Suggestion: progressive AI

AI's that "learn" as the game continues

from Sins Forums

(Apologies if this is a duplicate thread. Frankly, I'm getting a little ticked off at the number of posts that this forum appears to eat whenever I try and contribute here).

So I'm playing a big map on medium, and win handily. AI's pretty slow. Then I try Hard, and get kerschwalloped by a swarm of AI allies. Ouch. This got me thinking about an intermediate setting for large maps and multiple AI's - "AI that learns" mode, possibly as a switch on the screen when you're selecting your parameters for a game's set-up.

Here's how it might work: when you start any game with more than one AI, as you play, the 'surviving' AI's move to the next higher level of intelligence a bit at a time.

An example: say you elect to play a 5-player game where it's you vs. 4 AI's, all set to Medium, and you check the box that says "AI's get smarter" next to each of their names.

When ONE of the AI's is defeated (note: to prevent player abuse, this does not mean destroyed, just that the AI is effectively neutralized down to only, say, 20% of the overall strength of the player or best AI), all of the AI's get moved to playing at 125% of Medium skill level. When a second AI is 'defeated', the surviving AI's move to playing at 150% of Medium skill level (i.e. halfway between Medium and Hard).  When only one AI is effectively left, suddenly he's playing against you in Hard mode.

This game concept would help a little with the steamrollering that occurs in late game as soon as the player hits a certain imbalance of power. As soon as the player effectively becomes way more powerful than any of the AI's, suddenly they 'upgrade' to give him a tougher challenge.

Thoughts? Depending on how Sins set up the AI system, this might be very, very difficult to patch - or it might not.

-- Retro

17,583 views 5 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top
nice idea, but probably moot. the real imbalance later in the game is usually economic, ie ive wiped one of the AI out already and now have more planets, income and resources then any of the rest. not sure what better AI would do then, unless it involves two or more of them ganging up on you.
Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top
I'm thinking it would help out more in the "middle" of the game when you've conquered your neighbours but the largest AI foe is likely still kicking around unless he's allied to you.

-- Retro
Star Control: Origins
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top
With the way the AI seems to be setup, I'm not sure how much of a difference changing the difficulty level would have. If a weaker AI has only managed to obtain say, 3 planets by late game, suddenly turning him to hard won't make much of a difference, because he doesn't have enough resources to do much against your 12 planets or whatever.
Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top
Durikkan, I thought of that too, and there's really no way to actually stop the player once he reaches a certain level of arms build-up. But in a player versus 9 game, I've seen the AI "lock away" other AI players by shutting down their access to the map, and that would trigger the increase in their skill as well.

So the aim of this type of play is to postpone the player's ability to step up and completely dominate the playground, not to stop it.

-- Retro
Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top
I'll add that I just played a Medium random map, and the enemy didn't attack for almost an hour after I'd built up my defenses. This strategy would make the originally chicken AI at least overcome his reticence after I took out the first AI's faction at least.

-- Retro