AMAI and Commander

Really? that can't be true, aha, ladder players get owned by AMAI, but that certainly is because AMAI can control more things than a human player (as other ai) but it also can use good strategies and variate them (as opposite on other ai) also with the new healing routines and the shopping routines AMAI is getting a good opponent.

Wow Last time Amai used Troll high priest as its surprise.

hehe.

Beleave it or not but a new version that is even better is soon ready for release, or well Im not sure if we gonna make a release 3 of 1.8 or work a little more on finishing the current plans and make it 1.9 :)

I could use a copy of this merged common.ai. To implement a map with this, I import common.ai, amai's elf.ai or whatever, and gruntmaster.ai into a map, and use the trigger "start custom AI script" for each player on map init, right?

The repeated game Blizzard.j you wrote would be helpfull as well. I would like to find a way to get w3 to communicate the winner to some external program as well, and it sounds like the gamecache might be able to used for this (havent looked into this yet though).

I put them in a zip on the AMAI site.

I've got a suggestion for an undead strategy for AMAI. It is, as far as I know, one of the best undead unit strategies I've come upon by watching high level UD replays and analyzing units' combat powers (what I do a lot). Gratz go to Politik for deploying a form of this strategy.

The idea is to play upon the l33test UD skills: Vampiric Aura and Inferno. It includes essentially fast leveling DL and massing ghouls + aboms. Statues, fiends, and gargoyles support the strategy, as described below.

Heros:
1. Dreadlord
- Sleep, Vampiric Aura, Vampiric Aura, Sleep, Vampiric Aura, Inferno, 3 x Carrion Swarm, Sleep

Dreadlord is the sole hero in this strategy. He is fast leveled to Inferno and level 3 vampiric aura. Heavy use of items, such as Rods of Necromancy, potions, and TPs. You must keep him alive.

A new hero can be taken, when DL is at level 6, but it is not at all necessary. You can level DL all the way to 9 to get level 3 carrion swarm (which is wiser IMHO).

Units
1. Mass ghouls
- frenzy at tier 3
- cannibilize to heal them
- Vampiric Aura fest
- aboms replace a number of them at tier 3

2. Statues
- one is usually enough for healing

3. Abominations
- replace ghouls when at tier 3 and no need to produce statues/destroyers out of slaughterhouse
- don't produce too many of them, since they are slow and fat
- benefit from Vampiric Aura

4. Destroyers
- if magic dispel is needed, or if enemy has lots of heavy armor units and few piercing damage units
- rather useless against piercing damage units

5. Crypt Fiends
- for anti-air in certain situation
- if enemy has many piercing units or heavy anti-air (such as exploding bat riders)
- you may need a second crypt for efficient fiend production
- can heal through burrow
- also useful for taking enemy air-based antiair, such as gargoyles/hippos, to ground

6. Gargoyles
- for anti-air in certain situation
- can maneuver very well in air
- benefit from Vampiric Aura
- you may need a second crypt for efficient gargoyle production

Upgrades
- Cannibalize
- Melee upgrade 1/0 (at about 30 food)
- Melee upgrade 1/1 (at about 30 food)
- Ghoul Frenzy (when Tier 3)
- Melee upgrade 2/1 (at about 50 food)
- Melee upgrade 2/2 (at about 50 food)
etc.

Buildings
Normal UD Building order with 1 crypt and 1 slaughterhouse. Add a second crypt, when anti-air is needed.

Creeping
DL with Sleep is a good creeper.

Expansion
Normal expanding to support economy.

I think that was most of it.

Hope it helps to make the undead AI even more dangerous. :)

Cheers,

Tommi

Well it's good that you have ideas but after a lot of testing I have discovered that watching good players and try to copy the startegies they use into the AI will do no good at all, simply becuse the AI don't play like humans.
I think it's enough if you give ideas of good unit combinations and what they are used for, like Hunress + dryads is a good combination if enemy goes melee units only that do little damege to unarmored, it's that kind of information that suites AMAI the best, since AMAI works dynamic in the whole game it might start with one strategy then it detects that the enemy got some unit's that will beat that strategy very easy and switched to another strategy to counter these units right after is only have entered tier2.
Your strategy looks almost like the all round strategy of Undead that build like that, string of with mostly ghouls adn then in tier3 replaces them with some abominations. But making a strategy with such details that you describes and put in it the AI will probably be problem later when a new patch to the game arrives (Maybe even 1.13 arrives "soon") and the balance changes makes your strategy not so good anymore, what shuld be done then, delete the whole strategy and find a new or adept it would probably be equal hard works.

Well I think you for wanting to improve the AI so do we and I hope my explenation is good enough for you.

But you are welcome to find out what good units combos counter what other units combos for me if you like, I really have a hard tie keeping track of all that.

Alright. I put it really simple then:
Dreadlord + Mass Ghouls (+ 1 Statue optional but good)

It is basically a fast leveling hero strategy. I didn't yet see it in AMAI.

Strengths: Hero gains additional experience for being the sole hero. Inferno and Level 3 Vampiric Aura are game winning abilities.

Cheers,

Tommi

Good idea to make them save the second hero till the first have reached lvl6 I haven't thought of adding that feature before.

There is mass ghouls strategy already that add 1 or 2 statues in later game. Im thinking of adding a lot more strategies to the game later on when we got a more finished AMAI like version 2.0 or something when I can be sure we won't make any major changes in the strategy system any more.

Fast leveling works only with certain heros. There's no point in fast leveling any other UD heros, as they do not have any such game breaking abilities. Frankly,
- Death Knight is a fast moving Paladin (quite so) with the worst ultimate in the game :D (yeah, I know people use him a lot)
- Lich is a nerfed weakling with 1 good ability (FN) (49 starting attribute points and 270 movement speed, huh?)
- Crypt Lord: Has some cool abilities but nothing game breaking, really.

Similar reasoning must be done with other races too. NE has 3 potential fast leveling heros (DH, Warden, PotM), etc.

Cheers,

Tommi

I think we will make AMAI speed level some heroes that are worth speed level some times with some strategies in future verions of AMAI, it's nothing hard to implement but we probably save it to 2.0 and concentrate on getting the last added features ready for 1.9 right now.

I just want to thank AIAndy and Zalamander so much for this AI. I never play against the Blizzard AI anymore. Are you guys going to put up a Paypal link for donations to support your ongoing work developing AMAI? I would throw money at that if you did.

I installed AMAI on the new Blizzard map Emerald Gardens, the new 12-player Frozen Throne map with the unguarded expansions. I play against a team of two Normal AMAI players, all hit points set at 100%. I was having a problem with getting stomped over and over again by that AMAI team, but I've finally started winning by only building one burrow and nothing else...waiting to get 185 wood (I play Orc) and building an expansion at the unguarded gold mine before I build anything else; an altar or barracks or anything. That gets me the head start I need to win. And if the AMAI players are close to me and discover my expo I still get beat.

I was just wondering, is the AMAI smart enough to realize that a gold mine is not guarded by creeps, and use that information to start an expansion much sooner than it normally would?

Also, I'm noticing issues with Night Elf AMAI not uprooting their Trees of Life when the gold mine collapses, so they can move it to a different mine. Is the Night Elf AMAI supposed to be able to do that? And there was some issue, I thought I heard, about some bug hard-coded into the game that causes the AI to not be able to restock a new mine with wisps in some circumstances. Is there such a bug, do you know when it happens, and do you think you could ever fix it in future AMAI releases?

Sorry for the long post. Again, thanks so much for all your work on this incredibly awesome AI and thanks for any response/s.

Thanks for your nice feedback. actualy I have been thinking of pay pal but then I didn't think there was anyone willing to lend some money to us anyway so I never continued with that thinking. Maybe I shuld. :)

About the expansion stuff. yes there is a hardcoded bug making NE not put wisps in used mines, we hope Blizzard will fix that in next patch, if they don't we will try to fix it with AMAI after that. The computers will probably only expand slightly earlier if the expansion is unguarded for what I know, they will end the worker to expand at once instead of order the army to take out the creeps. But it's not always good to expand early, the problem with expansing early is not really the creeps guardning the expansion it's the cost to make a new townhall there and create all additional workers needed, it will delay the unit production allowing the opponent to get a larger army for a while there before the dubble income starts to roll in.

We will soon make NE unroot and move the tree to a new mine if it's needed maybe even expansd by building it a bit from the mine and unroot ---> attack the creeps with it, and take the mine.

Hi there.

Firstly, thanks for AMAI and it's frequent updates - it really makes playing the PC more challenging, especially seeing as I don't have a great ping to the bnet servers, so it comes in very handy.

Just a few questions:

1.) Positioning of buildings at PC's base. Can this be controlled? i.e. a more "tightly" built base that doesn't allow easy access. As opposed to scattering farms/buildings all over the place.

2.) Teleporting: I often find the PC teleports to it's expansion as I begin attacking it, but just the teleporting hero arrives, without his army.
i.e. the army obviously moved to the expansion while the hero remained stationery.

3.) I also notice, in battles when the PC is losing e.g. lost more units then me and/or a hero, there are units that just stand around and do not attack me. Why is this? They are just free xp ;] As opposed to running away and at least salvaging some of it's army..

4.) Early harassment. Why does the PC never harass? The most I've gotten is a Beastmaster in my base, with a summoned quillbeast, 3 archers. It attacks for a second or two and then runs away, never to be seen again. Obviously it would run if it is outnumbered, but why does it never return? i.e. keeping the pressure on

5.) Strategies: I often practice undead (my fav race) vs human. Everytime, it just goes straight rifles. Hardly any footmen. Everyone knows footmen > ghouls early on, yet it never makes a decent amount of them. Also, would it not be possible to implement a fast expo for the human race. Lastly, I often notice the pc will never make more then one expansion. For example, I just played it on Lost Temple, it expanded FAR away (bottom right corner) it spawned top left, yet it never expanded more then that once (the game was 28mins long) nor did it upgrade to a Castle.

I hope that my questions make sense, please let me know if there was anything unclear.

I understand a lot of these may be out of your control, and are dependant of the AI implemented by Blizzard, but am curious as to those which can be controlled by yourselves.

Keep up the good work!
;]

Positioning of buildings and teleporting to base defense is hard coded and unfortunately rather bad (especially the teleporting where he continues to walk to the target with all but the teleporter which of course results in a split of the army).

3) Hmm, maybe he thought he could heal them in the battle (where there healers in the army?). That may be improvable.

4) We'd like to have it harrass. Unfortunately the hard coded AI seems to think that heroes are only support unit. When I force it to stay with one hero only in an attack group it behaves really strange.
What I am considering to do is making a special harrassment AI that uses direct orders to harrass with a hero.

5) There is a militia expansion for the humans. I am not sure but it might be used too few times since the new expansion system in 1.9 . I'll have a look.
The expansion system is not perfect yet and it seems that especially the function that chooses an expansion place is rather bad. That will be improved in further versions.
As for the rifle strategy I just looked into the code and it should not be used that often against undead. Maybe that was just chance or there is a bug somewhere.

The next version of AMAI will have most of the code restructured and using Vidstiges precompiler it will have most of the info in table form. That will make it much easier for AMAI users to modify strategies and profiles to their liking.

Thanks for the quick reply ;]

3. Nope, there were no "healers" it was NE (PC) vs Undead (me) on Gnoll Wood. PC went mainly hunts/drayds with DH (1st) and Pandaren (2nd) after nuking both his heros and a lot of hunts (from my fiends) a number of his dryads just stood on the outskirts of the battle as it ran 1 or 2 hunts back to base. I've noticed this in UD vs UD where I have seen Ghouls just standing around and not attacking me.. ;[

4. Harassment AI would be cool ;]

5. Interesting with the rifles, but everytime I seem to play 1v1 it does that *shrug* It makes it very easy for me early on as he has 2/3 rifles + AM against my 5/6 ghouls + DK.

Something I also noticed, often at the end of the games, the PC has had more resources then me, yet my tech percentage is higher then it's. What I am trying to get at, is that it never seems to "take the initiative" and upgrade attack/armour and try and win the game. It always seems to stick to a "medium" teched army..

I'll post again if there's any other "strange" things I notice (if you like).

Thanks again.