Question about maps and AI

@goblinsly2

Yup, as long as you've got it selected in that sim mod tab it will load and generate markers.
Most of the AI use the default marker system which Uveso generates against.

The marker generation will add some time to the game starting up as well. You'll notice it more on the 20km maps.

m27/m28 (and an ai you may not have heard of called dillidalli) is an exception that uses it own system, so thats why you don't need to worry about markers with them.

Right now i am using uveso, rng and M27. Which other AIs are challenging and/or fun ? I usualy play with my friend 6v6 with AIs and it would be fun to have only 1 instance of each AI in each team and then observe their differences. M27 is incredibly good so far, followed by uveso. RNG is third and usualy doesnt eco that much and just spams units (though to be fair i pick unusual small maps, i just played the wierd map with 2 spots / team under water, just to see how AIs will be able to adjust to this wierd map - much better than me and my friend it turns out xD )

M28 was recently released and worth a shot.
There is one called dillidalli that is also good fun depending on the map and your play style.

Most of the AI are designed for maps that you would see in the ladder map pool as thats where most testing happens. So unique strange maps will usually produce sub par performance.

Oh and if you want something really different the SCTA mod has a build in AI.

I like to test different maps and wierd and fun is what i am looking for. Wierdly on maps i tested, M27 was better than M28. Dillidalli, didnt get the hang of it yet. On maps i tested it, it did some wierd things with their commander, like going into allys base and leaving own base unprotected.

I think the biggest mistake i did so far was that apart from me and my friend, i put same AIs in both teams. And i wanted entertaining challenging non cheating experience but what i didnt account for is that if i put M27 in both teams, they effectively negate themselves. M27 and Uveso are frighteningly good. But they still have trouble dealing with certain scenarios. Ok, i will leave aside rush experimental since thats not easy to deal with, though when they spot it, i would expect big change in strategy since if i finish that its game over. But then there is wierd things like my friend spaming nothing but destroyers and cruisers, getting a big builk and just going to their shore. His skills is like 400, but the bulk of ships was enough to drop like 4 cities, among them M27, M28 and Uveso. I was surprised that i didnt see mass T2 torp bombers from any of them since i saw that used against other AIs in other games. Wonder if they treat AI and human player the same ... me and my friend barely get touched in those games while AIs go at eachother hard. I am desperately trying to avoid using AIx since i like watching how much AI can accomplish with same resources as human player.

ps: tried a 6v6 game with a bunch of AIs and me and my friend on a big 80x80 map. Tried 2 maps, 4 times, always crashed or timed out. Its understandable since even on 20x20 map, it takes a long time to load as AIs are doing their thing. And 80x80 is what, 16x bigger.

@goblinsly2

awesome report

If you play on 80x80 maps, please disable the AI-Uveso mod.
The markergenerator in my AI can't handle 80x80 maps and will crash.

This is because I calculate all cells on the map according to "is pathable" and store this in a Lua table.
On a 80x80 the table is just to big for the game.

But if i disable AI-Uveso mod i can't use your AI and all other AI's depending on your AI to do its analyze thing, will be also useless without it right ? So then im stuck with Sorian AI :S

@goblinsly2 A number of the custom AI don't need Uveso - see the wiki for compatibility:
https://wiki.faforever.com/en/Custom-AIs
E.g. M27, M28 and DilliDalli don't need Uveso

Hmm, out of all those AI's i think only M27 and M28 will be viable since other AI's appear much weaker, at least on maps i tried. And Uveso is for max 20x20 maps as far as i understand. Its good to know that M28 is indeed a bit weaker than M27, for a while i thought i am doing something wrong since M27 appeared a bit better. Knowing this, it might be a good idea to put M27 in enemy team and then mix M27 and M28 in my and friends team until we lose. I hope we will see more AI's in the future for those who like to challenge AI from time to time

@goblinsly2 I’ve recently had a couple of desyncs highlighted to me in games where multiple humans were playing against a team of mixed M27 and M28 AI (but where no desync happened if the two AI weren’t mixed) so I’d suggest trying only one of the AI in a game if you’re playing with other players, and using AIX modifiers or AI player counts to adjust the difficulty to suit

I played with M27 and M28 and didnt get a desync yet, infact, i didnt get it with any AI. I did notice though after the latest patch, Uveso and RNG stopped working, while M27 and dillidali still work. Didnt test M28 but have no reason to doubt it also works. So much fun also, and amazingly good, that M27