AMAI 3 - Bug Reports

As I'm testing the new tech build already for a while now, I may as well report bugs I found.


Critical

• Crashes:
  • FIXED:Human: Div/0 in a function '...antitower...' dont remember the full name - happened quite at the end of the match (will write it down the next time)
• Hardlocks:
• Softlocks:
  • REQUIRE REPLAY:After both AI's goldmines have been depleted (75used food vs 17) the dominating AI stopped to attack and just sat in the base (though having 4000gold & wood)

Major Bugs

• Creeping/Expansion:
  • IMPROVED/FIXED:Sometimes attacks creep camps though lacking the strength - gives up after recieving a bit too high dmg
  • Militia/ToL Expansion often fails because of
    1. underestimating the creeps or
    2. not gathering troops before attacking the creeps
  • Seen Once: Night Elf AI built ToL too far away from expansion -> built a second one which was in Range (instead of moving the first one to place)
  • IMPROVED/FIXED:Have had instances of AMAI continuously canceling there expansion. Something to do with AMAI detecting a dead structure but structure dosn't get returned as being dead so AMAI thinks someones already there.
• Macro:
  • Doesn't build units while rebuilding it's heros
  • Builds few units while tiering up
  • FIXED:AI sometimes has problems to pump units (one-by-one like)
    • Seems to be waiting to build units which are not yet available (AI is teching to next tier in that moment)
• Strategy:
  • FIXED:AI builds Hippogryphs as counter though they need the Hippogryph Rider
    upgrade for being useful (enemy has no air)
  • FIXED:Builds quite a few mortars while inappropriate
  • FIXED:Wastes too many resources on useless upgrades (ie magic sentry)
    • In general: Should only build upgrades when it is appropriate (ie enough units existing which can benefit from it)
  • FIXED:It's good to counter the enemies units, but sometimes the AI is lacking a specific unit type (ie healer etc -> I saw an orc AI lose because the army was just standing in base damaged (amai vs blizzai match))
  • AMAI can start suiciding units to their doom by sending them one at a time to enemies base.
• Misc:
  • AI has problems to recover after one/several/main base has been destroyed -> rebuilds units/buildings in slow intervalls though enough money would be there
  • HARDCODED:After main Base has been destroyed the AI still sees the place as it's 'home' -> builds buildings & gathers units there
  • Often if the last gold mine is depleted and the AI is even only under slight harassment, it builds units though it really needs a gold mine (enough places where one could be built)
  • FIXED:Is using milita as defense though the attacking force is small (may only be summons send in to harass)
  • Orc: Has an army consisting of units that only deal magic dmg (to counter the enemie's unit constellation) -> attacks a golem creep camp and has no capability of dealing dmg (except for the hero) - Enemy won because of that
  • NO BUG (just confusion over the meaning of the debug message):The hero got stuck in a loop in SEND_HOME between "Moving to safe location" and "Stop at shop" -> the hero wants to go home but realizes he wants to go to the shop where he then wants to go home again ....

Minor Bugs

• HARDCODED:After clearing a creep camp the hero sometimes gets blocked by his units and if it's too long he wont collect the items on the ground
• Has problems against fairies dragon's mana flare
• FIXED:Nightelf: Buys a goblin shredder though it has over 1000wood (intended?)
• HARDCODED: Dark Ranger(or any unit with spells\abilities) uses silence on a region where the enemy has been 10-20 seconds ago.
• A ghoul send to harass the enemy ran into a creep camp and had to turn home because of the recieved damage -> let scouting units avoid creep camps on their path
• Also happens with units/heros which try to go to a shop: try this map - you will see these behaviours en masse there http://war3.incgamers.com/?p=mod&m=8943
• Occasionally units are not unloaded from a zeppelin so become forever stuck.

Ideas

• Is it possible to let the AI seperate an antiair group from the main army to hunt down rampaging air threats? (like hit&run with batriders by a human player)
• Let the AI detect destroyable objects which block the way to an expansion, creep camps, or other desirable targets
• If a hero has an ability which improves a certain type of units (ie true shot aura, vampiric aura etc), let that type of units be of higher priority to be chosen (out of the group of possible counters)

Key:
(new): Awaiting confirmation
(HARDCODED): Controlled by blizzard systems and will require the systems to be redesigned specifically for our purposes.
(REQUIRE REPLAY): Difficult to replicate and require replay.

Thanks for testing. I'm amazed i've actually had people testing the tech builds out. Last time most people just waited for the beta/ proper releases.

Alot of the major bugs relating to mining and home location are difficult things to fix due to hardcoded reasons although i do intend to work on them somehow.

Techbuilds update frequently though so always keep a look out for updates. Currently i'm still trying to solve the reason why that blasted critical bug keeps happening and only for anti towers.

I have one problem, but it seems it's related to perl, because when I try to run the perl script, it says that it miss the tk.pm library.

Anybody has a good link to download a good perl installation?

Go to cmd line and type ppm to bring up the perl package manager. Then you need to find and download/install tk as latest version of perl v5.10.0 dosn't build tk with it for some reason. An easier solution is you can download the older version of perl v5.8 from the activestate website.

Will that be mentioned in the techbuild changelog or do I have to dl it every day and see whether something changed?

@QueitDeath: Just keep an eye on the date in the changelog.

*edit* Beautified the first post a bit
I encourage others to post their findings too - I will then merge them in.
@strategy master: If you want to you can edit the first post to mark bugs which have been fixed.

I like the style of the list. Would be very useful to have the community maintain there own AMAI 3.00 bugs/findings here.

Adding these (tested in new techbuild):

• AI sometimes has problems to pump units (one-by-one like)
• Wastes too many resources on useless upgrades (ie magic sentry)
  • In general: Should only build upgrades when it is appropriate (ie enough units existing which can benefit from it)

wow the new techbuild (10/05/08) is great - building is smooth and fast

I had a friend of mine play several matches against the AI (09/05/08). One thing I noticed was in a NE(human)vsUD(AMAI) -> my friend teched right to tier 3 and built a lot of air units. To my surprise the AI didnt built any antiair (except for 1 garg). Didnt try it in the new techbuild.

Yeah that build before had some dodgy stuff going on. Hopefully they would build much more anti air this time.

Just put up build for the 11/05/08, but i'm unsure whether it would fix the critical bug and major bug in failing to heal properly. Heroes lost there control in old builds so would potentially cause those issues. Can't verify though.

hi SM, tested AMAI 3.0 last techn build 1x1, stupid thing is: AMAI at start of the game making ANTI normal(anti peons) units, so i maked only grunts, best strat vs it is casters or air yes? amai maked 50% of the game ONLY footmans. And after 15 minuts of the game he started to make sorcerres=(((

@Tosserino: Eventually AMAI will follow agendas. So a tiering agenda, balanced agenda or rushing agenda. This will affect how fast they tier up when they require it. I'm currently working on the balanced agenda first before i start the others.

that new changelog looks promising - I'll do some tests if I get the time, as I'm also helping to develop a broodwar AI

Techbuild 08-06-2008 doesnt compile for me...