Lieutenant Commanders confirmed

I don't see the point of playing a game if you refuse to play it. I also don't see the reasoning behind the assumption that the AI is trying to win at all cost. AI in games is supposed to be fun to play with rather than painful punishing experience that you are describing. That is the difficult part to implement. However if that part is done right this thread is moot.

Done Right? The inherent properties of the AI afford it a distinct advantage that humans can never have, the ability to compute and execute task instantaneously across ALL fronts.... This could be manageable depending on how much you dumb down the AI but as the number fronts opening up increases the AI's distinct advantage will compound and lead to the human player being overwhelmed.

Could you manage 40 different battlefronts? I couldn't.. Could you manage 20 different battlefronts? how about 10? I would barely be able to manage 10 but i think I'm being generous to myself and my RTS capabilities also assuming the current UI interface implementation. But still even then When we get to Galactic War sized battles, to say that you could process AND execute actions as fast as the AI is unlikely.

and yet with all that power humans continue to be better.


I think it's our adaptation.

Ok against ai this would be viable, as you said the ai can manipulate all of its empire at once

Agreed!

I'm just thinking of all the games I know where you can get the AI to automate tasks....

I'm thinking of Rise of Nations, Earth 2150, Civilisation, Sins of a Solar Empire, Anno, Star Drive and a couple of others.

And now I'm thinking of the games in that list where you disable that option once you reach a certain skill level...

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Yeah, If the AI is scaled down to lower difficulty via economic factors or difficulty settings but as the AI play more and more like a human, strategy wise i.e. threat responses eco management etc... and assuming you don't have an eco penalty on it the AI will win in that regard 100% of the time

Civ is a TBS not an RTS so I don't think it applies, however I agree with you that the automated workers suck ...

Sins of a solar empire..... of what feature do you refer? the scouting, or the fighters?

But no matter the skill level of the human, at an equivalent skill level the AI will always have the upper hand.. This game is a strategy game not an empire management capability game. The strategy is the game not the economy.
real time strategy game versus real time economy games lol... doesn't sound fun.

my point is that if I want to test my strategies against an AI of higher difficulty without physical or economic handicaps I wont be able to do that with larger maps due to the processing and execution disadvantages thatcome with being human.

Civ mismanages your city economies. You can get the AI to automate some aspects of your cities, so you can focus on more important stuff. As you were talking about getting the AI to automate macromanagement stuff, it doesn't really matter that it's TBS not RTS.

If you lose your connection in Sins, the Artificial Idiot takes over until you can regain your connection. At least that's what I've heard. And of course you can also get it to mismanage your units abilities and attack targets in general.

Sorry - the point of my post was that the objection that using the AI to give you a leg up always means that you'll win is unfounded. The AI is much more easily tricked than a human.

I understand your post now, you're correct the AI is able to be tricked due to the threat response mechanism not being the best.. and the AI is only equipped to respond to certain threats... humans have the advantage to create new strategies but that is nothing compared to instantaneous action

Rise of Nations and Earth 2150 both had assistive AI.

Earth 2150 AI was pretty stupid. It really just micromanaged stuff for the player (like base defences). It was best for that. The actual research and production behaviours I never found any benefit from.

You could write scripts for different units though. That was pretty powerful. You could tweak behaviours on an individual unit basis to your liking. (i.e. make your detection units scout the map automatically)

Rise of Nations had a total AI. Dual control of the game with the AI. Nothing wrong with it at the end of the day.

I'm absolutely in favour of the idea.

Instantaneous action is sometimes bad. Early game you have to fight the AI to do the right stuff. Mid game you have to keep it on track. Late game it's reached the point where you are too far to care.

I guess ideally, the whole game would work in such a way that the player is the defining force, and your other units kind of do their own thing.

In regards to instantaneous action and AI persistency to override commands i believe I heard on a stream that sorian was working on this because people want to play with the AI

It's because massive APM is only useful if you're using it to achieve useful things. Rapidly clicking your bomber squadrons to their doom on three fronts is not an advantage.

Unfair AI vs Humans

BRING IT ON!!!

no AI gonna beat me !!!! I wont let it.

Playing better feels good.
Playing worse feels bad.
A good AI playing for you feels handy.
A bad AI playing for you is liquid RAGE.

That is all.

I think I have confidence in sorian's capabilities.. That would be a scumbag steve moment if he made team AI worse the a pile of bricks AND Override Ever user commands

Sorian definitely has some skill, but there are some things an AI just can't do well. In those situations a bad AI may be worse than no AI at all.

Whether or not instantaneous reactions and actions is important depends largely on the game mechanics. The developers of PA have from time to time said that they don't want micromanagement to be a huge determining factor.
When micromanagement is less important the instantaneous reactions and actions of the AI matters less.

I think you're misinterpreting what I mean.....Instantaneous action as in empire management not necessarily armies. The AI can Instantaneously Build ques on 10 different planets. Even with area commands in place now, do you think (as the games get LARGER) that a single human can compete with that disadvantage? Or keep up with the speed that that the ai is afforded for not having to traverse a user interface?

I agree that sorian has skill and he won't put an unpolished piece of $%*^ in the game. But this is an option that i'd like to see exist and if done Correctly this has the potential to be one of the many huge achievements of this game.

No other RTS or 4x that i have played has had a competent AI assistance/ automation system built in to it. With the scales this game will be played at (against player but primarily AI) it will help speed the natural progression of games and level the playing field against AI's respectively.
I by no means want this Supplemental AI to be a thing that can override skill. A Better player should be able to wipe the floor with these "assistant commanders... drones.....whatever" 100% of the time. I'm not looking to create a crutch against "lack of skill" I want to see something that will take care of the monotonous early game tasks fairly efficiently later in larger games.