New AI improvements

from Demigod Forums

I didn't really notice specific improvements to the AI, but I do have to say that they must have been improved quite a bit.

 

Last night in a 3v3 about 10-15 minutes into the game my two team mates dropped from the game due to lag (at least I think that was the problem because there was no need to quit as we were doing well at that point).  It was on Leviathan (I was Oak) and no towers had fallen at this point.  Our team had gotten a kill or two on them and I had just gotten killed myself.  I assumed that we were going to get rolled of course with 2 AI and myself vs. 3 decent human players.  So I started having fun with it by saying stuff like, "Good, now we can let the fun start now that I'm not burdened by those two!" and what not.  One of the guys from the other team started smack talking like crazy of course.

Sure enough they beat down the two main lanes and get kills on us.  We were getting some kills on them too, but they pushed right to the citadel without much real fighting back from us.  The smack talking was getting ugly and I was egging it on as I tend to do when I'm in a losing situation.  Then finally I got to a level where I became Oak the unstoppable force.  I pushed one main line to their base, backed off to the citadel to dump money in for upgrades (gold, experience, reinforcement defense).  Then I pushed the other main line to their base, went back and dumped money into my citadel.  Pushed one side line and then went back to the main line for the final nail in their coffin.

We won.  The smack talking ended and the other players graciously said "gg".  The AI helped all along the way killing Demigods and not getting killed too much.

Now I do think that the other team could have stopped that if they hadn't been overconfident.  They shouldn't have let me push the lines all the way through like they did.  I leveled like crazy doing that and got to a higher level than them which put them in a bad spot.  Still that was the first time I've won with two AI on my team.

Nice job GPG on the AI improvements!

 

demigod
7,108 views 17 replies
Reply #1 from Demigod Forums Top

I think its a bit of a mixed bag.  One of my buddies prefers to play against the computer when we get together.  We typically play 2 v 3 hard + 1 normal and win 100% of the time.  We played last night and actually lost even with me being pretty OP early on (map was crucible).  So, it looks likes it a little better.  I played a 1v1 hard ai game and saw the ai come in and crap one my portals near base very quickly, so I had to address that (map = cataract).  That's the good stuff, imo. 

The bad stuff - I find the AI will often make crazy decisions when by itself.  This was most noticiable on crucible to me.  During conquest games, if I'm beating on the ai in the middle of the map, it often runs off, away from its defences towards the gold mine/artifact flag.  Obviously not the smartest move, especially in a 1v1 scenario.  I'm guessing this is just a bug as the ai does try to flee... generally speaking, though, I haven't seen anything all that great, but I am very happy that improvements are being made. 

Reply #2 from Demigod Forums Top

The other day I was in a 2v2 in Pantheon, but the other team was only one real player and one AI.  Ironically enough, the AI was doing better than the real player.  Kind of made me chuckle.

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Reply #3 from Demigod Forums Top

Has the AI really been improved? Everytime an update comes down, I read through all the changes in it and I hadn't noticed any mention of AI improvements. I played Tournament on Hard and won, but still lost a couple of games due to the incredibly awful behaviour of my AI team mates. I noticed an Oak just standing around near a flag we already captured for nearly a minute, not moving at all. There was an enemy Regulus hovering near him that didn't appear to be doing anything either. I don't know what all that was about. Meanwhile in a Conquest game on The Brothers, my team mates did a fantastic job of feeding the enemy for a while before finally buggering off to piss around on the far right whilst the other enemy DGs who were well-levelled by this point and had catapults, got the opposite portal and ploughed right through the left flank to the citadel, leaving me to repeatedly fight two DGs on my own with no support.

Does anyone know what changes have actually been made to the AI (assuming there were)?

 

EDIT: I'm talking absolute CRAP and everyone should ignore me. There's a list of the AI adjustments in the changes list. To redeem myself, here they are:

1. Adjustments to caution and hazard detection and avoidance.
2. Adjusted health level flee percentage.
3. Demigods do not use minions when fleeing, may summon minions in combat.
4. Improved teleportation
5. Increased Demigod planning frequency
6. Improved item usage when endangered.
7. Tower tag improved.

 

Reply #4 from Demigod Forums Top

I just played a game where someone got replaced early by the AI.

First thing it did was buy priests. Lots of nice tasty goodnes to the opponents, who of course outlevelled us easily.

 

I did notice it wasnt dying as much, but buying priests for your opponents early on is pretty mucy conceding the match.

Note that at that stage we had enough war rank for our first gold upgrade, and needed it.

 

So I ended up buying all the gold upgrades (as UB, go figure). SO there we were ammassing lots of gold, ans what did the AI buy next? Nothing. No more citadel upgrades. We could have really used catapaults but I couldnt afford them myself. I have no idea what the AI was spending its money on. Maybe gear, but it wasnt making any good use of it. It still ended up dying a fair bit by the end, tho not as bad as before I guess.

Reply #5 from Demigod Forums Top

The AI is still way to aggressive for UB, he is trash. Gets sniped all the time trying to run with 100 hp.

Reply #7 from Demigod Forums Top

I'm going to retract my earlier statement even further. It still does stupid things, but I've just played a couple of tournament games and I think it's definitely playing better. At least the enemy AI is, not convinced my team mates are any better, but then it was on hard so they're supposed to be weaker, I guess.

There needs to be a better way of making "Hard" and "Nightmare" tougher than making your team mates more likely to lose you the game, though.

Reply #8 from Demigod Forums Top

Newb - you are awesome!  hehe.

I have to agree too.  I just played another 2 human v 2 ai with my buddy and the ai did play better in this instance.  I found things a little more challenging. 

Reply #9 from Stardock Forums Top

It still has problems with learning when to retreat.  While the AI does run when it detects 2+ Demigods targetting him, his retreat usually consists of walking only a few yards out of view.  With usually only 500-750 health left, a ranged ability usually takes him out.  I also don't see the AI using towers as protection alot of the time.  Once the AI gets behind in levels, it doesn't play conservatively at all....focusing on trying to kill a Demigod with a 5+ level difference instead of farming for grunts.

In other words....you have to run for your easy kills now instead of the AI walking in front of you, passing 4 towers in the process

Was playing a 4vs4 game with 1 AI on our side.  He went 0-16 :X

Reply #10 from Demigod Forums Top

The AI is vastly improved, it's worth staying in the game with an AI teammate now.

It still has problems at the extremes though. For instance, I was in a game where there were 2 regulus players who both emphasized snipe and had heavens wrath and operated close together. Our Sedna player dropped, and even though we won the game the Sedna AI suffered 8 deaths because it didn't know to retreat early because you needed a lot of HP to survive double snipe+double wrath ganking.

I don't really think that's a problem though. AIs always have trouble with players who go balls to the wall, because the AI programmers can't account for every possible situation.  That's why RTS AIs always have been and always will be vulnerable to well executed rushes.

 

 

 

Reply #11 from Demigod Forums Top

There is one UB AI that is completely worthless. He will do one of the following

1) sits behind the towers for minutes at a time.

2) Doesn't cap the flags all the way. Just to nuetral

3) Is an ooze build that doesn't buy regen gear. Runs all the way back to cit with ooze on (Reg got soo many sniper kills on him it was ridiculous.

Reply #13 from Demigod Forums Top

I have also experienced the UB being absolutely useless although it wasn't an ooze UB, it was a spit UB. 

 

Pantheon game, double Oak vs double beast, each team had 1 AI.  The AI beast was absolutely-fucking-terrible.  It spent all its gold on the most useless possible citadel upgrades EG; building damage, respawn timer, priests.  I don't think it bought ANY items because at level 8 it barely had more than 2k HP, by contrast even the AI oak had 3k+.  Even though it had put  points in spit, 99% of the time it would simply auto-attack until it hit 1k HP at which point it would retreat/hide behind towers.  Since it only had 2k max HP, it could only engage for 5 second before running away.

Reply #14 from Demigod Forums Top

I have not noticed any improvements, I have no clue what the people who are saying it's worth staying with an AI teammate are talking about. the AI still feeds like hell, so it does not make up for a decent player at all. I had a game on Crucible(a terrible map I know) where my ally Reg dropped, and the AI reg fed non-stop from there even though the player had about 5 kills and 0 deaths before the AI took over. Very important: THE AI NEEDS TO RUN FROM 1v2, please fix this. The Reg wouldn't even help me destroy the citadel, he spent the whole time doing random shit like chasing angels, he was level 16 when the game ended, and it lasted just over an hour!!

Also, the AI uses way much gold on citadel upgrades (and of course it buys crappy ones too like the death penalty one, and it buys priests early and so forth). Yes I know gold hog allies are annoying(I'm looking at you every Regulus player in the world) but the AI completely gimps itself for combat by doing this, and it doesn't stack health.

Reply #15 from Demigod Forums Top

I also agree with Busdude... for me, if I'm playing with reasonably matched opponents and I get stuck with an AI on my team due to dropping, I'm more than likely going to lose.  BUT - I think they play better in direct human v ai games.  So, while that is nice, it would be great if I wasn't forced to conclude I will lose if I get an AI teammate against decents opponents.

Reply #16 from Demigod Forums Top

I wouldn't mind seeing the gold for AI deaths cut in half or more.

Nothing is more worthless than when your partner drops and is replaced with an AI. The team I was up against decided to attack only the AI. By the end of the match, I was 5-2 and the AI was 0-13. The other human players would not engage me unless it was 2vs1.

 

 

Reply #17 from Demigod Forums Top

Regarding the purchase of inappropriate items, I'm guessing that this is semi-random. Wouldn't it be better if, even though it's less dynamic, the devs wrote out some prepared build paths for different DGs. So for example, UB would have a dozen set build paths, some ooze, some spit, etc. Spit ones might have a selection list of appropriate items when they had the money that included a mana-regen item, the ooze build would not have any mana-regen in its selection list. Okay - it's not full AI, but with a dozen different build paths for each DG (which wouldn't take long to configure) nobody would know or care that patterns repeated. And even then, you could have some randomness depending on how much gold it has or which path its already started down. It would just eliminate some of the sillier cases.