AI 15, Klaxon Ultra (May 28) file

If you encounter issues after update with Russian AI not training units, switch difficulty, play a 1 minute match, resign, then switch back the difficulty. For multiplayer online games with the AI, it is advisable that you may want to switch the difficulty twice in single player just to make sure the game refreshes.

When I made this AI, especially the steps up from Lamer Major to Big Daddy, to Horsemaster, to Flycatcher to Guardsman, then to Klaxon and now this Klaxon Ultra, I modeled these AIs after the Company of Heroes AI, which I had played against years ago. I found that in COH the AI was very competent, though beatable, so this is the approach that I took while developing this 4-unit type AI. I understood that the AI needs to help Allies and beat Opponents, but also that it is able to do goofy mistakes such as all AIs are capable of doing. And this, coupled with the new map modes available for the AI, became the development frenzy which eventually enabled me to detect and understand the meshes in the code that allowed Water Transport over to different islands, BiasInf and BaisCav and Bias Art for allowing the AI to train an AbstractUnit Value + UnitBias/2, and allowed me to add custom difficulty levels with special economic rules to bolster treaty economy performance. And also with this was adding new cards to the AI script. With testing, and with granting handling for various card improvement shipments, I was able to make the AI reasonably intelligent yet still keep it quite dumb, dumb enough to be beaten in a 1v1 matchup.

My earlier AIs in N3O Patch were far too aggressive; so I went back and began from -0.5 and 0.5 btOffenseDefense, and slowly increased it to 0.35, 0.45 btOfftense Defense, until now when most civs are 0.45 or 0.50 btOffenseDefense. The higher value means that it will favor attacks more often, and lower values mean more turtling. The btRushBoom factor is sometimes 0.0, 0.5, sometimes -0.5, and this affects economic booming priorities with villager counts for the AI, and also how strong their attacks are. The lower the value, the strong eco and stronger attacks will be, and the higher the value, the lighter the boom and less strong attacks will be. There is a bonus btOffenseDefense value included also, and this is 0.25 for attacking value scores, 0.20 for defense value scores (helping allies when they are outnumbered), and 1.0 for raiding value opportunities. The high value for OpporunityTypeRaid makes the AI use ships to hunt down fishing boats and villagers, and also allows the AI to score for more attacks that cripple the enemy's economy rather than going for brute force suicidal attacks. In the N3O AI for N3O Patch original, there was 0.40 attacking value scores, 0.50 defense values scores, and 0.20 for raiding. I had tried 0.40 for attacking values, 0.70 for defense attacking values, and this resulted in an AI that tried to win every game, and tried to attack. The value 0.75 resulted in the AI units not defending when they attacked.

Anyways I wanted to share this writeup because technically anything can be changed in an AI, as long as it is properly added and the bool values are put at the top of the script, or before they are used later in the code. For me, making a challenging AI was something of a ministry, because I wanted to reshape the way a Professional Game Match was played, even though for many, it's either AI or Online play that they want. I prefer AI with Online play, often 2 AIs for both teams, and 1 Human for both teams, or 2 to 3 Humans versus 3 AIs, or 2 Humans with AI allies versus an AI team. The fact that I made this AI after Company of Heroes AI, as a powerful and interactive ally or opponent, makes me proud to know that even the AI, with maintain plans and building a solid base every time, can actually menace a ranked player such as a Captain or a Major. And with this on Eso-Community.com, there are ELO points for Custom Matches, that are given if a played beats another player, even with AI allies, so this I find quite satisfying. But most importantly, is that the AI gets to be tried online, and that there are no hang-ups with it being too powerful, too over-powered, or too easy. It does it's job and for that I am thankful to myself for having created something so nice. There are still maps that my AI's struggle on, such as Japanese AI on Yucatan. Or AIs on Ceylon. But since the AI can play mostly all the other maps without a struggle, I think that these things are in general negligible.

Having a good time gaming!

And God Bless, and make sure to go to Church next Sunday!

One of my goals with these creations is to make Online Abusers play Comp Stomps, instead of ruining the online experience for other people. This mainly is the cheating part, where on single player this doesn't matter, and on multiplayer where it does matter! Also with the map modes I intend to create options both online and single player with an extra unit start, to grant all players games with AI and with each other, on a kind and balanced tone.

Good Gaming!