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As a longtime fan of Age of Empires, I have absolutely fallen in love with the open source 0ad clone. http://play0ad.com/ http://play0ad.com/ The AI is surpri

by SEJeff 9y ago

As a longtime fan of Age of Empires, I have absolutely fallen in love with the open source 0ad clone. http://play0ad.com/ http://play0ad.com/ The AI is surprisingly good, and the character models are as good as Age of Empires. Bonus points that it is in all major Linux distro repositories if you're one of those kinds of people (like me!).

axaxs 9y ago
Honest question... did it get better recently? I tried it years ago... and the AI was non existent...as in, I built up an army and went to explore, only to find my enemy had like 4 peasants.
- rpedela 9y ago
  Yes much better. I have trouble beating the default AI on its highest setting now. I am not a great player, but I don't suck either.
- SEJeff 9y ago
  If you watch their svn history, they consistently are chipping away at it. I simply wait (to upgrade to a new 0ad) with the latest version in each new Fedora release. It gets progressively better from an AI, music, and artwork standpoint. 0AD is definitely not the same game now as it was years ago, it is massively improved. These were both pretty big releases: https://play0ad.com/new-release-0-a-d-alpha-21-ulysses/ https://play0ad.com/new-release-0-a-d-alpha-21-ulysses/ https://play0ad.com/new-release-0-a-d-alpha-22-venustas/ https://play0ad.com/new-release-0-a-d-alpha-22-venustas/ I find the AI to be challenging to beat on hard, but not impossible. I'll play as the Ptolemies, because I know that they were the pinnacle of the Greek Phalanx lead by none other than Alexander the Great. So I was trying to take a large group of spearman up to take over an enemy town center filled with archers but wasn't having a ton of luck. Every time my infantry would retreat, the 20 archers would come out and chase them down. When I'd turn back, the archers would head back to the town center and shred through them. My winning strategy involved staging 10 companion cavalry to the east and have the infantry attack the town center and then retreat south, drawing the archers out to try to take out the infantry. The companion cavalry rode north of the archers cutting off their retreat to the town center and let the infantry cut them down. The newer AI will also scout out your location and attack weak spots. They'll purposefully avoid attacking through walls and lots of towers if you mistakenly leave an unprotected rear or flank that they can use to march right up and destroy your town. It is certainly more difficult now and the new graphics make it a lot of fun to play.
  - axaxs 9y ago
    you're absolutely right! I'm terrible at these types of games, and getting my ass handed to me even on easy. Kudos to the team, this is a fun game.
  - mnicky 9y ago
    Speaking of AI, there's pretty interesting project which aims at creating 0AD bot that uses hierarchical planning, not just some random heuristics: https://github.com/agentx-cgn/Hannibal https://github.com/agentx-cgn/Hannibal
- blattimwind 9y ago
  Another stupid question: did performance improve in the last ~two or three years? Even on the kinda small maps back then it quickly ran into CPU limits.
  - rpedela 9y ago
    Yes performance is better overall. It is still possible to choke though depending on machine, map size, and number of units.
johnramsden 9y ago
Watching the video sure brings back memories. I spent many an hour as a young lad playing Age of Empires, I always loved the sounds. It looks like they did a good job of recreating AOE audio.
ouid 9y ago
I don't really like the idea of non-sprite graphics. Seems like it would detract from the game.
- SEJeff 9y ago
  What do you mean in specific? The current models are mostly made with Blender 3D and they're quite good.
- rpedela 9y ago
  Sprites in a 3D game look horrible for most objects: buildings, characters, terrain. Sprites are typically used for particle effects, grass, or objects that are far away. The latter is often used a performance optimization.
  - ouid 9y ago
    Age of Empires is not a 3d game.
    - rpedela 9y ago
      AoE 1 and 2, yes. AoE 3 is 3D. True 3D works fine for RTS games and generally looks better, and can apply dynamic shadows, physics, etc. If you are simply saying that you prefer the old-style graphics, then okay. But your initial statement wasn't worded well if that is what you meant.
nerdponx 9y ago
I wonder when we are going to start seeing game AIs trained by reinforcement learning with self-play. Building a simple 0AD AI would be a fun capstone project.
- eertami 9y ago
  The Open AI guys made a very impressive Dota 2 AI that trained itself through self play (and against pros), there is a pretty interesting write-up about it: https://blog.openai.com/dota-2/ https://blog.openai.com/dota-2/
  - Thorncorona 9y ago
    To shed some light on why they won, they chose a character (Shadow Fiend) that heavily relies on tight timings to execute moves. Naturally, AIs beat humans in events where timing is the key differentiator. Even so it’s quite impressive

by SEJeff 9y ago

axaxs 9y ago

Honest question... did it get better recently? I tried it years ago... and the AI was non existent...as in, I built up an army and went to explore, only to find my enemy had like 4 peasants.

rpedela 9y ago
Yes much better. I have trouble beating the default AI on its highest setting now. I am not a great player, but I don't suck either.
SEJeff 9y ago
If you watch their svn history, they consistently are chipping away at it. I simply wait (to upgrade to a new 0ad) with the latest version in each new Fedora release. It gets progressively better from an AI, music, and artwork standpoint. 0AD is definitely not the same game now as it was years ago, it is massively improved. These were both pretty big releases: https://play0ad.com/new-release-0-a-d-alpha-21-ulysses/ https://play0ad.com/new-release-0-a-d-alpha-21-ulysses/ https://play0ad.com/new-release-0-a-d-alpha-22-venustas/ https://play0ad.com/new-release-0-a-d-alpha-22-venustas/ I find the AI to be challenging to beat on hard, but not impossible. I'll play as the Ptolemies, because I know that they were the pinnacle of the Greek Phalanx lead by none other than Alexander the Great. So I was trying to take a large group of spearman up to take over an enemy town center filled with archers but wasn't having a ton of luck. Every time my infantry would retreat, the 20 archers would come out and chase them down. When I'd turn back, the archers would head back to the town center and shred through them. My winning strategy involved staging 10 companion cavalry to the east and have the infantry attack the town center and then retreat south, drawing the archers out to try to take out the infantry. The companion cavalry rode north of the archers cutting off their retreat to the town center and let the infantry cut them down. The newer AI will also scout out your location and attack weak spots. They'll purposefully avoid attacking through walls and lots of towers if you mistakenly leave an unprotected rear or flank that they can use to march right up and destroy your town. It is certainly more difficult now and the new graphics make it a lot of fun to play.
- axaxs 9y ago
  you're absolutely right! I'm terrible at these types of games, and getting my ass handed to me even on easy. Kudos to the team, this is a fun game.
- mnicky 9y ago
  Speaking of AI, there's pretty interesting project which aims at creating 0AD bot that uses hierarchical planning, not just some random heuristics: https://github.com/agentx-cgn/Hannibal https://github.com/agentx-cgn/Hannibal
blattimwind 9y ago
Another stupid question: did performance improve in the last ~two or three years? Even on the kinda small maps back then it quickly ran into CPU limits.
- rpedela 9y ago
  Yes performance is better overall. It is still possible to choke though depending on machine, map size, and number of units.

johnramsden 9y ago

Watching the video sure brings back memories. I spent many an hour as a young lad playing Age of Empires, I always loved the sounds. It looks like they did a good job of recreating AOE audio.

ouid 9y ago

I don't really like the idea of non-sprite graphics. Seems like it would detract from the game.

SEJeff 9y ago
What do you mean in specific? The current models are mostly made with Blender 3D and they're quite good.
rpedela 9y ago
Sprites in a 3D game look horrible for most objects: buildings, characters, terrain. Sprites are typically used for particle effects, grass, or objects that are far away. The latter is often used a performance optimization.
- ouid 9y ago
  Age of Empires is not a 3d game.
  - rpedela 9y ago
    AoE 1 and 2, yes. AoE 3 is 3D. True 3D works fine for RTS games and generally looks better, and can apply dynamic shadows, physics, etc. If you are simply saying that you prefer the old-style graphics, then okay. But your initial statement wasn't worded well if that is what you meant.

nerdponx 9y ago

I wonder when we are going to start seeing game AIs trained by reinforcement learning with self-play. Building a simple 0AD AI would be a fun capstone project.

eertami 9y ago
The Open AI guys made a very impressive Dota 2 AI that trained itself through self play (and against pros), there is a pretty interesting write-up about it: https://blog.openai.com/dota-2/ https://blog.openai.com/dota-2/
- Thorncorona 9y ago
  To shed some light on why they won, they chose a character (Shadow Fiend) that heavily relies on tight timings to execute moves. Naturally, AIs beat humans in events where timing is the key differentiator. Even so it’s quite impressive