Feedback on AMAI New Year Edition

Hi Zalamander and AIAndy,

I tried several games with the new year edition without looking into the codes, here are my feedbacks:

ITEMS:

1. Double items seems to be fixed:
It seems that you fixed the problem by putting conditions on purchase. No more double items of the same type in heroes. (healing portions and other consumables are okay as long as no more boots and things which do not stack are double)
That saved a lot of my time. Thank you. ^_^

2. Items still left on ground, though not so often.
This boring hardcoded bug from blizz have to be fixed.

Fine adjustment suggestions:
1. Items left on ground should be check when no more creeps around that position, that is all creeps are dead, or

2. Items are checked every 3-5 seconds when enemy density is not high (i.e. not at war). This can also check if items are left on the path, not just only on spots of locations, but it takes more CPU...

3. The no double rules also apply in picking up items on the ground. If there is an item which exists in all of our heroes or allied heroes in that area, destroy it or sell it at the nearby shops.

4. When purchasing at racial shops, melee heroes should have a much higher chance than ranged heroes in buying orbs. Melee heroes cannot hit air: it is their big disadvantage.

5. Two items' usages are confusing:
Portion of lesser Invulnerability - Hero with low hp using the portion back to attack instead of retreat.
Staff of Teleportation - AI hero knows to use it earlier, but it still detects for low hp, stops the teleport and use Portion of lesser Invulnerability, when it still has enough hp to teleport.

TOWERS:
Tower is now proper positioned.
Elf tower can have a bit smaller virtual size so that it will not locate far away.

RACIAL SHOPS:
Sometimes shops are still put at the back. It is better if a shop is put near the towers where heroes can access easier.

RETREAT:
Sometimes when AI retreats, the hero leaves the troop and goes back to the battle field and surrounded by the enemies. All units should be constrained to leave during retreat.

GO TO FOUNTAINS (not for melee games, hee..):
If possible, injured units avoid going to fountains where high level of creeps are there (ie. creeps with more than 1500 hp are considered high level)

On the whole, the AI players are smarter and do not blindly sacrifice their heroes and units ^_^

Finally!! Finally can stupid me putting a favorite Infernal smilies here!!

>> Staff of Teleportation - AI hero knows to use it earlier, but it still detects for low hp, stops the teleport and use Portion of lesser Invulnerability, when it still has enough hp to teleport.


This one, I've seen several times.

I also recommend the AMAI to use Invisibility potions when just running away (if there are no detectors around).

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http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-FCeas....VTHYYoVB?p=14

Hi.

hmm most of the problems are sadly hardcoded, workaraounds are hard to come up with, all item detect -> pickup is hardcoded, no way at all for us to detect item and order them to pick up them sadly. What we did to improve it was to give the hardcoded more time to o this after a fight before we give the army new orders to go somewhere else but seems still that the hardcoded AI has a short timeout on picking up items like 5-10sec before it gives up, what improvement we might be able to do is to make a order to all normal units to get out of the way so the heroes that tries to get to the items get to them faster.

Item usage has same problem, only thing we have control over is what items they buy in some cases. considering removing some items like potion of invurnebility if its used so much wrong that making the computers buy it just makes it waste resources.
Would really like to hear from all you users what items you think really isn't needed or is too badly used by AMAI so I can add these tweaks before releaseing the new 1.18 based AMAI that came to reality with great help from Stratgy Master now making use of the new "pathable" functions. This mean the scan lagg at game start is from now on gone.

There is also many other bugfizzes and optimizations included, hope we get time to release this soon.

Hi Zal!

The Pot of Invul thing, for me, is fine, just add code that once it starts using it, it runs away (instead of TP'ing), if there's another hero who has a TP scroll. :)

• Potions of Invulnerability are often used without Town Portal. IMHO in 4/5 of cases. I'm sure it is useful.
  
  May be Staffs of Sanctuary and Preservation worth a little to AI. I never saw elves teleporting somebody home, but once I saw the stunned and regenerating human hero near the Castle (in the single replay).
  
  While watching that replay I've spotted a very strange thing (read bug). It is well noticeable only in replay when the Fog of War is turned off.
  It was a 2x2x2x2 game at the MarketSquare. Two AMAIs didn't expand at all though there were two free mines (from eight possible expands total). Each kept trying to free concrete expand. Replay is here.
  Probably this is a common situation.
  
  
• About AMAIStrategyManager.pl:
  Now only few people edit strategies seriously. Just check AMAI strategy database. That's because of laborious and monotone methods. You have to count food, attack types, armor types, if units can attack ground and/or air and all correlations (I do it on the paper). Then repeat everything for each tier in each strategy and everything again for each race…
  Missed highlighting in editor adds inconvenience.
  
  But if AMAIStrategyManager.pl could calculate it for you and display summary for each tier.
  IMHO there is a solution: a table that lists units with food requirements, armor types, attack types and possibility to attack ground and/or air. I can make such table, but I don't know how to code perl.
  For example (final result):
  83 food
  attack: 70% air, 100% ground
  damage: 70% piercing, 30% normal, 30% siege
  armor: 70% unarmored, 30% medium
  (apart from workers; normal and siege simultaneously e.g. MG; strategy MGs & a lot of dryads)

Thank you AMAI Team for another release of the world best RTS AI.

Sorry for my English.

I agree... The amount of people who make strategies are extremly small, due to it can take such a long time. Most especially the bonuses of all the different types takes forever. (And takes even longer when you created about 6 strategies per race and have to then set all the bonuses and gets so repetitive) You end up having excel spreadsheets everywhere to try and work out best bonuses that strategies should have.

I really like your idea for the unit construction that does everything automatically for u. Using such a method may make it possible to make bonuses of strategy be calculated autmatically for you making it easy for simple strategies.

Saying that though the current method has much more power and customizability for more fancy ai, even if time consuming. The amount of options you can change is great. If we could keep both methods maybe a beginner and advanced strategy builder. That would satisfy both types of people.

Only problem now is I do not know perl too well so unlikely i could do much, but you never know.

Out of programming languages my interest is the Forth. As I look into “new method� I don't see any disadvantages: Why two methods are needed? And why our “new method� have to be less customizable?
– Perl have to parse code for each tier when you press a button near that tier, that will display it's statistics also. Syntax is known and parsing won't be a problem.
– Your great improvement: auto calculation of bonuses may be released in “Calculate bonuses� button which will simply fill corresponding fields (and parses all code for tiers). Also, I think everything upper “ally bonus� field have to remain unaffected by calculator.

The disadvantage is towards the more modders who ai's need to be much more specific and special and choosing number of units to build is much more powerful. Using your way automates it to spread units over a percentage of certain types and certain creators may not like the idea of total automation and may prefer current methods.

Although with proper testing its possible the system could be enhanced to work great with all sorts of tweaks and such and modability.

Overall this idea is great and we should try to implement it. The question is can we get it done plus inclusion of all the gameplay improvements. For all intents and purposes I hope so.

You misapprehend me. Spread units? I spoke about displaying statistics only. And you suggested to add a nice feature to calculate bonuses. Units choice must be the user's task as it is now.
I repeat: I do not suggest to change anything but only add some buttons:

– One for each tier to display statistics for corresponding tier (pop up message box or anything else, doesn't matter).
Or, may be enough space can be found inside "AMAI Strategy Editor" window to display statistics. In this case we don't need buttons for tiers.

– The last button for calculating values for bonus fields ("1on1 bonus", "FFA bonus" and so on, except everything upper “ally bonus� field).

I dislike "total automation" idea.

ah ok.... then yup those both should be done. But I now got loads of improvement ideas.

Maybe it's all in my head, but its teamplay seems better than I remember in the previous edition.