Frogboy, what's up with the AI??

By Jorune2112 on April 30, 2009 5:11:33 PM from

No doubt Demigod is a GOOD game. First game to get me to play online ALL the time. But since I play on my laptop, I'm mobile. And I don't always have the inetrnet. Combined with a flakey MP experience, when a player drops I've got an AI teammate. Or should I say, when a player drops, its game over.

What happened to the AI. I know its a GPG game, but I thought with you on board, we'd have a good AI to go along with it (like you did for SINS). On Hard level, the enemy AI is tougher, while my teammates are weak. When playing a defensive Demigod like Rook, I can forget about winning half the matches because my normal AI teammates have no problem thinking they can take on 2 Demigods by themselves. And with them dying off quickly and regularly, the Hard AI, buffed already, gets lots of gold and exp, quickly outleveling me.

I totally get that a tougher AI needs buffs (with an increase in gold income, it will get better equipment because it doesn't understand how to 'save' its pennies), but can't it be smarter to boot. Can't we get my teammates SOME logic.

It really hurts the Tournament mode. I'll never win the Kill 10 Demigod mode because my teammates throw themselevs at the enemy. They have no idea how to retreat. Forget the Capture and hold Flags mode, the enemy AI likes to cap flags, but my OWN teammates prefer to find other Demigods and get killed by them. In Fortress mode, the enemy AI doesn't seem to understand that they NEED to get the fortress'. They'd rather get to the Citadel. If my last fortress is wiped out, it seems only because it was in the way. For defensive DG's that rely on some sorta teamwork, its terrible. Rooka nd Regelus suffer alot. I can't even learn Regelus well because of it.

In another thread, someone said why not be able to 'plant AI flags', you know, defend this point here. Come defend me here. Capture this flag here. Destroy this structure here. I understand that with this method, it would seem more RTS like than you guys want, but we have it in MP. I may not 'control' my teammates, but we DO work together. Its a game ABOUT working together. (And I totally understand that even this flag method would be a HUGE undertaking and not easily implemented, I'm just wondering why it wasn't something that was put in there in the first place.)

I feel EVERY strategy game needs a good AI. Not great, not human like, but good. I want to practice in SP. When I'm playing MP, I want to know that if a teammate is disconnected or leaves for whatever reason, or the oppossing team loses a player, I want to know that we can still keep playing.

What does the future hold for the AI?

Thanks for listening. It is a great game, I just wish the AI wasn't so transparently awful.

Jorune

+1 Karma | 23 Replies

You can practice in skirmishes just fine if you set your AI's to the same setting as the other teams. It's only in the SP tourny where your ai's are gimped in harder settings.

Your teams hard AI's are no worse than the other teams. I've done some SP skirmishes where my AI's hit level 20 with the other teams sitting at 16 - 18, except for the early game i could pretty much sit back and do nothing. And then i've had sp games where my ai was a couple levels behind and i had to work the entire game.

Hell i've had games where the nightmare AI's do worse than the hard AI's oddly enough. (hard AI's on my team, half hard / half nightmare on the other team)

I am also reasonably sure even hard AI's get some handicaps, despite what the manual says. With more kills, more assists, more grunt kills, less deaths, and less retreats than the AI's, the ones on my team still end up with at least as much or more gold usually.

Yeah the AI on MP needs to be turned up to hard, if not nightmare really.

EDIT: after reading again, are you saying you set your AI's on a lesser setting than the other teams?

Well ... you're asking the best person around.

Brad Wardell is an expert A.I. designer & programmer, as illustrated by his work in the 2 recent Galactic Civilzations series.

Some people forget that he's not "just" the (all powerful) CEO of Stardock and a regular forum star (as "Frogboy" and "Draginol"), and that he is, first & foremost, a genius in A.I. design & coding.

But ... I think he was not very much involved in the programming of the Demigod A.I. That was GPG's responsibility. (Please correct me if I'm wrong.)

DISCLAIMER > All the info in this post comes from my dad ("CyberMage"). I'm just the dumb-blonde daughter who does the typing.

Well there are a hell of a lot of differences of programming AI for a turn based game to a real time game. But more importantly, I don't think Brad did the AI on Demigod, I think GPG did that.

I think the AI is kinda stupid, it likes to die often and make suicide runs in the enemy's base. And i've got a feeling that the only difference between the AI difficulties is the amount of HP and gold they got. It's not a bad AI, it could be worse, but it's not great either...

Kinda is an understatement. The AI is completely inept and prove to be a very boring opponent indeed. Not being able to effectively communicate with them makes it all the harder. Just adding an ability to tell the AI to run would already be a huge gain.

In my opinion, the GPG stock AIs in the Supreme Commander series have been lackluster so far as well, with terrible bugs. I will indeed be very happy if someone mods the Demigod AI to be better.

And for a Forged Alliance AI, sorian added the ping system that the AI follows. How he did I have no idea, but it is possible (seeing as they use pretty much the same engine).

The full list of cheats for the AI can be found in my post in this thread:

https://forums.demigodthegame.com/349524

I generally find the Normal AI in Skrimish or Hard level in tournament (as the AI is gimped at normal difficulty) and above pretty good at knowing when to run away and when to attack.

The issue Im having is that because Hard and Nightmare have a fixed gold and exp multiplier once they hit a certain level they are almost indestructible. I think it may be better for them to be given a fix boost to gold and exp per tick rather than a multipler of their current income. This means they will be have less advantage late game.

And yes we can mod the AI as we did for supcom, but for it to work in online play GPG will need to do it.

Also does anyone have an specific bugs they see with the AI currently? Eg doesnt use certain citedel upgrades or dg abilities correctly? (I find it hard to spot AI bugs currently because there is no replay system!!)

Yeah, getting an AI for demigod to work properly shouldn't be that hard...

Am I in a position to back up a HUMAN player? DO THAT

Is there a creep wave without a DG near it? GO FARM CREEPS

Are there more enemy human DG's near by than Friendly human DG's? RUN AWAY!

Is there nothing better to do? CAP FLAGS

Using roughly that decision making process AI's would work a lot better in multi player games. Trying to have them go it alone just as if it was a single player game is made of fail

i think itd actually take ALOT to code AIs to do that regardless of map layout.

if only programming AI was as easy as telling em what to do.

the game is full of fail get over it, connection issues should of and were supposed to be fixed a week ago and here we are with nothing more then hopes and dreams, i had been playing for a while now with no too many problems but it seems to be getting worse

The AI is great! Just tonight I had Regulus Snipe an enemy tower... from within the tower's attack range.

rookrolled, go away. This is a thread about AI issues not about connection issues.

Am I in a position to back up a HUMAN player? DO THAT

Actually, unless Im missing something that is one goal that is not in the AI list. Theres something called MoveToFriendly goal, but that seems to cover moving to near grunts, then heroes then defenses... not actually helping and ally DG. There is a goal called SupportAlly, but that doesnt seem to be used. So this is one area the AI could be improved in. The other things you mention are in there in various ways. For example there is a Flee goal that will trigger the AI to run away - we may just need to tweak the priority on that goal.

If the "charge fortifications" goal was removed (or if it's a kill enemy goal that doesn't count fortifications as off limits) and a "Support Allied HUMAN Demigods" goal was added that would instantly tripple the effectiveness of AI players in multiplayer games (while still not making them particularly desirable)

I have had multiple times that the AI just sits there and lets me kill them with out running or fighting back. Many of these intsances have been 2 DG vs just me... (during a 4v4 or 5v5 game)

I'm just curious IF the AI is on the list of fixes coming down the pipeline. Or is this game viewed as a Human Multiplayer Only game (by the developer/publisher, not the community).

jorune

I think the community views it as a human multiplayer only game, however the game throws in AI in skirmish and pantheon games, and also when people disconnect, so if they're going to be in games, we want them to not be a liability.

As it currently stands, having an AI player on your team is worse than having one less team mate

The ai actually does some cool stuff sometimes, it just seems so random on whether you get a good ai or a normal. And single player is completely ruined by them giveing you low ranked ai on tournements hard and up. Sure you can out upgrade the other side but it's boring and frustrating cause your ai teamates just feed or wont cap flags.

Frogboy + and Stardock employee--please don't responde to this simply because of the title

i totally agree about the problem. I've played about 10 tournament games on hard, and won 1. I usually end up with about 6 kills and 1 death, at which point i quit because the enemys are each 5 lvls higher than me because they've been fed so much. If you just make the AI a little less stupid it would be nice.

Agreed, the AI is really frustrating. Having AI on your team is honestly worse than not having them at all because of the amount of bounty you get when you kill another hero. The AI tend to do stupid suicide rushes. They also buy the dumbest crap for citadel upgrades. "Thanks for buying priests early.. now the enemy will outlevel us." =/

Can't wait for the patch that enables modding .

The AI definitely has potential, it just needs to take advantage of it.

Glad to hear it Sorian. Without the AI mods you guys made FA singleplayer would have been a nightmare! Thanks for the hard work!

Yeah you are asking the one question that Stardock/Frogboy seems to avoid answering. Every time I have seen the question asked, it has gone ignored.

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Frogboy, what's up with the AI??