Author Topic: This AI is awesome.  (Read 218916 times)

Offline Minty

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Re: This AI is awesome.
« Reply #45 on: February 14, 2010, 09:53:38 pm »
*Laughs at RCIX*

I've had waves as little as 25 ships, but never down into single figures before. What were you playing, AI level -15?  ;)

Offline RCIX

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Re: This AI is awesome.
« Reply #46 on: February 14, 2010, 11:11:17 pm »
*Laughs at RCIX*

I've had waves as little as 25 ships, but never down into single figures before. What were you playing, AI level -15?  ;)
No, i think i had it at 7. That's what makes it so funny!
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Offline Remagen

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Re: This AI is awesome.
« Reply #47 on: February 17, 2010, 04:08:50 pm »
In my first 7/7 game, I expanded to a cluster in such a way that my core planets had only 2 entrances.

One was to the rest of the galaxy, the other led on a chain that ended next to the other entrance.  So, I figured I'd take that chain since I could use the resources and reduced frontage. 

A few hours later, I'm only 2 planets shy of my goal, my fleet is rebuilding for the final assault and I get a CPA notice. 

So, I pull my fleet back to the main entrance and leave some turrets at the rear, after destroying the warp gate in a misguided tactic.

Fast forward 10 minutes, and 1k+ ships slam into my meager forces at the rear system and I barely beat them back after losing 3 or 4 planets.

/Schooled by the AI
Also, the AI has consistently attacked my rear entrance, as it is currently the weakest, I really need to reinforce it.

Offline HJFudge

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Re: This AI is awesome.
« Reply #48 on: February 24, 2010, 09:50:05 pm »
The AI is pretty ruthless.

I've been playing about a month now, and am suitably impressed by the methods the AI tries to conquer me! (And usually succeeds). Its mainly just simple, little things too but those simple, little things make all the difference.

Several times in my most recent game I've had the trader travel through and I've tried to build a Zenith Power Generator.

EVERY TIME, and I've tried this 3 times on 3 different planets, the last was even in a planet I thought 'safe', the AI sends a wave, and the raiders and some escort ships go to start blowin up their normal, expected targets like metal and crystal deposits, etc. and I'm not too sure but I think the bombers, all 100+ of them, come in right behind them AFTER all my forces have begun chasing the raiders and such and go blow up my building power generator (and often the command station of the planet as well  :o )

The way the AI can use its units in differing ways, adapting to the situation, gives it a totally different feeling than any other strategy game I've played.

So Kudos to you!

Offline vonduus

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Re: This AI is awesome.
« Reply #49 on: February 25, 2010, 04:55:06 am »
The AI is pretty ruthless.

...the bombers, all 100+ of them, come in right behind them AFTER all my forces have begun chasing the raiders and such and go blow up my building power generator

I have been wondering some time now how other people manage to keep their Zenith Power Generator alive. In all my games so far I have lost it in the way you describe. This ai may be just as stupid as all other ais, but it really hides its stupidity well.

It even uses its own bugs against you: I had a case with dancing on the spot, some ships could not decide if they wanted to attack me or run away through the nearest foxhole. I thought: "Ha, the indecision bug" and went after a blob of ships in the other end of the star system. Whereupon the dancing ships stopped dancing and went for my Zenith construction site. I almost lost the whole game.

So yes, kudos to arcen for making this fine piece of seemingly sentient software.
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Offline HellishFiend

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Re: This AI is awesome.
« Reply #50 on: February 25, 2010, 05:21:28 am »

I have been wondering some time now how other people manage to keep their Zenith Power Generator alive.

- Never build one from a Trader on a frontline planet. Always wait till it visits one of your planets deeper in your territory.
- If capturing one, destroy all adjacent special forces posts and warp gates PRIOR to building a command station on the planet
OR
- Use a warp jammer command station

 :)
Time to roll out another ball of death.

Offline vonduus

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Re: This AI is awesome.
« Reply #51 on: February 25, 2010, 05:27:42 am »
Great, thanks HellishFiend, I shall try out your suggestions as soon as I get home from here. :)
If you miss the alert, you die. If you get the alert, you die. Summa summarum: You die. (Kierkegaard on CPAs)

Offline IRANianCha0s

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Re: This AI is awesome.
« Reply #52 on: March 05, 2010, 03:07:46 am »
I want to say here and now, Chris Park, you and the rest of the team at Arcen have done a phenomenal job creating AI War. I'm impressed by how advanced the AI is, and how most of the development (obviously excluding art/music) was a one-man effort on your part, Chris. There's much more I'd like to positively rant about, but I'll leave it that to avoid clutter. I don't want to sound like a fanboy, I just have a lot of unbiased respect for what you've done.  :D



Anyways, I have been learning the value of making good defense grids + exo-forcefields, after witnessing raiders warp in and eat my harvesters too many times (until recently I had let my ally build most turrets). Worst mistake we ever made: our fleet had bunkered up with forcefields in front of a gate we would attack soon, and we had a nuke ready to send in. While it was on the way to the gate, AI sends in a fairly large group. One white flash later and oh wait a minute where did our ships go... >:(

Offline keith.lamothe

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Re: This AI is awesome.
« Reply #53 on: March 05, 2010, 02:37:39 pm »
Yea, the Nuke description should include a line stating "Warning: incautious positioning of this device may result in injury or death.  Mostly death."
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Offline Kryzite

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Re: This AI is awesome.
« Reply #54 on: March 13, 2010, 03:13:33 pm »
Just wanted to pop in and express my opinion, not only is you're AI great but I honestly wish more developers from other companies would show the same devotion you guys at Arcen show here on the boards by being responsive, and actually listening to your fan base. Keep up the good work!

~Kryzite

Offline x4000

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Re: This AI is awesome.
« Reply #55 on: March 13, 2010, 03:59:39 pm »
Many thanks for your support in return! :)
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Offline Mánagarmr

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Re: This AI is awesome.
« Reply #56 on: March 14, 2010, 09:44:58 am »
The AI just taught me the importance of protecting ALL wormholes, no matter how inconspicous the planet looks. My home planet had three exits: Two fairly uninteresting Mark I planets (albeit one with 4/4 resources. Made that high prio) and one Mark IV (ugh).

So well, I put up a massive  turret blob around the Mark IV wormhole and massed a fleet in front of the 4/4 planet in preparation to take it, but left the other largely unguarded. A few turrets in range, but those were more for the mark IV. The AI attempted to attack from the Mark IV once and sent a few ships from 4/4, but in the end, he kept sending Raptors and Minipods through the unguarded hole, waited until he had a few, and went on a harvester rampage.

I ended up having no resources because he constantly killed my harvesters. That hole is now balled too, with a tachydrone. Guess what? He now sneaks the ships in via one of the other wormholes.

I hate this AI. And I love it. Godawful, evil thing.
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Offline Rod Serling

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Re: This AI is awesome.
« Reply #57 on: March 14, 2010, 10:34:40 am »
It's my opinion that the AI isn't really that great.

Don't get me wrong, I love this game and have bought two copies myself, and enjoy the hell out of it... but...

The AI, in most cases is mostly predictable, but not in the way most game AI are predictable.
The AI of this game are predictable in the sense that 100% of the time, they are unpredictable.

You can never assume they wont attack from somewhere.
You can never assume they wont try to run away, but in the attempt simply blaze past your defenses into your unprotected core.

The only guarantees you have against the AI is:
If there is no warp gate, in an adjacent sector, there will be no warp-gate based attacks from there, conversely, if there is a warp gate, you will get a warp-gate based attack from there (eventually).
Special forces and random wanderers can still pass through your systems, even if no adjacent systems have Special Forces guard posts. (Same with trains)
If an enemy AI unit is not dead, then it poses a threat to everything in the system it is currently in, regardless of it's current course of action.

So, to beat the AI, you simply have to:
Cover ALL hostile wormholes.
Allow NO survivors past your defenses.

That said, it's not an easy task. Good luck ;]

Offline RCIX

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Re: This AI is awesome.
« Reply #58 on: March 15, 2010, 03:03:59 am »
It's my opinion that the AI isn't really that great.
Hmm. Let me try and convince you otherwise :)

The AI, in most cases is mostly predictable, but not in the way most game AI are predictable.
The AI of this game are predictable in the sense that 100% of the time, they are unpredictable.
This is its greatest strength. If you know where it's going to attack, then it's predictable. If it's predictable, then you can hit the AI where it hurts and do a better job of defending. If you can do that, then the challenge greatly falls. If it greatly falls, then you don't have a good AI.

See, you want the AI to be able to poke you at you most vulnerable point in order to  suprise you and hit you hard, because your most vulneraboe point is often one you're not expecting an attack at. Attacking in weak spots is sommething you'd expect any good player to do :)

So, to beat the AI, you simply have to:
Cover ALL hostile wormholes.
Allow NO survivors past your defenses.
And this is where it gets hard: you need to maintain a good enough defense everywhere, but there's not enough turrets/FFs/etc. to do so (trust me , i know) on qa decent number of worlds. Thus, you must both pick and choose your targets, and also make sure that you can properly defend your important stuff. Otherwise, the ai will find a weak spot (as it's oh so good at doing) and poke it just a little to hard for your comfort :)

This has happened to me: i left a spec ops post in one system, and every time i tried to take it it would send a wave through that post which had a nasty side effect of blitzing the station. Needless to say, i took it out but not after it did a good number on that spot a couple of times :)
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Offline Rod Serling

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Re: This AI is awesome.
« Reply #59 on: March 15, 2010, 09:25:10 am »
Hmm. Let me try and convince you otherwise :)

As long as this remains good-spirited fun, I'll bite ;]

This is its greatest strength. If you know where it's going to attack, then it's predictable. If it's predictable, then you can hit the AI where it hurts and do a better job of defending. If you can do that, then the challenge greatly falls. If it greatly falls, then you don't have a good AI.

Agreed, and that's why I suggested an option to remove the wave announcement.

http://arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,4336.0.html


See, you want the AI to be able to poke you at you most vulnerable point in order to  suprise you and hit you hard, because your most vulneraboe point is often one you're not expecting an attack at. Attacking in weak spots is sommething you'd expect any good player to do :)

Yes, but the AI doesn't specifically choose a weak spot. Instead, the AI likes to randomly choose to pick every spot, over a long enough time period. A weak spot is not intentionally exploited by the AI, it's simply eventually hit. A good player wouldn't always bash a good amount of units over your time-and-tried proven strong spots. AI does.

See the attached picture for system name references. In this game, against 2 Vicious Raider 7's, I quickly cleared out Manchester and Gaia. I colonized Manchester almost right away, but left Gaia alone. Sigma-19 (My home planet) had defenses at both wormholes, and Manchester had defenses at the Gaia and Chisos wormholes.  My weak point was an attack on Sigma-19 through Gaia.

This never happened. The enemy will 100% of the time send a wave directly into your system, before sending them across an empty sector to hit you.

This is predictable. Later, as I was clearing out Cella Dor, Sigma-13, and Dover, all of the backwash hit Manchester, not Sigma-19. Why? The Wormhole from Cella Dor was much closer to Manchester, rather than Sigma-19. Sigma-19 didn't get hit through Gaia until the command post at Manchester fell due to vampires.

Point of all this, even this AI can be forced through a "Hole in the wall" rather than the actual weak spot. This AI just has more random factors, and more units to throw, but this doesn't mean the intelligence cannot be bested. Most of the "Hard" factor is the sheer number of enemies, and the fact that they will hit any sector next to theirs, rather than just any one per given circumstance.

And this is where it gets hard: you need to maintain a good enough defense everywhere, but there's not enough turrets/FFs/etc. to do so (trust me , i know) on qa decent number of worlds. Thus, you must both pick and choose your targets, and also make sure that you can properly defend your important stuff. Otherwise, the ai will find a weak spot (as it's oh so good at doing) and poke it just a little to hard for your comfort :)

I agree 100% on the importance of defending only what you can defend. "He who tries to defend everything, defends nothing" or something like that applies as well. The most important part of any defense is proper strategic positioning. In that example, one of my biggest priorities is to capture and hold Maine. I can then literally funnel every attack into one position. Even then, my Home world is not without turrets. The other sectors are generally undefended simply because they will need no defense. Everything there can be rebuilt, but my Home world can't.

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Map Planet names taken from the game "Freelancer" PM me if you want a copy of altplanetnames.txt
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Edit: P.S. a CPA did throw quite a few units at my weak spot, so I'll give it that ;]
« Last Edit: March 15, 2010, 09:39:14 am by Rod Serling »

 

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