Allies - AI without brain?

[unmerged(67806)]

Hi.. Im sorry if there is many other treads concerning this, but here's MY story:

Im Inca and the year is 1587. As Inca i conquered / colonized all of south america and most of North America, except the provs/colonies owned by portugal ( about 20-30 prov), England 3 provs and france 3 provs. (castille also had 4-5 provs but i crushed them ). Now... to the point!
Portugal, castille and England are allied. I need (want) the provs that portugal has and wages war on them (first time). England and Castille joins them in attacking me. I crush them utterly and sue for peace with tribute (got me like 6 provs). Now.. I have done this 3 times now (because i want it all and cant get more than 5-8 provs at the time due to warscore) and each time England and castille joins portugal against me. WHY? All my tech is higher than theirs, i outnumber their forces 50-1 at land, 168 wargalleons and 73 Frigates protect my coastline, Im ranked #1, have 80 prestige and 0 in stability (kills stability to wage war).

Why oh lord whyyyy do they join portugal against me? They have no chance whatsoever to even pop a pimpel on my forces, actually the last time England didnt even have any forces left in NA(??).
And i know the AI aint that "moral" about allies.. they sold me short plenty of times. Because of this my game is painstakingly looong and my BB-point is gonna kill me before i have my kingdom complete. And now im so pissed at the English that im assembling my troops ( 7 armies of nearly 30k cavs and inf each), im gonna laugh my way through their tiny island, leaving nothing but scorced earth.

But seriously...

Dont the AI have "rational thinking" build in? It would be like lichtenstein wagin war on China today...

(for the record, i have never waged war on england, just on Portugal).

 

[ghost88]

Hi.. Im sorry if there is many other treads concerning this, but here's MY story:

Im Inca and the year is 1587. As Inca i conquered / colonized all of south america and most of North America, except the provs/colonies owned by portugal ( about 20-30 prov), England 3 provs and france 3 provs. (castille also had 4-5 provs but i crushed them ). Now... to the point!
Portugal, castille and England are allied. I need (want) the provs that portugal has and wages war on them (first time). England and Castille joins them in attacking me. I crush them utterly and sue for peace with tribute (got me like 6 provs). Now.. I have done this 3 times now (because i want it all and cant get more than 5-8 provs at the time due to warscore) and each time England and castille joins portugal against me. WHY? All my tech is higher than theirs, i outnumber their forces 50-1 at land, 168 wargalleons and 73 Frigates protect my coastline, Im ranked #1, have 80 prestige and 0 in stability (kills stability to wage war).

Why oh lord whyyyy do they join portugal against me? They have no chance whatsoever to even pop a pimpel on my forces, actually the last time England didnt even have any forces left in NA(??).
And i know the AI aint that "moral" about allies.. they sold me short plenty of times. Because of this my game is painstakingly looong and my BB-point is gonna kill me before i have my kingdom complete. And now im so pissed at the English that im assembling my troops ( 7 armies of nearly 30k cavs and inf each), im gonna laugh my way through their tiny island, leaving nothing but scorced earth.

But seriously...

Dont the AI have "rational thinking" build in? It would be like lichtenstein wagin war on China today...

(for the record, i have never waged war on england, just on Portugal).

Well in less your extremely lucky you've been using the cheat console or save game edit. In this case complaining about the AI might be an exercise in futility. :rofl:
The AI seems to Kamakase against BadBoys.

 

[Zeitkugel]

That sounds like an empire. How did you manage to keep up in the tech race as Inca?
Sometimes AI is a real pain in the ass with its stupid DOW;s.. I do not think that computer program could "think" rationally. Maybe their relations are so good that they feel obliged to go to war..

 

[unmerged(67806)]

That sounds like an empire. How did you manage to keep up in the tech race as Inca?
Sometimes AI is a real pain in the ass with its stupid DOW;s.. I do not think that computer program could "think" rationally. Maybe their relations are so good that they feel obliged to go to war..

I kept up in tech cause i used the event wich allowed to get the Latin tech group And yes... u could call that cheating, but i made myself a goal. And thanks to good advisors (3 peeps given me colonist's) i coluld fairly easely colonize most of america.

And yes... the empire is HUGE! I can almost understand Bush now.. Im to big to lay still, gotta use all this brutal force against someone

 

[Stingray]

IIRC the Inca can westernise and gain latin tech, and once you have that the massive ahead-of-time penalties should make sure you catch up eventually.

 

[ghost88]

I kept up in tech cause i used the event wich allowed to get the Latin tech group And yes... u could call that cheating, but i made myself a goal. And thanks to good advisors (3 peeps given me colonist's) i coluld fairly easely colonize most of america.

And yes... the empire is HUGE! I can almost understand Bush now.. Im to big to lay still, gotta use all this brutal force against someone

I was not accusing you of anywrong doing just trying to point out that an American culture being ahead in tech means real good luck(the Latinizing event) or modding the game(cheat code or save game edit) the first may not effect the AI but the second could if it is programed to think the Americans are easy pickings. Remember the AI does not learn. That said.
The AI tends to honor alliances with itself and once your BB is up they will all come calling.If you had a border with every country as high as your BB has to be you would be at war with them. The AI hates Bad Boys almost as much as I hate Bigots.

 

[unmerged(67806)]

aahh.. tnx! Didnt think of that (the AI does not learn). I guess ure right!

Who would have known the Inca to be a global domination-force before (or after for that matter) 1600?

In a 30-50 years time my empire will be so huge there's nothing stopping me anyways So i guess i have to take them all on then. I gotta save the savegamesfiles for this game thou.. It's been a blast

In EU4 i demand that the AI is given a tuder.. If u want the AI to be ignorant of global actions and generally play it's own little stupid game.. Hire Bush to lead them :rofl:

 

[ghost88]

aahh.. tnx! Didnt think of that (the AI does not learn). I guess ure right!

Who would have known the Inca to be a global domination-force before (or after for that matter) 1600?

In a 30-50 years time my empire will be so huge there's nothing stopping me anyways So i guess i have to take them all on then. I gotta save the savegamesfiles for this game thou.. It's been a blast

In EU4 i demand that the AI is given a tuder.. If u want the AI to be ignorant of global actions and generally play it's own little stupid game.. Hire Bush to lead them :rofl:

OFF TOPIC
The person who has Johans job in another game, one that Gamers gate sells IIRC but who I shall not name wrote a detailed article on that website about AI capablities.

What it boiled down to as I understand it is AIs on PCs could not be as good as humans unless you wanted 5 hr turns as what was slowing down the AIs was the computers abillity to make the caculations it needed to learn and think more than a turn or two ahead. Now some of the Super computers that fill rooms might be able to give you a go.

 

[unmerged(67806)]

But why make it so complicated..? Could one not use a set of "rules" instead of coding a zillion numbers. (a lot of job as well im sure, but still..).

Like:

ex. In my current game now as Inca "owning" almost all of america, shouldnt ex france react when the spanish bring home news about this new terrible enemy overseas? In "real" life i'd guess they would jump the boats to defeat those unholy Incas...
Set some "rules" that makes other big nations (with other religion) attack u if u are getting too big. The Crusades would illustrate my point. The AI doesnt HAVE to think, but it would be nice if it reacted in some sence to the world around....

 

[ghost88]

But why make it so complicated..? Could one not use a set of "rules" instead of coding a zillion numbers. (a lot of job as well im sure, but still..).

Like:

ex. In my current game now as Inca "owning" almost all of america, shouldnt ex france react when the spanish bring home news about this new terrible enemy overseas? In "real" life i'd guess they would jump the boats to defeat those unholy Incas...
Set some "rules" that makes other big nations (with other religion) attack u if u are getting too big. The Crusades would illustrate my point. The AI doesnt HAVE to think, but it would be nice if it reacted in some sence to the world around....

I am not a programer but used to have a old Tandy 64k just to program a simply random number generater took 20 lines of code. I understand they've improved since then but to program the AI there's alot of if a=b then c,except if f=w. So to get the AI to attack the Incas and not innocent little Mainz could be just a tad complicate.

 

[Chaingun]

Coding isn't about "writing a zillion numbers". It's about writing "rules" if you wish, in a mathematically logical and high level language. However, there's two problems:

1) It's difficult for programmers to come up with a model and rules for every single scenario. They will miss some things. Certain game situations are incredibly complex to categorize with rules. Essentially it comes down to describing everything with mathematical equations/algorithms. Yes, one could argue the AI should be programmed to "learn", but that's entering an entirely different level of AI which is even more difficult to get right.

2) Processing power is an issue. Stuff that we consider simple to describe can take hundreds or thousands of operations in the CPU. While on one hand the CPU is much better than us in calculating A + B * 3, it doesn't help it much at playing games.

I'm not trying to defend the poor AI in this case, rather I'm one of those who believe it can be much better, even with the given constraints. But really, comments from non-programmers become a bit silly sometimes.

---------------------------------------

For example, let's consider a theoretical function in pseudo-code for whether the AI should declare war upon a country:

We want to be able to have aiCountry.shouldDeclareWar(anotherCountry); return a boolean true/false value.

What will we need to consider?
- Military strengths of both countries.
- Relations of both countries.
- Economic strengths of both countries.
- Geographical closeness.
- Current political situation.

I'm not going in-depth with all of these; I'll just speak about the first to examplify. To handle military strengths, we'd have to loop over all number of military units and count the troops, as well as consider manpower and maximum manpower. We'd the have to consider the effects of DP sliders and military techs also. We'd also need to make some distinctions on what's remotely possible. France is not going to be able to invade England without a navy for example. Now, go and write equations for how to calculate the value of all that. Also try to make the algorithm so efficient that it can be called for each country several times per game-month in worst case.

Once you've calculated values for all of these, you need to weight them correctly. What's most important in fighting a war? Finally, you need to produce a boolean output, since that's what the action of declaring war finally is. You need to take your final value and compare it to a threshold value for war declaration. How do you optimally find this? Most likely by trial and error, but since we most likely have overlooked some subtle factors it will be different for different wars. Voila, here you have your effect of pussy major powers and over-aggresive minors.

Keep in mind this is for a SINGLE AI action that all of this was needed. No wonder Paradox manages to make the AI retarded at release with the kind of ambitious deadlines that are the norm in the game industry.

What can we as end users do? We should bring the AI problems to the developers' attention and show that we want them prioritized for patching. Make accurate descriptions of weird AI behaviour and the game conditions that caused it. We shouldn't be telling them how to program the AI though. I have little idea how EU3's AI routines look internally, yet I consider myself to be a mildly experienced hobby programmer. It looks even worse when people who never have programmed try to tell Paradox how the AI should/could be programmed.

 

[ghost88]

Coding isn't about "writing a zillion numbers". It's about writing "rules" if you wish, in a mathematically logical and high level language. However, there's two problems:

1) It's difficult for programmers to come up with a model and rules for every single scenario. They will miss some things. Certain game situations are incredibly complex to categorize with rules. Essentially it comes down to describing everything with mathematical equations/algorithms. Yes, one could argue the AI should be programmed to "learn", but that's entering an entirely different level of AI which is even more difficult to get right.

2) Processing power is an issue. Stuff that we consider simple to describe can take hundreds or thousands of operations in the CPU. While on one hand the CPU is much better than us in calculating A + B * 3, it doesn't help it much at playing games.

I'm not trying to defend the poor AI in this case, rather I'm one of those who believe it can be much better, even with the given constraints. But really, comments from non-programmers become a bit silly sometimes.

---------------------------------------

For example, let's consider a theoretical function in pseudo-code for whether the AI should declare war upon a country:

We want to be able to have aiCountry.shouldDeclareWar(anotherCountry); return a boolean true/false value.

What will we need to consider?
- Military strengths of both countries.
- Relations of both countries.
- Economic strengths of both countries.
- Geographical closeness.
- Current political situation.

I'm not going in-depth with all of these; I'll just speak about the first to examplify. To handle military strengths, we'd have to loop over all number of military units and count the troops, as well as consider manpower and maximum manpower. We'd the have to consider the effects of DP sliders and military techs also. We'd also need to make some distinctions on what's remotely possible. France is not going to be able to invade England without a navy for example. Now, go and write equations for how to calculate the value of all that. Also try to make the algorithm so efficient that it can be called for each country several times per game-month in worst case.

Once you've calculated values for all of these, you need to weight them correctly. What's most important in fighting a war? Finally, you need to produce a boolean output, since that's what the action of declaring war finally is. You need to take your final value and compare it to a threshold value for war declaration. How do you optimally find this? Most likely by trial and error, but since we most likely have overlooked some subtle factors it will be different for different wars. Voila, here you have your effect of pussy major powers and over-aggresive minors.

Keep in mind this is for a SINGLE AI action that all of this was needed. No wonder Paradox manages to make the AI retarded at release with the kind of ambitious deadlines that are the norm in the game industry.

What can we as end users do? We should bring the AI problems to the developers' attention and show that we want them prioritized for patching. Make accurate descriptions of weird AI behaviour and the game conditions that caused it. We shouldn't be telling them how to program the AI though. I have little idea how EU3's AI routines look internally, yet I consider myself to be a mildly experienced hobby programmer. It looks even worse when people who never have programmed try to tell Paradox how the AI should/could be programmed.

That was what I was trying to convey in my posts.

 

[Folkert]

/ontopic

My guess is that your BB rating going through the roof is causing it.

"Bad boy, bad boy, what you gonna do..."

 

[unmerged(67806)]

I think u just read a little bit more into my post than i intended
I was (trying to) point out the need for a better AI. I never claimed to be a programmer or in that matter understand any of what they are doing. But hey.. knock ureself out

When i said that i cant be THAT hard to make it better u actually convinced me that it isnt. Since u as an "mildly experienced" one obviously nows how to do it, im sure it aint that hard Lack of time on the other hand is an entirely different matter...

And pleeeeease.. Dont use your "i know this better than u and therefore i can dizz u" attitude towards peeps whos trying to come with ideas. If u dont agree..fine! no need to gloat on a forum for newbs :rofl:

 

[Chaingun]

That was what I was trying to convey in my posts.

I know, I wasn't disputing your opinion, I was building upon it. Rather the itchiness to post this was triggered by the post before yours, because it's not the first time I see it.

I think u just read a little bit more into my post than i intended

No but everyone seems to read more out of mine.

I never claimed to be a programmer or in that matter understand any of what they are doing.

I haven't claimed you have. But I want you know what they do, thus I wrote my post.

When i said that i cant be THAT hard to make it better u actually convinced me that it isnt. Since u as an "mildly experienced" one obviously nows how to do it, im sure it aint that hard Lack of time on the other hand is an entirely different matter...

I was using myself to illustrate the point that we should tell Paradox the implementation specifics; I don't know enough about the underlying issue either, despite being a programmer (but not a professional one like I pointed with "mildy experienced hobby").

And pleeeeease.. Dont use your "i know this better than u and therefore i can dizz u" attitude towards peeps whos trying to come with ideas. If u dont agree..fine! no need to gloat on a forum for newbs

I don't intend to dizz anyone, my motive is to enlighten. I suppose my opinion about non-programmers giving programming advice can be a bit hard to swallow, but at least I was truthful.

For the record, your original post is very good and definately points out valid problems with the AI.

I should revise the wording of my post since it seems to stirr up emotion in everyone... I wrote a fairly general post and should be taken as such. It's not directed to any specific person or has any hidden implication.

 

[unmerged(12921)]

I kept up in tech cause i used the event which allowed to get the Latin tech group And yes... u could call that cheating, but i made myself a goal. And thanks to good advisors (3 peeps given me colonist's) i could fairly easely colonize most of america.

If you are willing to accept an idiotic proposition like the Inca's leaping from the Stone Age to the Copper Age to the Bronze Age to the Iron Age to the start of the Industrial Age in a couple of years, why are you objecting to the idiocy of the AI? I mean was EVERY Inca Youth sent to Europe for an Apprenticeship or a University education? Once you launch yourself into the realms of the absurd, you should expect absurd results....

 

[unmerged(67806)]

If you are willing to accept an idiotic proposition like the Inca's leaping from the Stone Age to the Copper Age to the Bronze Age to the Iron Age to the start of the Industrial Age in a couple of years, why are you objecting to the idiocy of the AI? I mean was EVERY Inca Youth sent to Europe for an Apprenticeship or a University education? Once you launch yourself into the realms of the absurd, you should expect absurd results....

See ure point there, but the fact remains about the AI "response" nevertheless..

And Chaingun: sry i got carried a bit away there.. I do see ure point! I just got a "feeling" frome ure post... Im prob having a bad mood due to monday :wacko: bloody monday...

 

[MacGregor]

I kept up in tech cause i used the event wich allowed to get the Latin tech group And yes... u could call that cheating, but i made myself a goal. And thanks to good advisors (3 peeps given me colonist's) i coluld fairly easely colonize most of america.

Sounds like a terribly boring game. I can beat the chessboard in chess if i make it's moves for it too, but I don't feel like I accomplished much. Of course, if I don't make it's move for it, I kind of sit there doing nothing, for . . . FOREVER.

 

[Basileus777]

Sounds like a terribly boring game. I can beat the chessboard in chess if i make it's moves for it too, but I don't feel like I accomplished much. Of course, if I don't make it's move for it, I kind of sit there doing nothing, for . . . FOREVER.

Putting the Inca into the Latin techgroup is the equivalent of playing both sides of a chess board?

 

[unmerged(67806)]

Putting the Inca into the Latin techgroup is the equivalent of playing both sides of a chess board?

indeed Makes the quest for victory more innteresting thou.. Who da hell wins..? my left arm or my right..? :wacko:

To answer this more "seriously": I have a goal! what if the tables of history were turned? And the natives was conquering europe? (like "the planet of the apes" -thingy). I now it can seem pointless to do this, but in my head the "movie" is rolling and im having lots of fun Just picture this... What if it on an early sunday morning in London, people suddenly woke up frome the scary warcry of the 60.000 men strong cav army marching trough town. Raping the women, killing the children! It's the Natives Payback-game! And thou im from Norway and pale as snow... It feels GOOD!!!