AMAI 2.2

How does the AI "see"? In many games people assume the AI can see everything, simply because it's part of the game. I've found that this generally isn't true, with the AI, like the player, being fed only a portion of the information the game is processing, or cheating in some areas (knowing where a target is), but not in others (only firing once it has an LOS on the target).

Is this true for the WC3 AI, or does it make decisions about thinks it can't see, for example, knowing the enemy camp is undefended, or that the enemy is stronger without having done anything to discover this? How human is the AI in its limitations?

After several games and tests I am back to see what possibly could be done to affect the expansion growth system.

I tried to create a few triggers to force the comp to expand at a time when it had 4000 gold or lower but it wound up crashing the map (I can email or post it if you all would like). It did seem to work on normal AI but AMAI partly followed it then continued to harrass and ran out of money.

What I attempted to do is have it attack a mine once it built a certain attack group (similar to the Blizzard AI function) and then use that attack group to secure the mine. I essentially had 4 level 3 creeps at the mine and used the humans (Attack group = 4 footman 3 riflemen and 2 heroes) to test. I then tried to have it repeat the action until the mine is secured. I believe in the attempt to repeat the trigger it caused the crash but without the repeat trigger the trigger worked in NORMAL AI. AMAI seemed to try it once then proceeded to continue to attack me until it ran out of money.

I am still learning JASS but I hope to eventually send to code to AIAndy to see what he thinks and have him essentially do the feasibility analysis. It seems that the expansion radius does work but the priority and emergency priorities which are set to 300 and 500 respectively are not working as I would like.

-Should these be increased even further?
-What is the good range and is it better to code JASS or try a trigger to force the comp to expand?

Additionally there are excellent strategies out there for each race especially the Undead by using the straight to Wrym strategy but it seems to want to attack the opposing players first while it's gold is down to 2000 or less. Is there a way to force AMAI to attack the mines with 9 or 10 Wyrms, secure it, build defensive structures at the expansion before attacking other players or essentially have it prioritize or is this a hard coded aspect of the game?

Thanks in advance.

Well a good explenation would be that the AI knows everything, where any base or army currently is and how strong they are, but it's also completely blind, it can sometimes just run by your army without tuching it just becuse it decided already to go to another target, it don't even see if it comes by your army. it just takes a fast peak on the map when it is deciding what to do, then it does what it decided and don't see what happens while it's doing it. Just some things can interupt what it's currently doing, like the army tracker we added in 2.20 I think it was, that will make AMAI interupt with current actions and move to defend it's base if your army moves towards it and gets near.


@Zeta09
At least we had some great improvements with earlier expanding in AMAI 2.30 and later, there was a bug in AMAI that made the computers think that the dead creeps at the mine still was creeps guarding te mines so it always waited about 2-3 minutes for thoes dead creeps to decay before it expanded.

We will make some improved early expanding among other things for the next version of AMAI that probally got the version 2.40 and is being released after patch 1.17.

I don't personally like the straight to wyrm strat. The computer is too vurneble to rush in early game if it uses such strategies but I also don't think there is any need for it to stay and guard a expansion until it's done. A good alternative would be to make AMAI use that item that create blighted ground by the expansion so it can create some towers at once at the same time as it hunts the mine.

=UPDATE=

Just released 2.33 for 1.17 beta with some optimizations to human strategies and the bug in blizzard.j allowing players to get more than one of the 2 new neutral heroes fixed.

Zal,

I am not by any means criticisizing you or AIAndy's work nor am I belittling what you all have done. AMAI is a fantastic program with more usefullness then some of the patch updates themselves.

I am just looking for a way to learn and how can I improve the program and tailor it so I won't have to post or email you guys. I had posted really to show what I have tried and what I can do to help improve it. Again let me know if you want me to upload the trigger or the replay.

I want to emphasize I really do appreciate the work you and AIAndy has done.

Take it easy Im not angry at you or anything, I was just informative. :)

And we can't make functions in the AI based on "triggers" btw, triggers is not possible in the AI scripts. :/

Currently there is many fast expansion possibilities we haven't implemented but thats one thing we will concentrate on doing in the next version. like for example militia expansion is currently out of order so we will fix it and make it work better than ever before and add some other fast expansion methods like maybe night elf building a tree of life close to the expansion early and then attack the creeps with it and the hero when it's completed, I think this NE fast expansion is possible to do in the AI and it would be cool to see it in action.

But don't get me wrong I would really like to share your ideas about expansion methods.

Is AMAI 2.33 only available on IRC or is there a link on the downloads page I'm missing?

[edit] I see the note on the download page saying you updated the edition to 2.33 but when I mouse over the file, on the status bar it says it's AMAI_231PE still.

No on the download page it has always been 2.31 since it's the latest to the current official war3 version, on the first page on the other hand there is this text:
"Updated the 1.17 beta version to 2.33, not possible to pick multiple of the new neutral heroes any more and some optimizations to human strategies:"
followed by download links for 2.33 PE and DE versions.

A few thoughts about 2.33

1. You've spelt Assault Assualt in one line. I forget the line.

2. The readme doesn't include any details on how to upgrade to a new version. This is a must.

3. The readme doesn't tell you what differences to expect between difficult levels.

4. If you try to convert the original maps into AMAI, you get the warning about Battle.Net and are offered a Yes or No choice. Problem is, no question which merits this choice is asked, the last line is a statement, not a question and you're left guessing which button does what.

5. You really need a "taunts off" option :)

6. AI's often tell the other AI's they want this here, or meet up there... but the other AI's never respond. It would be nice to know if the attack is going to happen or not... and also if the AI changes its mind, if it could say so we can withdraw out troops.

1-5. Will fix it's just a matter of time.

6. The computers never speak to each other. it would have been a real waste of CPU resources to make them do that since comunication between the computers in war3 is slow and complicated. Unless gamecache is used maybe.

The problem is, it's tricky to know if you should be joining the assault, since, for all you know, there isn't going to be one because everyone else has decided it isn't worth the hassle.

BTW, what do you guys do to advertise your AI? As I said, I stumbled across it by accident. Finding it is pretty hard, search terms like:

"AMAI"
"warcraft 3 ai"
"alternate warcraft 3 ai"

and so on, reveal nothing under Google. You guys might want to make a greater effort to have your page indexed by google.

We usualy news about it a little everywhere on sites like wc3campaigns.com, warcrafters.se, fragzone.se, and mention it in some forums, I guess I can add some more search words to the site but I have added war3 ai and such things already.

You can add your url her: Add Url !

You can add your url here: Add Url

I've tried "amai" in Google, and the AMAI site appeared, at #5.
For "amai warcraft", the #1 result is a link to this forum, the 1st message having a link to the AMAI web site.

But I discovered AMAI via the Battle.net Warcraft Forums. I think AIAndy made a post there, with a link to the site (the first version of the site was simple, then it improved with the Pandaren theme).

A simple adding of the string "Warcraft AI" on the home page will help the AMAI site rank more closer or = to #1. :)