Replays of winning against CSAI?

hughperkins · Post by **hughperkins** » 27 Oct 2006, 22:47

How easy is it to win against CSAI? If you've managed to beat it on a land-map could you send me the replay please? You can send it to my email on hughperkins@gmail.com .

Perhaps the best replays will be added to the CSAI wiki page.

Argh · Post by **Argh** » 28 Oct 2006, 08:15

When it can play NanoBlobs, I will be happy to obliterate it for you

hughperkins · Post by **hughperkins** » 28 Oct 2006, 08:20

Argh wrote:When it can play NanoBlobs, I will be happy to obliterate it for you

Ok, happy to try. Do you have some replays of experienced Nanobot players competing that you could send me please?

silv · Post by **silv** » 30 Oct 2006, 21:19

i played it on core_faf and it made a crucial mistake of trying to expand into me in the very beginning, maybe this replay helps you (csai is red) http://rapidshare.com/files/1333455/061 ... b1.7z.html

next replay: after losing the commander some minutes into the game expansion stalls: http://rapidshare.com/files/1336686/061 ... -0.7z.html (i didn't know this tho and kept on building defenses since some ai-units kept coming in sight

)
the ai started on the "correct" side this time, playing from the upper side gives better results on this map.

MadRat · Post by **MadRat** » 30 Oct 2006, 22:58

I'm still having problems getting CSAI to even run using that installer. Otherwise I'd be glad to analyze it.

hughperkins · Post by **hughperkins** » 30 Oct 2006, 22:58

Hi silp,

There's a bug in the current release version when the regional settings decimal separator is set to something other than ".". The metal cache fails to load correctly, and the metal extractors are placed at the top edge of the map.

hughperkins · Post by **hughperkins** » 30 Oct 2006, 23:25

MadRat wrote:I'm still having problems getting CSAI to even run using that installer. Otherwise I'd be glad to analyze it.

MadRat,

Can you check that you are selecting a bot, you are choosing "csailoader.dll"?

What error message is it coming up with?

hughperkins · Post by **hughperkins** » 30 Oct 2006, 23:50

silp wrote:i played it on core_faf and it made a crucial mistake of trying to expand into me in the very beginning, maybe this replay helps you (csai is red) http://rapidshare.com/files/1333455/061 ... b1.7z.html

next replay: after losing the commander some minutes into the game expansion stalls: http://rapidshare.com/files/1336686/061 ... -0.7z.html (i didn't know this tho and kept on building defenses since some ai-units kept coming in sight )
the ai started on the "correct" side this time, playing from the upper side gives better results on this map.

Silp, could you try the version at http://manageddreams.com/csai/CSharpAI_20061031.zip and see if this corrects the issue?

MadRat · Post by **MadRat** » 31 Oct 2006, 00:13

I was able to play almost five minutes before the last unhandled exception in the global dll crashed it again. Seems to be a mighty beast for virtual memory. Probably have a memory leak or something. Alot of times I've tried to play it the game loses sync almost as soon as it starts. Definitely got something going on there. I'm using an AMD 2600+ Barton core with 2 GB of DDR and a 128M version of an ATi 8500.

That last game the comm rushed me in the upper left corner of painted desert remake. Never saw a comm rush from an AI before. LOL

MadRat · Post by **MadRat** » 31 Oct 2006, 06:48

I was finally able to complete a whole game. I had to let the system run the virtual memory!! I figured with 2 gigs of RAM and another four gigs on virtual memory spread out among two drives that would be enough... but no it was not. So basically my whole problem was my swap file needed to be dynamic.

I did manage to scrutinize the AI you built. In XTA v8 it spreads well, but it never really finds a niche doing anything but massing level 1 units. Your AI stumbles with any roadblocks and I was able to wall up with dragons teeth and you AI just waited for the pair of guardians to pulveize all of its units. I gobbled up the free metal and threw fidoes and flash units right back. The commander wandered out into the open early and often and one of those times I managed to capitulate him with just a small group of level 1's. After that the AI never was able to manage its economy to build up again. I waited for it to do like AAI and build storage, to see if it would tech up, but it never got anywheres. You almost need a logic flow like AAI uses to scale up and down the economy and unit choices depending on the situation. If you don't know what I'm talking about then just read one of their log files after a game and they document well the decision making processes of the AI.

hughperkins · Post by **hughperkins** » 31 Oct 2006, 10:21

> I was able to wall up with dragons teeth

Yes, CSAI doesn't handle dragons teeth at this time.

Do you have a replay please? You could send it to me at hughperkins@gmail.com or I can provide you with an ftp useraccount.

Can you beat CSAI without using dragons teeth?

AF · Post by AF » 31 Oct 2006, 17:51

Madrat you'r grealty overexxagerating the abilities of the other AIs, AAI doesnt plan things like that, none fo the AIs do, nor can any of the AIs handle DT. The nearest thing has been OTAI and NTai building DT rings around bases.

Never saw a comm rush from an AI before

Spring AIs are notorious com rushers, and early skrimsih AIs always ended when their commanders walked into enemy bases. Commanders where and are overused as expansion tools by AIs, and it works as long as you can keep the commander out of harms way.

Also, the problem with virtual memory si not that you need the system to manage it but rather that you didnt allocate a big enough swap file.

On a home use computer it should be 3x the size of your ram, and on a gaming computer it should be 4-6x the size. So for a 2GB system, I'd say 2GB vram is silly, and 6-8GB is a much better size.

silv · Post by **silv** » 31 Oct 2006, 18:56

hughperkins wrote: Silp, could you try the version at http://manageddreams.com/csai/CSharpAI_20061031.zip and see if this corrects the issue?

it did apparantly, and you're right, i got the decimal point set to "," (german standard). beat the ai on first try though, it lost the commander in early midgame again. the com was scavenging, maybe you shouldn't let it do that near the front line and in general i think you're wasting too much metal on building factories instead of builders that support the existing factories (and that could have scraped the metal the comm was trying to scrape).

http://rapidshare.com/files/1449262/061 ... -2.7z.html

hughperkins · Post by **hughperkins** » 31 Oct 2006, 20:27

Silp,

Good work. Thanks.

Concentrating beam lasers and a guardian into a small space in the AIs path is a very powerful move.

Clearly a human would just walk around the side

Do you mind if I add the replay to the wiki as an example of one way of defeating CSAI?

silv · Post by **silv** » 31 Oct 2006, 20:40

go ahead if you like :) you're correct that i wouldn't play like that against a human, but some would still try to push through the middle and "destroy my base" (which it's not) or porc for some time so i could build some more offensive defense building to control the important map points or something even better like moving units

anyhow i like your ai as it is quite aggressive and if you're not expecting that you're beat instantly :) also it retreats nicely and forms good attack groups. way to go!

hughperkins · Post by **hughperkins** » 31 Oct 2006, 21:03

Silp,

Question: if, at the start of the game, you pause it and say ".csai chooseplaystyle raider", does that change anything?

hughperkins · Post by **hughperkins** » 31 Oct 2006, 21:09

Silp,

silp wrote:you're correct that i wouldn't play like that against a human, but some would still try to push through the middle and "destroy my base" (which it's not) or porc for some time so i could build some more offensive defense building to control the important map points or something even better like moving units

It's also a form of attack in its own right: tower attack. I'd quite like to implement this as an attack strategy.

anyhow i like your ai as it is quite aggressive and if you're not expecting that you're beat instantly :) also it retreats nicely and forms good attack groups. way to go!

Thanks!

Tim-the-maniac · Post by **Tim-the-maniac** » 31 Oct 2006, 23:47

Hi
Good work with the ai!
To answer your question it is pretty easy to beat it (sorry if i dampened your spirit :)) but I think it would do much better if it could use static deffences. imo the longer a game lasts the better the ai's chances, human players dont deal with the multi-tasking nearly as well.
atm im able to send some weak scouts right past its units and destroy its base from the back even mid-late game.

Also it tends to send streams of units to attack which is good when the oppenent is weak/not well defended but when there is much deffence at all it would be better to group a small army and attack like that.

im gonna go play it 3v1 on comet and see if that makes for a better replay :)

MadRat · Post by **MadRat** » 01 Nov 2006, 00:14

AF wrote:Madrat you'r grealty overexxagerating the abilities of the other AIs, AAI doesnt plan things like that, none fo the AIs do, nor can any of the AIs handle DT. The nearest thing has been OTAI and NTai building DT rings around bases.

Quite the contrary, AAI expands its base using a sector system of management and keeps tracks of attached sectors outside its base. It also begins play by determining the configuration of the map layout (via config if applicable), measuring out the size of the map, deciding sector size, quantifying metal spots on the map, and weighing the usefulness of builder and factory units for that map. From that information it seems to choose an appropriate base factory and expand from there. (I did notice it erroneously tries to build peepers from air labs.) And it updates this information throughout the game to bend strategy to what is measureably working apparently.

AAI also uses at least 3 levels of "unit production rate" during the game to balance resource generation to resource availability. I also liked how it picked units that it wanted (like big bertha) and chose a build flow to get there. It also uses groups to control units (I've seen up to five so far in a short game) and builds scout specific units that it also manipulates independent of the groupings.

You might think I gave AAI too much credit, but obviously someone put some effort into its workflow. I credit them for their good work and its ability to perform using very little memory footprint.

hughperkins · Post by **hughperkins** » 01 Nov 2006, 08:25

Tim-the-maniac wrote: Good work with the ai!

Thanks!

atm im able to send some weak scouts right past its units and destroy its base from the back even mid-late game.

Ok, do you have a replay please, so I can host it and link to it from the wiki?

How well does this strategy work if you use the 31 october dev release http://manageddreams.com/csai/CSharpAI_20061031.zip , and type ".csai chooseplaystyle raider" at the start?

The raider playstyle is not yet finished, but it would be useful to start collecting feedback on it.

Spring RTS Engine

Replays of winning against CSAI?

Replays of winning against CSAI?