Bad AI

Post by **turin** » November 23rd, 2004, 12:52 am

Shouldn't team 2 retreat the mortally wounded thief? He doesn't; he consistently leaves the thief there instead of retreating it and putting a full health unit in its place. does this have something to do with there being no villages on the map?

Post by **quartex** » November 23rd, 2004, 3:56 am

Probably. I think the AI only retreats if there is a village he can reach in 1 turn.

Post by **Dave** » November 23rd, 2004, 4:11 am

Right. The AI usually only retreats if there is a village he can reach in that very turn. It is pretty hard to analyze the cost/benefit ratio of retreating over multiple turns.

And when there's a map with no villages at all, I'm really not sure what you'd want him to do. Is it really worth rotating the fresh unit into his place? Even if it is, it's hardly a 'clearly stupid' move not to...

David

eugenelim · Post by **eugenelim** » November 24th, 2004, 6:21 pm

Does the AI retreat to friendly unit with healing as well if it's within range?

Post by **Dave** » November 24th, 2004, 10:04 pm

eugenelim wrote:Does the AI retreat to friendly unit with healing as well if it's within range?

Nope. The AI knows nothing of units with healing or curing abilities.

David

Post by **quartex** » November 25th, 2004, 3:07 am

Hmmm. Too bad the AI can't just treat all hexes next to a curing/healing unit as villages, and thus retreat to the nearest such hex if possible. An AI that knew how to use healers would be a lot stronger.

Post by **Dave** » November 25th, 2004, 4:01 am

quartex wrote:Hmmm. Too bad the AI can't just treat all hexes next to a curing/healing unit as villages, and thus retreat to the nearest such hex if possible. An AI that knew how to use healers would be a lot stronger.

The big problem is a unit moving next to a healer, and then the healer moving somewhere else...

David

Post by **Darth Fool** » November 29th, 2004, 9:43 pm

Dave wrote:
quartex wrote:Hmmm. Too bad the AI can't just treat all hexes next to a curing/healing unit as villages, and thus retreat to the nearest such hex if possible. An AI that knew how to use healers would be a lot stronger.
The big problem is a unit moving next to a healer, and then the healer moving somewhere else...

David

This could be addressed by having healers get priorityin moving first. The tough part would be deciding where the optimal place to move the healer would be. Something along the following lines might work:

1) decide which units need to be healed and which can be used for attacking.
2) move/attack with units that don't need to be healed and aren't healers.
3) move/attack with healer units.
4) retreat units that should be healed.

Of course deciding wether a healer should be used for an attack or not is tough. Also the algorithm for moving the healer could be interesting. Should it move to the place that maximizes the number of wounded units that can move next to it to heal, maximize the number of hit points for all units that could reach it, maximize the number of near death units it can heal, maximize the number of any of the above for units that can not retreat because they attacked this turn (and got whooped real good)? A human player might choose any of these depending on the circumstances or do something else (like move a healer behind a fully healed unit that he expects will be attacked next round.