cheating AI is annoying..
it really bothers me with empire earth. it's just not funny

Well I can see why programmers/game-devs sometimes want to cheat, it's dead easy to do so. This because in a RTS for example all the information about you is stored somewhere, the AI just accesses it and takes some peeks as to where you base is and which units you have (so which it should take to counter) so those are pretty easy things. If an AI had to find a base all by itself it would increase the AI's complexity and make it more prone to mistakes. You can try to develop a super-duper find-base algorithm for the AI but none of these algorithms are watertight. Simply look at the A* pathfinding system. In supreme commander when moving two groups of units trough each other they would stuck halfway through and they wouldn't come out neatly:



However this new 'Flowfield' isn't flawless either, not that it cheats but the units don't keep formation after having marched trough another group of units.

Anyways for games like the one you mentioned zera cheating AI is annoying but for bigger RTS's or maybe even shooters it might be neccessary to cut down production time, game size and complexity allowing it to run faster (maybe). Long story short, I can see the advantages of a cheating AI altough I don't think it should be made that obvious that the AI cheats...

Neh-pah-tah-pull

If it helps, English would probably spell it more like "Nepataple." You can just call it "King's Table," since that is a common translation.

On what syllable does the accent fall?

zera, couldn't you easily draw a stalemate as a defender by placing 4 of your pieces in the four corners?

When AI cheats is an interesting topic. How about making another topic discussing "When AI is stupid"? I thought of this because I played a sc game recently where my cpu could have easily wiped out all 3 opponents single-handedly, but instead, I had to build up to DTs and kill two of them after i got rushed before the cpu would do anything.... which was kill off the remainder of the base of the guy who had already left.

It really bugs me when the AI does something impossible for normal players, like shooting a rifle across a map, through foliage, over a mountain, and still manages a head shot...

It's then that I get annoyed and pull out the God mode.

When AI cheats is an interesting topic. How about making another topic discussing "When AI is stupid"? I thought of this because I played a sc game recently where my cpu could have easily wiped out all 3 opponents single-handedly, but instead, I had to build up to DTs and kill two of them after i got rushed before the cpu would do anything.... which was kill off the remainder of the base of the guy who had already left.

Haha yeah in SC CPUs are stupid sometimes, especially SC1, when you wall your base with barracks and supply depots and put bunkers behind. This is why a good player can solo 7 computers in a FFA. On top of that, sometimes the first 3 pushes are just basic units. Another weird thing is when you send a drone to attack their workers and they start following you. By microing your worker around their base you can really hurt their economy.

Quote from: DJ_O on September 19, 2010, 04:57:07 am

I wonder if in SC2 AI still knows where's your base automatically... so far the probe seems to scout random places but I wasn't sure. Another thing I wonder is if Insane computer AI is cheated? We tried 6-pooling a computer in insane mode in 2v1 and he could immediately defend against the rush with his zealots. My teamate is in Diamond league... to me it seems like they have slightly faster build times or simply press keys in an instant, in a way that is normally impossible by humans...

The SC2 Insane AI cheats; the developers said so themselves. However no other AI difficulty in SC2 cheats.

In SC1, AI has perfect vision, knows presence of cloaked units (but can't attack them unless they have a detector), and starts off with 1000 minerals and vespene. Really, the main reason why the AI is still quite beatable is that its unit control is terrible.

Yeah I heard they got more minerals or got them faster and/or started with more, although I would need to check replays. Maybe stuff just builds slightly faster. I knew in SC1 the AI knew where your base were, but I didn't know they started with that many minerals.

That said, I am sure if someone made a RTS for calcs with many separate units being controlled at once they would need to make the AI cheat, though.

Another example of bad AI is in Warcraft 2 on complex maps. Units will not go through pathways that goes in multiple directions, you'll have to direct them over and over.

On-calc I am sure for unit orders there would need to be a limit on action stacking. For example, if you give orders to 4 different groups of units, the 4th group's order would overwrite the first's and then the first one would stop moving.