The sorian PA AI thread

Discussion in 'Planetary Annihilation General Discussion' started by Quitch, December 23, 2014.

  1. crizmess

    crizmess Well-Known Member

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    It is not guaranteed that there exists a strong default choice. If you always go army first, your opponent may get to many resources.
  2. Quitch

    Quitch Post Master General

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    The odds of one choice being better than the other are vastly higher than there being a perfect 50/50 split. The times when you don't shoot enemy units which can shoot back are pretty rare in PA. The AI isn't smart enough to discern such situations and is therefore better shooting the enemy troops.

    When the AI attacks a base it loses battles it should win on a regular basis due to being distracted by non-priority targets. During the early game the AI misses critical fabber kills due to being distracted by resources.

    Killing resources is what you do when either:

    a) That group can outrun the enemy and paths by as many resources as possible

    b) You've lost the battle and killing a MEX is worth more than killing one more Bolo

    It's very situational. Killing troops isn't, it's a core part of the game and almost always a safe choice. Every enemy unit you fail to kill leads to a snowball effect in battle.
  3. cdrkf

    cdrkf Post Master General

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    So from what your saying, as a starting point at least the AI should have a targeting priority as follows (for a land platoon)

    Fabber > Combat Unit > Mex > Structures

    Is this not something you can implement yourself with Queller?
  4. Quitch

    Quitch Post Master General

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    No, AI targeting priorities are hard coded AFAIK. Whether fabbers should be ahead of combat units I'm not sure, there's numerous ways that could go wrong too, but since they die in a shot or two it's less of an issue.
  5. crizmess

    crizmess Well-Known Member

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    Despite the fact that you have a point here:
    The introductory statement is a fallacy. Say you have a 80:20 split, you might say the 80% is your default, but when those 20% false predictions make you lose all games, you might reconsider your default.
  6. Quitch

    Quitch Post Master General

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    No, I feel pretty confident that the 50/50 split is less likely than every other combination of results possible, such as 49/51, 51/49, 48/52, 52/48, and so on.
  7. crizmess

    crizmess Well-Known Member

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    Yes, but you stated that the only condition for a good or strong default to not exist is that the split is perfectly 50:50. And that is not true.
  8. Quitch

    Quitch Post Master General

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    There are only three possible outcomes:

    1. Shooting resources before troops results in more wins
    2. Shooting troops before resources results in more wins
    3. There is a perfect 50/50 split between them in terms of wins

    The only measure of success is wins. Where all other factors are identical and you change this default targeting, whichever results in more wins is the superior default.
    cdrkf likes this.
  9. Quitch

    Quitch Post Master General

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    The AI doesn't always seem to follow its own placement rules. You'll see things like this:

    2015-04-19_00001.jpg

    Even though every build order for a turret always has the following in its placement rules:

    Code:
    {
                      "unit_type_string":"Structure & SurfaceDefense",
                      "alliance":"Ally",
                      "compare_type":"<",
                      "range":75,
                      "count":1
                   }
    
  10. Quitch

    Quitch Post Master General

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    I've seen the AI on Pacific suddenly build a vehicle factory late in the day on the starting island. Is it incorrectly setting CanDeployLandFromBase to true because a Dox from its base attacked an enemy land target?
  11. Quitch

    Quitch Post Master General

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    Still seems to be a problem. Here's the AI on a user map. It produces two fabbers which do nothing but assist nearby projects. For the entire game red will never use those fabbers for anything other than assisting. It won't produce a factory (presumably because it thinks it can't afford the drain), yet nor will the Commander go and get any additional metal either.

  12. Quitch

    Quitch Post Master General

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    Once the AI has put fighters in a bomber squad it doesn't seem to use them for anything else. I watched as the AI ignored two bombers on the outskirts of its base bombing MEX. It had the fighters to shoot them down, but because they were in a bomber squad it wouldn't use them.

    It needs to be more flexible in its air behaviour. Fighter squads should be joined to bombers for missions, then detached once they get home.

    The AI should treat Combat Fabbers as fabber units, not combat units, and it should use them for reclaiming.
  13. Quitch

    Quitch Post Master General

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    You sometimes see this kind of behaviour with land fabbers on Meso. They just won't go and claim the nearby two metal expansion. They eventually get themselves over there, but it's very noticeable compared to how they behave on other maps.
  14. Quitch

    Quitch Post Master General

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    The AI has a nasty habit of pausing its bombers at the end of a run if they kill their target. It's getting them killed a lot, especially by Dox. Also it's far too slow to turn its tanks around when fighting superior numbers of Dox.
  15. Quitch

    Quitch Post Master General

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    There's a bug in the AI test AllMetalSpotsFull. At the start of a game it should be false, but it appears that it's never false. I also tested to see if the value was reversed by accident, but it's not true at the beginning of a game either. Any test relying on this check will fail.

    It's possible it gets set to true correctly when the metal spots are full, but I didn't test that far.
    Last edited: April 30, 2015
  16. mjshorty

    mjshorty Well-Known Member

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    The last 8 posts consist of Quitch talking to himself, fortunately he finds himself as very good company.
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  17. DeathByDenim

    DeathByDenim Post Master General

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    It's just bug reporting though. In fact, I caught masterdigital looking at it right now!
    (I heard somewhere we were supposed to stalk more)
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  18. Quitch

    Quitch Post Master General

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    When one requires intelligent conversation one finds it where one must.
  19. cdrkf

    cdrkf Post Master General

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    And where there is none to be had, one makes do with what is available :p
    mjshorty, dmorchard and stuart98 like this.
  20. Quitch

    Quitch Post Master General

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    After a while of building on a gas giant the AI will start building its Jigs in long lines.

    2015-05-02_00001.jpg
    stuart98 likes this.

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