Topic: How Next-Gen AI can be done...

[Nemesis]

Link to full article

So I got my new Quadcore in. 2.667Ghz of Quadcore power.  I love it.  And as an AI developer, the future looks increasingly bright with features such as Quadcore coming.  Galactic Civilizations II: Dark Avatar, will support Dualcore CPUs. If you turn up the CPU options, more advanced algorithms come into play.

But think of a future where Quadcore is common.  I could have, literally, a thread dedicated to doing nothing else than statistical analysis of data running in the background.  Such power would allow the AI to start storing a great deal of data that would be persistent. Your strategies could be written to disk and then analysed in future games by the AI.  It's something I definitely want to put into our next game (a fantasy strategy game) in some form so that the AI really does learn over the course of multiple games.

These concepts are nothing new of course. Neural Nets/Expert Systems have long been discussed in AI circles.  What is changing is that some of these techniques become quite viable when you're dealing with a large % of your gamer base having multiple core CPUs.  Now, threads that do nothing but sift through data become possible. Even a brute force asynchronous thread could result with significantly more intelligent computer players.

Now add this to SFC2.  The AI knows that you always fire a full spread of pseudos to force it to weasel even before your Plasmas are actually charged - so it doesn't weasel.  It knows that you always hit and run as soon as its shield is knocked down, so it holds back so fire power to mizia through your dropped shield when the hit and runs go off.  It knows you like to do captures and hits your transporters to block that.   It knows that you always fire your overloaded photons on the first pass so it out runs you and keeps the range to high for them to be effective.

Just a few examples.  I'm sure that there are many more.

[NuclearWessels]

Absolutely - I've often thought about doing that even with the OP scripting API - having the mission record your style of play (maybe broken down into a few general matchup types) and then once in awhile throwing in a response directly geared at ambushing that. 

The only thing stopping me has been the incredibly weak control the script has over the ships -- you can't tell a ship to fire weapons, arm overloads, launch or recall fighters/shuttles, drop bombs, etc etc.  There are just a handful of vague/general instructions you can give, and those are routinely ignored by the AI anyway.   Ah well, just me b*tching about the API again

dave

[Skawpya]

Ah, so finally we'll get AI Lyrans that are not a cake walk to beat :>

[Nemesis]

Ah, so finally we'll get AI Lyrans that are not a cake walk to beat :>

Lyrans that can do the Onion on you.  Romulans that do the Plasma Ballet.  Romulan allies that don't just sit there cloaked the whole battle.  Klingons that Sabre Dance.  Gorn that can do the anchor properly.  ISC Eschelons.