guys i done some research, read books and crawled the net and its just SO much that can be done to improve the AI, its all so clear now... ill need to rewrite it from scratch (thankfully 1 gen at a time) to get the most out of it and its gonna be a mammoth task! but ill be working a lot faster as now i have beta testers that can do the testing while i do the programming 😁

just some stuff that i found out to be possible:
-make the AI have a random strategy for each game! that includes say as inf gen doing an infantry rush, a dual helix rush, a nuke turtle etc etc!
-make the AI more intelligent as it will evaluate the success of an attack and consider if it hsould repeat it
-the AI will build better, more protected bases
-rebuilding working flawlessly
-the AI managing its money properly and saving up for buildings BY ITSELF
-AI going after objects like junk piles (gla) and money crates
only to scratch the surface...
wow its so much, i can atually make it smart now!
i also found some ways of simplyfying installation and beta distributing (1 big file instead of multiple files).
anyways it will be some time till i can get a full rewrite going but it should eliminate a lot of bugs, as i wont be patching EA's work but creating my own, and it could even speed up the process as ill be more confortable with the AI and less bugs will need to be stomped!
awsome stuff but ill need so much free time to work on 12 armies and finishing before ZH is primitive....
ah well lets see how it goes! lots of brainstorming to do for the basic plan for my first AI from scratch

---

seems like yuo've taken on quite a project there. 🙂

---

Is there an expected date for the mod to be finnished?

---

No there is not =)

And Lion: WOW. All the power to ya! Good luck with all of that, it sounds like it could be really really great!

---

I agree. This could be quite amazing.

---

Thats kick a** Lion. Let us know if theres anything that we can help you out with.

---

hehe at the moment im brainstorming!
to keep the amount of work manageable ill have the AI have 3 personalities per general. different personalities will mainly vary in the general points they pick, units they use and overall tactics. base building might be slightly different but not too much...
my first plan is to make the demo general, a complete rewrite of it or a china general (id probably pick nuke)
i brainstormed it a bit this morning and this is a little bit of it:

3 personalities (names are cheesy because they wont appear anywhere, youll only know what personality you are against when you get rushed/bombed):

1-sneaky quick hit and run guy
It will use demo bikes, scorpions, buggys, technicals, sneak attacks, rebel ambushes etc, will try to use disabling attacks and concentrate on taking out the economy/factories, with rushing and hit and run strikes. should make lots of traps and use suicide units against enemy armies.

2-Assault, heavy demolitions guy:
will use scuds, anthrax bombs, marauders, bomb trucks, battle busses etc. it will try to send large multi-front attack forces and will favour brute raw firepower and superweapons.

3-balanced:
so far a mix fot he two above, preferably with a twist.

of course thats really rough (didnt mention quads, upgrades they pick etc), i cba posting a proper plan here, ill work on the mod instead

i also found a way to make the AI do random decisions, so it might want to rush you from time to time at random...

well lots and lots of work to do, tonight im deleting the whole of the Demo gen AI and starting from scratch i think....

UPDATE:
just started the complete rework... the AI cannot build units, upgrades, it doesnt know how to use superweapons or powers, but its starting to build a good base! check the screenshot:


Image Insert:

82.41 KB

as you can see it now builds a semi circle of defenses so it gets protected from all directions. It builds more black markets inside its own base as well. as you can also see it needs tweaking as it build a scud storm outside its defense ring doh lol... im working at it, when im done the AI should have a pretty good base to kick ass from!

Keep tuned!

---

Nice! Lookin' good Lion!

---

ahh its good it rebuilds its command center and all base buildings now, provided it has the money. in the game i tried it only rebuilt when my forces were out of their base, which was a neat and unexpected outcome.he had no units so i can just microwave his defenses and destroy random buildings for testing...
i also added a code so the dozers will wait until the radiation/toxin clears before rebuilding the CC...
ill have a full week to work on it after tomorrow so i should get loads if not all of the demo general done...
i still have to brainstorm how it will base its attacks (alarm level, increasing waves, based on enemies defenses etc)...
the base structure positioning is extremely tricky, and i mean EXTREMELY, as if you rotate it it doesnt spin around the center, the coordinates are inverted and rotated 45 degrees and it has to fit within some area i do not know how big it is...
i also worked it so GLA will always pick resources at max efficiency (having a good dozen workers at it)
the base planning works so the AI will always have 2500-5000 in bank so it can rebuild its buildings (it will stop building units if under a certain amount etc)
it looks like this time its going far.. no bugs detected at all yet...

---

Just thinking about that makes MY head spin... heh.

Sounds like things a progressing real nicely! Just a question on the mod... how much cheating does it currently actually do? Just because I always see people saying "it [still] cheats" and stuff. I know that the original EA AI cheats as well, and I tell people that the new AI gets less extra money than the original did... but still 😄

---

the EA ai cheats. a LOT
it gets 6k for every SW it makes even for a swg PCU that costs 2500
it gets 3k when it builds a tech center
it gets 4k when it builds extra supply centers
it gets 5k in the beggining for free
it gets 10k mid game
it gets 15k late game
it gets 20k after that
it gets 3k for building black markets
it gets 725 for every hacker
it gets 200-2200 at the beggining to cover a bug
it gets 3k for building an internet center
it gets 2k for warfactories (tank gen especially)

My AI gets the correct amounts for most buildings/units mentioned above (eg 625 for inf gen hacker, 2500 for black market)
and instead of the free 5,10,15,20k that it gets (total 50k) it gets 10k for each (total 40k)
its not a HUGE amount less but its a lot less if you add it all up...

as i rewrite the AI the cheating will not only be less (it now saves up for what it needs) but more adequate (it will use them to build a good attack force or to keep pressure, not jsut for the sake of it)

the AI will always cheat however and saying it doesnt would be a lie.
My AI MOD was made with 2 intents:
1-making a harder AI that will pose a greater challenge
2-Making it fun to play against it

i could make it harder by making it cheat more and pump out more units but that wouldnt be fun, so ill balance the challenge with fun and at the current stage his amount of cheats is adequate.
any hard/brutal/impossible AI in almost any strategy game cheats. AIs will never be as smart as humans so they have to cheat to defeat/be as good as a human.
i guess most people complain that it cheats because it did cheat more in the older versions (especially v0.1-0.3) and because so much focus is given to the fact it cheats less i think lol... 😁

---

Thanks for the clarifications 🙂

---

I reccomend using at least a partial threat evaluation technique. This means scanning for the amount of units and defenses an enemy has and assigning threat values to them. These threat values trigger the construction of teams that are effective against the scanned units and defenses. The AI then attaches these extra teams to a core contingent before sending them to attack. I don't know of something like that would be possible, though...

---

Lion, just a note from an completely unexperienced person. When you build a semi circle of defenses like the AI does there the AI is almost never smart enough to react to someone A) sitting back and shelling your defenses or 😎 sneaking around the side with a Lotus or a Burton. You might want to consider these.

---

as for artillery im working on special teams such as comanches, migs, helixes, aphas, buggies, demo bikes etc that have the sole purpose of detecting and attacking artillery.
for heroes its a bit trickyer but pathfinders will do for usa and maybe comanches/quads/gattling tanks...
i have to think about that, for nom im working on base building and getting upgrades/repairing/rebuilding working

---

yes that can be added (although would take too much type for individual units as there are 12 generals, ill make it so it counts "defenses", "tanks", "infantry"). actually that is already present in the EA's AI but as with most good features it is not apparent or doesnt work.
im coming up with a smart system like holy war state if the enemy has a sw or rush if he has under x defenses etc

---