Unusual AI modding question?, AI in Skirmish gets more credits than what it should, any ideas? Options

[midnightgreen]

Hi, I would like to know how/where can I adjust the money that is given to computer players in Skirmish maps, as I have found that even If i set the start amount to 2500, the AI spends more than 6000 before the first harvester brings anything back.

Also, Maybe these are related, but can anyone can give me any information what does the "AI Level" mean for AI players? And if there are any settings I can adjust for them in any of the .ini files?

PS: I have already checked out the ai.ini, that is only for attack groups and related behavior.

cheers

[Rampastring]

Hi, I would like to know how/where can I adjust the money that is given to computer players in Skirmish maps, as I have found that even If i set the start amount to 2500, the AI spends more than 6000 before the first harvester brings anything back.

I don't know where you can find the amount of money the AI starts with, but you could check the AI levels' Cost values. (open Rules.ini, press Ctrl+f and type "*** Difficulty Settings ***" without the quotes)

The cost value controls how much everything the AI builds cost to the AI player.
The Cost value in the [Easy] section is for AI level 2, the Cost value in the [Normal] section is for AI level 1 and human players and the Cost value in the [Difficult] section is for AI level 0.

Also, Maybe these are related, but can anyone can give me any information what does the "AI Level" mean for AI players? And if there are any settings I can adjust for them in any of the .ini files?

Well, AI levels 1/2 are more intelligent than AI level 0, and the level 2 AI players' units got more armor and they shoot faster than your units.
Also, the AI level 2 builds things faster than you can (BuildTime=0.8) and the AI gets about twice as much money from tiberium than you do.

You can adjust the AI players' amount of cheats by editing the difficulty settings I pointed you to.

You can also adjust how much more money the AI gets from tiberium than you. Locate a key in the rules.ini named "MultiplayerAICM" (Multiplayer AI cash multiplier, again without the quotes) and edit the values. The formation is from hardest to easiest, so the first value is for AI level 2, the second one for AI level 1 and the last one for AI level 0.

Good luck

This post has been edited by ^Rampastein: May 12 2008, 12:37 PM

[ShDwBoRn]

There's a reason for this, i've seen that in every C&C game (don't quote me on that, but i'm pretty sure i have), the .ini's inside generals actually provide an explanation, i thinks its some sort of bug to make the conyard deploy or something

[SeekSomethingNew]

AI sh*t is REALLY hardcoded, there is a lot of things the AI does that we dont know about, quite funky actually

[The DvD]

Actually, AI income is controlled by MultiplayerAICM tag, as far as i know

CODE

MultiplayerAICM=250,200,100

Hard, Normal, Easy difficulty respectively.

Not sure what the values stand for. Perhaps '250' means that AI's income is multiplied by 2.5 (250%). Try setting this to a few thousand for fun, you'll see the AI spending like mad

[midnightgreen]

Thanks for all the replies so far, and the "MultiplayerAICM" seems to do the trick. I have set it to 0,0,0 so the computer has the same resources as human players, however this introduced another problem:

The AI only builds one Refinery.... thats it, it builds only one refinery and 1 extra harvester, and builds up its base from that.


Also I tried to get it to build more Refineries by increasing the RefineryLimit and RefineryRatio settings, but no effect. I also tried it out with the original MultiplayerAICM settings, but then it NEVER builds more Refineries than 3. Is there a way to get the AI to build more Refineries then? Why don't these settings work?

[Lin Kuei Ominae]

strange that your AI even build something. if i understand it right, means 0,0,0 that the AI gets 0% of the players money (effectively nothing).
100,100,100 would mean that the AI has on each difficulty setting the same amount of money like the player.

This post has been edited by Lin Kuei Ominae: May 13 2008, 10:17 AM

[midnightgreen]

I did some research on the "MultiplayerAICM", and what i Found was that it is a % _bonus_, not just a multiplier.

means that 100,100,100 would mean that the computer gets what you get +100%, if it would be 200, then it gets what you get +200%... so if you set it to 0, then it just gets exactly what you get.


However as I said, that introduces a problem, if you set the Startmoney to 2500, as the computer builds buildings in the wrong order. It builds a Powerplant first, then a Barracks. and then a Refinery. Which would be 2600 in total, so what it does, that it sells the Barracks after it built it, so it can build the Refinery, but that seems to screw up something internally, which results in the Skirmish AI never building more than 1 Refinery in total.

So What would be nice, is if it would be possible to edit the "Build Order" of the Skirmish AI, to tell it to what to build and in what order.

[The DvD]

If the computer has less than 3000 credits, it will 'try to spend money more conservatively'. There is a setting for this.. try lowering it. Also, there's an easy way to have the computer build more refineries: simply make 2, 3 clones of the standard refinery and set the Techlevel to -1, so as a player, you can't build them. The computer doesn't have this limitation, it will always build the building as long as they have the right House to be the Owner of those cloned refineries, and the AIBuildThis=yes tag is present

Interesting findings about MultiplayerAICM btw, i never bothered to look at it that closely.

And, welcome to TiberiumWeb

[midnightgreen]

Yes, Thanks the Refineries DO work now, the computer has 6 Refineries:) However the problem is that it doesnt build anymore Harvesters than 6. If i give it more than 6 Refineries than it will have more Harvesters, problem is that it will only Replace Harvesters up until 6. Is there a setting for "Max Harvesters" somewhere?

the 3000 AiAlternateProductionCutoff, I tried to play with that setting, but unfortunately it doesnt make any difference. The default already is at 3000, so if the Comp starts with 2500, than that should be already less, but the comp is just dumb and builds a Barracks regardless.

[Allied General]

harvesters and [PROC] was hardcoded, here is proof from YR where it became "soften"

HarvestersPerRefinery=2,2,1;gs this used to hard coded. If it is here then design has control
AIExtraRefineries=2,1,0;gs Again, formerly hardcoded. Does not apply to SlaveMiner

My main issue with your "realistic" AI is that real players build more then one war, if you let your AI make any clone factories they will automatically cheat with free units.

If you decide not to implement it then your AI isn't realisitic as it slowly builds from one war, barracks.

This post has been edited by Allied General: May 14 2008, 08:36 AM

[midnightgreen]

Yes, the comp will be limited to 1 War factory. But I think a Lot of the times in Westwood games, especially in TS and TD, because the nature of the game(ie Pacing), 1 Warfactory should be enough, I mean of course more WarFactories mean faster production, but in TS/TD you rarely have more money than what you can spend even from 1 war factory. In theory.

The reason why Human players build more than 1 Warfactory is because Humans cant concentrate on multiple tasks as well as the AI, and you may build up an excess in money, and then to 'bring it down' again its beneficial if you can crank out units faster than the normal rate.

However AI can always concentrate on as many tasks as you specify, so if it will have money it will automatically spend it, regardless how many other things it is doing at the same time.

Of course, if the map is really saturated with Tiberium, then yes even the comp may have excess money at one point, but that would only be for a short period of time, until the resources deplete that are too near to the harvesters.


Anyways... back to the subject ? The Refinery limit problem was solved by Cloning the Refinery itself, now I can get the AI build as many Refineries as I like, how about Cloning the Harvester unit as well? What do you think ?

[Allied General]

Its gonna have issues as ai is hardcoded to use just HARV

Personally I think you expect too much from a AI engine based on RA1

This is speaking from experience and how incredibly dumb the AI is, e.g. baiting ai units, kill all harvesters by camping in field and its game over for AI

This post has been edited by Allied General: May 14 2008, 11:17 AM

[The DvD]

TSTW AI is a bitch to play against on lvl 2. But yeah they do cheat, there are several buildings which the player can't buy but the AI can. (clones of obelisk for example) These buildings give a free advanced harvester (which is cloaked, so you won't ever notice that they didn't build it from the war factory )

BTW, you could try to make the AI build extra harvesters by modifying the AI.ini. That's pretty complicated though. These tutorials by Banshee should help you out:

http://www.ppmsite.com/?go=taskforces
http://www.ppmsite.com/?go=scripttypes
http://www.ppmsite.com/?go=aitriggertypes
http://www.ppmsite.com/?go=teamtypes