AMAI 2.2

Hello AMAI Team!

I have 2 AMAI Bug Reports. I will send you via email the replays and matching maps:

. CPU Ally's KoTG does not move (30''00')

At 30'00', 9 o'clock, my ally's (Aqua) KoTG doesn't move. His army does move.

. CPU Human ''I can't build there'' bug (54''30').w3g

At 54''30', my Computer opponent (Orange) encountered "Unable to build there" exception, but still insists "building". This lead the computer to surrender to me later even he has resources and buildings.

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Update: I sent you the email containing the attachments now. I did that because our proxy server is having problems with using the forum attachments uploads.

Guess what. My custom AMAI still isn't training the hero sometimes. The prioties are all high. But it still fails to train it at times. I thought it might be for some reason they somehow choose a neutral hero except there isn't any taverns on the map.
Who kmows. If u want to see this happening urself download the map at http://www.wc3sear.ch/?p=Maps&ID=591

Play against all 6 computers as its more likely that 1 player will never train a hero.
This problem really is getting on my nerves.

@Strategy Master: Probably happens when you install "Warcraft TFT" AMAI scripts on RoC maps?

@AMAI Team: If the statement above is true, do you recommend us to install RoC AMAI Scripts only on RoC Maps, and TFT AMAI Scripts on TFT scripts only? Thanks!

It does not depend if it is a RoC map or a TFT map, it only depends on what version you play the map.

So it seems that u have no actual idea what is wrong. Do u want the ai files or something else standardunits.txt here. I have no idea which file could contain the problem.

The heros now train from the barracks and are set up correctly in standardunits.txt. Is there maybe another entry for this not changed.

Well, I guess it helps if I have a look at the files. Send me the StandardUnits.txt and the Heroes.txt files.

Well the hero.txt files only each consist of the one hero so i'll put them here. I deleted the other heros from the files.
human hero.txt file

MTN_KING 80 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

orc hero.txt file

BLADE_MASTER 80 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

I tried to also add the build hero_id[1] to the global build sequence instead of part of the strategies but that seemed to have no effect what so ever.

I noticed something since some games and played an FFA game to see if this happened again.

If i put a minimum of 4 towers (upgraded to be able to open fire in the case of human and undead) in my base , i can tech to tier 3 without having to care about an attack.

In the FFA test i just made , i made no other units than a mountain king during 8 minutes , and no AMAI (there were 3 AMAI players in that FFA) tried to attack my base.

On the replay , i even noticed that my immediate neighbour was an Orc with a TC and a mass HeadHunters + 2 catapults . And even this enemy never tried to attack my base despite my only mountain king unit.

Now, after those 8 minutes , i built more units and an archimage and worked to take an expansion spot.
Again i built a minimum of 4 towers, but this time the AMAI players tried to attack the expansion despite the tower (but as they left me free to tech to tier 3 and as i didnt bought any other units during that time, i had enough money to begin a mass gryphon so i succeeded to defend my expansion easily) .

So it seems that AMAI is very "shy" when it should attack or harrass your main base if you have a minimum of 4 towers, whatever is your army.
But on all the game i had AMAI is not shy when it is an expansion with 4 towers, this problem is related only to the main base.

I do not remember what Blizzard AI made in those conditions , with at least 4 defense tower in the main base.

I say 4 because i usually build a minimum of 4 towers when it comes to base defense , it can be a lower number that cause the AI to not harrass or attack.

Hey,

Couple of things I'd like to discuss:

1) What does everyone think about burrowing? Personally I have never seen the AMAI or Blizzard AI use this intelligently. I played an Undead AMAI last night. It had a mix of ghouls/fiends/statues. When we'd fight, he would burrow his fiends when they were 'in the red'. But then his hero would town portal away... which leaves the burrowed fiends behind. So I got to repeatedly pick off the mostly dead, completely unguarded and defenseless fiends that were burrowed at the battle site.

Burrowing is a very ineffective way of healing fiends, and the computer doesn't have the ability to use this skill. Researching Burrowing works against the AI, causing it to lose more units than it saves (using the above scenario as an example).

I would like to recommend either removing it all together or alternatively dropping its priority from 80 (very high) down to 40 (so it won't appear as often)

2) I noticed that in NightElf->global_build_sequence it has this condition:
if TownCountDone(ARCHER) > 4 and TownCountDone(HIPPO) > 2 then
Why 4 archers? Shouldn't it be 2? (i.e. 2 archers for 2 hippos). Its not like there is 2 archers per hippo.

3) Also in the same function, the priority for UPG_WELL_SPRING is 50. I think its more important than that. Could the priority be increased to maybe 60?

4) In my last post I suggested lowering the merc_healer priority for Orcs but I received no comment. Does anyone else agree/disagree? Priority 70 is way too high. It makes merc_healers more important than combat units (for several orc strategies). They are support units only. I suggest priority 50 would be more suitable.

Thanks for your continuing efforts AMAI team! :D

Regards,

Goose.

I can't comment regarding FFA, but I had a 2v2 (me+AMAI vs AMAI+AMAI) the other day where I did not see this behaviour. My Orc ally chose StrategyMaster's new Tower strategy :D My orc ally built about 6 towers in his base, and 2 heroes - no combat units. He was under CONSTANT attack from both of our enemies.

Could be different for FFA, but based on that game I would say team games certainly dont have that 'shy' problem.

PS I won that game - the tower strategy worked great! With all the towers my ally was always the focus of attacks, but with my help and his towers we beat off the enemy. Then he switched to Mass Wyverns, I went to dryads and we romped it in. So nice work StrategyMaster. Such a simple strat, but it works suprisingly well :)

Thanks Goose.

That strat only took me like 15 minutes to do so its definately not perfect. There are some things that could be improved. Especially at beginning of the strat because they don't build units until later on where they can build a few headhunters for creeping and creeping expansion unless you did that for them. Thats where they are most vulnerable. But i may just change some proirites and bonuses for using strat so it uses it a good situation when can be protected by other players.

First I would say don't doublepost Goose, use the edit button and just make some free lines when the two parts have a different theme!

And I think the Well Upgrade priority is good like it is since it's not as important as for example an attack upgrade if you really have many units as you should have at tier 3!

:D Though this is not directly related to AMAI maps, but more on how AMAI has helped me self-train and improve. :-) I am attaching the games made on BNet today, funny or serious. And while playing, I told players to visit the AMAI site, too! So, whether for entertainment purposes or analysis, here are the replays (attached).

Again, many thanks to AMAI Team. :-)

I welcome any comments about my replays, esp. if it's about how to improve more (email me or priv msg me). Thanks!

(Side question: How do you view your opponent's level while in a BNet game?)

Hit "enter" for a chat window, then do "/stats [player name]"

such as:

/stats MurphGuitar

then hit "enter" again.

In 'common.eai' , the end of function 'microherojob', i made some changes

if CaptainInCombat(true) then
call TQAddJob(0.6, MICRO_HERO, hn)
elseif CaptainRetreating() then
call TQAddJob(1.2, MICRO_HERO, hn)
else
call TQAddJob(2, MICRO_HERO, hn)
endif

should micro heros more often in combat and release CPU % in non-combat.
the second,
in function 'retreatcontrol',
when "set enemy_sum = enemy_sum + unit_strength "
i think the creeps who are sleeping should not be added to enemy_sum.
and use 'set unit_strength = GetUnitStrength(u) * GetUnitState(u, UNIT_STATE_LIFE) / n' (n=4 or some othervalues) instead of 'set unit_strength = GetUnitStrength(u)' should be better
3rd, i think 'flee_health_percentage' should not be a fixed value,
when a game starts, it should be low and grows to a higher value when the game lasted. so i added:
set flee_health_percentage = r_minimum(R2I(TimerGetElapsed(tq_timer))/2200 + 0.15, 0.32)

hope these 'improvements' could be useful :)