The sorian PA AI thread

Unfortunately the old thread wasn't moved over, so I'm starting this one.

@sorian, there's a typo in factory_naval_builds where the AI is incorrectly checking the Advanced Naval Fabber's build demand against AdvancedAirFabber.

Also the issue of building on top of its first metal spot seems to have been reintroduced. What happens is the AI spawns right on top of a metal spot, rolls off it, then turns around and builds a factory over it. A few patches ago this was fixed. The AI would still land on the metal spot but built its first factory without moving (thus ensuring the spot was not covered).

Another issue has seemingly been introduced and that is a delay before the AI does anything. Previously the AI would commence work the second it spawned, but if you reduced the buffer value on a factory to less than 15 (and that was eligible as an opening factory) the AI would sit at its spawn for at least five seconds (as long as it takes the smoke to clear) before acting. This behaviour now appears to be the norm, meaning the AI is at an immediate disadvantage.

All testing was done on the Meso system, build 76557.

I like the idea behind the Dox raiding groups. Will have to play with that in Queller and see how it works out.

Also, has the neural net been retrained since the AA prioritisation change?

It also tries to land it's commander via astraeus in an area covered with heavy AA, even after it's been scouted out
it does nothing when it spawns in water
it has nuke conservation issues, even when it has a nuke ready and one nuke could easily win the game for it, it will hold the nuke and wait for the other launchers to finish their nukes

so basically, AI is very flawed right now

One other thing I saw - when one AI was fighting another, the attacker had a force large enough to do significant damage to the enemy base, but instead it twiddled its thumbs inside the range of a Pelter until it was all dead. Definitely a bad place to be indecisive.

it does that a lot too, the AI loves to send little groups of units at the enemy, unless they're bombers. And even then with bombers, the AI hesitates and just loiters the bombers in range of AA anyways.

looks like we don't have to worry about sorians AI taking over the world anymore.

AI still needs a lot of work ,_, it does...alright early on but later it just cannot understand how to field large armies and build many factories

Time, my dear friend, all he needs is more time.

anyways, should we sticky this thread? because it has to do with AI....which is a major part of the game

they should just underp the other thread and move it to the general discussion. I will report it.

Working over break! Jeez! Well, have a great Christmas taking over the world!

@sorian
happy new year!

Just a thought: is it good or bad that the AI attacks locations close to a commander? Early to mid game if I find a commander, I usually attack everywhere else, because he is pretty strong, and I don't want to waste my units.

All hail Sorian.

Ok so I was fighting the AI as usual and I had some holkins at my defense against the AI. I was expecting a long battle and was preparing nukes etc. Then out of nowhere i heard that he enemy commander was defeaten, and it seems my holkins took out the AI commander!

But seriously, why didn't the AI flee? He should have fleed when he started taking damage from the Holkins. Nope, he committed suicide.

Just a theory, but having seen things like this, I think the AI fails to model threats it has not scouted. If so, it needs to learn to respond when taking damage from unknown sources. That might not be super straight-forward. As a human, I assume damage like that is either artillery or orbital and make an educated guess about the direction it is coming from.

That can be correct, the ai visited the area when it had smaller artillery that got rekt, then I rebuilt with turrets for short distance, smaller artillery and 5 Holkins or so, with my massive radar my Holkins were fully operative. So yeah, the AI didnt know of the Holkins.

Should be worked on imo. @sorian ?