Advanced AI Base Expanding (Extreme Case) image - Dawn of the Tiberium Age mod for C&C: Tiberian Sun
Dawn of the Tiberium Age (DTA) is a stand-alone mod that combines Tiberian Dawn (C&C 95) and Red Alert. While classic mode gets as close to the original game-play and balance as possible, Enhanced mode provides improved game balance and a lot of fun new stuff. DTA features many customization options for Skirmish and multiplayer (where you can play as GDI, Nod, Allies and Soviet on over 200 maps), challenging original singleplayer missions, as well as co-op missions. Since this is a stand-alone mod, you don't require anything but the mod itself to be able to play: the original game is not required.
A more extreme showcase of what our new AI is capable of. To see a more typical case, check the previous image.
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The DTA R&D labs have once again done the impossible.
This might look like a base built by a skilled human player who knows how to expand. But it is not. Instead, it is built by our new Advanced AI!
This AI expands through the map from one resource field to another. Once it has reached a resource field, it places a Refinery next to it, and then continues expanding to another one!
The AI also builds extra factories to bump up its unit production speed, depending on how many fields it has managed to expand to.
This makes the AI play far more competently on large maps with many resource fields, and makes matches vs the AI much more exciting and dynamic compared to the original TS engine AI which preferred sitting in its own corner for the whole match.
Thanks to this smarter AI expanding logic, we were also able to heavily cut the AI's cheats, while still having it be roughly as difficult as our old AI was! This opens the room for many human-like tactics to work against the AI, such as starving it by hunting down its harvesters!
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Less cheating from AI is always welcome in my book. If you can get them to stop breaking build limits, I'll be all for this.
Unfortunately making the AI respect build limits is harder and most likely won't make it to this AI update yet. Maybe in the future though.
Very impressive. I think it might still be good to force them to have at least 2 construction yards at a certain base size.
Just to make it :
A. Look more believable.
B. To avoid easy and silly raids against their construction yard and usually only 1 or 2 war Factories. A thing I usually committed to against the AI.
Unfortunately the AI owning two construction yards leads to a problem where it builds two copies of all buildings. Which is very unfair when it expands (imagine if you could crawl by placing two powerplants at once, both reaching towards a field), or when it places defenses.
Basically the AI plays the game like it had a C&C3;-style sidebar, with each factory working separately instead of it only having a primary factory.
That's unfortunate.
Perhaps there's a possible work around so that this building gets produced but immediately disabled for as long as the other Conyard is intact. Just like npc scripts activate when reaching a trigger zone. Although I doubt that the engine supports such complex yet simple scripting.