Attempting to improve the AI for Proportions 3.05 - Page 3

Arralen · #1 December 30th, 2006, 04:51 AM

Any news on this?

I tried 2.9.1 or something (the version recommended for SP play) and found the aI to be pretty poor ... would be glad to help, though I don't think I would be able to do much ...

Atrocities · #2 December 30th, 2006, 06:36 AM

Its hard to want to work on a mod for a game that no longer is really being valued by the players. Its like going to a party that no one shows up to any more.

Black_Knyght · #3 January 2nd, 2007, 11:26 AM

Quote:

Atrocities said:
Its hard to want to work on a mod for a game that no longer is really being valued by the players. Its like going to a party that no one shows up to any more.

I'm still VERY much into the game, and will be into SEIV for quite some time to come.

PvK · #4 December 30th, 2006, 03:54 PM

Oh, there are a few players still enjoying it. I'm just swamped, and have other projects. Also with 3.0 I was really trying to make the multi-player game more fun, since that's what interests me most (because the SE4 AI can only get so smart without "cheating"), and so I made some things that are interesting for a micro-managing human player, but would be hard to make a competetive AI for.

Arralen, there is also AIC (AI Campaigns) mod, which was based on a 2.x version of Proportions but with major changes and adjustments including heavy AI "cheats" which can be quite challenging and interesting to play against.

PvK

Arralen · #5 December 30th, 2006, 07:48 PM

Heavy AI cheats do not make up for very poor ship design, eg. .
And I think it should be possible to fix at least the "very", if not the "poor"

Atrocities · #6 December 30th, 2006, 11:35 PM

The problem with getting the AI to design ships is that the AI will use more than one needed component or won't use the components that are being required.

The AI will always use the largest ship in the list, usually the top one, as it gains access to that design size.

Also the AI use of components will differ dramatically over the course of low to high tech game.

It is as if the AI wants to be stupid and revels in it.

PsychoTechFreak · #7 December 31st, 2006, 09:24 AM

Quote:

PvK said:
Oh, there are a few players still enjoying it.

Yep.

Quote:

Arralen, there is also AIC (AI Campaigns) mod, which was based on a 2.x version of Proportions but with major changes and adjustments including heavy AI "cheats" which can be quite challenging and interesting to play against.

Don't get me wrong, AIC is a good mod, but there may be areas that you could dislike (well, I do). E.g you research for mines and then you notice that it was (almost) useless because the AI ship hulls have the ability to sweep them. Or you spend millions of RPs for the talisman and then you notice that the human type of the RT is only a better attack sensor.

PvK · #8 December 31st, 2006, 04:47 PM

Even the Proportions 2.x AI can at least deploy ships of multiple sizes, and usually do a reasonable job of designing them and so on. The Xi Chung is the AI I tweaked the most in Proportions 2.x. The AI's Oleg made for 2.x are also good (search for "Oleg's AI pack adds three new empires (Size: 1.6 MB)." on my Proportions web page, and JLS also did a good job tweaking the Abbidon (and maybe some others). However, because they don't cheat, and I think also because Proportions requires more thinking and provides more opportunities to do creative and tricky things (as well as some more opportunities to get messed up, etc.), the AI will always be weaker than an experienced human player, and a human will need to limit himself and/or give the AI some kind of advantages in order to have a challenging game.

If I had the time and this was the project I was most interested in, then I would spend the time to mod a decent AI and make some interesting AI cheat options. I know it can be done.

The best way I found was to start a game with the AI race I was tweaking, and watch what it did each turn, then make adjustments to the research, build, design and strategy files to make the AI do things, re-load with the AI and make sure they did them, then look for more things to tweak, etc. I actually found it very fun to do (it's like playing the game using the AI files as your UI) and rewarding once it was done, but it also took forever and showed many weaknesses and frustrating issues with the AI. For that much time investment, I have other projects I'd rather devote the time to.

PvK

Arralen · #9 January 1st, 2007, 11:46 PM

...
The requested URL /pvk/proportions/OlegsProportionsAIs.zip was not found on this server.

PvK · #10 January 3rd, 2007, 07:02 PM

Quote:

Arralen said:
...
The requested URL /pvk/proportions/OlegsProportionsAIs.zip was not found on this server.

Sorry Arralen! It seems to have vanished during a web site update. I'm hunting for it... if I don't find it, I'll reassemble it.

PvK