Rise of AI Global Mod v3.12

[rbodleyscott]

I thought the standard AI was patched at some point to resolve melee's first and in the order which would potentially have the greatest impact yet unmade actions. Although, I think it appeared in Jack's AI first.

The vanilla AI does wait to the end of its turn to resolve melees, but then resolves them in order from best chance to worst chance.

[roguedjack]

You’ve done a great job. I’m playing FoG:E using your AI for exported battles and it’s really interesting. Even if I win easily (and it’s not always the case), the battles are very interesting without obvious AI errors.

You’ve implemented some solutions which should definitely be implemented into the game. One of the obvious examples is melee resolution. Vanilla AI simply waits for the end of its turn, which I assume is something that is left from the older games which had separate melee phase without player involvement. It’s such a huge handicap for the AI. No human player would firstly move all its troops and then resolve the melee – you simply need to have some measures to react to the melee outcomes.

Regarding the lags, it doesn’t bother me, if I play using 100% conversion rate options. However, if I want to play using 150% conversion rate option the game becomes very laggy.

Thanks for the feedback.

[Jagger2002]

* Multiplayer
Do not enable Rise Of AI while playing multiplayer. It may cause bugs and crashes.

Have there been any reports of bugs or crashes in MP? I could easily see myself forgetting to turn the mod off when I play MP.

I have already praised the mod once but I will second the praise. After some play, I still see the mod as quite an improvement.

Do you have any interest in improving army selection? It seems that type of improvement might be substantially easier than what you have already done with the Ai. At least my army selection is fairly easy and based on only a few criteria-terrain open or closed and a comparison of army troop types. But then, my understanding is apparently even some of the simplest of tasks can turn into a nightmare project when duplicating into code. Just a thought. Myself, I am bad about picking out the enemy army, doing the deployment and then handing over to the AI. Effective but takes away any sort of surprise when the enemy army appears.

[rbodleyscott]

* Multiplayer
Do not enable Rise Of AI while playing multiplayer. It may cause bugs and crashes.

Have there been any reports of bugs or crashes in MP? I could easily see myself forgetting to turn the mod off when I play MP.

Global Mods should automatically be ignored by the game when playing MP. Roguejack is playing it safe with the above advice, because this has not been extensively tested.

[roguedjack]

Do you have any interest in improving army selection? It seems that type of improvement might be substantially easier than what you have already done with the Ai. At least my army selection is fairly easy and based on only a few criteria-terrain open or closed and a comparison of army troop types.

I have not looked at how the AI buy its units but that's something I'd like to look at. Could possibly be included in the next major version of the mod.

[Karvon]

I've never disabled any version of the AI and don't think it has ever impacted on MP games I've played.

[Jagger2002]

Global Mods should automatically be ignored by the game when playing MP.

Thanks!

I have not looked at how the AI buy its units but that's something I'd like to look at.

Yes, should be interesting to see how it works.

[Ray552]

I've never disabled any version of the AI and don't think it has ever impacted on MP games I've played.

Same here, no problems in MP with the Rise of AI mod enabled.

roguedjack, thank you very much for this great addition to the game.

[Jagger2002]

I just had the AI move 4 lancer units up towards a single skoutatoi infantry separated from the main line to protect the flank. The AI moved one cavalry two hexes in front of the raw skoutatoi, then moved another in front of it which charged and fixed the skoutatoi unit. No fall back by the cavalry because cavalry behind it. Then two other lancers then moved through the now open ZOCs behind my main line. That is an advanced tactic. Impressive.

[MarkShot]

What I like best about it is the big picture.

I can use the included AI and play against overwhelming numbers.

or

I can use Jack's AI and play a more balanced game point wise.

Also, Jack has hinted at what would be a great feature for this series is AI personalities. Because that is what you feel when swapping. Jack's is more aggressive and goes for the kill. But the included, I think it more conservative and hold's back a reserve.

They are quite different. Most games only have result modifiers for representing command differences, but better games will actually result in AIs having variable aggression, variable tendency to commit, variable tendency to flank ... you could see how a number of AIs could be rolled for the game which gives it more personality.

---

I know people give the most advanced challenge. But I really prefer SP. If I competed, I would have to play this night and day not to lose my edge.

Instead playing SP, I have played three genres and four games in 2 days:

* genre = Sub; Dangerous Waters/RA

* genre = Sports; Virtual Pool 4

* genre = War (American civil war); Scourge of War

* genre = War (American civil war); Ultimate General Civil War

SP play just offers more freedom. So, I really like games with solid AIs.

---

Again thank you Richard and RogueJack!

[Phoenix100]

I was very keen to use this, since it's so praised in here, but I find it leads to a staggered performance on my system, at least. Meaning it's REALLY stuttery. Freezes for micro-seconds whilst the sprites are moving, regularly (I mean all the time). Could put up with the big freeze at turn change whilst it processes things a bit more, but the micro-stutters in game make it a bit unpleasant for me. No idea why this happens. I guess it's just me, as no one else reports this. My system isn't too bad - a Ryzen 5, 32GB Ram, game on an SSD, GTX 1080ti card. The vanilla game runs fine.

The only thing I've 'edited' in game is the view settings, to make shallower view angles, longer zoom out and closer zoom in possible. But I guess many do this, so I assume that can't be it (works fine with vanilla game, as I said). It does seem like a pointer thing though, since the pointer freezes entirely (as if the entire game had crashed and was about to CTD, which then doesn't happen) during these stutters and pauses...

[roguedjack]

I was very keen to use this, since it's so praised in here, but I find it leads to a staggered performance on my system, at least. Meaning it's REALLY stuttery. Freezes for micro-seconds whilst the sprites are moving, regularly (I mean all the time). Could put up with the big freeze at turn change whilst it processes things a bit more, but the micro-stutters in game make it a bit unpleasant for me. No idea why this happens. I guess it's just me, as no one else reports this. My system isn't too bad - a Ryzen 5, 32GB Ram, game on an SSD, GTX 1080ti card. The vanilla game runs fine.

The only thing I've 'edited' in game is the view settings, to make shallower view angles, longer zoom out and closer zoom in possible. But I guess many do this, so I assume that can't be it (works fine with vanilla game, as I said). It does seem like a pointer thing though, since the pointer freezes entirely (as if the entire game had crashed and was about to CTD, which then doesn't happen) during these stutters and pauses...

Do you have a save where this happens consistently on the AI turn when you end your turn ? You can pm me.
Also just in case if you have activated DEBUG mode in the option file that might slow things down, disable it.

[KKarlssoNN]

I was very keen to use this, since it's so praised in here, but I find it leads to a staggered performance on my system, at least. Meaning it's REALLY stuttery. Freezes for micro-seconds whilst the sprites are moving, regularly (I mean all the time). Could put up with the big freeze at turn change whilst it processes things a bit more, but the micro-stutters in game make it a bit unpleasant for me. No idea why this happens. I guess it's just me, as no one else reports this. My system isn't too bad - a Ryzen 5, 32GB Ram, game on an SSD, GTX 1080ti card. The vanilla game runs fine.

The only thing I've 'edited' in game is the view settings, to make shallower view angles, longer zoom out and closer zoom in possible. But I guess many do this, so I assume that can't be it (works fine with vanilla game, as I said). It does seem like a pointer thing though, since the pointer freezes entirely (as if the entire game had crashed and was about to CTD, which then doesn't happen) during these stutters and pauses...

It does it for me as well, exactly how you describe, a battle takes quite a while to finish. I made a post about it a ways back. I figured it was because I play at 3440x1440. I haven't tried playing at a smaller ratio or resolution, that may help. More units on the screen equals more calculations, perhaps. I haven't done any modifications to the view.

[Jagger2002]

Mine will freeze for a few moments as well from time to time. I assume it is pushing my computer to the limits. In my case, the freezing is not significant enough to prevent my using the mod.

[roguedjack]

As I understand from the feedback I think people are describing 2 sorts of lags/freeze/stutter:

1) the major freeze when ai starts its turn, lesser ones during its turn when it starts a new pass, and very minor ones when between moving units which may look like stuttering.

2) the stutter in the animation when an ai unit moves, specifically when they are ending their movement having reached their destination tile.

Problem 1) is due all the computations the AI does.
I'm working on improving it and already implemented some minor improvements. I try to squeeze out as much as I can think of with tricks without "dumbing down" the AI.

Problem 2) is what I think Phoenix100 described
I understand this can be annoying and an unpleasant playing experience, as it seems not related to the ai doing something useful and makes the animations choppy.
Vanilla AI does not have this problem.
I think I just fixed 2) or at the very least greatly reduced it, but I would like saves from users suffering this problem to confirm. If you would like to help, when you have played an AI turn that had stuttering animations during movement, please zip & send me the autosave.
Ironically the fix will add a few seconds to the Ai turn because it will now properly wait for the animations to complete before resuming thinking

[MarkShot]

Ha ha ... your effort at concurrency created problems.

Early in my career we knew user perception is everything. We worked with dumb text terminals. One of the character attributes like BOLD was FLASH.

You would be amazed how the simple flashing of "WORKING" calmed users even though you could have taken a cleaver to the serial cable to the computer, and it would have done that for eternity!

[kronenblatt]

As I understand from the feedback I think people are describing 2 sorts of lags/freeze/stutter:

1) the major freeze when ai starts its turn, lesser ones during its turn when it starts a new pass, and very minor ones when between moving units which may look like stuttering.

2) the stutter in the animation when an ai unit moves, specifically when they are ending their movement having reached their destination tile.

Problem 1) is due all the computations the AI does.
I'm working on improving it and already implemented some minor improvements. I try to squeeze out as much as I can think of with tricks without "dumbing down" the AI.

Problem 2) is what I think Phoenix100 described
I understand this can be annoying and an unpleasant playing experience, as it seems not related to the ai doing something useful and makes the animations choppy.
Vanilla AI does not have this problem.
I think I just fixed 2) or at the very least greatly reduced it, but I would like saves from users suffering this problem to confirm. If you would like to help, when you have played an AI turn that had stuttering animations during movement, please zip & send me the autosave.
Ironically the fix will add a few seconds to the Ai turn because it will now properly wait for the animations to complete before resuming thinking

Many thanks for your efforts in further improving this great mod!

Any way of reducing the problem of (2) through different settings, such as Idle Animations (as an example)?

[Phoenix100]

Many thanks, Roguedjack for taking this seriously and trying to fix it. I myself am at the stage where I can only regularly beat the vanilla AI on easiest settings, so I'm not urgently in need of a better AI opponent, though it's true that when playing against your AI it seemed, for example, to react very quickly to simple things like me lining up my strongest units to hit one side, unbalancing the front, whereas the vanilla AI sometimes just seems to steam straight ahead, regardless of where my apparent strength is. I'm not keen on fighting battles outnumbered, however, so it won't be long before I need to properly try your AI. I'll go back to it and watch out for stutters, as suggested. But meanwhile, I look forward to your fix.

[roguedjack]

Any way of reducing the problem of (2) through different settings, such as Idle Animations (as an example)?

Probably not, its purely related to scripting. You could try changing "Unit Speed Turbo" in the settings to your liking, I have mine set to x3.

[Phoenix100]

But you mentioned 'debug mode', Roguedjack. I don't see that in the options. Where do i find it and how do I switch it off? Thanks.