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TA:Spring had these AIs that would exploit shit in a terribly annoying way. Like, you had ballistic projectiles that would take a while to arrive at the target,

TA:Spring had these AIs that would exploit shit in a terribly annoying way. Like, you had ballistic projectiles that would take a while to arrive at the target, and your units would fire them. Well, the enemies had them too, except the AI would exploit its superior micro by firing off the projectiles at maximum range and maximum inbound velocity and then immediately shifting outbound. You can't move your bloody units as fast as them so your units would fire at the place where they were 'going to be' within the range or at the place they were at the limit of the range. Utterly infuriating as a player. I know it doesn't have to be that way, and the path could be closer to strategic decision making, but it's a funny example of one of those AI decisions that wasn't constrained in one way.

PetahNZ 8y ago
Which Spring AI was this? I don't remember any of them being any good. I made a Spring AI back in the day (it wasn't very good either).
- scarejunba 8y ago
  I saw it do it with BA, but I don’t remember the name. It was many years ago. Perhaps RAI? Was that a name?
bryondowd 8y ago
Yeah, that sounds less like a 'smart' AI gone wrong and more like a typical cheating AI. In this case, instead of an actual cheat it's just able to act at superhuman speeds. Similar to the speculated issue with the Starcraft AI. Even though that one was constrained in actions per minute, it wasn't really constrained the same way a human is. In general, the smarter you make the AI, the more you have to work to give it constraints to keep it from cheesing the player the same way players often cheese dumb AIs. In the case of an RTS, you can force the AI to manipulate a cursor and view area the same way a human does. Only give it partial information about areas outside the current view. Put limits on cursor manipulation. Maybe add a fudge factor that makes its clicks land randomly within X distance of its target, where X is based on the average speed the cursor has moved in the last half a second. That alone would make it harder for it to give orders to a bunch of individual units fast enough to out-micro a player, and you're really just giving it constraints similar to a human operating a mouse.
mcv 8y ago
In clicky action games, the AI has a definite advantage over human players, because it's not encumbered by an interface. For turn-based strategy games, that advantage disappears. Outside of heavily researched abstract predictable games like chess and go, I haven't seen any games where AI can beat a skilled human player at strategy.

PetahNZ 8y ago

Which Spring AI was this? I don't remember any of them being any good. I made a Spring AI back in the day (it wasn't very good either).

scarejunba 8y ago
I saw it do it with BA, but I don’t remember the name. It was many years ago. Perhaps RAI? Was that a name?

bryondowd 8y ago

Yeah, that sounds less like a 'smart' AI gone wrong and more like a typical cheating AI. In this case, instead of an actual cheat it's just able to act at superhuman speeds. Similar to the speculated issue with the Starcraft AI. Even though that one was constrained in actions per minute, it wasn't really constrained the same way a human is. In general, the smarter you make the AI, the more you have to work to give it constraints to keep it from cheesing the player the same way players often cheese dumb AIs. In the case of an RTS, you can force the AI to manipulate a cursor and view area the same way a human does. Only give it partial information about areas outside the current view. Put limits on cursor manipulation. Maybe add a fudge factor that makes its clicks land randomly within X distance of its target, where X is based on the average speed the cursor has moved in the last half a second. That alone would make it harder for it to give orders to a bunch of individual units fast enough to out-micro a player, and you're really just giving it constraints similar to a human operating a mouse.

mcv 8y ago

In clicky action games, the AI has a definite advantage over human players, because it's not encumbered by an interface. For turn-based strategy games, that advantage disappears. Outside of heavily researched abstract predictable games like chess and go, I haven't seen any games where AI can beat a skilled human player at strategy.