Spring RTS Engine

Here's three crashes... demos, bot logs and infologs...
Hope it helps to make the bot greater (already quite nice to play against )

To everyone,

Just after the release of E323AI 3.17.0, BA came out with a new version of itself namely 7.11. Now, the problem is that the AI will generate a new configfile for BA7.11. This configfile will be screwed, as its just a guideline to be finetuned by players, therefore it will create a lot of errors and wrong units.

Download the compressed file below and install it just as you did with E323AI 3.17.0 that should get things going again as they should be. No more AA spam etc.

To those running lots of bots and wondering about cpu time: Be aware that the engine and all the AI instances are running in a single thread. You can't spawn infinite amounts of E323AI and expect it to be all running nicely :). A single E323AI is using quite some cpu already, of course one tries to minimize it, but it should also do something. Use alt+b for its cpu usage.

Error323 wrote:A single E323AI is using quite some cpu already

I wouldn't expect AI programming to be easy, but how did the OTA developers create their AI? I could play OTA with 6 AIs, all built a lot of buildings and stuff and the whole game still ran totally smooth.
Would it be possible to find out how the original AI worked so one can reproduce it for Spring?

AndiNo wrote:

Error323 wrote:A single E323AI is using quite some cpu already

I wouldn't expect AI programming to be easy, but how did the OTA developers create their AI? I could play OTA with 6 AIs, all built a lot of buildings and stuff and the whole game still ran totally smooth.
Would it be possible to find out how the original AI worked so one can reproduce it for Spring?

As far as I remember, the OTA bots weren't really that much of a challenge...
I'd assume that a better bot requires more CPU power...

In the (nearby) future, I think AI will require the largest slice of the cpus/gpus.

Zydox wrote:As far as I remember, the OTA bots weren't really that much of a challenge...
I'd assume that a better bot requires more CPU power...

Well they built nearly all possible buildings and units and created functional armies. It was enough for me I think bad tactical behaviour is not linked to CPU usage... I only wanted to point out that they used a lot less CPU time.
It could have to do with how the map format changed etc, those things that now require a different technial approach than in OTA times. I have no knowledge about the technical aspects though

I was just wondering: how does your AI work?
How does it roughly make its decisions?

And I agree: AI's will get more and more sophisticated over the coming years.. And no doubt there is some awesome stuff yet to come :)

The ota basicly makes a bunch of units at throws them at you, no tactics whatsoever :S That doesnt take too much CPU time. Even the Dune2 AI could do that (well, iin dune2 attacks didnt grow as the game progressed ) If you compare that to all the stuff this AI calculates :)

if CPU time is so important to you, i suggest using AAI and/or RAI. they use much less CPU then this AI, so you can put a lot of them into one game, and probably play porc for many hours on very large maps.

of course, these AIs are not as challenging, compared 1 to 1 with this one. but still quite some more intelligent then OTA AIs, plus you can use resource bonus.

In general, it is recommended to mix AI instances, as it will give you the most diverse and challenging games.

So if you worry about CPU, use only one instance of this AI, and probably one or two KAIK, plus some RAI and AAI.
This AI is currently by far the best one in attacking, just weaker in defending its base then most others. knowing this though, you can eg. put it in the back, letting one or two RAI instances do the defending in the front, plus a KAIK for the generally larger but less well handled attack groups in early game.

Most CPU time used by AIs is (in mid- till late-game) not the AI its self, but the path finding and other sim-time used by the AIs units, when they get stuck in narrow places. so you better not let the AI even get so many units.
if it still happens, there are still ways around it, but the game then already is in a state where it is not fun to play anymore, no matter what you do, as you have to cheat so much ... till you have a chance to win again, either killing many of the units of the AI, or killing the AI which controls the most units (as it will be the most lagging one).

aehm.. yeah.. sorry, quite off-topic post :/

the only thing this AI lacks a bit is stability (eg, crash less often) compared to the others. but it is getting better and better there.
most other stuff can be worked around by just mixing it with other AIs.
soo... i like it as it is now! :D

You're pointing out some very good things here. However I'm afraid that with different AIs the chance of a crash gets many times bigger. And without a save feature I don't want that
Anyhow, except for the CPU usage I, too, think that this AI is very good. And I think/hope it can only become better

This AI kills my framerate towards the end of the game. (12-20fps)
It seems to build a lot of unnecessary workers and this slows down the fps.

CPU is a 2,7ghz dual core

Any progress on the >1 humans vs. >1 bots crash?

You can watch the progress here: http://github.com/Error323/E323AI/commits/master

New version is upcoming. Stay tuned.

E323AI v3.18.0 - High Templar
Changelog:

• categorization file is generated now along with config file on new mod
• faster loading on speed metal maps
• intelligently enabling of hovercraft (on maps with 20% of water)
• much better economy handling on non-metal maps
• scout groups became stronger, merge faster on idle
• number of scout groups will not increase eternally now after merging
• increased number of possible targets for scouts, so less idle
• attack/harass unarmed buildings being under construction also
• builders will reclaim unarmed enemy building nearby
• fixed numerous (potential) crashes
• eternal memory consumption fixed
• slight optimization in pathfinding
• other minor fixes

E323AI SO/DLL: HighTemplar
E323AI BUGS: Issues
E323AI SRC: Github

- Error323 & Slogic

FYI, under Spring 0.81.1.3 infolog.txt with an empty stacktrace as shown below CAN NOT be considered as a crash caused by AI! Do not post fault crashes. Try updating your ATI drivers to version 10.2 as suggested by imbaczek.

I've tried the 3.18.0 version now, and so far I havn't had any crashes... even managed to complete a 2 humans vs. 3 AI on comet catcher without any major issues (AI got really laggy 30sec before the AI teams last commander died).

I'd also like to see a little air handling from the AI's... as it it now, they are kinda easy to kill with air... other than that, just a great AI

weee looking good now, defeats multiple KAI nicely

the main flaw with its unit control is that whilst steering small groups away from larger groups lets them penetrate into the enemy eco better, equal or large groups tend to avoid enemy units in the same way.

this is a problem because when attacked, the AI moves groups out of the way letting the attackers penetrate, when really a large group should ALWAYS engage a small group in order to defend its expansion

obviously the biggest hitch on its competitive performance is still the lack of defence etc but I understand that is on the to-do list

great work !

1v0ry_k1ng wrote:...this is a problem because when attacked, the AI moves groups out of the way letting the attackers penetrate, when really a large group should ALWAYS engage a small group in order to defend its expansion...

This is because penetrating group is not a real target. Real target is behind that group :) This will be changed soon with enabling defending algo.

FYI here is changelog for v3.18.1, which was included in Spring:

• builders are more aggressive now and will reclaim nearby enemy structures even when metal is nowhere to store
• fixed too narrow builder reclaiming area
• great speedup in loading metal spots data
• fixed categorization file for BA mod for Core side

Tried out 3.18.0 yesterday and the AI builds a lot of attacking units but they just seem to sit around a lot instead of throwing them at an enemy. I went into his base and it was clogged with units.