[3.1+] NullBot: an adaptive skirmish AI

[Giani]

Found an important bug, nullbot doing nothing. There was an error that said error loading script-nullbot or something like that.

[NoQ]

Emm should i repeat the usual questions? I guess i should ...

What AI personality are you picking? Is it installed correctly? What exactly does the stderr message say? Is it always reproducible or happens just sometimes?

[Giani]

They were 1.23 MC nullbots installed on maps folder. I had just started a new game in Rush whit the same nullbots and they worked, weird...

[NoQ]

Almost found it ...
upd: no, not that, but still found something, and have no idea what happens >.<

[NoQ]

Giani: just curious, not sure if it matters: you don't have the standalone MizaMaze map in your map folder, do you?

[Giani]

You mean if i have it installed in the maps folder?

[NoQ]

Yeah, this one for instance.

[Giani]

I have the old Miza-Maze.

[NoQ]

v1.24: i still didn't figure out the problem reported by Giani but figured out some separate problem with the spectator mod (not really related ...)

Changes:

• The AI now picks up oil drums.
  • he doesn't really pick them up on the way like humans do, but has to manually send his idle units (mostly trucks) to do that.
• Fixes in low-level base building routines. Most importantly, it now builds near his trucks, not around the start location.
  • This results in less truck movements, especially on maps like Sk-Rush where trucks went back and forth from highground to lowground like crazy.
  • Also, if the base is destroyed, he starts rebuilding instantly, without moving back to the start location.
• Don't make more groups than the amount of enemies present on the map. For instance, always fight with one group in 1x1 duels (seems to be effective now, even though it used to cause problems before)
• Tighter regrouping and some fixes in regrouping mechanism.

[aubergine]

What version of WZ is needed to pick up oil drums? I thought there was still hard-coded stuff that prevented AIs from picking up drums and artefacts?

[NoQ]

As you write in your wiki, the AI is not forbidden to pick up things since 3.1_beta5. But he should explicitly give DORDER_RECOVER to his droids (and this constant needs to be faked, cause it's not exposed yet).

[NoQ]

v1.25.

Changes:

• Easy and medium difficulty AIs are now 100% non-cheating, even in the sense of visibility! Unless i forgot something. (Hard and Insane AIs are still doing things like getting a list of all enemy units, which is equivalent to deity-cheating, but it still doesn't do any impossible things.)
• Fix: Don't try to build defenses around the old base after the base was rebuilt in another place.
• Fix: Generic AIs now don't build too many defenses.
• Fix: Don't research late howitzer damage in Flamer/Rocket and MG/Flamer branches (that use incendiary howitzers) (cause it's the thing that required 7th cannon damage upgrade) (i still have no idea what caused cannon research in MG/Rockets AI in case reported by Giani some time ago).

[aubergine]

1.25 is working great for me - had some seriously awesome skirmishes against it, thanks!

[NoQ]

v1.26 features improved combat micromanagement improvements on master/3.2+, but v3.1 was touched as well (not sure which way). Could use some serious testing, to make sure it still works on 3.1 and works actually better on master.

Putting it the simple way, the AI should now effectively concentrate fire and move damaged units behind the lines of healthy units.

The primary testing ground is the "Startup" challenge from -extras.

[NoQ]

v1.27.

Changes:

• Fix broken attacking enemy oil derricks
• Rocket-based AIs use more MRAs
• Don't send all units at once to pick up an oil drum