AI with Personalities

A few years ago I worked on the AI for a WWII Strategy game called Patton Drives East.

A simpler game than Elemental, with fixed opponents and a single map (covering USA, the Atlantic, Europe and the Middle East) it utilized a personality driven AI that adopted a randomly selected strategy at game start based on random seed(s) generated for the AI player.

Example: An Allied Human player might  be facing an Axis AI that adopted;

01-20: English First Strategy
21-50: Russia First Strategy
51-80: Middle East First, then Russia Strategy
---------51-60 Middle East Via Turkey
----------------------51-60 Middle East via Turkey Diplomatic Strategy
----------------------51-60 Middle East via Turkey Production Strategy
----------------------51-60 Middle East via Turkey Conquest Strategy
---------61-75 Middle East via Libya
---------76-80 Middle East via Spain (i.e. Take Spain and Gibraltar when Attack Middle East)
81-00: USA Invasion Strategy (yes, in this game the Axis could invade the USA!)
---------81-90 UK then USA
---------91-00 Spain then USA
----------------91-00 Diplomatic Strategy (diplomacy on Spain, keep Russia Neutral)
----------------91-00 Production Stategy
----------------91-95 USA Invasion Strategy 1 (conquer Spain, then invade northern USA, feint to South USA)
----------------96-00 USA Invasion Strategy 2 (conquer Spain, then invade southern USA, feint to North USA)

In each game the player faced an opponent that could be pursuing a number of different corrordinated (war, production, diplomatic) war strategies. (PS: The AI in Patton Drives East are in a text file that is easyily modifiable - and the war fighting, production and diplomatic strategies can be linked). In PDE you didn't know which front the AI would focus on.

I would like to see each Elemental AI opponent have a chance to adopt a pesonality drivien strategy (based on the strategies used by the best players), in lieu of following a general AI strategy. I don't want to see all the AI players following the same stategy to win.

You might have one AI spam cities, while another builds up a single powerful city. One AI might build an army of peasants warmed with warstaffs while the other build an army of plate-mail armored warriors.  Another AI might focus on recruiting demonic armies or powerful champions. One might focus on magic. I want to face AI opponents that are smart and really different from each other in how they choose to advance their kingdom or empire. At the same time I want them to use strategy coordinated research, production, and war fighting strategies that maximize their chance for success.

 

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Reply #1 Top

I think this is where Brad's trying to go with Elemental's AI, actually.   That's certainly how it works in GalCiv2, where each race has its own methodologies as to how it goes about building and expanding.   But the key to that is first building an underlying AI system that actually works on a base level and can actually play the game with a basic level of competency, and that's what the current 1.1 AI aims for.   In short; you have to crawl before you can walk, and walk before you can run.