AI Default Settings

AwarE

Hi,

I request a change to the options/default AI settings to improve the AI performance.
1./ Change Amount of Land Expansions Limit - Increase needed.
2./ Change Amount of Naval Expansions Limit - reduction needed.

There have been claims that the AI has been improved in some of the latest patches.
Case 1./
I do not agree as the AI is not expanding correctly on land and is much weaker as a consequence.
When the AI can not expand the FA Markers can not be set to make the AI built more Plants and therefor builds less units. Also the AI has lost the ability to appear to have strategic intelligence.
Plz change the default Land Expansions to 8[temporally] or fix the bug in the code.
When 8 or 'unlimited' is selected it works as it should ... the AI expands to unused start positions and large and small expansion area markers... it could be argued that the AI is expanding too much, when set on unlimited, to have an efficient economy. This may prevent the AI teching up to T3 as quickly as is possible.

At present the Land Expansion Limit setting is broken for settings of 5[default] and 6. I did not test 7. On 8 the AI does 3 expansions - two spare start positions and one large expansion. I did not test 9. When set on infinite the AI expands to build bases on spare start positions, large expansion area markers and small expansion area markers.

In case 2./ a different problem occurs. The AI builds too many Naval expansions and that causes pathing problems and slows game speed.
I don't think there is anything wrong with the Naval Expansion Limit code, I would just like to turn it down to a default of 3 or 2 so the AI does not overbuild navy. At present when four AIs build two/three shipyards at each Naval Area marker the T3 ships get stuck in the maze of shipyards.

Please note that all tests games were played against multiple teamed AIx ... 3 or more.

relentless

Which specific AI are you talking about here AwarE? You didn't mention any name. Its usually up to the specific AI developer how they deal with expansions (and the AI expansion configurations set by the user when they are setting up the game). Some AI's put economic limits on the expansions and other have mass to factory ratio limits on them(or both) that may be limiting it.

The AI is supposed to get a list of of units at an expansion to determine if it should make its own expansion there so it 'should' be detecting other AI's naval factories on locations before deciding its going to make its own.

AwarE

Thanks for the reply relentless ...
I normally use AIx Sorian Turtle AI on land and AIx Sorian Water for navy. Both multipliers @1.2
We play on TeamPlay_AI maps that have full set of FA Markers. Three Humans vs Three teamed Sorian Turtle AIx. AI factions are Aeon, Cybran and UEF matching our own factions.
I have found if the Land Expansion Limit is set to 8 then the AI expands as it should.
At the current limit of 5 the Sorian Turtle AIx does not expand to build on spare start positions or Large Expansion Areas ... it will sometimes build T2 weapons under shields on the most forward Small Expansion Area.

Fearghal

@AwarE
Hi,
Have you tried the many new AI's in the Mod Vault?
Sorian is old and Not been updated in long time.
Try uising these AI mods found in the vault

AI Uveso - (Must load for All the following AI to work)
AI Swarm,
RNGAI,
NutCracker AI and
Also Sorian Edit , which I just played, and is great,
smarter and doesn't slow pc down at all!

( Set "Auto Generate AI markers" to: Always Generate, in the options)

ALL 5 above are better and smarter then base Sorian,
and most operated with less PC load then Sorian

relentless

The bulk of AI's don't do naval expansions very well. I've only just started trying to remedy that with mine.
This is likely where the request to decrease the expansion settings come from. Also the marker generator can make matters worse on certain maps when it comes to naval expansions.
Since we are talking about Sorian, it doesn't require a positive mass income to go and build a naval expansion. But each one (assuming its a T1 engineer, if its T2 then its worse) will set it back almost 1000 mass just to establish. So 5 of those in the first 20 mins meanwhile the human already put that mass into building actual ships.

In general though the expansion limits are also going to impact performance since every expansion is going to spin up some process heavy managers. The expansions are a double edged sword and the usefulness/detriment of them often comes down to how they were designed for that particular AI and what map type is being used, gameplay style is being played.

Sorian will make giant proxy bases that require significant investment, other AI will make the bare minimum so the eco can be used for main base production. Pros and cons to each approach.

Sprouto

Good summary. A lot really has to do with both the AI's intentions with naval expansions - and the map makers understanding of how the AI interacts with the markers.

Each AI can, and often does, have different parameters for WHEN to expand, and how far to expand. As a result, the experience can vary rather wildly.

The AI developers have recently been talking about some logic to better understand what kind of naval investment is necessary, depending upon just how big a map is - and what % of the map is actually water. The idea being that the AI becomes aware that no matter what the markers may indicate - this map just isn't viable for naval work - or it's so significant that it should work much harder on naval.