AMAI 2.2

I agree, i never saw the standard blizzard AI to attack his own/allied units.

When i play Human or Orcs i sometime kill my own grunts/footmen because they are so low/red on health that i prefer to build a new one instead of having to buy 2 health scrolls or to give easy XP to my opponent.

But i never kill my hero, i can't afford a hero-less time in the game, if my opponent decide to attack, without hero, it is usually the end.

That is why i submitted the ROC replay up there, as i thought it was not normal , or a case like the one i just described in the case of Human/Orc low health units.

And as it occurs on TFT AMAI too , from what said the others people here , and not in blizzard AI, i doubt it is hardcoded.

I hope you will find a solution AMAI team for your next version, take your time , it is the only very important problem i noticed in some games
I really enjoy this AMAI release.

I am pretty sure the problem is in the focus firing as that is the only part of the code that gives attack orders.
That reminds me that I one time saw that a bunch of hunts killed themselves one after the other.

Hey Aiandy

Guess what.

I fixed the heroes not training bug in my map. All it required was to allow the races to train more than 1 specific hero.

Strange, but at least the problem will no longer occur.

I registered especially to give my thanks to Alandy and Zalamander giving me great time with this tools, and give my feedbacks as well. Here is my 2 cents:

About preserving heroes (function saveHero?)

Losing a hero could be critical to a game. Apart from using Zeppelins, moon wells and TPs to preserve a hero, I can think of several other ways:

Urgent - Immediate usage:

1. When a dying hero is near to a share shop, or a merchant:
-- Rush to the shop, buy healing items and use

2. When a dying hero is near to another heroes (single 1v1) or allied heroes (FFA), who have healing items:
-- Give the healing items to the dying hero and use

3. If there are healers in your army:
-- Healers should also include heroes with healing skills other than units. Paladin, Shadow Hunter, or Death Knight (undead), for instance. They could give heroes higher priority than units.
-- If a healer hero has just gain level and has not choose skill yet, choose a healing skill and heal the dying hero immediately.
-- If a healer hero already has the healing skill, but:
3a. Not enough mp while he got a mp item at hand, use it to restore mp and heal the dying hero
3b. Not enough mp while he is nearby a share shop or merchant, rush to the shop, buy mp item and use it, then heal the dying hero.

4. When your army is engaging with your enemies together with creeps:
-- If the a creep died and dropped a healing item or rune next to the dying hero, run (or blink) to the item, grab and use

5. When the dying hero has a invulunable potion, use it immediately and esacpe.

6. Last trick. When you are sure your hero is going to die without help during a fight. Kill your hero by yourself as soon as possible. That prevent your enemies from gaining xp.

The final feedback I can see is about chasing a dying enemy unit. I saw many time my cats stopped chasing a dying ghoul with only 10-20hp when only one more hit can finish it. I think whether to keep chasing a dying unit or not should also depend on the dying unit speed and your units speed. Right?

I am no programmer, but I had a look at the codes. You guys did a great job! Keep it up!

@Peon: Nice suggestion, it's more specific. :-) I've seen replays showing that pattern. Some of those can be applied for units, too.

In fact, I had an AMAI game where ghouls are denying me of experience by killing their buddies at near-death (red). The thing is, they should add code that computes the number of hits the killers would need to kill the nearly-dead unit in a hit (because 2 ghouls took awhile to kill the nearly-dead ghoul in my base).

AMAI Team, I had a very challenging fun game last weekend, great job dudes! ^_^ I was attacked by an opponent who did wisp-harass at the same time, e.g. After the battle, my lumber wisps were all killed by a group of ghouls. The attack was a diversion (though I killed the hero, so it's paid back). :-)

@AMAI Team: Please add this strat in the next AMAI version. It's from HitmanB, the "Wyrm Rush" Strategy. This one won him a lot of games.

http://www.battle.net/forums/war3/th...&ReplyCount=33

To counter this strat:
1. Use scouting to discover an early tech, esp. presence of early Sacrificial Pit.
2. For Undead: Mass Fiends.
3. Polymorph (but this can be countered with Destroyers)

___

BTW, if you don't mind, what is the "Army Tracking" code someone mentioned above? Is it new to this version?

Thanks!

Ok.

After several games and replay views. I see that the 2.20 AMAI does go to the Expansions that I have listed in the previous post sooner. This has occured with both the expansion times on the strategy and the personality being low (25 and -5 respectively). Additionally with the Level 5 and 8 both being set to Level 1 for strength. Just as a experiment I played several games with the comp recieving gold and lumber for killing the creeps at the expansion. Still many of the comps then build more forces instead of heading straight to building the town-hall type building at the expansion. For the ones (usually 2 out of a 8 player game) who do expand it is not immediate and they do not build defensive structures.

The questions now are:

1. Can you code into having the comp build at the open gold mine through the AMAi or is it better to use the WE?

2. Can you code through the strategies for the comp to build defensive structures at the expansion?

Ok all, time to make some big response to all this.

Me and Andy have been working on next version of AMAI for some days now and already there is many new features and bug fixes.

And about that preserving hero stuff, that is something we already did in AMAI many versions ago, sadly it seems to have stopped working, they should automatically buy healing and use any kind of healing units to assist heroes with low HP we just have to get it working again. I have noticed that it's not working properly for a while now at least.

other news in next version will probably be that they finaly can do earlier expansions, it's something not woking in that area too so we have to investigate it.

other stuff thats already completed is:

Bugs fixed:
Computers attack own units when harassing sometimes.
Computers try to expand in center of map even if there is no mine.

Features:
Anti harass, using the new army tracker to detect if a enemy harass on the home base should be ignored or not by comparing different factors.(if the computer can win by entering the enemy base and kill the enemy instead of going home and take care of the harass it will) But it's not completely confirmed if this works yet.

Many new strategies for all races will be there already added some and made more opptimizations and fixed some bugs in the priorities.

We might come up with something more but this is the goals before next release, just have to fic healing featur and fast expansion now.

Oh and b.t.w, anyone visiting out IRC channel #AMAI at irc.quakenet.org will have the luxery to always get the latest beta of AMAI. DL-link for that is in topic there.

Cool. Can't wait.

Also i was wondering. Are you at some point going to make computers able to use goblin ship transports effectively. I know its only 1 map{islands} they are on, but it would be great if a point in the future the ai could work on such a map. Didn't you once have some type of system for this ages ago but was buggy so was removed. I can't remember.

I also got an idea to help for the AMAI developer where you could allow a setting somewhere in a txt document that sets what units to use as air transports. At the moment you can only edit the common.eai directly and change zepplin into something else but only that 1 unit will work be used for air transportation.

The problem is not the transports really but how the AI handels islands. The hard coded AI wants to move units freely on the map and it don't see obstacles like water s any transporter will have a busy moment all the time and it just can't work. We tried forcing them to make expansions on islands already but so far no succes.

The unit specifications is not edited in common.eai it's given on the "type" column of StandardUnits.txt table. Currently Zeppelin is the only unit marked as "Transporter" there but any transporter unit can be added there and given that type and AMAI will use it as a transporter I think.

Great to read that you found a way to fix those bugs,

Thank you for your hard work on AMAI , it is very appreciated.

When I did check the code now, I noticed that the unit name is used in some enumerations that are specific to Goblin Zeppelins. I think I will put that in the global settings table so that that that can be changed without code changes.

oh ok.

About teh transporter was that added in this latest amai cause i can't remember zepplin having that property before. Maybe i just deleted it accidently when doing my custom amai. hmmmmmmmm. But thanx for the help.

EDIT- Is it possible to force any transporter to just unload its attack group within 128 of a players town hall. So if there is no obstacle to enemy but transporter present and is not being used by transport system already present then load up attack group and unload 128 from position of enemy main town hall or enemy expansion town hall. If it comes within strength of 5 ranged units it retreats the transport. This could be classed as a type of transporter harass or surprise attack. That would definetly help air tranports on island type maps maybe. Transports still would be difficult as they can't travel on land. Its just an idea though.

Is it not possible to check whether a unit is able to walk through an area. Cause then you would just need if ground unit cannot walk through area but float unit can then water transports needed = true or something.

Note that the transporter property is not enough at the moment. You will still have to do 2 small code changes.

The transporter harass is a good idea and should be quite possible to do as a specific harass.

Ships are a very big problem to do as you would have to actually override the hard coded AI completely. With the pathing in AMAI it is possible to find out where you need a transporter but it is not clear if a ship is enough or an air transport is needed.
The second and even bigger problem is to find out places to board ships as the Warcraft engine does not provide that easily.
In the end it will probably be possible but it would require a lot of work that is likely better used elsewhere in the AI to a bigger effect.

Are you going to make sure that the global setting can allow more than just 1 unit. Or will it for now be left for just 1 unit?