AMAI 2.2

They don't use wyvern as starting strategy very often, almost never when I see them.
I am going to remove normal strat for all races since they are pointless to have there, I started with Orc becuse it's most important that they don't have any normal strategy since orc can't afford to build a little of everything, they have to build towards a goal from the start else they will be to much behind with the economy.
The main reason to why it needs to be gone is that it has no usage. AMAI automatically switches to the strategy that counters what enemy has best, and a "Normal" strategy is never best at countering anything, therefor it will never be used.

@Tez:
I looks like they are using the NE strategy Dryads and Mountain giants, whats the problem?

Hi,

That concerns me a little. I play FFA with the AMAI most of the time. In FFA, a 'Normal' strategy is a good idea.

Regards,

Goose.

For what I have seen it is air strategies and tier3 strategies that wins in FFA games, mostly mass air, like wyverns with shamans or tourens with shamans.

No matter what game type a normal strategy is the wrong way to go since they will spend twice the resources to get a equal army size as another player going for example mass grunts with catapults only. since they need lot of different buildings to make all kind of different units and upgrades. Takes time and resources to do that.

Goose is right. We are speaking about AI, AI is weaker then the human player by definition. So if one want to have a good high-tech game he have to set three of more teams of AI players. Because single computer (FFA) is too easy to beat (one by one). And in case of two teams - game ends very quickly. So the most convenient is case with three or more teams. The game doesn't end with defeat of a one team.
So AMAI have to act selectively:
In case of less than 4 races to deal with, it has to select advantageous strategy by counting bonuses (compare bonuses of each available strategy for current situation, taking into account all enemies (all their units)).
In case of 4 races to deal with, use a normal/universal strategy at start (& after Strategy Persistence timeout select appropriate strategy as in previous case (depending on all enemies' units).

Let's discuss MGDryads strategy. Gene***** it's best in some cases to replace dryads with archers but due to poor unit formation control dryads are the best – you are right. :( When I'm going this strategy I never build more the two MG & it works excellent always. So… taking into account inconceivable AI's formations (check that screenshot), maybe we can set MG to 3 or 4?
PS
I can't understand why 6 MG is needed? MGs are most affective in counter-attraction role (they are made for it – taunt skill, huge HP, the highest HP regeneration rate (for NE), medium armor (with the highest amount (for NE)), formation rank 0 (viewable in World Editor (as HP regeneration rate), 0 is the most front line, archers have it 3, Druids of Claw in bear form has 2) & two upgrades for increasing their survival). So, 6 MGs is an ineffective waste of food.

One thing that bothers me about the AI is that sometimes they like to send a small force at your base in the beginning of the game, but when they finally get there they run back home. This seems like a waste of time. They also do this with creep camps when they do not have enough troops to take them on. Isn't there a way just to make them NOT attack the creep camps until their troop count is high enough?

One more thing. I find it interesting that the computer gives priority to run one hero all the way across the map to either their home shop or an item shop on the map to buy some items. It gets even worse when they don't have enough money and they just wait there.... Fix please?

It's a bug if they do that. They should only go to nearby shops to buy if they can afford what they are buying. But we'll look it up.

MG strat is also a bit experimentsl, maybe a bit many MGs.


Now to the FFA gameplay of the AI I nkow it's a problem that the AI tried to adept to beat the overall army of all other players in the game, I have been thinking on this and maybe make AMAI only target one enemy at a time in a FFA, like one of the 2 closest and adept to beat that player, then when it's done it picks another enemy and adept to that ones army, instead of trying to beat all players at once.

Sounds good. Sorry I didn't want to sound like I was critisizing before, I just wanted to make sure that you keep FFA in mind while you are revising the strategies. What you suggest above sounds more 'natural' that the AMAI targets a player and takes them out. I'd be happy for you to remove the 'normal' strategies. (Infact I came up against an AMAI using a 'normal' strategy yesterday and it was the easiest battle I've had in a while!).

One thing I'd like to add.. is there anyway the AMAI can 'remember' who its been fighting during a game? In a FFA, 2 AMAI players could have been fighting hard against each other.. then all of a sudden they magically realise without scouting that a player on the other side of the map is weak, they give up on fighting each other and every AMAI player heads for the weak players base. While the same thing could happen in a battlenet match if someone sends a public message saying someone is weak, its a bit annoying for Computer opponents to show the same poor sportsmanship.

Thanks for your response!

Hi,

I saw some questionable behaviour in the AMAI yesterday.

I was playing on (2)GlacialThaw with Patch Beta 402. My race was Human. My opponent was CyberPro whose race was also Human.

1) In our first battle, the AMAI player used a wand of lightning shield on his own footmen which were no where near my units and only damaged his own units. It would have been far better off using lightning shield on my tightly bunched footmen. This sounds like hard coded unit behaviour.. but thought I'd raise it incase there is anything you can do to help it?

2) There is still a problem with how the AMAI returns to its base when its under attack. Heres what happened. As mentioned above, I was playing (2)GlacialThaw. I attacked the computers expansion in the top left. Coincidentally, the computer was creeping the red creep camp right below that expansion. He was literally 1 screen away. BOTH of his heroes had town portal scrolls. Heres where it gets wierd. The AMAI sent his army all the way back to his MAIN base (by foot no less). Then as soon as he got there, turned around and walked all the way back to the expansion I was attacking. So he's walked his entire army about 8 screen lengths.. when all he had to do was walk 1 screen length back to the expansion I was attacking! This is purely insane. I'm guessing the computer realised it was walking distance to the threat so did NOT use the Town Portal scroll, but then when deciding where to walk to, picked the wrong town hall? But wait theres more! Once it finally got back to the threat none of the units attacked me. They just stood there until I damaged the hero enough then it town portalled away. I think this was because the unit I attacked the expansion with FIRST was a summoned creature which had since expired and disappeared.

Any ideas what could have happened here?

I've got the replay and map if you want to see it (but its Beta 402 so might not be valid for long...)

Thanks in advance,

Goose. :D

Hello AMAI Team!

Is there a debug mode in AMAI, where people will be notified in custom games about what strategy the Computer opponent is using?

This will help the players using AMAI understand that AMAI is not always creating a "mistake", but intentional choice of the computer to perform a strat.

Next, a suggestion: Add a module in AMAI that controls all "% chance" factors of AMAI in choosing strats ala-Diablo II tables, e.g. Minimize what the others claim as "computer always using this strat or hero" thing.

Another suggestion: For the Developer Edition, I suggest using 8pt Tahoma as the font for the interface controls (buttons, lists, etc...). I'm sure it add to the nice shink-wrapped-product appearance of the AMAI Developer Edition. :-) Or, make use of the Windows Display Property "Dialog Box" font.

Thanks and more power! I'm getting ready for AMAI when 1.15 is final! :-)

We are changing the % chanse of heroes and strategies when people complain actualy, but thoes also change dynamically depending on whats happening in the game.
The GUI of the strategy maneger is very limited I think, not sure what's possible tochange in it have to check that with AIAndy.

@ Goose:

Yes you are right about that FFA stuff me too wants to make it somehow remember what other player has been attacking it the most and want to have revanch on that player most of all and things like that, should be a lot nicer FFA games if it worked that way. Maybe the best would be to have some kind of FFA mode where AMAI computers play like if it was a 1on1 only counting with the closest opponent all the time, without letting things like players gettinmg weak far away interfear with it's behavior.

1. This is unfortunatly hard coded nothing can be done there really but most of time I see them use wand of lightning shield well.

2. This can happen but will probably not happen most of time, maybe most of the units in his army got injured by the creeps and needed to go home instead or something. But I see them walk directly to the threat and take care of it most of time, it will definitly work better in the new version, we are currently concentrating on improving AMAI's reaction to threats.

Hi,

A little while ago you guys were talking about the Goblin Tinker not appearing very often.

I think this could be affected by the profiles. No AMAI profile lists the Goblin Tinker as its favourite neutral. Perhaps in the next patch change some of the existing profiles to use the Goblin Tinker?

Of the existing 26 profiles the popularity is as follows:
Dark Ranger 7
Beast Master 6
Pit Lord 5
Sea Witch 5
Brew Master 3
Goblin Tinker 0

Regards,

Goose.

There's been a couple new versions of AMAI that have come out in the recent past. If I want to uninstall AMAI from a map, do I have to use the specific AMAI version that was installed on it to uninstall, or does it matter? How would I tell what version of AMAI is installed on a map if I've forgotten? Thanks for any help.

No it doesn't matter what version you use but I remkomend that you delete your AMAI maps and copy in new fresh maps instead since the new war3 patch updates the maps as well and AMAI can't be completely uninstalled it will only be removed from the file list of the map(the filesize of the map will not decrese). And if you want to use a new version of AMAI on a map there is noneed to uninstall first from the map, you just need to install the new version and it will overwrite the old files in the map.

I believe these were reported before but I just had back to back games where they occured and thought I would mention them since this is version 2.015.

1. Repeated messages of something like "Unable to find Zepplin for peon" or some such. I located a mass of Acolytes that were headed to a mine I had just destroyed. Once I started attacking the lead one (all were stopped) the messages stopped.

2. At the AMAI UD expansion I found 2 acolytes mining, one standing trying to load into a zepplin and upon destroying the zepplin about 5 Acolytes dropped out. Pretty odd since there were 3 open mine slots.

3. AMAI still does not buy or use Mercs. It will send units to Merc camps but it will not buy them.

Finally, not sure if the "Mass Destroyers" strat got changed but I am happy to report I haven't run into any more mass Obsidian Statues. Seems the Mass Destroyers strat now operates properly. Could be that I stopped playing so much on Glacial Thaw which is a small map.

hmm yes. we will disable the malfunctioning island expansion function and investigate why they never buy mercs any more and fix that as well.

Can't remember exactly but I think I did some small change in 2.015 to mass destroyer strat to solve the problem you reported.

We also have some other nice features added for next version that will be released shortly after 1.15 goes official.