For Backers Only: AI building stuff

Yes, thanks @sorian !

OMG the AI has taken RTS masterclasses!

Sorian I just wanted to say I'm a long time fan of your work since you started tweeking the supreme commander ai, and I stalked your blog when you were working on supcom 2's ai, and I'm just so glad they got you to work on the ai of planetary annihilation, it's awesome.

I know it's early work, but to me the ai already feel a bit smarter than the one you modded in supcom, I just love how it stop a few meters ahead of my tower's line of sight to gather their troop in a blob of doom before rushing in. In supcom it didn't bother doing so, using formations only sometime. It might also just be an happy accident, but I was surprised when it stopped its troops behind a mountain to attract tower fire while a small group of advanced bots came from the other side razing everything. And it's not affraid to walk a really, really long way to the other side of the planet to attack the weak side of my base. Most human player don't bother unless it's a small world cause they're impatient and will just gather a huge blob of thanks or spam artillery.

I also noticed the ai doesn't send its fabs to the grinder, if they get attack they try to get the hell out and take its nearest soldier to defend them =D

I did notice that the ai seem to not reclaim and rebuild on the destroyed metal extractor, but I guess it's just not implemented yet.

You're doing a great job and I look forward teaming with my wife to fight your AI in the Galactic war XD

Keep up the awesomeness!

If you still dont have that: try reversed integrated cost field: the unit that wants to go somewhere is the goal, you do the integration of the ground cost once, where ever you want to go now check if the integrated cost there is under UNPASSABLE_VALUE

Also this could be done recursive, if it can get to a goal prior calculated, it can also get to all places that goal could get to (reverse logic here)

Would you mind posting a simplified version of that plan here? As a programmer I'd LOVE to see more of the logic behind PA.

never the less the current lvl would be perfect for casual easy to win games incase somebody dont want a challenge while they learn the game perhaps it could be made into a casual beginner mode

Great work by the way... The path finding really needs some serious work as the AI units and I mean a **** load of units will get stuck in a v shape shore that points toward the ocean... Also some metal points are or become invalid and the AI will just sit there and not do anything because its trying to build a metal extractor where it cant... Also I was expecting a combination of air and ground attacks but its only sending ground attacks at the moment... It does create fighters that patrol around its base but no bombers are ever created... It does scout but it wont attack anything else if I start building on another part of the map... I will start testing with different planet sizes to see if the AI reacts differently... But if the path finding around buildings in your base and in the environment are fixed this will not only help prevent the AI or our units from getting stuck but if the AI is aware of these and knows how to navigate around them that will help the AI a lot more... For now I am trying to create a planet with as little obstacles as I can so it wont get stuck... Be nice if I can make a plane planet with no mountains or cracks...

1. AI gets stuck and tries to build on metal points that are not buildable on and the AI just sits there... Screen included...
2. AI gets stuck on v shape shores...
3. AI no longer attacks with Bombers... I was expecting attacks from both bummer ...
4. AI will only focus on T1 buildings but wont use T2 unless I destroy its T1 buildings then it will finally start to create and use T2...
5. AI is not really expanding or building on metal points not to far from its location...

I think the latest patch breaks the AI as it builds a lot of ground or air units and it never attacks...

I just realized the AI needs to do more scouting until it finds the enemy...

That's what I'm calling my attacks from now on

"Hey stop attacking me, I thought we said cease fire!"
"Don't worry, it's just a huge blob of thanks"
"Oh.. well in that case no worr- AAAAAAHHHHH!!!"
"You're welcome"

Lol XD


Oh and Sorian, do you plan to have the ai taunt you like in forged alliance, or ways of giving commands when we team with it?

I have found that the AI commanders on the current build tend to ignore being attacked. I attacked one with ships and it just did not try to run away. It just kept building what it was building till it was to late and blew up. It did attack with some bombers, but only a couple.

The AI thinking:"Why would I build bots if I can simply nuke him?"

wooops

You may want to have the AI at least build Anti-Nukes. I did not realize he does not build Anti nukes and launched 1 at him. It suprised me it got there,

Hey Sorian, Good work on the AI so far and in the past on previous games.

I have a question and excuse my ignorance if this has be asked/talked about or implemented before:
Will you ever use a threat map to help AI determine good/bad locations of the enemy to attack?

I ask because in many RTS games I've played including SupCom with your previous AI's (which have been fun) I've noticed that the AI often attack the same locations over and over even if all its units die without doing much damage. Listening to how PA works (with cost maps and flow fields for AI path finding) I was thinking it might be nice to add a layer that AI units use that makes it more costly for units to cross if a lot of death happened in a area without much reward, in other words, damage for and against.

Example:
If the AI gets dealt a lot of damage without doing much in return in a specific area then that area should become more expensive in the cost map and be less likely to path through it, avoiding heavy defence. If the AI deals a lot of damage and doesn't receive much in return in an area then that area should become cheaper in the cost map and should be more likely to path through it, attacking weakly defended areas. This threat map cost should probably also decrease overtime so AIs that get beaten to a pulp eventually try to attack that point again, just not in the immediate future.

I know you're still in the early days of developing the AI for PA but I'd like to know if this sort of strategy if on the cards?

Good to hear! Now all we need is it to learn from the players it plays against!

I played a hacked version of Tiberium Sun that had learning AI. It got pretty good and I had to keep thinking of better ways to defeat it as it could always execute may strategies more efficiently. My final strategy was to rush it with engineers in a subterranean APC, capture its construction yard and sell it. The very next game it did it to me. :-(

From then on I had to build concrete and walls to keep them out. Haha.

An adaptive learning AI would be awesome ...

One can dream... I think it worked in C&C because the parameters of the game were small enough. PA is huge! Enabling an AI to learn to control all those parameters would be pretty tricky...