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Thu, 2010-02-11 02:46
I have almost stopped playing the mod. And it is because I play skirmish a lot and I'm starting to get bored about the enemies AI.
Here I tell you how it works mostly:
The vast majority of times they don't attack, unless they are provoked, specially if I shoot at their harvester. At the beginning of the game their attacks can be harmful, but in a few minutes I buy things to defend myself. And then, the attacks never success. They keep sending a small amount of units again and again for a long time, that never have any chance to do some significant harm. And that's very boring. I always play against the highest AI level.
I don't know if you're going to improve the AI because neither Tiberian Sun nor Tiberian Dawn have good AI, so maybe it's not your priority. I think it's a lot of work to improve the AI, I don't really know, but I think it'd be really cool. Just take a look at C&C3's AI, sometimes can be very hard to beat, and that makes the skirmish games a lot more intense and challenging.
In short, I'm just telling you that if you improve the AI in your mod to make AI players really challenging and even capable to beat a human player, it would be awesome and it'd make the mod a lot more interesting and entertaining.
Here I tell you how it works mostly:
The vast majority of times they don't attack, unless they are provoked, specially if I shoot at their harvester. At the beginning of the game their attacks can be harmful, but in a few minutes I buy things to defend myself. And then, the attacks never success. They keep sending a small amount of units again and again for a long time, that never have any chance to do some significant harm. And that's very boring. I always play against the highest AI level.
I don't know if you're going to improve the AI because neither Tiberian Sun nor Tiberian Dawn have good AI, so maybe it's not your priority. I think it's a lot of work to improve the AI, I don't really know, but I think it'd be really cool. Just take a look at C&C3's AI, sometimes can be very hard to beat, and that makes the skirmish games a lot more intense and challenging.
In short, I'm just telling you that if you improve the AI in your mod to make AI players really challenging and even capable to beat a human player, it would be awesome and it'd make the mod a lot more interesting and entertaining.
Fri, 2010-02-12 09:38
#2
I noticed that some boys from the sven coop mod are pretty good ai coders. You may want to say hello in the official forum at svencoop.com
Fri, 2010-02-12 15:30
#3
AI coding experience for FPS games ain't going to help with TS/DTA.
I think I could post my own AI modifications (although it's much better and more aggressive than the original DTA AI without adding any cheats, I think someone like Dutchygamer who has used a lot of time for the TI AI could do a better job) here once I modify some taskforces. Right now it spends too much money on infantry, and while it also builds lots of tanks, infantry in DTA are really weak in attacking when compared to tanks (cost-wise).
I think I could post my own AI modifications (although it's much better and more aggressive than the original DTA AI without adding any cheats, I think someone like Dutchygamer who has used a lot of time for the TI AI could do a better job) here once I modify some taskforces. Right now it spends too much money on infantry, and while it also builds lots of tanks, infantry in DTA are really weak in attacking when compared to tanks (cost-wise).
Sat, 2010-02-13 02:59
#4
Yeah, I already asked Dutchy before I released DTA 1.10, but he really didn't have any time to do it back then. I got an offer from DvD to do it however...
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Wed, 2011-01-26 13:14
#5
So are you the lead designer of this mod bittah?
Wed, 2011-01-26 19:32
#6
So are you the lead designer of this mod bittah?
Yes, he is.
Thu, 2011-01-27 18:05
#7
Not only the lead designer, but the lead-everything. Everything not specially credited as someone else's work in the credits has been done by him (well, except all the converted TD stuff which was originally created by Westwood).
About the AI, it won't be too easy in 1.11.
About the AI, it won't be too easy in 1.11.
Sun, 2011-01-30 16:51
#8
Ok, well I'd first like to congratulate him for starting this mod. I know a lot of people helped and those people deserve credit too. I just found this mod about 10 days ago, and after reading a lot of forum posts' and playing the game to test it, it is very fun. Since this topic is about the AI, I'll get right to it.
As the topic states, the AI is too easy. I agree with that, but my understanding is that Bittah made this for a multi-player purpose as opposed to skirmishes. I like both, I am personally interested in skirmish, or comp stomps with a friend. So as I was testing the mod against say 1-3 AI players, I found them to be very easy. I'd compare them to an "easy" AI in Red Alert or Generals, with the exception that they sometimes make higher tiered units. I tried to increase the challenge of the AI making my own map(screen shot below) and having 7 AI players instead of 1-3. What I found out was that in the beginning it's a FFA, but...THEY WILL ALLY every time and then own you. I then tried editing the INI file, the part where it asks you that if you want the AI to ally with one another if the situation looks bleak, I set that to "no" but they still did it anyway. I was then going to come here and make a post only to find some one else did.
So I started to think about, how exactly could the AI be harder? Really? The brutal AI in Tiberium Wars get double income as a their only cheat, yet the armies are coded to make 4+ War Factories, Barracks and Airfields and they just bombard you with units. I don't know if that would be good for this game though. I do know that in the INI file you can change the limit on how many of a particular building the AI makes. I've tried to increase that as well but with no luck. For example instead of a limit of 2 War Factories, I changed it to 4. So I kept thinking, and then I realized how this could be done. Theoretically. With your "classic" version and "enhanced" version you could do like so...
In your classic version you could make the "Hard" AI about the same difficulty as the "Hard" AI in Red Alert. They provide a decent challenge for a game that old. For your "Hard" on your enhanced version, you could really turn up the heat. Have you ever played a mod for Yuri's Revenge called "Eagle Red"? The AI rushes in that game are like, 35-50 tanks all at once, the Allies will rush you with 25+ rocketeers, Soviets will send 20 blimps your way. The default hard is 6 rocketeers and 3 blimps. Please lol.
So after thinking about this, eagle red is sort of like a human player, they mass tanks, then rush you. At least that's how I view it. Then I thought about something else, that mod also has "new defense" structures and the ability for all defenses to upgrade because 50 tanks would crush regular Tesla Coils, as they could easily crush Obelisks and absolutely DESTROY AGT's. So perhaps if you went down that path in your enhanced mod, where the AI would make rushes of that caliber, I would suggest having defenses be able to earn veteran and elite tiers as well. And adding new and bigger defenses like the Grand Cannon or something like that. Although I don't know if that is even possible in this engine. Obviously this would not be needed in the classical version, but I just thought I'd bring this up.
If you do think this is possible and you consider it, I took the time to think of some defenses that would somewhat tied to the Tiberian Dawn/Sun/Renegade time line. For GDI you could add a HUGE turret, just like the one in the 3rd or 4th Renegade mission that is firing at GDI gunboats. Remember that? It's freaking huge. As for NOD, I only came up with maybe bringing the Obelisk model from Sun, but maybe make some small changes too it. I think because of their size, they would take up 4 cells instead of 1 like the Grand Cannon, and their power and range would be increased substantially.
I also wanted to touch on the artillery based units in the game, I've found that ALL Artillery units out range all the defenses. I think this should be changed, maybe have the Artillery and Rocket Launcher have the same range as defenses(like the Artillery in Red Alert or C&C), but they be available to you much earlier in the game, and have the SSM Launcher and Hover-MLRS out range the defenses but you have to build a Temple or Adv. Comm center to unlock them.
Just some ideas that I had and I thought I'd bring all this up.
As the topic states, the AI is too easy. I agree with that, but my understanding is that Bittah made this for a multi-player purpose as opposed to skirmishes. I like both, I am personally interested in skirmish, or comp stomps with a friend. So as I was testing the mod against say 1-3 AI players, I found them to be very easy. I'd compare them to an "easy" AI in Red Alert or Generals, with the exception that they sometimes make higher tiered units. I tried to increase the challenge of the AI making my own map(screen shot below) and having 7 AI players instead of 1-3. What I found out was that in the beginning it's a FFA, but...THEY WILL ALLY every time and then own you. I then tried editing the INI file, the part where it asks you that if you want the AI to ally with one another if the situation looks bleak, I set that to "no" but they still did it anyway. I was then going to come here and make a post only to find some one else did.
So I started to think about, how exactly could the AI be harder? Really? The brutal AI in Tiberium Wars get double income as a their only cheat, yet the armies are coded to make 4+ War Factories, Barracks and Airfields and they just bombard you with units. I don't know if that would be good for this game though. I do know that in the INI file you can change the limit on how many of a particular building the AI makes. I've tried to increase that as well but with no luck. For example instead of a limit of 2 War Factories, I changed it to 4. So I kept thinking, and then I realized how this could be done. Theoretically. With your "classic" version and "enhanced" version you could do like so...
In your classic version you could make the "Hard" AI about the same difficulty as the "Hard" AI in Red Alert. They provide a decent challenge for a game that old. For your "Hard" on your enhanced version, you could really turn up the heat. Have you ever played a mod for Yuri's Revenge called "Eagle Red"? The AI rushes in that game are like, 35-50 tanks all at once, the Allies will rush you with 25+ rocketeers, Soviets will send 20 blimps your way. The default hard is 6 rocketeers and 3 blimps. Please lol.
So after thinking about this, eagle red is sort of like a human player, they mass tanks, then rush you. At least that's how I view it. Then I thought about something else, that mod also has "new defense" structures and the ability for all defenses to upgrade because 50 tanks would crush regular Tesla Coils, as they could easily crush Obelisks and absolutely DESTROY AGT's. So perhaps if you went down that path in your enhanced mod, where the AI would make rushes of that caliber, I would suggest having defenses be able to earn veteran and elite tiers as well. And adding new and bigger defenses like the Grand Cannon or something like that. Although I don't know if that is even possible in this engine. Obviously this would not be needed in the classical version, but I just thought I'd bring this up.
If you do think this is possible and you consider it, I took the time to think of some defenses that would somewhat tied to the Tiberian Dawn/Sun/Renegade time line. For GDI you could add a HUGE turret, just like the one in the 3rd or 4th Renegade mission that is firing at GDI gunboats. Remember that? It's freaking huge. As for NOD, I only came up with maybe bringing the Obelisk model from Sun, but maybe make some small changes too it. I think because of their size, they would take up 4 cells instead of 1 like the Grand Cannon, and their power and range would be increased substantially.
I also wanted to touch on the artillery based units in the game, I've found that ALL Artillery units out range all the defenses. I think this should be changed, maybe have the Artillery and Rocket Launcher have the same range as defenses(like the Artillery in Red Alert or C&C), but they be available to you much earlier in the game, and have the SSM Launcher and Hover-MLRS out range the defenses but you have to build a Temple or Adv. Comm center to unlock them.
Just some ideas that I had and I thought I'd bring all this up.
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Mon, 2011-01-31 05:23
#9
The AI have already been beefed up a lot.
About the artillery outranging the base defences: I can only assume you are talking about enhanced mode. The mobile artillery (nod's) is imo perfectly fine. IIRC it's damage was decreased for 1.11 however. The Hover MLRS's range has already been decreased, and the MLRS has been somewhat re-purposed. The SSM was always able to outrange everything, so you can hardly complain about that...
It doesn't make sense to have several units which fulfill the same role but are minor upgrades of each other. In DTA 1.11, all of the artillery will have distinct strengths and weaknesses.
I don't think a gigantic turret fits at all with GDI's style... nor does an obscenely large and conspicuous obelisk fit with Nod. It just doesn't seem right...
About the artillery outranging the base defences: I can only assume you are talking about enhanced mode. The mobile artillery (nod's) is imo perfectly fine. IIRC it's damage was decreased for 1.11 however. The Hover MLRS's range has already been decreased, and the MLRS has been somewhat re-purposed. The SSM was always able to outrange everything, so you can hardly complain about that...
It doesn't make sense to have several units which fulfill the same role but are minor upgrades of each other. In DTA 1.11, all of the artillery will have distinct strengths and weaknesses.
I don't think a gigantic turret fits at all with GDI's style... nor does an obscenely large and conspicuous obelisk fit with Nod. It just doesn't seem right...
Mon, 2011-01-31 22:55
#10
I see, well I can't wait until the next release comes out. Eh, what a cliche. I'll just say, "ok".
About the defenses, they were the first things that jumped in my mind and I went with them lol.
About the defenses, they were the first things that jumped in my mind and I went with them lol.
Tue, 2011-02-01 17:13
#11
I agree those suggested base defenses wouldn't really fit; even in TS the base defenses weren't all that more advanced than in TD.
The AI in DTA 1.10 indeed wasn't a very big challenge. Since I didn't have any experience with modifying the AI, I entirely based DTA's AI on TS's (using the same teams, attacks and everything, but just with TS's units replaced by DTA's in the taskforces). This seemed to work pretty well at first and sometimes this indeed proved to be a challenge in DTA 1.09, but later I found out the AI only becomes aggressive after you attack its harvester and this used to happen quite often before, because the AI always sent its harvester to harvest in the player's base at the beginning of the game.
Since having the AI's harvester always harvest right in your base seemed rather annoying however, I'd reduced TiberiumFarScan for DTA 1.10 and because of this (and also because bigger maps were added) the AI became completely worthless, since it was no longer provoked by players attacking its harvester.
But, as mentioned above, the AI has been beefed up a lot for DTA 1.11. ^Rampastein completely took over the task of coding the AI and he's doing a better job than I could've hoped for, so instead of worrying about the AI being too easy, you can start worrying about being able to beat it instead
The AI in DTA 1.10 indeed wasn't a very big challenge. Since I didn't have any experience with modifying the AI, I entirely based DTA's AI on TS's (using the same teams, attacks and everything, but just with TS's units replaced by DTA's in the taskforces). This seemed to work pretty well at first and sometimes this indeed proved to be a challenge in DTA 1.09, but later I found out the AI only becomes aggressive after you attack its harvester and this used to happen quite often before, because the AI always sent its harvester to harvest in the player's base at the beginning of the game.
Since having the AI's harvester always harvest right in your base seemed rather annoying however, I'd reduced TiberiumFarScan for DTA 1.10 and because of this (and also because bigger maps were added) the AI became completely worthless, since it was no longer provoked by players attacking its harvester.
But, as mentioned above, the AI has been beefed up a lot for DTA 1.11. ^Rampastein completely took over the task of coding the AI and he's doing a better job than I could've hoped for, so instead of worrying about the AI being too easy, you can start worrying about being able to beat it instead
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Wed, 2011-02-02 00:51
#12
Sounds promising. I was playing again last night against 2 AI and I did something silly that I have not done since I used to play Retaliation. The first game that I played, the AI did a 5 Engineer APC rush to my base and owned my CY and Strip. I was quite impressed with that rush. So when I played the next map, before I made any Turrets or Obelisks, I WALLED off my entrance and the AI armies never even attempted to come at me. They just fought one another. It was very funny, I didn't think that trick would work lol.
Sun, 2011-02-13 13:05
#13
Some pics of the new AI: http://dta.ppmsite.com/news/feb13-2011
I might be able to give more info about it on (or closer to) 1.11's release, we'll see.
I might be able to give more info about it on (or closer to) 1.11's release, we'll see.
Mon, 2011-02-28 18:50
#14
It would be cool if you could ally with AI in skirmish! PLZ MAKE IT POSSIBLE!!! 
Tue, 2011-03-01 19:53
#15
There is a small chance that this will be possible when HyperPatch is released... but there are no guarantees. There's only so much we can do with this engine.
Wed, 2011-03-02 17:41
#16
It would be cool if you could ally with AI in skirmish! PLZ MAKE IT POSSIBLE!!!
As Chronoseth said, not possible. HyperPatch (an unofficial executable patch extending the engine's modding capabilities) should make it possible, but it'll likely still be a few years before it's released (assuming it will really get released someday).
Wed, 2011-03-02 22:24
#17
Sad cuz i wanna ally with them becouase they all attack me! Always they attack me only! Its like everybody is against you! 
(
(
Thu, 2011-03-03 03:33
#18
That's because the "Paranoid" option is enabled; this is what makes all AI players ally with one another. In DTA 1.11 "Paranoid" will be disabled on normal maps (meaning the AI players will fight one another) and it'll only be enabled on Comp Stomp maps.
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Thu, 2011-03-03 16:22
#19
Another thing is why can't you set up teams like on Red Alert 2 Yuri's Revenge and set which AI will be Soviet or Allied so you can set the game as you want and not hope that your enemy if you are for example Soviet will be Allied???
Thu, 2011-03-03 17:22
#20
Another thing is why can't you set up teams like on Red Alert 2 Yuri's Revenge and set which AI will be Soviet or Allied so you can set the game as you want and not hope that your enemy if you are for example Soviet will be Allied???
Because we haven't coded the engine and have no access to it's source?
We'd gladly have a multiplayer menu with as many options as the RA2 one, but the TS engine doesn't allow that.
Wed, 2011-11-30 21:12
#21
I agree the AI is indeed "twitchy" But considering what TD used to be I consider it a step up. But when I play a skirmish vs 7 AI they tend to all ally with eachother and team up on me.
I dont know if that was intended or meerly a glitch with the AI. Also I noticed that my harvester automaticaly wants to go harvest with the enemy harvesters. I dont know much
about harvester psychology but I think that poor unit is lonely.
With the Harvester situation I find myself micro-managing my harvester more than my other units just to ensure the silly unit doesn't stray to far into enemy territory.
I'm sure you all have lost a harvester to someones defenses one time or another even in multiplayer.
On the otherhand however the fact the AI put my enemys harvester into my base on occasion helps my war effort a great deal when im trying to deprive my enemy
of resources.
I dont know if that was intended or meerly a glitch with the AI. Also I noticed that my harvester automaticaly wants to go harvest with the enemy harvesters. I dont know much
about harvester psychology but I think that poor unit is lonely.
With the Harvester situation I find myself micro-managing my harvester more than my other units just to ensure the silly unit doesn't stray to far into enemy territory.
I'm sure you all have lost a harvester to someones defenses one time or another even in multiplayer.
On the otherhand however the fact the AI put my enemys harvester into my base on occasion helps my war effort a great deal when im trying to deprive my enemy
of resources.
Wed, 2011-11-30 23:29
#22
The AIs allying with one another is not a glitch; it's caused by the "Paranoid=yes" key in the rules.ini file and it's usually actually preferable in multiplayer games (with multiple human players vs multiple AI players).
Since it indeed does depend on exactly what kind of game style you prefer, the AI players will only still ally with one another on Comp Stomp maps, on which all human players will also always be on the same side of the map, while the AI players will be on the other side.
Concerning your harvesters; they usually simply harvest from the closest tiberium field they can find and if they wander into enemy territory, it's only because there isn't any tiberium any closer by. This is a bigger issue in DTA 1.10, since many of the maps are still pretty small.
The AI has always harvested right in the player's bases however; in DTA the AI is in fact less likely to do that than in TS.
Since it indeed does depend on exactly what kind of game style you prefer, the AI players will only still ally with one another on Comp Stomp maps, on which all human players will also always be on the same side of the map, while the AI players will be on the other side.
Concerning your harvesters; they usually simply harvest from the closest tiberium field they can find and if they wander into enemy territory, it's only because there isn't any tiberium any closer by. This is a bigger issue in DTA 1.10, since many of the maps are still pretty small.
The AI has always harvested right in the player's bases however; in DTA the AI is in fact less likely to do that than in TS.
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Thu, 2011-12-01 14:33
#23
Well that makes me feel a little better. 
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The AI will be improved a little for the next version of DTA however and if I can find someone who's experienced with AI coding, it might even get improved a lot.