Minor tweak request:  is there any way you could keep the AI from declaring the build it is going for about 4 to 5  seconds?  With the way things load, this usually translates into having to hit enter to see what the AI chose as its only visible for 1 to 2 seconds.  I guess the perfect implementation of this would be to wait 4 to 5 sec, then post 1 build.  Wait 1 or 2 sec then post build 2 and so on.  Again, not even remotely a big deal, but figured I'd throw that out there.

Updated.  There is other stuff in the release.  Pretty sure everything else i had updated on my local copy was complete.

The game time actually starts a few seconds before the player's camera spin start, so i did a little higher wait and added some randomness.

Actual code:

The major other changes are in the AI master goal overrides.  I expanded from ~4 to 8 or so that should get the AI always doing something.

Basically in this order:

if it has stuff to buy and it is near a shop it will buy. 

If there are enemies around its citadel it will attack stuff.

If the flags aren't heavily in it's teams favor it will capture flags.

If none of the above and its healthy it will attack

Otherwise use the default function to decide what mastergoal to do.

I think this might be where is care less about holding its portals. 

If there is a way I would prioritize friendly portal flags as 3, and enemy portal flags and the HP flag as 2. 

Therefore, if it lost a friendly portal flag, it would really prioritizing flags (hopefully one of which would be the portal). However, if presented between capping XP flag and HP flag it would always go HP flag. 

This would make the "flag count" to be 13 + 2*2 + 3*1 == 20. 

Another trick would be to "teach" the AI how to capture the two gold flags without being attacked by the tower, and how to capture both the gold flag and portals as the same time. 

Is there currently logic in the AI to distinguish between different flags at all?  By type, or also by location / default ownership?  I'm pretty sure the flag markers in MasterChain that each team starts with have ownership variables, so if it doesn't do this already, it should be simple enough to retrieve.

Also, does Validate.CanPickUpgrade check whether or not the upgrade is already purchased?  I don't have the lua in front of me right now.  I assume it does, but I figured I'd ask.

Yes, a general-use capture-nearest would be good, and a much higher-priority recapture-own-portal, with a caveat for going for an enemy portal instead if one is significantly closer and not too heavily-defended (a simple radius 25 count of hostile towers centered on the flag).

I'll take a look at those actions when I get the chance.

however, if i play on cataract, it plays just fine... hmm

No one sticks around the HP flag becuase they are probably all unhurt, so all get the capture points as thier master goal.  They all then run the same capture action function that selects the nearest flag as the capture target.  I might be able to add some randomness to this so even if they are all in the same spot they can make different choices.

The shopping issues is probably a distance thing.  

I'll have to test the overrides on the other maps.  The shop distance check is only 30, so shopping will generally only occur when the AI passes by a shop (most maps this is on their retreat to the health stone).  There are so many distance types in the game, but i think that '30' in this function covers from the shop to the citadel on cataract.  The AI shops consistently on cataract because it retreats to the health stone next to the shop. 

Probably need to get distance out of the check and just shop when it has stuff to buy.   But don't want it to shop every time it can afford a health potion... 

Maybe I'll modify the shopping override to be cash based?  If it has over 3000 and has items in its shooping list, then go shop?   I'll tinker with this a bit.   Maybe sum up the cost of all the items it thinks it can purchase and make some cash amount worth the trip?

I think for the flag capture actions I am going to count up each flag type or at least count portals on each team.  If the portal counts arn't in the demigod's favor it will select the nearest portal as the capture target.    Not sure if it should be nearest to the demigod or nearest to the demigod's stronghold.   Maybe i'll have it check which stronghold the demigod is closest to and select the closest portal based on which side of the map its on.

If portals are even or its not war rank 7+ it can any near flags.   Not sure what to do on the AI bunching up on the same flags.  Maybe a new capture action can be done that instead of capturing a point just defends it...   I've got a move action in to teleport to portal flags (the action sends the 'portal threatened' message when its triggered), maybe I should expand that to protect HP flags?  Any other valuable flags?  If it is expanded to any center flags it will be threatened often. 

well... that I'm not too sure about.  I think I'd probably like the ai to purchase the upgrades.  The general premise in the vanilla ai is that they are useless.  The more they take care of for me, the better my chances of winning.  Your mod makes a substantial difference in the ai's skill level - but unless they can come pretty close to emulating another decent human player, then they are a liability.  HOWEVER - that is offset quite a bit by having them purchase upgrades so the human players can focus on kills, etc. 

It might be worth a shot at changing things up a little, though.  I'm game for testing at any rate and we can see how things go.

Also, upon re-reading the past few posts, I agree with pacov about having the AI, especially nightmare, take care of the core upgrades like fs1 and currency.  Even having one nightmare AI on your team means that you should never have to worry about these, and definitely shouldn't have to worry about buying the entire creep tree yourself.  Normal AIs are never going to be able to afford the entire creep tree AND a bunch of items, so expecting them to compete anywhere near on the level of a human while buying upgrades is silly.  If you want an AI that takes care of upgrades and is also challenging to fight, don't play with/against Normal.

The question is then, should we adjust certain citadel upgrade priorities for lower-skill AIs?  This is trivial to implement, and I already have the code to get AI difficulty sitting around somewhere (if I cant find it, it should also be in the .23 skirmish AI thread), so it's just a question of deciding which upgrades to not have lower-level AI focus on unless it's trying to auto-match (i.e. the enemy has giants and the AI's team is screwed unless it gets them too, items be damned).

Edit: What difficulty level are the AIs brought in when a player is dropped?  If not already the case, it should be possible to auto-adjust this to the enemy team's combined kills/war score compared to the dropped player's team, i.e. pull in a Nightmare AI if the enemy team is winning, or a Normal/High if things are closer or the dropped player's team is winning.

Good stuff.  Thanks for getting another release out.  Not sure if I'll have a chance to test this out tonight, but I'll take a look at it tomorrow.  Thanks!

Had to rush that G release out this morning before leaving for the thanksgiving festivities.  I did not get to test the portal re-capturing section or let you know what changed.  I normally run a few full games for release, but did not for g, so hopefully no major issues.

To detail the changes in G:

First I found very odd behavior trying to mod the capture action that comes with the game.  Almost like the modded version wasn't overwritting the existing function.   So i neutered it to never be chosen as an action, and re-made the capture anything action.  It was called by the demigods as expected. 

For the action I tried to simplify it down, so it has a fixed weight and the instant status check to confirm it can run this action only requires an enemy or neutral flag be available.   Once we are performing the action, it selects a flag:

First we check if we own fewer portals than the enemy.  If so, we check if we are closer to an enemy portal flag than our stronghold.   My thought here was if the AI is on the other side of the map near an enemy portal flag and the enemy captures one of our flags on the other side of the map we might as well go for the flag near the unit.   If we are closer to the stronghold, then we will find the portal flag closest to the stronghold and go re-capture it.   This runs before selecting any other flag, so if the portal flags ever get out of balance it should be the first thing addressed by a healthy AI.

If the portal balance is in our favor or equal and there are enemy or neutral flags on the map it sorts for the flags closest to the unit.  If there is more than one it randomly selects from the two closest flags.   We can tinker with this, but in testing it split the AI's in a nice way, so they would go to different flags.

Some test items:

Are there any maps where the physical portal is far away from the flag?  It was easier to get a list of physical portals than to loop over the flags and find the portal flags, so that part will actually send them to the portal rather than the flag near it, but finding the flag nearest a given portal shouldn't be too much effort if it is an issue on certain maps.

For this version i have the action set to 40 seconds.  If the AI does not make it to the original flag selected in that time the function will run again and it may select a different flag based on the units current position.   We may need a distance check on the closest flag and make sure we don't re-pick to the second closest flag when we are close to another flag.  

Need to run some games to test artifact shopping.  I think it will run to the health stone, shop locally, then if the team owns the artifact shop it will continue and shop for artifacts.   Shopping could also come up as the master goal through the default goal picker anytime the demigod is less than full health (override action at full health), so artifacts may get purchases this way naturally.  The weight for this is controlled by a sensor that checks item priority (very high for artifacts, 100+) and distance to shop.

miriyaka,

On flag defense.  I wrote the custom action 'Teleport to Portal' in useitemsactions.   It could be expanded to other flag types or maybe a new one that is walk based, so we save teleport flag defense for portals and maybe have a walking defense of other flags (probably should do a list of flags worth defending vs ones you can just let get captured and re-capture when you get near it).

On difficulty i believe that is stored directly with the brain as well. 

Found some issues on the maps with a large distance between the portals and the portal flag, so have a fix ready for that. 

I will add a damage check to the instant status of the capture action.  The old function also used to scan for enemies and abort when it found enemies.  I can add that back in and see if the behavior is better.

I test 'h' and try to get another version out before the end of the night.