M28AI Devlog (v142)

v101 Update
13 changes mostly based on a few Yung Dookie replays:

• ACU target prioritisation updated so it targets T1 combat units over enemy ACUs (unless trying to kill the ACU)
• Fixed an issue where M28 could tell its ACU to reclaim nearby wrecks despite being surrounded by enemy units
• Transports should commit to a drop once they get close to the target, and consider dropping early if getting low on health
• Fixed a bug that prevented transports from dropping on mex-free plateaus with lots of reclaim
• Improved ACU's ability to dodge notha shots (unlike a player it can't dodge all of them, but in a few sandbox tests dodged a much higher proportion than before)

Acknowledgements

• Yung Dookie for providing several replays against M28 on a 5km (M28 won one lost one) which helped with estimating the rating to give to M28 as well as identifying some issues, along with a replay on the Ditch which highlighted M28's failure to reclaim mex-less plateaus
• Pablo and Ravendel - Ditch replay also highlighting M28 failing to reclaim mexless plateaus, along with a couple of additional replays
• DillyDalli - A separate replay also highlighting M28 failing to reclaim mexless plateaus

Trophies
No change from before (Radde trophy - current holder Radde who beat v98 1.4 resource M28AI; Sladow trophy - current holder Radde who beat v81 1.5 AIx M28AI)

https://replay.faforever.com/22700574
It seems that AI undervalues it's ACU in 1v1 - I managed to trade with AI that had 1.5 multiplier on 5 km map. Also, it's strange it did not block my path/focused my ACU with everything

I think 1.4 and 1.5 multipliers is too much for v100+ trophies. I tried it like 5 times and it's really hard:
On 5km map the only chance is too push very early until eco advantage hits you
On 15 km mapgen AI can take really inefficient trades and still be in eco advantage
Just see how hard it was to cheese with aeon gun on 1.3 multiplier:
https://replay.faforever.com/22700773

https://replay.faforever.com/22701325
Managed to get map control from 1.4 AI - not sure it's a bug, but interesting. Still lost

https://replay.faforever.com/22701462
AI does not go t2 navy till min 16 on navy map + undervalues islands with lots of mexes - still beats me as 1.4 mass is enough... (t2 navy countered with t1 subs xd)

@dillydally said in M28AI Devlog (v101):

I think 1.4 and 1.5 multipliers is too much for v100+ trophies. I tried it like 5 times and it's really hard:
On 5km map the only chance is too push very early until eco advantage hits you
On 15 km mapgen AI can take really inefficient trades and still be in eco advantage
Just see how hard it was to cheese with aeon gun on 1.3 multiplier:
https://replay.faforever.com/22700773

Thanks for all the replays! I might consider adjusting the requirements if it goes a long time with no-one able to beat them, but part of the reason for them being so high is because it makes it very likely that M28 will have made a significant blunder costing it the game, and it's not expected that many people would be able to beat it at those levels.

For example, in the first 1.5 resource 5km replay you posted, it largely played as I would have wanted, but was ultimately caught out part-way through its gun upgade when your Aeon half upgraded guncom appeared (but it didn't start its gun upgrade particularly late, hence there's nothing obvious I'd want it to do differently in the future that is feasible - e.g. getting gun sooner would damage its economy and mean fewer tanks; getting T1 PD to cover the upgrading ACU would probably be a mistake more often than it would help). In contrast if it was in that sort of a position despite both a significant resource and build rate advantage then I'd need to rethink the approach as it would have gone beyond unfortunate timing re the upgrade.

That said, with the 1.4 mapgen replay while it wasn't a bug I think it could've got a few more factories early on so I'll tweak to let it get slightly more in future)

In terms of the navy I see it as a grey area whether going T2 earlier or focusing on t1 navy spam is better - the risk if it focuses on T2 earlier is it gets overrun before it can build enough t2 naval units to help it (more likely for an AI since it requires a decent amount of judgement to assess if you think you have enough units to hold off the enemy while getting a T2 upgrade)

@maudlin27
I finally managed to beat the AI on 15 km mapgen with 1.4 resource modifier. I think AI just misjudged the map and went into air and navy when land was key factor. Also, it didn't go pd creep when my army with ACU arrived.
And I think it undervalued reclaim and far mexes again.
https://replay.faforever.com/22706131
Edit:
Now I looked through replay.
It goes 2nd air on this map - it's strange, mexes are not that far to rush a transport to drop 1(!) eng...
1st bomber goes without scout and bombs nothing
It is building engies from 2 factories instead of 1, so has no units + is very greedy with t2 mex. I think we are too close for t2 mex.
Then it spams eng from 4 (!!!) factories even when see my units coming
Not sure why it went t2 air at all.
9:20 - it knows I have army and it has a lot of t2 engies - couple of PDs could save the game. Then units just block the PD spot for years
11:00 - it is totally losing, but could probably rush gun and t1 PDs due to good eco + go into water

@dillydally said in M28AI Devlog (v101):

@maudlin27
I finally managed to beat the AI on 15 km mapgen with 1.4 resource modifier
https://replay.faforever.com/22706131

Thanks for the replay and comments, and congrats on beating it at 1.4 resource mod! A few things for me to work on from that for the next update. I think many of the issues were connected to it going for T3 air too early (causing it to stall power, which I expect was the reason it both failed to get T2 PD, and failed to get the gun upgrade on its ACU)

v102 Update
13 changes based mostly on replays from DillyDally, including:

• A few tweaks to when tanks will come to the aid of M28's ACU to make them slightly more aggressive
• Increased the chance of a second T1 air fac being built at relatively high mass storage levels (since otherwise M28 wouldnt get any more factories)
• Significant increase in priority of building the first air scout if a first bomber has just been built
• Adjusted transport drop prioritisation so a 3+ mex zone on the same plateau will be prioritised over a 1 mex plateau
• When deciding whether to upgrade to a T3 air fac, the AI's resource bonus should be taken into account (to make an upgrade less likely in some cases than before)
• The first T2 PD should have its build location reassessed if construction doesnt start soon and units are blocking the build location
• Absolvers should be more cautious/retreat sooner
• Idle engineers should attack move to an adjacent land zone instead of sitting idle (so they can pick up very low reclaim value props on the way)

Acknowledgements

• DillyDally - various replays which formed the basis of the majority of the changes this update

Trophies

• Radde trophy - Awarded to DillyDally for beating v101 M28 at 1.4 resource on a 15km mapgen

@maudlin27 I had a crash today and it seems that it has to do with OBS which i use for streaming. Do you have any more insight as to what is wrong or how to solve it ?

game_22739611.zip

@goblinsly2 My expectation is it went over the 2GB memory threshold given this line was in the log:
ACCESS_VIOLATION: Write to 0x0389F000 Out of memory/Alloc error

In which case a couple of options you could try to avoid a repeat would be to reduce the number of AI players and/or the unit cap

Ok, so this is not OBS problem then ? I am asking because this never happened when i played, but had a crash 2 times when using OBS. And i wasn't even far into the game, probably about 1 hour, while other games i played for 3-4 hours ingame time

It's possible observer mode results in a higher memory usage; for example when I tested a while ago, staying zoomed out at default used less memory than when zooming in, so I'd guess it's possible that as a player fewer assets are loaded into memory (because they're not visible) vs if you were an observer

v103 Update

The main change this update was adding basic compatibility with LOUD - although M28 won't be able to play LOUD well (with parts of its logic broken or relying on redundancies) it is now compatible with LOUD enough to play somewhat competitively.

Note there’s currently an issue with getting M28 to work on the latest release of LOUD which I’ll be looking into shortly - currently it only works with v7.0 of LOUD

• 9 general changes and fixes, including fixing a bug that meant M28Easy would try and dodge T1 arti and MML shots
• Basic LOUD compatibility added (i.e. M28 can play LOUD, and some configuration options are provided to specify to what extent) - Copy M28 mod folder to the LOUD usermods folder and enable it in the mod manager, then reload LOUD to see the M28 game options that allow you to play with M28 instead of or as well as LOUD. Note that the option to specify what team M28 applies to gives inconsistent results based on the map (i.e. the teams per the game settings don't align with how the teams are recorded for the map, so applying M28 to 'odd' teams might actually end up applying it to even teams) - this is only relevant for mixed M28 and LOUD AI games though.
• 6 changes made from an initial test of M28 on a LOUD map of wider relevance, covering some refinements to when it will upgrade a t1 mex to t2, and reworking how it draws the core base land zone if there are no mexes very close to spawn but are some much further away (which seems to be the case for almost every LOUD map)

Acknowledgements:

• GerJS – Replays highlighting how M28Easy would try and dodge MML and T1 arti fire
• Goblinsly – Log which included an error with M28’s land logic
• Sprouto – splitting out a function in LOUD to facilitate it being hooked
• Jip – Confirming I could copy the code to get the navigational mesh he wrote into M28/ M27Mini (with appropriate copyright notice) which made it feasible to get these mods working outside of FAF, and for creating the Navmesh in the first place!

v104 Hotfix

• Fixed a bug introduced in v103 for co-op maps that could cause a bunch of error messages to appear
• Updated LOUD related initialization to switch compatibility to v7.02 from v7.0
• One other niche bugfix/redundancy

Acknowledgements

• greenkiller56 - highlighting a bug with M28 on coop
• j.w.w - noting M28 didnt work on latest LOUD release

There might be a bug with v103 or v104 regarding shields => https://imgur.com/a/ONbRhwe
The shield cannot be destroyed (building yes but shield itself no) and projectiles get stuck in it causing the game to progressively slow down. We got it twice and couldn't reproduce without M28AI, and another player described the same problem in #aeolus (also with M28AI enabled).

I play 1 game against M28 everyday and would like to thank you for your work - u have no idea how much fun i have after a working day, playing against M28

I have a few observations, if u find them useful:

1. Occasionaly M28 has problems regarding nukes. Namely, when i launch a nuke and its in the air, often he might go to where the nuke will land. I thought it was to lure the enemy but he sent to many planes there. And sometimes he will launch a nuke a few seconds after i do and target the spot that will be destroyed by my nuke
2. when he spots enemy air experimental or gunships, he will often follow them with all their ASF's and get shreded in heavily SAMs fortified town (scouted). When he is fighting ASF vs ASF he will usualy stop, but when its about gunships or air exp he will send them to death often, barely shooting anything down
3. sometimes we have a land experimental nearing our base while he goes with tons of gunships killing some very far away scouts and stuff

ps: is there something special with fatboys or UEF in particular ? I find the games with UEF run a lot slower than games without them, particularly when fatboys move around. I did test and fatboys vs fatboys do indeed cause serious lag. Which is funny because ASF fights even consisting of like 1300 ASF's rarely cause more than -1 or -2. When u see fatboys around after 1.5 hours i can drop to -5

@croutouze If it was with v104 please could you send me the replay ID?

@goblinsly2 said in M28AI Devlog (v104):

I play 1 game against M28 everyday and would like to thank you for your work - u have no idea how much fun i have after a working day, playing against M28

I have a few observations, if u find them useful:

1. Occasionaly M28 has problems regarding nukes. Namely, when i launch a nuke and its in the air, often he might go to where the nuke will land. I thought it was to lure the enemy but he sent to many planes there. And sometimes he will launch a nuke a few seconds after i do and target the spot that will be destroyed by my nuke
2. when he spots enemy air experimental or gunships, he will often follow them with all their ASF's and get shreded in heavily SAMs fortified town (scouted). When he is fighting ASF vs ASF he will usualy stop, but when its about gunships or air exp he will send them to death often, barely shooting anything down
3. sometimes we have a land experimental nearing our base while he goes with tons of gunships killing some very far away scouts and stuff

ps: is there something special with fatboys or UEF in particular ? I find the games with UEF run a lot slower than games without them, particularly when fatboys move around. I did test and fatboys vs fatboys do indeed cause serious lag. Which is funny because ASF fights even consisting of like 1300 ASF's rarely cause more than -1 or -2. When u see fatboys around after 1.5 hours i can drop to -5

Thanks for the comments,

• 1a (air suiciding into nukes) - what air units are going in the nuke radius - gunships, or asfs? I thought I'd added logic for gunships to avoid nukes, but not sure I've done the same for asfs (as it would tax the cpu a lot more)
• 1b (nukes doubling up on human nukes) - It's meant to check for teammate nuke launches, however there will be a 5-10s gap (depending on faction) between a missile launch being queued and actually launching. E.g. if you start firing a missile at target X, 3 seconds later (before the missile launches) M28 thinks target X would be good for it to nuke and launches its missile, then 2 seconds later your missile is released from the launcher, followed a few seconds later by M28's at the same target. If there's a bigger gap between the two (i.e. more than 10s after your missile is released from the silo M28's missile fires) then let me know the replay and timestamp and I can look into further to see if there's a bug
• 2 (asf suicide into air exp) - Could be working as intended depending on the scenario - it will be more aggressive if it thinks it has air control; and if the enemy air experimental is threatening a high value target (like its base, ACU, or a friendly experimental). If it's suiciding into an air experimental that is a long way (e.g. more than a T2 arti firing range) away from high value friendly units, and it's in the first 40m of a game, let me know the replay and rough timestamp and I can see if there are any tweaks I can do.
• 3 (gunships ignoring approaching land exp) - it has an override for land experimentals that get close to its base, although this might vary on map size, if you have a replay and timestamp that's , in the first 40m of a game let me know
  (reason for the 40m threshold is there's a good chance time looking at it would be wasted/I conclude it works as intended but it would potentially take a long time to test to confirm if the re play is later on than that, assuming we're talking about large teamgames/large unit counts)
• 4 (fatboy slowdown) - It's possible, fatboys have some custom logic, although I wouldn't have expected it to be that intensive as other units have similar logic; if you use the cheat menu to spawn a couple of fatboys for M28s on opposing teams early on in a game do you get the same sort of slowdown? if so I could look into further to figure out if its the fatboy logic and (if so) if there are ways I can optimise without making it significantly weaker

@maudlin27 I can't reproduce with v104. Maybe it was just on v103.