SE's Best Quality, And How to Improve It

[thebigsilly]

Hi!

So - I've played all the other recent releases, like Galactic Civilizations II, and I've even been playing MOO2 again recently. But I keep coming back to SE:V, despite frustrationg with the interfaces and bugs and AI, because, unlike the other games, development in SE:V is much less linear, restrictive and formulaic.

For example, in Galactic Civilizations II, you're stuck in a never-ending rock-papers-scissors game, with the three varieties of weapons and the defences against them. You don't really get to experiment with more intricate tactical approaches.

In MOO2, while there's a neat variety of weapons, the fact is that shield-bypassing is so important that there are really only a handful of viable approaches to armament. And, of course, by endgame, everyone's using essentially the same equipment; all the final choices narrow in again.

So what I like best about SE:V is that you can play the game with so many different approaches; you can focus on masses of fighters, or kamikaze drones, or cloaked world-destroyers, or any number of variants - and they're all essentially viable, none necessarily overpowers another utterly, you just have to play them right.

The only problem is that the various AI's don't seem to branch out into those different approaches; all the AI's build pretty much the same way, in terms of military defence and offense.

I think that the game would immediately become much more interesting if it were possible to assign different strategies to different opponent races. For example, one race might favor high-speed, long-range, hit-and-run ships. Or another might focus on shields and armor, hoping to outlast their enemies' ordnance/supplies. Or, using massive fighter fleets, launched from slow but well-armed carriers.

Then, you the player would have to adapt to these different enemies. They wouldn't all be the same basic entity but with different tech levels and portrait icons.

I don't know if that kind of thing can be modded into SE:V, but maybe it's just worth bringing up for the sake of SE:VI.

Thanks for reading!

[Will]

TDM for SEV, perhaps? I haven't been following the modding for SEV much, so I'm not sure if there's a big project for AI modding started... but I'm sure there will be one at some point.

[Romulus68]

There are several Mods that address AI strategies.

Dvoongar's Doctrines: http://www.spaceempires5.com/en-US/node/4086

Balance Mod: http://www.spaceempires5.com/en-US/node/4351

IRM Mod: http://www.spaceempires5.com/en-US/node/2845

[Fyron]

There is also Unnamed's AI Mod, which is mostly a porting of Balance Mod (and a little IRM) AI to the stock data set.

[javaslinger]

IRM is defunct unless someone is maintaining/updating it that I'm not aware of....

I'm not familiar with Dvoongar's doctrines...

And, as for BM, does it really have different AI's for different races? Or are they just either agressive/defesive/or in between?

Thanks,

Javaslinger

[Fyron]

thebigsilly said:
I don't know if that kind of thing can be modded into SE:V, but maybe it's just worth bringing up for the sake of SE:VI.


It certainly can; nothing requires all races to share common AI files like they do in stock.

[thebigsilly]

Oh excellent. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Yes, it would be very interesting for different races to tend towards intelligence rather than research (and then to specific kinds of intelligence, like sabotage or tech-stealing), or to focus on building different kinds of fleets, or designing ships with different kinds of components (which would be reflected in their research tendencies), etc. The possibilities are really endless, and it would give the game a much better atmosphere. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

I am playing the Balance MOD now, and I have not noticed different civilizations building or researching in markedly different manners....but I could be wrong?

[se5a]

I'm sorry, why do people keep doing "MOD" all in caps?
It's not like it's an acronym, it's an abbreviation.

[thebigsilly]

MOD

[thebigsilly]

from now on, the reason why i am typing it all in caps is because it bothers you

[Suicide Junkie]

That type of behavior is not going to earn you much respect around here, aside from the fact that trolling is liable to get you kicked out.

Notice the comment draws attention to the problem without singling you out. Many people have done it when they first got here.
Just take the tip and improve your posts with it.

[Parasite]

One of the hardest things for the AI to do is change tactics. For example if it meets a race of Missilers, have it start producing ships heavy in AntiMissiles. That is the line that humans can exploit and win.

[MrToxin]

Parasite said:
One of the hardest things for the AI to do is change tactics. For example if it meets a race of Missilers, have it start producing ships heavy in AntiMissiles. That is the line that humans can exploit and win.



That should be possible, but the problem is that if the AI is predictable in that route as well, it can again be exploited by a clever human player.

The problem with making really good AI is programming it. It takes a great deal of time and can slow your computer to a crawl if you make it too complex.

[Leternel]

The problem with AI is the same with human. How confident are you in your prediction.
Imagine two emperors of SE, A and B, who can see each other's weaponry.
A is making a fleet of missileship, and is now thinking about a smaller but hidden fleet to defend it. How will he choose?
Point-defense corvets, since B will build lot of fighter which are protected against missiles?
Or cruisers because B will not build fighters, as he knows A wants to build a defending fleet, so he will build cruisers with point-defense?

Thinking about it, A as another probleme: "must I continue building my missileships if B can counter them?".

In most case, B will never have to defend himself, because A will hesitate.

If B had only 2 choices, fighters or PDF-cruisers, A could crush him with high-range torpedoes, but as A and B are equals, they both stuck in the trap/coutner-trap/counter-counter-trap/...
Against a human, you will be like A and B.
Against an AI, you will encounter a quite different problem: what level of AI is it? trap? counter-trap? CCC-trap?

[dmm]

Personally, I took thebigsilly's response about MOD to be a joke, and I thought it was kinda funny.

To be persnickety, if mod. is an abbreviation for "modification," then it needs a period after it. Maybe it's an acronym for "Modification Of Design," in which case "MOD" is correct. Although, commonly used acronyms often drop the capitals, as in radar and laser. In which case, "mod" is correct. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[dmm]

The problem with AIs is that (usually) they do the same thing every time. Even if you randomize strategies at the start of a game, once you figure out which AI enemies are using which strategy you've got the drop on them.

I like to play solo, so I always decide at the start of a game what my empire is going to do and then stick with it.

A favorite role-play is to pretend to be defense-only isolationists. This limits expansion and gives the AIs a head start. Inevitably, one AI gets very aggressive and demanding. Maybe they crash a warp point and raze one of my colonies. My people become incensed and outraged. Nothing but unconditional surrender will satisfy them. Depending on treaties, this can snowball into war with multiple AIs, or my people can go isolationist again.

Another role-play is to decide that my people are blood-thirsty savage xenophobes, who immediately declare war on anyone they meet and glass every colony they encounter.

Another role-play is to be as pacifist as possible (short of surrendering) while still being expansionist. Maybe use intel a lot also.

Another fun thing is to make two human-controlled empires at the start. One is normal; the other is The Ancients. You use cheat codes profusely for the latter to get them super-advanced. You seed the galaxy with undefended supercolonies, computer-controlled uberships, maybe even some heavily-defended ringworlds. Then you have them abandon everything and retreat to one system with a sphereworld, knocking out all warp connections. (This can all be done in a few turns. You can temporarily change all empires to "human-controlled" and have them do nothing until The Ancients are set up.) For the rest of the game, just hit "end turn" every time The Ancients comes up. (Impt: don't use any ministers for them!) See how long it takes you to contact The Ancients. Toss a coin to see if they're happy to see you. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif (Oh, also, give them high intel points and set it all to defense. Otherwise an AI might use AI to get their sphereworld. Unless you WANT that to happen....)

[Fyron]

Mod is not an acronym or abbreviation; it is a full word in its own right.

[Suicide Junkie]

The AI is actually quite good at doing random things.
The trick is trying to make "random" be good for the empire rather than really bad http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[dmm]

Fyron said:
Mod is not an acronym or abbreviation; it is a full word in its own right.


Hey, you're right, at least according to some dictionaries. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/shock.gif

[dmm]

Suicide Junkie said:
The AI is actually quite good at doing random things.
The trick is trying to make "random" be good for the empire rather than really bad http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif


LOL. Anyone else see this article in New Scientist, about how neurotic AIs defeat rational AIs?
http://www.newscientist.com/blog/technology/2007/10/neurotic-software-is-top-gamer.html

[Arralen]

dmm said:
Anyone else see this article in New Scientist, about how neurotic AIs defeat rational AIs?


Actually, it says the neurotic AI defeats "standard" (totally passive and dumb) AI faster than a plain aggressive AI.

What tells us nothing else than that
a) the standard AI of the game sucks
b) they should have run the test with much more limited in-game ressources and on a bigger time scale: a calculating agressive AI would always beat a neurotical AI in that case. And ressources are limited in one way or the other in 99% of cases. Real life experience shows that ignoring these limitations is recipe for mid- or long-term desaster, not success. The argument of being unpredictable does not apply at all, because the standard AI cannot predict anything at all ... .

[capnq]

I'm reminded of a friend who told me that in the computer version of Risk, when he played against an AI which was set to use the "Random" strategy, it reminded him of playing the boardgame version with me. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif I used to drive him crazy making attacks that he thought made no sense whatsoever. (They always seemed perfectly sensible to me.)

[narf poit chez BOOM]

...Did you win?

[capnq]

Not that I recall. But most of our games also involved another friend who usually crushed both of us. Which of us got eliminated first largely depended on relative starting positions on the map.

[thebigsilly]

Hi!

Yeah, I wasn't seriously trying to insult anybody. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif It was a silly goof on my part to capitalize it, but it's also silly that anybody would post just to criticize that; so I made a third silly post just to get passed it.

Anyway --

Well, you know, it's obviously pretty tough to create an AI that can constantly adapt to the player's choices in a way that the player can't exploit. I don't even think that a system like that would be ideal..

The point of my post was to say that, if you had a Space Empires game where the enemy races took predictable but varied routes in terms of military research and tactics, it wouldn't really matter if you could predict and exploit one or even several, because you would always be faced with a radically different opponent somewhere out there. So it would present a lot of challenge without necessarily adding a lot of labor to the process of programming AI's -- you would just have some research techs, ship blueprints and tactical formations flagged at a higher priority for some races than for others. So you would have one race that may never really develop much in the way of shields before it's maxed-out fighter carriers and fighter techs and miniaturized weapons, and this race would go all-out with fighters, so that if you've not got point-defense ships OR super-high-class shields, you're not going to be very successful against them.
At the same time, you would also be facing an enemy with great morale and strength who focus on land combat and ship-boarding, developing those techs and building those kinds of units/ships before they worry about space-based weaponry.
And also another enemy who builds-up defense research as quickly as possible, cramming as many mines, satellites and stations around their warp-points and colonies as they can manage.
And so on, and so on. And being faced with all of these radically different opponents at the same time would compel the player to really try to only take on the enemies that he's prepared to fight against. Even if you can exploit the particular tendencies of a handful of opponents, it really wouldn't be possible to develop yourself in a way that could account for ALL of your opponents' traits. Just breaking down the general AI's building/research schemes into race-specific schemes would add new gameplay dimensions to almost every aspect of the game - for one, diplomacy, which is kind of a weak spot in single player SE despite there being tons of options. Now it would really matter that you're able to placate specific races - what if their tech is particularly well-suited to besting your own, because you've been developing to confront a more immediate threat?

I don't really think randomness needs to enter into it for the kinds of things that I'm talking about to work. Only variety.

[dmm]

I haven't played with SEIV's or SEV's AI scripting. Are there triggers? I've played with other games' AI scripts, and it seems like reacting to events is always a huge missing element differentiating AIs from humans.

For example:
In SE, if a human suddenly encounters a race with good missiles or fighters, he will either
a) make PD a research priority, or
b) desperately trade for PD, or
c) go into defensive mode, or
d) assiduously avoid that race, or
e) make extra-nice with that race, or
f) go all-out to destroy that race quickly.

Another example:
If a human is losing colony after colony to one player and the situation is hopeless, he will either
a) quit http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif , or
b) surrender, or
c) try to negotiate a protectorate deal, or
d) get vindictive by going kamikaze, or
e) get vindictive by surrendering to another player.

But the AIs just seem to go on with whatever strategy that was pre-mapped out for them, regardless of the circumstances. Triggered behaviors would solve a lot of that problem, and they could be tuned for each race to match that race's personality.

[Captain Kwok]

The problem with creating a reactionary AI is how do you determine how they respond in an environment with multiple empires and get them to direct the appropriate response versus a specific empire. Human players can manage this a lot better and that's a big advantage they have - matching up counter strategies versus each opponent.

[dmm]

what do you do? Here's an idea, feel free to bash it as much as you like. Suppose the following:
a) AI players are plentiful: 25, maybe even 50
b) mediocre planets are plentiful
c) asteroid fields are plentiful and worth developing
d1) AIs don't like colonizing in "their" systems
d2) but they don't totally freak out about it
d3) unless it gets "too much", then they freak out
e) cheap small exploratory probes are default tech
e1) maybe cloaked? extra-fast? solar-powered? unmanned?
e2) definitely unarmed
f) AIs form lots of gradually-improving alliances
g) AIs react negatively toward attacks on allies
g1) reaction is mild if ally is casual acquaintance
g2) reaction is strong if ally is firm friend

If this could be implemented, I think that (if the parameters were set correctly) it would set up a galaxy that would gradually become well-populated, technologically advanced, very interconnected, and incredibly unstable. Woohoo!!

So, what do you think? Is this do-able right now? Would it work? Has it been tried already?

[capnq]

dmm said: f) AIs form lots of gradually-improving alliances

g1) reaction is mild if ally is casual acquaintance
g2) reaction is strong if ally is firm friend

These threee look like the hardest to implement. How do you define "improving", "casual", and "firm", in terms the AI understands?

[Phoenix-D]

Civ 4 does it decently. They make a list of things that the AI likes (tributes, you beating up on his enemies, time allied) and things it dislikes (being nuked, bad demands, being allied with his enemies) and weight the AI's attitude and alliances by that.

[capnq]

Aha, Phoenix-D's post reminds me that Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri did that pretty well, too.

[Phoenix-D]

Right, Civ4 just makes it visible to the players and improves the process a bit.

[thebigsilly]

Wow, you guys are nuts. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif Uh okay I'll do you the courtesy of ceasing to post in this thread of mine, since obviously I'm being ignored.

I've made it pretty clear that it's difficult to program random/dynamic AIs and as a result that demand would fall outside the realm of possibility for an SEV mod or for SEVI, and that a much more feasible method would be to simply spread the various "paths" that a truly dynamic AI might take across a range of AIs, by prioritizing techs and building/battle tactics in different ways for different races.
Instead of responding to anything I've said on that matter, you lot are content to keep going on about hypotheticals and abstract ideas. Fine, cool, I'm not saying you're wrong - but it's really immaterial, isn't it? Nothing that you're saying is related to the immediate objective of pumping this game up a bit - it's all just empty chatting. If you'd spared a post or two to even attempt addressing the points that I STARTED this thread to talk about, I wouldn't care what else you say, but instead you just ignore them completely. And then Kwok shows up, and instead of encountering a discussion that might've actually been of some use to him as he mods this game into enjoyability, he's just faced with your endless hypotheticals to comment on.

heavens to betsy but you're all a bunch of sillypusses

[Fyron]

That's one hell of a way to make friends...

[capnq]

You are being "ignored" because there isn't really anything to add to the things you said. Yes, it would be nice if somebody programmed some AIs that followed different strategies. Every person who's ever played the game probably has their own pet strategy they'd like to see implemented. Suggesting ideas to "help" Kwok write mods is like teaching your grandmother to suck eggs. (Although I doubt you're old enough to understand that turn of phrase.)

Thread drift is the normal state of things on any Internet forum.

[dmm]

capnq said:
How do you define "improving", "casual", and "firm", in terms the AI understands?


Clearly SEV has a "how much I like/hate you" factor that every AI uses when dealing with every other player (AI or human). If the AI likes the other player it will accept/offer treaties. And the treaties it will accept/offer get gradually more and more like a total alliance with that player. So, my question is, can modders currently access that factor directly when programming the AIs, or is that all hard-coded? It seems to me that it is already there: congenial races appear to gradually warm to me, provided I don't do stuff to tick them off. Can modders tweak that? And can we decide what actions tick off AIs, or is that all hard-coded? Currently they seem to get mad automatically if you have ANY colonies in "their" systems (unless you have the appropriate treaty -- but the "allow colonizing in my systems" treaty is very hard to obtain from an expanding neighbor).

[Captain Kwok]

The Balance Mod AI has a lot of the characteristics you are after.

Nothing is really hard coded with the AI in SE:V, the only real limitation in what you can do is what script functions you have available.

This thread at SE.net has some more info:
http://www.spaceempires.net/home/ftopict-3368.html