DyDo 2.2.2, AI for skirmish games and challenges

[Zarel]

I have just seen a weird scorpion bug. I'm not sure it's realted to the DyDo, but i've never seen anything like this without it.

A standard DyDo 2.1 ally was building some machine gun scorpion half-tracks, which itself sounds like a bug. But still when i click on it, i see "Heavy Machinegun" instead. Here is a screenshot:

No worries. It's caused by typos in names.txt - we'll be overhauling that system shortly.

[KukY]

No worries. It's caused by typos in names.txt - we'll be overhauling that system shortly.

Still, it is a big nonsense in DyDo: It has Scorpion researched, but it still uses regular MG. It should be using HMG at least by that time...

[kringled]

That's odd too; I've been testing and playing DyDo for a while and only ever get attacked by regular MG units very early in the game, and heavy MGs show up pretty early. If it's a problem in names.txt referring a Heavy Machinegun to a regular machinegun that might make sense.
DyDo 2.2 is definitely tougher for me than 2.1, and it does a better job of fielding units that can one-on-one compete with yours. I would recommend that if someone has the time to play-test 2.2 some more, I'm sure it would help Dylan, as other people will almost certainly have different play styles than I do.

Keith

[DylanDog]

After weeks of changes and testing I am happy to release the new DyDo AI which is really stronger then ever.

Main features of this new version:

* {change} – AI strength (level) is now always set to LEVEL 5 as default.
* {change} – AI personality is now always set to General 1 as default.
* {change} – The number of working research labs has been increased to speed up research.
* {change} – DyDo selects a research path to develop only certain type of weapons. Consequently only templates with that type of weapons are built. This reduces the time to reach next Tier level and makes AI much stronger. The research path is the same for the AIs belonging to the same team.

Important: you can set the research path for the AI belonging to your team using the chat commands

* <set rp0> Research Path set to 0. AIs in your team will research all technologies.
* <set rp1> Research Path set to 1. AIs in your team will research mainly Flamers and Rockets.
* <set rp2> Research Path set to 2. AIs in your team will research mainly Machine Guns and Cannons.

VTOLs, AA and mortars technologies are searched anyway by all AIs.

If you want to change the AI level or personality (into Turtle AI, VTOL AI or Cyborg AI) you have to do it manually using the chat commands.

DyDo comes with new challenges based on maps developed by myself (to be honest I also got a lot of inspiration from existing maps). The maps can be downloaded from the Warzone Forum (link to be posted soon).

DyDo 2.2.1 comes with an update scavenger AI too (DyDo-scav 1.2.1) which fixes a bug.

[DylanDog]

That's odd too; I've been testing and playing DyDo for a while and only ever get attacked by regular MG units very early in the game, and heavy MGs show up pretty early.
Keith

Let me know if this appears on 2.2.1 too. I have not intentionally tried to fix this but as I changed a bit the templates to be used possibly this is not fixed anyway. Otherwise I need to look deeper into templates.txt

[guciomir]

This is a great step forward! Right now you have opened path which will make Dydo almost as strong as human player (obviously more work is required, but I feel Dydo is already much stronger than previous Dydo). I used WZ 2.3 RC1 (i know i have to upgrade)

I played against 1 Dydo (gunners) to see how it works. Next time i will play against more Dydo allied against me (and I believe this will be hard). Dydo attacked me with a massive force at the beginning of the game and I lost all defence apart from 3 machine gun towers. I was thinking I would lose this game, but It was easy to rebuild defences and from this point Dydo was not able to become a threat to my towers. I rushed with technology and soon had scourge, twin assault and autorepair.

Dydo was using heavy machine gun most of the time and when I finally started building my heavy tanks, Dydo attacked my towers with a big force of tanks + cyborgs (velocity guns) and my towers started dying. I send my tanks to help them and it was enough. Nevertheless, when I was playing vs previous versions of Dydo, AI was slower at research and i did not see such a nice force as versus newest Dydo. Now it is more fun

During the game Dydo was building mortars which were attacking my defences, which was very nice, but he did not defend them against 3-4 cyborg gunners i was sending every time.

I saw first heavy bodies of Dydo after 50 minutes of game, which was quite late. I think Dydo should create them faster. Vtol attacks came late in game and they were not significant. Could you tell what is the current, exact technology path for Dydo?

[DylanDog]

That's odd too; I've been testing and playing DyDo for a while and only ever get attacked by regular MG units very early in the game, and heavy MGs show up pretty early. If it's a problem in names.txt referring a Heavy Machinegun to a regular machinegun that might make sense.

Keith, the issue is in the assignweapons.txt file on row 304

ScorpHTrackHMG,MG1Mk1,NULL,NULL,6

should be

ScorpHTrackHMG,MG3Mk1,NULL,NULL,6

ticket #1945 opened for this

[DylanDog]

I played against 1 Dydo (gunners) to see how it works. Next time i will play against more Dydo allied against me (and I believe this will be hard).

Play 1 vs 2 and let me know, try the also the Arrakis challenge, the medium one, it is 1vs2 and AI has also a small derricks advantage...the maps for DyDo challenges can be found here.

I saw first heavy bodies of Dydo after 50 minutes of game, which was quite late. I think Dydo should create them faster. Vtol attacks came late in game and they were not significant.

In 1vs1 games DyDo uses more power for units production then the human player does. This because you want DyDo to run some attacks otherwise you have a boring game. This means human player will research techs quicker then DyDo. I see what I can do to speed up researches for heavy bodies in 1vs1 games.

Could you tell what is the current, exact technology path for Dydo?

Currently there are 3 research paths but dydo uses mainly 2 of them more info on http://www.obooma.net/dydo/

[Sonsalt]

Hi,

I have tested your latest AI and I have to say it has some really nice moves.

However I noticed the following minor issues, you might want to solve.

1. Building Upgrade bug.
It seems that your AI is not upgrading the energy plant and the research facility, even if he has researched this upgrade.
This slowes him down in later stages of the game. I noticed this on Res. Tree 0

2. No MG research bug
On Research tree 1 (Flamer) the AI does not research the most basic MGMK1. This gives your AI some significant disadvantage within the early stages of the game and makes him an easy target to rush.

Feature: Hover Taskforce
Playing Seton's clutch I noticed that your AI is already using the hover technology in order to build on islands. This is great.
If you could give him a strategy to build a hover taskforce on islands with a lot of water your AI could quicly raid enemy's Bases and oil stations.
Due to the lack of armor these units should try to avoid enemy strike forces and concentrate in raiding smaller bases

Once again great work on the AI, keep it up

Cheers

Sonsalt

[guciomir]

I can not find on your website the technology paths that both versions of AI are using. Could you please tell where it is?

[DylanDog]

1. Building Upgrade bug.

This is strange, power and research upgrades ares usually made as soon as the upgrade modules are available.
Please tell me the map you were playing in I will give it a try.

2. No MG research bug

This is not a bug, MG are not researched because with this research (#1) path DyDo does not build any droid with this weapon.

Feature: Hover Taskforce
If you could give him a strategy to build a hover taskforce on islands with a lot of water your AI could quicly raid enemy's Bases and oil stations.

Actually it is impossible for the AI to understand how much water there is on the map. Therefore it is impossible to use such tactics. This would be a nice feature!!

[DylanDog]

I can not find on your website the technology paths that both versions of AI are using. Could you please tell where it is?

Ok, to see the whole path you have to open a DyDo vlo file (player0.vlo), then you will see few arrays showing the techs researched:
[list=]
[*]researchCheap[][] - Basic researches
[*]resPath1[][] - Rockets and Flamers (path #1)
[*]resPath2[][] - Machine Gunners and Cannons (path #2)
[*]research[][] - All techs (path #0)
[/list]

[Sonsalt]

1. Building Upgrade bug.

This is strange, power and research upgrades ares usually made as soon as the upgrade modules are available.
Please tell me the map you were playing in I will give it a try.

This bug happens on every standard map.
Could it be that it is related to the fact that I only play with 2 research facilities?

[Zarel]

We should implement AI hinting in map designs. So a map designer could designate maps as "hover helpful" where going over water gives significant shortcuts, and "hover required" for maps that require hovers to get to enemy bases.

[Black NEXUS]

Why crashs the Game, if i set the AI Strengh in the VLO to random (0)? If i set the personality to random, the Game will work and the AI work faster with Strengh 5.

DylanDog, pls check your Mails, i have you send some interesting Data