I have a suggestion about AI. Expand the scripting capabilities of AI to make AI smarter. This game is also fun to play against AI. Nearly half of the people on the server are fighting AI every day. Please pay attention to the expansion and improvement of AI, not only promi, but also custom AI. The current AI script is really too limited, the function is very limited, and some functions require tedious code to implement. Isn’t that a problem?
Yes, this is the sort of thing I’d prefer they worked on rather than AoE 4.
The boundary between the game code and the scripting makes it hard to do certain things with the AI, for example it’s very hard to make it execute the exact details of a specific build order. I’ve resorted to creating my own build order simulator to try out different strategies, but it would be really nice to be able to get the AI to perfectly execute a build order to see how it does against another AI perfectly executing a different build order. This would need a much better API to be exposed by the game code that gives more control.
Make them better at defending on treaty games as they rarely ever create an army in treaty.
The AI you guys are looking for, which Microsoft choose to not pursue, is machine learning AI like alphastar in SC2. That AI can easily beat you down or even Viper, Hera etc.
However, I’m not sure how practical that AI would be to run on local computer.
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How would people rate the current AI of the game vs the old Barbarian AI on Voobly. Which is considered the best AI? Barbarian AI was always the best AI out there. I still think that AI would easily beat the currrent AI.
I have seen games of 3 pros vs 5 Barbarian AI and it was some struggle for the pros. 3 pros vs 5 DE AI would be not that hard for the pros. So the old Barbarian AI was much better then the DE AI.
Not sure if Barbarian AI is already released for DE. I am not really into playing the AIs.
You can get Barbarian for DE, but I don’t think there’s any way to do a fair comparison against the DE AI because you can’t set a different level for each player, and AFAIA Barbarian cheats at the extreme level.
Re the machine learning suggestion above, that isn’t actually of that much interest to me personally, I’m more interested in being able to have better control over what the AI does, to test strategies that would be useful to a human. A machine learning AI might provide tough opposition for people who want that, but it may well end up playing in ways that a human would struggle to copy, so would be less informative.
Didnt they get rid of the cheating as well for Barbarian?
For me comparing AIs is all about their highest level. If they cheat at some level, then just skip that level for comparison.
The reason Microsoft didnt pursue machine learning is that it just doesnt work unless you throw tons of raw calculation power at it. And you have to do this again and again, every time a patch comes out. Its simply not justifiable for an economic standpoint.
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I’m a fan of AI scripting.I read everyone’s reply carefully.your discussion about AI is amazing.
I hope Microsoft officials will attach importance to and plan to develop and improve the intelligence of AI in this game,just like AlphaGo,its level is not sure that even the top professional players in the world will win.
in this game,even the Barbarian AI was easily defeated by human players when 1V1 .Promi is easier than barbarians。
If this can be done,the age of empires II Definitive Edition will be an epoch-making great game.
now AI is easily defeated by human players without cheating,which is no fun at all.As a result,50% players disdain to fight or pratice with AI at all. It’s a pity. PVE is dismissive of experts,they only like PVP.the current low AI level is one of the important reasons.
Even the extremely AI still looks very stupid , including Barbarians.All these are due to the limitations of AI scripting functions,and the AI script library is too crude.For example: in the Dark Ages,human palyers can easily use palisade-wall to block AI’s resources on map,or they can easily use persian TC to shoot AI’s TC.you can also easily beat the extreme AI,simply by relying on Watch-Tower, which is no fun at all.
Specific build order has been implemented in barbarian’s code,but there are still a lot of functions that can’t be implemented with concise script code.
Microsoft believes that the fun of players is only in PVP.
Barbarians are better than promi, but it’s not enough.
I have tested the barbarian who does not cheat, and it has a winning rate of about 80% against promi in multiplayer games.
It’s not a lot of work for me.
On DE? Is Barbarian already released at DE?
Last news what i heard was that TheMax was still fixing Barbarian for DE, since some of the features were broken in DE (UP features at voobly who arent part of DE). So while some players might have manually port over the AI to DE, that isnt the official release at DE.
At least this was the status some months ago. Things might have change and TheMax could have released his version without me knowing this.
Barbarian was pretty tough to beat afaik (without using some exploits). The DE AI can easily beat but an average player by just being aggressive. Last time i checked i had no issues at all with killing the most difficult DE AI. I havent tried to play against Barbarian for a long time. Barbarian also played pretty much human like.
So i am not really sure which functions you are missing. Could you explain these points a little bit more? For me this statement isnt really obvious. I dont know what you are missing.
I did not claim it was a lot of (human) work. I dont have enough experience to judge that.
I said that you need lots of calculation power to train your machine learning. And not just once, but again and again and again, with every new map and every new patch. Microsoft has no intention to invest that much money.
There’s no official Barbarian AI for DE. The status of Barbarian’s development hasn’t changed for at least one year.
There’s some fan-made versions of Barbarian but none of them can play DE civs without cheating on extreme
I have my modified Barbarian edition , it can play new 4 DE civs. It’s just that playing by myself is not made public.
For example：a code determines whether an enemy or allied villager or buildings is within the scope of the town and gets the player code to which he belongs.
It can’t easily be made to do something as simple as execute a build order. Look at how it does Turks Fast Imp on Arena for example. There are well defined builds available, but you can’t directly put those instructions into the AI script to make it do it.