Spring RTS Engine

here is a related question: what motivates AAI to add a new sector to its base? does it check to see how many factories are in the current one and expand if it's already got a few or is it totally different?

one way to do it is key the defensive structures to:
A individual mexxes - for the outlying mexxes beyond the edge of the base
B groups of valuable structures (factories and resources) that are sufficiently dense to be considered 'the base'

don't restrict where the valuable structures are built...just prefer to have them in the 'base' until it has x number of buildings in it. then adjacent (or more smartly decided) sectors can be built in. once y number of buildings are together in a sector it is considered part of the base that needs fortifying.

also, perhaps like i mentioned a while back the number of construction workers & factories can be increased in proportion to the size of the base too to help the ai support its swelling real estate. and the number would always encourage more expansion by needing more real esate to place extra factories.

Part of the problem is that the system falls into base mentality, which is why the earlier AI ffa's showed AAI stuck in its corner defending it's territory while OTAI KAI and NTai battled it out over the other 80% of the map.

Instead I think it could be salvaged by determining how safe a sector is according to the threat metrix and adding safe sectors to the base that're nearby if they've been consistently safe.......

When do you (submarine) think that your AAI wil work under AA 1.45 ?

IceXuick wrote:When do you (submarine) think that your AAI wil work under AA 1.45 ?

I just renamed the .cfg files for AASpring144 to AASpring145 in the aai\cfg\mod folder and it works fine!

shweet! thx!

would creating a special group of workers who's sole task is to keep expanding the base work? ie they are probited from helping construct units

if aai wants to build a new building and there are no idle builders available, it will build more builders and/or order an assisting builder to do start the construction

i know that aai's restrictive base management has some disadvantages, on the other hand i dont like ais that simply spread out ver fast and build their "base" everywhere on the map. though it may be more challenging for human players or a lot more effective vs other ais, atm i simply dont want an ai that behaves like this. imho it's much more fun to fight an ai that acts "smart" (to some extent) instead of just fighting hordes of enemy units

maybe i'll change my mind sometimes in the future, it's just my current opinion

I don't really think we're looking for an AI that goes nuts and spams buildings everywhere, just one that after having built up its base to a decent size/security rating, will start to expand into nearby secured areas.

The rate of expansion could be specified in the mod config files etc, and you could always set it to 0 and effectively have what you have now.

hmm, well I've read everywhere that base mentality is a bad thing and that the smart move is rather to treat the entire map as your base, and you're not defeating an enemy base but rather kicking out an infestation in your own. It sorta fits in with sun tzu etc....

submarine wrote:
i know that aai's restrictive base management has some disadvantages, on the other hand i dont like ais that simply spread out ver fast and build their "base" everywhere on the map.

I'd agree with that. the only issue with the current setup is that the ai seems to 'forget' to keep expanding the base sometimte - maybe every now and again the workers could be given a 'nudge' and told to enchance the economy (and stop assisting).

the size of the final base certainly isn't an issue - the bases AAI builds seem to have ample room for stuff (4 or 5 sectors). they just forget to keep building moho mm's and fusions sometimes so the economy plateaus, or otherwise they don't have enough builders to use up the resources they're getting in

AF wrote:hmm, well I've read everywhere that base mentality is a bad thing and that the smart move is rather to treat the entire map as your base, and you're not defeating an enemy base but rather kicking out an infestation in your own. It sorta fits in with sun tzu etc....

mmm, egomaniac AI!

Well it's in fittign witht he aim of the AI.

Perhaps AI could use a cyclical system where it expanded its base, then had a period of entrenchment then another expansion, sorta like rings of bark in a tree....

submarine wrote:if aai wants to build a new building and there are no idle builders available, it will build more builders and/or order an assisting builder to do start the construction

i know that aai's restrictive base management has some disadvantages, on the other hand i dont like ais that simply spread out ver fast and build their "base" everywhere on the map. though it may be more challenging for human players or a lot more effective vs other ais, atm i simply dont want an ai that behaves like this. imho it's much more fun to fight an ai that acts "smart" (to some extent) instead of just fighting hordes of enemy units

maybe i'll change my mind sometimes in the future, it's just my current opinion

I dont think you really need to change your mind. Honestly I find the aai already the second most effective AI next to SAI which is just INSANE!

Anyways, I think the main thing the AAI needs to do is like its been said remember to keep expanding its base once the current sectors are secure and its deemed safe to expand into a safe sector.

Also I think the biggest restriction about the way the AAI builds its base is it limits how many metal spots it can control thus limits its metal economy. This can be partially offset if the aai can be programmed to reclaim wreckage, but like I suggested before a possible solution could be to have loan builders go out and build metal extractors (armed ones in aa) on distant metal spots to get the extra metal income. THese extractors wont be considered part of the main base, and even if they are eventually destroyed the metal income would be worth it to the aai's economy (especially early). Another way is to have it focus more on making an enconomy with power plants (fusions) and metal makers, thus it wont have to worry about the metal spots the opponent is claiming. But I think overall it could be more agressive in expanding its base without being like other ai's.

Mind you there are some exeptions, like In one AA free for all on AA I had going on greenhaven the AAI took over nearly half the map

heres a screen shot:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v250/ ... een005.jpg

Blue: AAI
Red: NTAI
Black: SAI
Purple: OTAI

AAI can perform impressively in E&E, with very slight adjustments to the default profile. unfortunately, I've discovered that it seems to have some kind of effective limit to where it sends out war-parties, which I noticed on the map Real_Mars. I think that AAI ought to either learn (or be coded, whatever) to reach out farther when it has to. If possible, it would be nice if AAI began building a second base at a position more advanced toward the enemy locations. Keep it up, Submarine!

could you post your E&E cfg so we can use it?

FizWizz wrote:AAI can perform impressively in E&E, with very slight adjustments to the default profile. unfortunately, I've discovered that it seems to have some kind of effective limit to where it sends out war-parties, which I noticed on the map Real_Mars. I think that AAI ought to either learn (or be coded, whatever) to reach out farther when it has to. If possible, it would be nice if AAI began building a second base at a position more advanced toward the enemy locations. Keep it up, Submarine!

how did you stop the GD scout spamming?

There is are two very good reasons to spread out (saying which, I seldom do so). Long range artillery and nukes. Generally speaking, a few Vulcan cannons will demolish an enemy base, and a decent supply of nukes will also be effective. Forward garrisons are also useful in certain situations. We don't yet have a mod which is geared to entrenchment, except possibly TA:WD.

An AI that tries to porc will generally get blasted pretty quickly. The AI should also upgrade its mexes as fast as possible. Metal makers and fusions should be built in an exponential upwards curve.

Commonsense presets should also be included with the AI, geared towards the more popular maps.

I'll post it once I get it working really nicely.

I haven't experienced any GD scout spamming, but I let a game run with Folcan and his AAI (I think he got the profile from me a little while ago) was spamming URC scouts like mad. I don't know why.

Unfortunately, AAI did not seem to follow the profile parameters very well in that game either, only building a single lvl 1 factory and a single lvl 2 factory when I had 3 entered for the max factories per type. None of the AIs (two of mine, two of Folcan's) built more than two factories, in fact.

Is sector size in footprints, elmos, map units, or some other measure? It appears to be footprints, and that is what I am assuming.

Is there some way I can actually *look* at the efficiency values of different units, to gauge what the Min. efficiency to build, and the Min. Efficiency to air strike parameters ought to be?

I'm seeing more that after a while during a game, AAI has a hard time rallying war-parties to effectively attack the enemy. In my last game, on Desert Dunes, even though one URC player easily had enough units built to kill off two of the other three AIs, its war-parties would keep shuffling back and forth between its own and an enemy's base, making it about as effective as a parade march. However, when GD attacked a moho mine nearby, the parade turned on it and defeated all of the attackers quickly and decisively.

I'm going to run a good number of more skirmishes, try to tweak out whatever pitfalls I can from the AI, and then consult Submarine if I still can't get the profile to work as well as I would wish.

FizWizz wrote:
I haven't experienced any GD scout spamming, but I let a game run with Folcan and his AAI (I think he got the profile from me a little while ago) was spamming URC scouts like mad. I don't know why.

odd, that's the exact opposite of what i get

hmm, in that shot you posted I ahve a few comments to make:

NTAI XE7.5 on AA, especialyl an AA version released after XE7.5 will work pathetically.

Anyways when referring tot he AI taking voer the map with a humongous abse, I point at the NTAI 0.2 shots of the map brazillian battlefields where the entire map was so packed full there where traffic jams with con units. Other AI's have reached those pinnacles AAI included but those shots seem to portray it the best.


Submarine, you made a horrible mistake, when loading configs you failed to include a "default" config, or a defautl settings. I know you require the starting units defined in a profile but that isnt somehtign that cant be done automatically by parsing Gamedata.tdf. As a result of this AAI stands absolutely still and does nothing in XTA v5.5+6 (odd since AAI is included with XTA v6 in spring 0.71), it doesnt even attempt todo anything, all ti did for me was crash after 12 minutes of idling doing nothing but waste cpu cycles. Users shouldnt have to route through AAI cnfigs trying to figure out what's wrong then making the leap to renaming the config files to the new mod name..

speaking of config files has anyone got a Xect vs mynn config file for AAI that they'd mind sharing?