Upcoming AI Neural Net Change

Welp. Back to getting my arse kicked by a calculator .

At the risk of coming off as unduly negative, which is by no means my intention, I would just like to point out that PA is quite a lopsided game. On the one hand you have the AI, which by all accounts appears to be of unprecedented quality (haven't used it myself so far, but I am quite confident that the praise it's receiving is well-deserved), and on the other hand you have e.g. the biomes, which, though they do have their strengths (merely the fact that they exist on spherical maps being in itself a major accomplishment), are on the whole quite primitive for the genre. So while it's great to hear that the AI is still being significantly improved, there's a small part of me that would rather you were focusing your energies on the biomes instead, or on any number of other aspects of the game that are underdeveloped by comparison. Of course I realize that people have specialties and can't be reassigned to other aspects of the game at will, but that doesn't change how the irrational part of my brain works when I see update posts like the above.

tl;dr pls ignore the above which I just had to point out and get out of my system, and keep up the good work

Probably the best way to help that would be for other team members of Uber to post on the forums as well about what they're working on so we can all see the diversity of work that is going on (And god help us if biomes aren't getting some massive love).

One thing also worth mentioning is that Sorian says above he worked on this on his weekend -- presumably outside of standard working hours (hope this for your sake guys ). Given his background in AI stuff, may even be a little passion project/feature he's been wanting to do. And when it comes to personal time, anything is fair game even going outside and enjoying the sun

Does this mean that chances of AI comm running straight into my base/open field alone because I destroyed 3 factories in their base are lowered?

Hey sorian, sorry if this is a dumb question, so do you have a set of data, scenarios, etc. that you use to train the network ahead of time? What (and I suppose when)are the different inputs going in to the network for training?

I delved in to neural networks for some work I did many years ago building a kohonen neural network for the classification of seismic waves around minesites and for that I was feeding in static waveforms, picking out key features (dominant frequency, spectral envelope, etc.) and evaluating the resulting map clusters. I've since forgotten all that stuff though and am now a lowly iOS/Android dev

Sounds like your trying to teach the AI how to think a few moves ahead. This alone would make the AI alot less predictable in situations where you would normally expect only one kind of behaviour.

Sorian,
Could you please clarify a few things regarding your Neural Network implementation :
You say outputs are differents type of actions and that for training, you randomly select an action.
Then, in order to tell to the NN it was a good or a bad decision, you compute the fitness function value. And if the fitness function value shows evidence that it was not a good decision you say output nodes are adjusted then adjustment is back propagated. I understand the backpropagation thing. What i do not get is what you mean by "output were adjusted". How do you adjust an output which is an action ? Do i have to understand that a single output node is a combination of action/fitness delta ?

Another question : is Deep learning (applied today to computer vision/recognition) something that could used to build a better AI ? It looks like to me that complex strategical decisions may take advantage of deep learning.

Thanks.

Well it might just be that during the day you're fully concentrated on direct actions. And when you're back at home, your own neural network is producing outputs because it now has time to work for itself . I usually experiment the same thing in the evening or early in the morning, drinking my coffee and smoking a cigaret When i was younger, a coding issue was usually fixed in the middle of the night because it used to wake me up and i could not prevent myself from switching on the computer and fixing the issue asap

I know how you feel.

LOL at first post ripping an AI dev for not improving terrain.

WOOHOO!!! This is gonna be a HUGE improvement to the AI.

Up until now it's been easy to defeat the AI by just sending in a large force and the AI runs away. Glad that it will no longer just run away.

I assume it will also fix AI sending commander alone in Astraeus without scouting planet before?

I don't think interplanetary moves are controlled by the neural net either yet.

I still do see some type of problem though: Running away or not is a very situational decision. When deploying mixed platoons, they tend to spread quite far while executing an attack order. Some units like infernos tend be best left alone to die, while combat fabbers and other second row units actually have a good chance of escaping, so the situation actually differs quite a lot. Not even mentioning dox which are inherently designed around hit&run maneuvers.

Static, mixed platoons are making it somewhat impossible to find an universal solution for the whole platoon at once.

Tell me, would it be possible to implement a split/merge action for platoons? Try to run the NN not only for whole platoons, but for arbitrary classifications / subsets instead. If the outcomes vary to much, split. Or merge with other subplatoons if outcomes match (= same action). That could actually solve quite a lot of problems, such as:

• Platoons with similar / identical goals colliding
• One platoon retreating while another one stays, even though this now leaves the remaining platoon doomed
• Mixed platoons inevitably failing in some situations
• Lack of "steamroll" tactics (the AI somehow doesn't seem to understand synchronized attacks yet)

@sorian
Will you be programming in some old school war moves into the neural network,

It would be amazing to see the AI amass a large force and then attempt to use moves like,
Pincer movenment and attack, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pincer_movement

Also maybe a the AI Neural Network needs an "Are these unit's considered disposable routine"
If steamrolling or rushing is wanted then units need to be deemed as disposable and just thrown at the enemy regardless of odds of winning.

Edit..
Obviously the AI would need to rate the effect of steamrolling with a batch/group of disposable units and only use it if it was beneficial to the outcome of the battle.

Sorian is right man at right task, his talents would be wasted on biomes and art. However i agree, planet biomes look ugly and unpolished. If i remember correctly they had only one update since alpha, and just some of them. Hopefully it all gets fixed, someday before the ancients wake up.

Sorian, greetings from the mountainhomes. Your efforts are legend there.