                    "unit_types": "(Land | Air) & (Scout | Recon)",
                    "min_count": 0,
                    "percent": 0.05,
                    "squad": "Defense"
                }
            ]
        },

Code:

        {
            "name": "Land Attack Platoon Small",
            "to_build": "Land_Attack_Small",
            "instance_count": -1,
            "priority": 104,
            "build_conditions": [
                [
                    {
                        "test_type": "UnitPoolCount",
                        "unit_type_string0": "((Tank | Bot) & Mobile) - Fabber - AirDefense - Construction",
                        "compare0": ">=",
                        "value0": 1
                    },
                    {
                        "test_type": "FocusTargetThreat",
                        "string0": "AntiSurface",
                        "compare0": "<",
                        "value0": 840
                    },
                    {
                        "test_type": "CanAttackWithPoolUnitsLand",
                        "string0": "WL_AnySurface",
                        "string1": "WL_AnySurface",
                        "unit_type_string0": "Mobile | Structure"
                    }
                ]
            ],
            "task_type": "LandAttack"
        },

EDIT2: I bypassed the problem by allowing the AI to make Bot only or tank only platoons in addition to mixed platoons. .

Define Platoons *as MJshorty already defines standards for rankes* the absurd AI would barely be able to beat a silver player because they dont build any sort of large platoon or use them effectively....let alone mass multiple amount of platoons. Players can easily hit up to 1000 sized armies *yay* while AI struggles to use the 200 in its base sitting around =(

See the above post. It also seems that if I hive the AI a 5x economy multiplier it will happily make any platoons it can, but at 1x the units just keep idling in it's base. I'll go check again to confirm.

EDIT: It's not even that. Sure the AI is more likely to make platoons and send them out at 5x economy rating, but it's not given. When testing at 1x economic rating, in a 52 minute game I saw both AIs constantly making air, scout and orbital platoons and only 1 AI making 1 ground forces large platoon at about 44 minute mark after it had gotten nuked by the other AI into oblivion.

In a 5x Economy game I only saw 1 AI making the ground platoons while the other one happily sat in its base doing sweet FA.

In another 5x economy game I saw both AI working as intended with no oddities.

The AI builds plenty of bot only platoons under Queller, I've never seen any land platoon issues.

As I have said. It seems random. I have difficulties figuring out why doesn't it want to form platoons at one time, but happily forms them the other time.

EDIT: Could it be the fact that some RCBM unit drain power/metal to reload their ammo? Still those kinds of units are all late game units so it should form platoons in the early game.

How much processing resources does the AI get? How does it allocate those resources so that it's efficient? That there chart is cool though; lots of stuff happening within the AI's brain.

You mean other than "EXTERMINATE!"?

So no repeat of the FA vanilla AI slowdown, THANK you I followed that thread on the GPGforums for litterally years hoping someone could fix it 100%.

Was one brain per AI also true when the AI did shared armies, or was the team counted as one AI? Also, why did shared army support disappear and is it coming back?

It disappeared back when AIs were allowed to join human teams, I assume to avoid AI and human shared army teams, but you can't have shared army AI teams either.