Monster AI

See thread Colonization Minister Secret Revealed for what has gone before. http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/For...ML/003169.html
Discuss my Clays MonsterAI here.

First topic - I will change the Clays back to Carbon Dioxide Gas Giant like the Eee in the next game. Atmosphere None races cannot convert Gas Giants to breathable because there is no such thing as a Gas None.

That means that I WILL make another map with Co2 planets in the center of the nexus systems rather than Nones....

Possibly if people really like the challenge of a Nexus map, Aaron could be persuaded to have the game build nexus style quadrants automatically rather than each being a hand crafted work of art....

Possibly he could be persuaded to add Giant style size 200 planets along with sizes 50, 75, and 100 to the regular game so that people do not have to mod. Until then change all references in Clays_AI_Planet_Types from small to tiny then medium to small, then large to medium then Huge to large, and finally Giant to Huge. That is, if you do not like the bottomless pit giants...


[This message has been edited by LCC (edited 18 July 2001).]

Well, it did not take that long to play, but there was a lock up and I had to figure out why. What I have learned :

Turn 72 - 3.8m/3.0m/60.0/6.5/316/10/469/256.3/1569/202/0
Learns Last tech next turn by leaving the nexus to plant colonies...
Turn 73 - 4.0m/3.1m/58.6/6.5/370/35/545/270.9/1569/214/0
Turn 74-75 took 12 minutes! 4 new systems 114 colonies planted...
Turn 77 - 4.3m/3.2m/59.0/7.0/370/49/912/348.2/3430/293/0
Turn 88 - 6.7m/6.2m/61.0/44.1/370/49/1182/542.9/3556/38/0

1) The increase in units is a call to build mines for colonies 349 to 545 done on turn 73.
2) It is obvious that the game is skipping the calls to build warships, perhaps because it already has some and is still in exploration state.
3) Turn 72 is already posted. I am uploading turn 77 and 88 now.
4) Turn 77 is near bankrupt again with the ship queue about to halt. Also it is building lots of atmosphere modification plants, getting into bankruptcy on organics and radioactives as well as minerals and having lots of forced farming/refining colonies. What the AI needs to do is have the colonization manager rethink its orders and select a different destination to plant rather than forcing the colony type of a low productivity planet.
5) Turn 88 is just before a lock up on the transition turn 89-90. When Clays are switched to player there is no problem. It turns out that since all tech has been learned, the research colony on Aye XVIII A wants to build a solar generator III. Under AI as I said it locks up, but player controlled with full AI on starts the facility.
6) Another thing I noticed is that one and only one of the 30 Research colonies ever was allowed to build research facilities. Is that because the Clays research ability is nonexistant ? If so, then NEVER go nonexistant!
7) Since all tech has been learned the AI should have scrapped the research facilities to build something else. Research colonies ARE being run, they have lots of facilities just no research centers. I checked, only the one colony had research centers before the Last tech was learned....
8) I waited an hour to get turn 90 then finally and reluctantly did CTRL ALT DEL. After thinking about it I checked. There IS A QUICK AND EASY way to determine if the game is locked up. Just click the little window icon in the upper right hand corner to go back to windows. If it does not take you to windows within a minute, the game is locked up! To get back to the game click the game name on the windows bottom screen bar. When the turn is complete it will pop you back up to the game.
9) Most turns executed in 3 minutes or less. But when the AI reluctantly decides to colonize in new systems, it takes a LONG time to decide which ones to use. This needs some execution time optimization.
10) In turn 88 sorting the colony list etc takes a minute or two. Just give it time, there is a lot to sort.....

I am going to bed after doing the uploads. Today I created a monster AI that if unchecked will plant 1000 colonies before turn 80! A GOOD DAYS WORK!!!!

I just posted a new patch and map10 in scenario/mod archive SE IV maps and scenarios. I changed Clays to be Co2/Gas instead of Rock/None. I added new planet sizes NexusTiny, NexusSmall, NexusMedium, NexusLarge, and NexusHuge to replace the single Giant size. As with the Huge, a regular Large can be created as NexusLarge on random planet creation etc. This means that home planets can start with very different sizes even though they are all supposedly Medium or Large, because some will be Nexus style. It should be an interesting challenge for those who usually use AI bonuses. The new map also has a better distribution of ruins and more nexus feeder and destroyed nexus buffer systems. It will take me a few days to break up the map into clusters and post again...

The attached zip creates a new subdirectory "test" containing the new Clays empire files, a patchsys3 file containing patches to make a nexus quadrant, and Clays_AI_Planet_Types which is required to get minimal usage of the new planet types.

The Clays are an evolved Eee with Organic, Crystalline, Religious, and at 5000 points Temporal picks. They are NOT a space monster, my choice of description "Monster AI" is unfortunately confusing given the other thread about "Space Monsters".

It is taking a LONG time to build my latest map10a from map10 in the Map Editor because I want it to be my LAST map for a long time. Another couple of days should see it done. Then I will do the research tree and ship design. Until then the AI is on hold, but the planet types file alone should be useful to get better AI colonization and recovery from bankruptcy for ANY race. Just change Small to Tiny, Medium to Small, Large to Medium, Huge to Large, and NexusTiny to Huge.

Map10a is posted at Last - See Map10a and Really big games Version 3
I will rip off ship designs from other races and not worry about research for the moment since the AI gets tech off the ruins really fast...

[out_law]

You wont a moster race??? Watch this space I've nearly made my first one, you'll love it!

quote:

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Originally posted by out_law:
You wont a moster race??? Watch this space I've nearly made my first one, you'll love it!

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If it modifies any tech, components or facilities, then get together with the people on this thread :
http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/For...ML/003235.html

which deals with space monsters.

If it is a hybrid AI using all standard game files but a new AI, then feel free to post here!

Well, our new house finally got a phone connection, so I am back Online. I worked on warship design for my AI for a couple of days, doing the attack/defense ships/bases and the colony ships. I then decided to run a test game and ran into a stone wall at exit from second bankruptcy turn 88-89. I thought at first that I had busted the game with my 915 colonies with yards, but it turned out that the game engine still can handle it. Unfortunately it takes **** 9000 seconds **** more or less to execute a single turn when building ships/units. It only takes a couple of minutes for 915 colonies when doing only facilities. It only took a few minutes with 186 of 915 colonies with yards at entrance into second bankuptcy. So execution time when specifically building ships/units is directly proportional to the SQUARE OF THE NUMBER OF YARDS AVAILABLE times some HUGE number of instruction cycles. My best guess is that the AI has no memory at all of which is the fastest yard available, and rather than cycle through all colonies ordered by yard rate and number of turns already scheduled, it cycles through colonies in the order planted. So for every single colony with a yard it does an evaluation of every single other colony to see if that colony would be a better choice for building the current item. If there is a better choice then it moves on to the next colony in the list. The item gets sheduled only if there is no better choice available compared to the particular current colony. When it has run through all the colonies and has scheduled something, then it starts the whole charade over again and basically repeats the cycle up to 30*30/2 times depending on how many different yard rates are available. Then if the current item in the ship/unit queue is successfully fully scheduled, the whole process basically starts all over again for the next queue entry. When at least four or five turns of work has been scheduled at all colonies then nothing gets scheduled and the circus grinds to a halt for the current turn.

I have a Compaq Presario with AMD K-6 3d processor bought in 98. It runs Windows 98 Year 2000 Update 2 operating system and has 64 megabytes of memory. With SE IV running it reports 77% resources free during a turn, but there is no way to check while the AI is running to next turn because the minimize to windows button is ignored during the AI processing of a turn (another issue). Nevertheless I think that the execution time is NOT due to my computer limitations but instead to the generation of TRILLIONS of instructions by the AI engine. I did my first AI in 86-89 by rewriting a public domain 4x game called "Conquest" for the Commodore Amiga. I also wrote a performance analysis tool called "Debugger" to study the game and improved its execution time by a factor of 50+. In 91-92 I spent a couple thousand hours writing my own 4x game for the Amiga called "Galactic Zoo". I abandoned it and released it as public domain in 92 when some people who looked it over said that nobody would play it because managing an empire looked too much like work. A year or two later the first Versions of Civilization and Master of Orion came out and became big sellers, proving the analysts wrong, but by then my Amiga had died from over 20000 hours of hard usage.

In case you other folks in this forum did not know it, a (labor intensive) strategy game pays a breakeven wage to the developer compared to a regular job only if it sells 100-500 THOUSAND units depending on the royalty percentage per unit actually sold delivered to the developer. Game writing as a profession SUCKS. So my sympathy goes out to Aaron fighting an uphill battle just to pay for rent and groceries. OTOH his AI engine is LOUSY on an absolute scale although it is ok compared to what many game designers put out. The absolute scale I use for comparison is the AI for the Space Shuttle, which I became familiar with while working on simulations at JSC in 79-81 and again in 87-88. Since tens of MILLIONS of dollars are spent on improving that AI every year that may not be very fair, but it does give me an idea of what is POSSIBLE. During the past few days I have fought the AI engine in my game uphill to reach turn 125 at which time it is finally building some ships besides colony and minelayers, rather than skipping their queue entries (another issue). While waiting the long hours for each turn to process I am unable to use my computer to do anything else. I have spent the time staring at the screen and speculating as to just WHAT THE **** he may be doing with his AI engine that takes so ******* LONG. I think by now that I have a fair idea, and am in the process of writing a LONG list of DETAILED suggestions to improve the execution time, plus reporting yet more bugs/features observed during this test game. My original interest in this game was for playing, but the AI was not challenging enough. My second interst was development of an AI that could survive at the center of Nexus maps, but that has been overridden by my latest interest. That interest is HOW THE **** can this ******* AI engine be improved to manage over 1000 colonies with yards and still take only a couple of minutes per turn. If I can get him a factor of 50-75 execution time improvement as on earlier games without even seeing the source code then I can later brag about that too. So Aaron and his game distributer get free labor until I can resume work on my AI, which is also free labor of course, but somewhat more personally satisfying.

I will not post save game files for this current test game because I already posted files in the scenario/mod archives for the previous one, which is of similar size. What I thought was a lockup after the Last save of the previous game almost certainly was NOT. It just never occurred to me that a game could possibly take over an hour to process a single turn for a single player and be functioning as designed. The only reason why the game was allowed to run a turn to completion at exit from second bankruptcy in this test game was that I was very tired, had no phone to go Online with, and just did not bother to hit CTRL ALT DEL and exit the game before going to bed. To my extreme surprise, when I got up in the morning the game was waiting for me at the next turn! I also will not bother to post the AI minister bugs/features because nobody commented on my previous postings and they are a matter for the Beta testers and MM to resolve. So until the AI engine is 50 times faster there will be nothing else to report about my AI.....

Edit :
It is probably 30 times not 30*30/2. I do not know why I thought it was that way when I posted. I need to catch up on my sleep again....



[This message has been edited by LCC (edited 01 August 2001).]

[dogscoff]

QUOTE:
I did my first AI in 86-89 by rewriting a public domain 4x game called "Conquest" for the Commodore Amiga.
/QUOTE

Hey, I think I might remember that. I used to play it against my brother. Don't know if it was your Version or not. I certainly remember "lore of conquest", which was out a few years later...

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"Pinky, are you pondering what I'm pondering?"
"I think so Brain but, if you replace the P with an O, my name would be Oinky, wouldn't it?"

If it was the Version where planets increased in capacity without limit using investment of part of the production, then it was probably mine. Also I designed the AI to fleet its battleships and cruisers together and whip around the map blowing up planets no matter how many missile bases and advanced missile bases they might build. The clincher is if the characters for fleets and planets were color coded, which was a new character manipulation trick not possible on older machines....