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sdfx
Famous Hero
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posted March 26, 2007 08:07 PM |
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Generally, AI does everything correctly in a context of one turn. It just doesn't "see" the whole picture. It will chase fodder/gated troops, it will ALWAYS attack a stack that's in range no matter what it is: one peasant or 10 Dragons - it's in range so it has to be attacked.. it also likes going for "kills" which is wise... in a context of one turn.
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Halm
Hired Hero
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posted March 26, 2007 10:22 PM |
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Yes there is nothing stupid about it, let's assume the AI can't see the difference between gated and normal troops.
Or it's even logical, why should some poor creeps care if you have losses of real troops or not? The poor creatures just want to win and live. 
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Darkeye
Promising
Famous Hero
of the Deep
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posted March 26, 2007 11:02 PM |
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I will rather say its no intelligent about the AI; the programming is lousy 
Intelligence is defined by something more than just seeing one step ahead; Even a nematode is more intelligent than that!
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dfortae
Known Hero
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posted March 27, 2007 01:05 AM |
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Edited by dfortae at 01:06, 27 Mar 2007.
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First of all, as a software architect and developer, I can say artificial intelligence is ALWAYS bad. It is impossible to come even close to the dumbest human being. It is impossible to teach a computer to learn because our hardware limitations. If we could ever have USEFUL atomic computing we MAY be able to tap the simplest of A.I., but even it would be ignorant.
The problem is what people call "A.I.". Most of the time it isn't. People think an algorithm is A.I. No, it's just a simple representation of a SINGLE (read SINGLE) task. A.I. is about learning (extremely difficult to do). Think about how long it took YOU to tie your shoe! Or, how long did it take before you could understand calculus? YEARS! This is why one can develop an amazing chess program (that can beat the top world player Kasparov). But try to make a program that can play chess better than anyone, learn new languages, invent new things and theories, learn any subject AND UNDERSTAND it, etc., it won't happen for hundreds of years (if ever).
The biggest problem with computers is lack of parallel processing and fuzzy logic. Our brains process so many things at once, this is why we can have deep "quick" thoughts. Computers are great at doing millions of SIMPLE tasks quickly. But throw a complicated problem at it and watch out. Our image processing will never be improved upon by computers. Just take a look in front of you in a messy room and think about all the things you INSTANTLY recognize and all the thoughts associated. A computer would try, get 90% of them wrong, and come up with all kinds of bad information. Even though a person (programmer/developer) can do it, it doesn't mean he can make a COMPUTER do it.
Getting back to Heroes 5, yes, the computer player is pretty bad. It could be improved quite a bit because it has a very limited set of options it can take (unlike a human being walking around in the real world). So it could definitely be made much "smarter" for the Hero's world. The game that has great "A.I" for the amount of processing time allowed is Warcraft 3. Heroes has MUCH MUCH more CPU time to calculate things (not real time), and yet it does much much worse.
Now, even though it is pretty bad, believe me, programming "A.I" is VERY difficult. So before you bash Nival with all you have, consider they are the ones that made a game and you didn't (and don't know how to). 
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Elvin
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Endless Revival
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posted March 27, 2007 01:41 AM |
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That's exactly why they deserve a bashing, because that is THEIR job and they are supposed to know how to do it decently- I won't go to exceptionally. After all these years they cannot make an AI better that the one in H3? No, even if the game is more complex there is no real excuse, they did not put as much effort as they should.
I wouldn't mind much to have a mediocre AI but that's below the expectations of many. Not even a simple modification via patch to make heroes retreat on hard!
That said, I recognise what Nival has done but some things are disturbing to say the least...
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H5 is still alive and kicking, join us in the Duel Map discord server!
Map also hosted on Moddb
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dfortae
Known Hero
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posted March 27, 2007 03:08 AM |
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Yes, they could have improved. Remember this though. The gaming market doesn't actually make that much money (unless the game is a HUGE hit). The developers are overworked and underpaid for the difficult tasks they have to do. Also, this game I'm sure was a complete rewrite. Nothing was reused from the previous heroes I'm sure. Going from a 2D overhead view to 3D requires a rewrite most of the time.
They probably don't have any of the original developers either, so anyone who improved their reasoning for A.I. is probably gone. So you loose talent over the years.
Not trying to make excuses, just pointing out some facts a lot of non-developers and architects don't know.
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Doomforge
Admirable
Undefeatable Hero
Retired Hero
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posted March 27, 2007 09:15 AM |
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dfortae you are right ofc, but what about *scripts* ? is it so hard to script the AI to act i.e. in a weird situation like a good player? Say, train paladins-only when the map is rich (simple script, if gold is blablabla than do blablabla -_-) or counter suffering with righteous might (another easy script etc). Human players also follow a certain pattern, I guess it wouldn't be too difficult to script the AI to act in similiar way. Just get some good players, give them different situations, check how they responded and script AI to act in a similiar way. Hard? NO! Effective? Yes.
And we shouldn't forget that the all-powerful chess AI beat kasparov few years ago. Not saying that such heroes AI is possible since it's completely random which totally messess up the number of possible solutions the CPU must consider, still, it's quite impressive
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Darkeye
Promising
Famous Hero
of the Deep
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posted March 27, 2007 06:09 PM |
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Edited by Darkeye at 00:03, 28 Mar 2007.
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Thanks for your views dfortae  I have studied both programming and neurobiology so I know AI is the wrong term to use for those algorithms behind the scenes
Still, as Doomforge says, this is more about making algorithms for doing the simplest things, like countering spells, always attack when the chance is there etc.
I would in many cases rather use the word "bug" instead of "stupid" since the computer does unbelievable mistakes. For example, last game I played, the enemy goes ashore right before one of my castles, which is completely undefended. Instead of attacking, he just goes back in the boat again, and leaves it. Plenty of more examples to come up with. Where is that "if-sentence" that would make him attack?
It might be underpayment and because of trying to make most money out of it, but still after making such an exellent job on the graphics, why don't put a minimal effort on the game mechanics?
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dfortae
Known Hero
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posted March 27, 2007 11:37 PM |
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Yes, a script is just a set of instructions. No learning, therefore no A.I. The wrong term keeps being used. We shouldn't say the "A.I. could be improved". There really isn't any A.I. It isn't learning, it is simply reacting based on what the developers programmed. We should say the "program" or "application" or "engine", something like that. I know it's just a word, but it gives the wrong impression.
Yes, Doomforge, it would be fairly easy to just find out what the best people did and script a lot of special cases. If the special case doesn't exist, fall back to an algorithm. Very effective for limited things like a game.
And yes, the chess program that beat Kasparov was great, but again, that's all it could do. And the programmer did what you just talked about, got some advice from the best players in the world and put all of it in. It didn't "learn" on its own. I'm not saying it wasn't impressive, because it was VERY impressive. But it isn't A.I. really. If all a human could do is play chess (NOTHING else), would that be intelligent??? Absolutely not.
Also, I agree with you Darkeye. Those types of things are indeed bugs. Whether it is a design bug or an algorithm bug, it is a bug. I completely agree that more thought and effort should have went into the computer players. But again, the pressure is VERY high and the time frames very low, so something had to give (and it was the computer players).
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lord_crusader
Promising
Supreme Hero
UHU!! supreme!
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posted March 28, 2007 12:03 AM |
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I'm agree is like playing vs monkey gamer... and the worst thing is that they have to cheat to make the game a little more playable...
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Dig Out Your Soul
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soup
Adventuring Hero
Thinks Gorgans are cute
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posted March 28, 2007 02:07 AM |
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my, my, im lucky, for some reason my AI isn't very non-intlligent. It keeps beating me on normal, and im a fairly good player. It keeps waiting until I leave the castle to attack, splits its army and draws me away, and all the other tactics you wouldn't expect from a machine. It's very odd, and its preventing me from finishing HOF. Eek!
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That Gorgan is cute but he will still bite your nose off.
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Elvin
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Endless Revival
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posted March 28, 2007 02:27 AM |
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Ehm, in normal it builds every other day, cannot build dwellings or mage guilds of a higher lvl than yours and it flees before it can even damage you should you have a bigger army. It's not that hard to leave a week's army to guard your town even if the main hero is away, especially if the enemy has so many handicaps.
I don't think anything has changed in HoF though I have not tried it myself.
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H5 is still alive and kicking, join us in the Duel Map discord server!
Map also hosted on Moddb
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kcwong
Hired Hero
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posted March 28, 2007 07:36 AM |
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Quote:
And we shouldn't forget that the all-powerful chess AI beat kasparov few years ago. Not saying that such heroes AI is possible since it's completely random which totally messess up the number of possible solutions the CPU must consider, still, it's quite impressive
Chess is a much easier game. There is no randomness - no dice are being rolled. There is also a clearly defined set of possible actions - you and your opponent only have that much pieces to move, and each pieces' movement is strictly restricted by the rules.
So the program can just list out all possible moves, up to a certain depth depending on computing power available, and in all those possibilities, give scores to each one. Say in case 1, we lost a bishop, so case 1's score is lower than case 2, which we captured our opponent's knight.
And then with the scores, the computer can find the best move to make.
In most strategy games these days, the case is much more complex than a game of chess. There are die being rolled, and there are many different factors to take in consideration. There are much more variations. Many times even humans cannot clearly tell if a said action is better or worse than the other.
So without a set of well defined rules, the program cannot make good decisions.
That is why so many game cheats on higher difficulty levels - because otherwise, they can never keep up with a human mind.
Next time you play HoMMV, try writing down all the decisions you've made, and why. The decisions will involve but not limited to: where to move each army to, what to pickup, what to fight, how to fight, what to buy and what to build.
If you managed to write down a set of rules, try to follow them strictly in your next game. See how it will go.
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blink
Adventuring Hero
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posted March 28, 2007 03:00 PM |
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By the way, for people talking about Deep Blue (the machine that beat Kasparov), it's even farther from AI than most people probably think. Deep Blue is just a huge database of every recorded chess game the programer could get ahold of. The only real programming that was done was in how the games are indexed and called. Every turn, Deep Blue goes into its database and tries to find a game where it can force a win; if it can't find that because there are too many ways for the human to avoid getting check-mated, it follows the moves of a winning game until it can eventually come to a turn where it can lock down a "mate in X number of moves." In the mean time, it chooses which winning games to follow by a combination of how far away it can set up a check mate (because it's harder for someone to see a "mate in 43 moves" than a "mate in 2 moves") and how few mistakes the human player could make and still avoid a forced check mate. The only way people really "beat the machines" in chess anymore is to just start making very odd, seemingly random moves near the end of the game, so that the computer can't find a game in its database to mimic. At this point, the computer falls back on its actual intelligence, where it is just a mediocre chess player, until hopefully it can get into a position where it can follow another winning game. This program was more a feat of massive processing power than in creative programming.
Obviously, indexing winning games in Heroes and having the computer try to mimic this would fail miserably because there are almost as many combinations of "moves" that can be made on the first day of a heroes game as in all of chess and there aren't millions of games upon which to draw a database from anyway.
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PhoenixReborn
Promising
Legendary Hero
Unicorn
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posted March 30, 2007 08:40 PM |
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Quote:
<<list of normal defects snipped>>
I don't think anything has changed in HoF though I have not tried it myself.
I think he's talking about in the campaigns which play a little bit differently than a 'regular' multiplayer map. In those there can be time issues, and the preset armies and movements can present a challenge.
Personally I've been playing on hard on normal maps...and the computer controlled player sometimes does appropriate things and sometimes not. For example, if I cast haste it will cast slow on the unit, or vice versa. Other times though, it will waste movement, letting me capture it's castle because it didn't smash me with a larger army.
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Bask in the light of my glorious shining unicorn.
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Doomforge
Admirable
Undefeatable Hero
Retired Hero
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posted March 31, 2007 01:16 PM |
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Yeah, so it's all about scripting. Nival should just add a few "if..then.." here and there, and the AI (or "AI" as dfortae suggests) would be at least challengable. The point is to make an imitation of a real player, yes? So why it's based on cheating, ridiculous growth and totally pointless moves that make me wonder how BAD the scripting looks atm?
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Elvin
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Endless Revival
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posted March 31, 2007 01:22 PM |
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What scripting?  I think the script to use a destructive spell instead of a buff when a peasant remained was added a lot later. Many simple things yet important for gameplay are unadressed and I'm pretty certain that a decent homm player could find them easily.
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H5 is still alive and kicking, join us in the Duel Map discord server!
Map also hosted on Moddb
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Doomforge
Admirable
Undefeatable Hero
Retired Hero
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posted March 31, 2007 01:29 PM |
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But our beloved () Nival is too lazy to address those simple issues. Pathetic.
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PhoenixReborn
Promising
Legendary Hero
Unicorn
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posted March 31, 2007 05:17 PM |
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Quote:
But our beloved () Nival is too lazy to address those simple issues. Pathetic.
Well in Heroes 2 the enemy creatures stupidly charge out of the castle even when they are not under threat. If they stayed in the towers would shoot me up. Guess what. In Heroes 3 the enemy creatures stupidly charge out of the castle.
I'm with you, I want Nival to fix stupid stuff like horned demons exploding with no one around. But NWC/3do was hardly perfect and the a.i. is not the strong point of the series.
Does anyone use ghost mode online? Can't you control neutrals with it?
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Bask in the light of my glorious shining unicorn.
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dale
Known Hero
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posted September 25, 2007 09:30 PM |
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AI Fleeing stupidity
I got to this note from the TOC uber-message looking to see if my thoughts had been posted already.
I note that this thread is about six months old, and things may have changed with revisions, but some of its statements are exactly opposite to my recent observations (have just finished the campaigns and am moving on to the single player games).
Quote:
I reckon a lot agree to the fact that the games AI isn't very good.
This is true, always has been and will probably continue to be true for as long as I am playing games.
Quote:
Examples of this are such as:
- When the computer has the chance to conquer one of your castles, it doesn't and just walk past.
- When boarding a boat, it often just go back to land the next turn and then back to the boat again like it can't decide, and wastes a lot of time.
- When meeting a much stronger hero it might move closer to it rather than at least making an attempt to escape.
All of the above I agree with -- have seen them in current 1.5 version.
Quote:
- Often the AI heroes do nothing, standing still on the map.
- Very often the AI locks itself inside a castle a large time of the game and just build armies, nothing more. It doesn't even send out scouts to recapture mines and such.
May be true in some cases, but is not what I have observed -- except that I can force AI to lock up in a castle by posting a strong troop nearby. It is smart enough to observe that if it comes out and adventures, I will smash it.
Quote:
Also, why doesn't the AI flee anymore? In the manual it says that on Harder difficulties that it should do it very often.
And this is the reason I came here -- to wonder about exactly the opposite, namely why does the AI flee so easily. Almost every time I attack an enemy hero where I am stronger, it flees almost immediately. Both tactically and strategically, this is bad. Fleeing loses all his troops. If he stayed around and fought for a while, he could do me some damage and flee only when it looks like he is about to be killed completely. The most ridicuous example of this was in the final battles of "An island of one's own". I am being attacked by a hero who has no home town to flee to, and yet he flees immediately without doing me any damage at all.
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Grey Beards of the world, Unite :-}}
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