Posts made by tyne141

Frequent lack of anti-nukes?... I've noticed that quite often in games M28 doesn't seem to be building anti-nukes. When I've had M28 allies, the game has often very easily ended by either my M28 allies or M28 opponents getting nuked my an opposing M28 AI and having zero anti-nuke defenses; because it is the opposing M28 sending the nukes it is not the case of the nukes being too fast for the AI to build defenses, it just seems like the AI isn't building defenses. Here's an example of a replay: https://replay.faforever.com/20218155

@maudlin27 - I just thought I'd post about a bit of a vulnerability I noticed fairly frequently. I was just playing round with some AI vs AI out of curiosity; mainly because we've been getting a lot of enjoyment out of M27 and I was just curious to see whether any other AIs could be nearly as challenging.

I saw that in the recent AI vs AI tournaments that DilliDalli was one of the few that seemed to win relatively frequently. I tested it on 4 vs 4 Setons a couple of time with 4 x DilliDalli VS 4 x M27 (URLS:
https://replay.faforever.com/19777194 & https://replay.faforever.com/19776810 ) and the front most M27 ai-player twice in a row left its commander unnecessarily far forward where it got easily killed by moderately large swarms of T1 units. In one of the games the commander even managed to complete a T2 engineering upgrade but then it didn't move back far enough to build a T2 point defense despite there being plenty of land support available; it could've easily moved back a bit and built a T2 point defense but seemed to just wander fairly aimlessly amongst the incoming T1 tanks for long enough to get killed. I know that this is quite an isolated and specific scenario because DilliDalli seems to always T1 land rush and on Setons the front most player is instantly swamped by 4 teams worth of T1 land units, but it just didn't seem to adapt to a new strategy when it was clearly out numbered.

I should add that in both games I tested under those conditions that M27 still won because the remaining 3 teams had vastly superior economies after a few minutes, but it just seemed to me that the front player could've easily kept its commander alive if it'd just backed back a bit and defended its commander. M27 seems to build pretty good firebases slightly forward on Setons and if it builds those it's pretty hard to beat; however, when it seems to be prevented from doing that, its front playing commander seems pretty vulnerable. Recently with human players vs M27 I've also found that if you prevent M27 from getting the front fire base it often won't build too much defense back further which makes its front bases fairly vulnerable.

Possible bug causing crash: hi there we just had a game crash and I am not sure if it was possible an AI bug with M27AI. The log has some lines that mention M27.

I've pasted a few of the lines below but I can sent the full log if you want:

EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION (0xc0000005) at address 0x009272e4
attempted to write memory at 0x50895010

Program : C:\ProgramData\FAForever\bin\ForgedAlliance.exe
Cmd line arguments : /init init.lua /nobugreport /log C:\Users\tyne1\AppData\Roaming\Forged Alliance Forever\logs\game_18231596.log /gpgnet 127.0.0.1:22751 /mean 1149.82 /deviation 311.527 /savereplay gpgnet://127.0.0.1:51135/18231596/tyne141.SCFAreplay /country NZ /numgames 8 /numgames 6

Callstack:
Unknown symbol (address 0x009272e4)

Last 100 lines of log...

warning: [C]: in function assert' warning: [C]: in function pcall'
warning: ...nder forged alliance\mods\m27ai\lua\m27utilities.lua(79): in function ErrorHandler' warning: ...nder forged alliance\mods\m27ai\lua\m27utilities.lua(1023): in function GetACU'
warning: ...forged alliance\mods\m27ai\lua\ai\m27airoverseer.lua(6851): in function <...forged alliance\mods\m27ai\lua\ai\m27airoverseer.lua:6716>
info: Warning - no valid units in tNewUnits
info: Warning - no valid units in tNewUnits
info: Warning - no valid units in tNewUnits
warning: false\000M27ERROR Count=1: GameTime 1018: Cant find any ACUs that we own for brain2, and in assassination game mode, so will treat us as being defeated
warning: stack traceback:...

The latest updates seem to work well. I've had some good games on maps like Flooded Strip Mine when the AI navy seems to work pretty well. One weakness I found in recent games is that the AI is sending their commanders forward fairly far into the game and they're relatively poorly defended in general and definitely poorly defended against air. If you try to go air too early the AI seems to adapt and defend fairly well but if I don't go air at all early game and then when their commanders cross that map towards me, spam a whole lot of T1 bombers very quickly I can almost always snipe the commander/s. Other than that it's really challenging though as it is still beating us quite frequently with either nukes, artillery or experimentals. Here's an example replay of sniping the commanders with T1 bombers: https://replay.faforever.com/18219133

@maudlin27 - example of navy game: I've played a few games with navy now and it seems to be working well. In a few games it has used the missiles on the cruisers to great advantage. Here's a Setons game I just played with 7 M27AIs + me and it seemed to work well; I didn't notice any major mistakes made by the AI; however, two of my opponents commanders were killed on the land bridge by the M27 opposition so they were maybe being a bit too reckless with their commanders: https://replay.faforever.com/17979113

I've noticed one major vulnerability on many maps that have water in between the AI and player like Flooded Strip Mine: the AI almost always sends the commander through the water towards the enemy fairly early on in the game, it's very very easy to destroy the commander with torpedo bombers because the commander is virtually undefended and cannot get back out of the water in time; my impression is that the commander is programmed to harass early on, but in the case of a map like Flooded Strip Mine, it takes so long to get across to the enemy that the commander can very easily be destroyed with torpedo bombers by the time it gets in the water. The commander isn't much of a threat if it get across to the opposite island at that stage in the game anyway so I think it's quite a risky move for very little reward. Here's an example match: https://replay.faforever.com/17901355

I've still been playing against M27 with some friends. I haven't shared any replays recently because there wasn't much too noticeable for a while, but we did have a few games in a row on a map generator map in which one of the enemy ACUs just walked straight into T2 point defenses and died. I did built T2 point defenses relatively early but I'm not sure why it didn't retreat once it was getting hurt. This is the replay URL: https://replay.faforever.com/17728462 there were also a few other games on that same map where the enemy ACU did exactly the same thing and died so it seemed to be a recurring issues.

All of my games are titled TyneTest and most of them are against M27 with a few human allies and sometimes M27 allies so if you want extra random replays just search them up. Other than the one issue noted above, the M27 is still giving us novices a run for our money, we often beat it but it does often manage to beat us too by rushing experimentals or T3 artillery.

Great to see so many frequent updates.
If you want some more replays, here are a few more:

• Four-Leaf Clover: https://replay.faforever.com/17387027
  - We lost a few times because the T1 land skirmishing was quite effective but we ended up winning in this replay by turtleing and using tactical missiles
• Flooded Strip Mine: https://replay.faforever.com/17432261
  - This was just me playing with one ally M27 and two opponents; I was mainly just practising to see if I could beat it with T3 artillery; in this particular one I mostly beat the opponent opposite me but my ally lost its side so I lost in the end
• 3 of us losing against 3 M27s on The Ditch: https://replay.faforever.com/17401339
• 2 of us on Fields of Isis: https://replay.faforever.com/17364957
  - We lost quite a few times before we won but we found that a firebase with tactical missiles was quite effective against the AI as it only built so many missile defenses
  Tactical missiles seem to be the biggest weakness we've found on land skirmish maps but on a map like Flooded Strip Mine that's larger the tactical missiles aren't so much of a weakness because of the range.

@maudlin27 said in AI Development Guide and M27AI v40 Devlog:

Various tweaks aimed at improving M27’s response to a nearby naval threat slightly

Thanks for the acknowledgement; here's a couple more replays if you want:

• https://replay.faforever.com/17292294

• https://replay.faforever.com/17292355

It was 2 games of 2 humans VS 2 M27s on Eye of the Storm. We lost the first one but won the second. There didn't seem to be any major bugs but in the second match, the bottom right AI sent its commander diagonally across the whole map underwater which meant that it was completely vulnerable to torpedoes. So it almost got taken out by a lone T1 submarine. We lost the first match in a big part due to the M27 firebases being quite effective and me not defending against the T2 artillery quickly enough; however, in the second match it didn't really seem to build the firebases as effectively at the top or bottom so we just skirmished across gradually.

@maudlin27 - awesome, it's great to be playing against an AI as it is evolving so we know that we can't just learn how it behaves once and remember how to beat it.

Out of interest, is the intention to definitely add navy/sea eventually if there is time to do it well? Or is it potentially easier to make an AI difficult to beat if it concentrates its resources on land and air? I notice that some of the AIs that do build navy don't defend them too well so it is often easy to knock out naval factories in which case it is a massive waste of mass for the AI but I assume that an AI that can strategically use certain naval units could be quite tough to beat.

@maudlin27 - here are the replays:

• https://replay.faforever.com/17270495
• https://replay.faforever.com/17270834
• https://replay.faforever.com/17271124

From memory, we lost the first two games but it was in the second game that one of the commanders died early because it didn't move away from the torpedoes; the remaining team still beat us convincingly by teching up and hitting us with experimentals. I think we won in the third game mainly through long range naval.

For context, we haven't been playing too long but we're easily beating the standard AIs and Sorian etc; we don't really play against other humans much yet so we're not exactly great players but it's offered us more challenge than Sorian or LOUD which are the other AIs we've played against so far.

Thanks for the quick feedback; it's really great to watch the AI develop as you add to it. I'll try running a similar setup again on v40.

One other thing that a friend and I noticed when we played 2 humans VS. 2 M27s on V39 last night was that one time a commander killed itself by standing in the channel on High Noon and getting hit by 3 x T1 torpedo launchers. The commander seemed to retreat most of the time when it was damaged a certain amount but it didn't seem to detect it this time. The other thing was that the AI didn't seem to respond very quickly to T2 UEF cruisers attacking base buildings; it was still very challenging to win but we managed in the end partly through weakening their economy through cruiser missiles. I think we played about 3 games in a row and eventually won the last game. I can find the links for the replays if they're useful; I assume it was on V39 as I think we updated last night before playing. It's still really challenging as the AI was very quick to hit us with nukes and/or experimentals if we let it grow for too long.

@maudlin27 said in AI Development Guide and M27AI v39 Devlog:

nks, have you got a replay ID, as I've not been able to reproduce on either the FAF or non-FAF setons?
Also was this the latest version (as v39 fixed a couple of bugs that in some scenarios would cause Plateau engineers to not build mexes)

It wasn't on v39; I think it was on v37 or v38 as I played the game about 1 day before v39 released. The replay URL is: https://replay.faforever.com/17259833

It's a bit of a weird match as I was just testing M27 against Sorian out of curiosity so I was only human player in the match. I haven't seen the bug happen when I've used M27 with humans but I haven't played on many maps with plateaus with humans yet.

@maudlin27 - I like the AI and have had some good games against it. I enjoy the blog too. I did notice a small bug on Setons where it air-dropped engineers on the plateau but never built on the mass extractors. The engineers just sat there for most of the game with untouched mass extractors right beside them.