DyDo skirmish AI: ver 2.1.1 (21 Apr 2010)

[Zarel]

Cyborgs: All possible templates.

Wrong answer.

Flamer is useless once you get Thermite Flamer.
Machinegunner is useless once you get Assault Gunner.
Heavy Gunner is useless once you get Needle Gunner.
Lancer is useless once you get Scourge.

If you don't have every MG upgrade, or you have a lot of laser upgrades, Flashlight Gunner is always better than Assault Gunner, too. And once you have a few T3 cyborgs (like Needle Gunner), Grenadier isn't all that useful, either.

Tanks:

...

No Retaliation and no Dragon.

Fair enough. But what about VTOLs?

[xahodo]

Tried the latest version of dydo and, well... I still run over it This is in a team game 2v2

Here's my tactic I use against dydo (I play T1, so no bases in the beginning):
- build a factory, which starts construction of 3 additional builders.
- build a research station, which immediately starts researching machine gun.
At this stage the first builder is ready and I immediately send it out to claim the initial resources.
- build a power plant.
At this point an additional builder is ready, which is sent to help out the builders constructing the base.
- build the command center, which allows the first tank to be designed.
Research machinegun turret.
Immediately start producing tanks.
The third builder is sent out to claim additional resources, if dydo got resources which I intend to take, I build turrets next to it. If the resoruces are defended (unlikely), I send my army to it.
From this point on things are pretty obvious and the result is that we run over dydo... it tries, but fails miserably because the defences near its resources are too weak or simply non-existent.

[DylanDog]

Wrong answer.

Flamer is useless once you get Thermite Flamer.
Machinegunner is useless once you get Assault Gunner.
Heavy Gunner is useless once you get Needle Gunner.
Lancer is useless once you get Scourge.

It is a misunderstanding, what I mean is that I added all cyborgs templates in the template list but this does not mean DyDo builds flamers if thermite are available...it indeed does exactly what you have written.

Template selection is one of the most complicted part of the script if compared with other AIs as I did not wanted to follow the standard way of template selection like other AIs (which is simply a random selection of the best 3÷5 templates).

The VTOLs template LIST is:

Code: Select all

	vtols[0]	TEMPLATE	"P6-L-LTAT-V"		//Viper Lancer
	vtols[1]	TEMPLATE	"P6-L-Bomb1-V"		//Viper Cluster Bombs Bay
	vtols[2]	TEMPLATE	"SK-Bug-VTOL-CLBomb" //Cluster Bomb
	vtols[3]	TEMPLATE	"H-Scorp-VTOL-Lancer"  //Lancer
	vtols[4]	TEMPLATE	"H-Scorp-VTOL-BB"  //BB
	vtols[5]	TEMPLATE	"SK-Leopard-VTOL-PhosBomb" //Phospjor Bomb Bay
	vtols[6]	TEMPLATE	"SK-Scorpion-VTOL-Hbomb" //Heap Bomb Bay
	vtols[7]	TEMPLATE	"V-Scor-HPV"  //HyperVelCann
	vtols[8]	TEMPLATE	"SK-Panther-VTOL-TK"   //Tank Killer

[DylanDog]

Tried the latest version of dydo and, well... I still run over it This is in a team game 2v2

Ok, I got the point: DyDo should not allow the human player to get too much Derricks in the start game.
Have to implement something to avoid this but on DyDo 1.2.2 there is already something in this direction.

Soon the link to Dydo 1.2.2

[Zarel]

Fair enough. Carry on.

[DylanDog]

Here you can now download for test purposes DyDo 1.2.3

Game difficulty levels for 4 and 8 players skirmish games have been introduced to make life for human players a bit harder. There are a total of 5 levels which are randomly chosen by the AI script at the beginning of the game. More expert users can manually force AIstrength in the VLO file. At level 5 AIs will mostly attack human players (but not only!)…the lower the level the lower the probability DyDo attacks human player (which is anyway higher then in any previous version).

Another important change: DyDo will mostly play with General 1, the probability to pick up the other three personalities have been reduced. This is just a temporary change as I prefer gamers to test Dydo on General 1, the main personality.

Remember you can now communicate with DyDo as you already do with other AIs (see how). Using the beacons feature and the "go" or "help" command you can control other AIs helping units.

I think this version is stronger the any other DyDo version.

Please test it in 4 players games 1vs1vs1vs1 and let me kow any comments!!!

Cheers

[Berg]

Have just finnished playing bagdad map with 7 AI enemy I found an error stderr.text had a large amount of text in it.
They were all general 1'
The base defences were better but the AI's had rockets etc. but only seemed to use machine gun bunkers.
Maybe these were built early on in the game because the better defence weapons seemed to be missing.
When I was attacking a base the AI had a lot of aircraft but they only seemed to defend when I was within a few squares of them the range they defend should be extended.
In the early part the AI's developed aircraft and attacked me constantly this gave me some trouble and was very entertaining but after a short time air attacks stopped if it had of continued I could have been the victim not the winner.
Every base I attacked had mass tanks just sitting there and they only came out after I made my first attack on each base.
I don't know what info you need so I have just told you what I saw about this game.
Thanks You
Keep up the good work
this is fun

[DylanDog]

In the early part the AI's developed aircraft and attacked me constantly this gave me some trouble and was very entertaining but after a short time air attacks stopped if it had of continued I could have been the victim not the winner.

Thanks Berg!

The bug report file can be reduced to errors in 4 events , from which I see that :
- The first part of the report refers to not important errors related to the fact that at the very beginning DyDo builds Sensor tower all around the map to "discover" the oil resources.
- 1xAI stopped building base defences
- 1xAI stopped producing tanks
- 4xAIs stopped using VTOLs
- ...and that multiple error appears after half an hour game when DyDo script has a bug on the event which is called when a droid is built, I am not sure about this but possibly such droid is not assigned to a team and that is the reason why it stays in the base doing nothing.

I have a lot of work for fixing bugs here!!!!

Just a question...have you played 2 and half hours (from 06:36 to 09:12) without interruption (no pause...)? this info can be useful for me to understand when a bug appears.

[Berg]

Yes I played continuous for the whole game.
Note the large piles of aircraft next to the factory.

mass planes.gif

This is 4player cockpit map

[DylanDog]

I think I have been able to fix all four bugs reported by Berg.
The new DyDo 1.2.4 can be downloaded as usual from the DyDo website.

[javierkaiser]

I tried 1.2.3, and was quickly overrun by the IA.
It's getting challenging
I will try later the newer version.

[guciomir]

i'll surely play the game during weekend

you are doing great job!

one tip: i saw in the development section that the function droidCanReach is now working. Maybe you can use it?

[DylanDog]

i'll surely play the game during weekend

you are doing great job!

one tip: i saw in the development section that the function droidCanReach is now working. Maybe you can use it?

DyDo already uses it since a while. Why ask you this? have you seen droids which try to rech "unreacheable" locations like a truck which try to harvest an oilRes on an island and its engine is not an hover one? this should not happen.

[Berg]

Is it possible to have the AI copy and remember the actions of a player.
For example record the research path the player takes?
Its just a thought for writing the research script.
I was playing bagdad map with only 2 players both were dydo AI's
I did note that the base 0 AI tried to make more then the default
power generators.
It did not even try to research grownd defences so protecting its base
was not possible.
Its very interesting to watch it play.
I will do more testing soon.

[DylanDog]

Is it possible to have the AI copy and remember the actions of a player.
For example record the research path the player takes?

Not it is not possible, as far as I know you cannot store info on external files such that the AI can use them.

I see that playing against AIvolution few files are generated and stored in multiplay/learndata folder but I have not been able to understand how this works and looking at AIvolution script there is nothing I have found which seems working in that direction.

I have not been able also to write debug messages on external files even if there is a function for this: debug()... but it is not working.

In DyDo 1.2.5 I am working on the research paths trying to improve them. I have now enough experience with the game (on T1 games) to proceed on it without any external help.