AI behaviors

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Geoff the Medio
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#16 Post by Geoff the Medio »

Tortanick wrote:So what you're saying is that the citizens of that empire follow their personality, a xenophobic race will see unrest if you're not at war, a flower picking race will create unrest if you are at war.
Similar ideas have been discussed previously, usually in context of something else, such as political factions within an empire or on a planet, or one of many races within an empire.

Some probably-relevant threads (I didn't reread all to be sure):
http://freeorion.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=398
http://freeorion.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=598
http://freeorion.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=740
http://freeorion.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=825
http://freeorion.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=896
http://freeorion.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=920
http://freeorion.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=974
http://freeorion.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1037
http://freeorion.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1078
http://freeorion.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1206

Nifty ideas include:
- The consequences of having a faction loyal or fond of another empire on your planets
- Attempting to foster or promote particular factions on others' planets
- Making it politically difficult for other empires to be at war with you
- Making enemy planets more receptive to trade goods
- Having planets rebel due to actual logical reasons such as disagreement with a particular imperial policty by a faction that dominates a planet

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eleazar
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#17 Post by eleazar »

Geoff the Medio wrote:...Similar ideas have been discussed previously, usually in context of something else, such as political factions within an empire or on a planet, or one of many races within an empire.

Some probably-relevant threads (I didn't reread all to be sure):
...

Nifty ideas include:
- The consequences of having a faction loyal or fond of another empire on your planets
- Attempting to foster or promote particular factions on others' planets
- Making it politically difficult for other empires to be at war with you
- Making enemy planets more receptive to trade goods
- Having planets rebel due to actual logical reasons such as disagreement with a particular imperial policty by a faction that dominates a planet
Yeah, i believe i've previously read all those threads, (most of them are useful) and i've incorporated the nifty ideas ideas into my multi-racial empire idea. With the substitution of species for factions. Expect for the trade-goods idea which i do not understand.

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General_Zaber
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Surrender Policy

#18 Post by General_Zaber »

eleazar wrote:Yeah, this is an old thread, but it contains an important question.
I agree that the emperors (AI and human) should be "Players", but i propose that the citizens of all empires should be "Characters".
On this subject I would have to say that when an AI surrenders it should be the citizen's idea.
If the the AI is a player then obviously they would never surrender (How do you win if you give up?) So therefore when the people of an empire grow tired of losing a war and know there is little chance of victory (or they are just cowards and want to get out of conflicts) then the Empire ethos should override the AI's "Human desire to win the game" and instead surrender.

This would likely represent the government either collapsing onto itself (like the Third Reich in WW2) or the people overthrowing it (timed rebellion). Of course there would be other factors involving the Empire's race's ideals and qualities. Mrrshan and Bulrathi would be more likely to fight to the last then Psilons or Trilarians, If an empire contained combinations of the two then the races likely to be surrendering would do so while the AI would keep control of the remaining pockets of loyalists.

This system could also apply to human players at a reduced strength though I shouldn't think so, perhaps it can be something that can be toggled before the game starts. (after all, I'd be pretty peaved if my entire empire surrendered after a string of minor naval defeats on the fringe of my borders)

Also I just want to feel the satisfaction of one of my AI enemies surrendering before being wiped off the face of the universe. It's something I never experienced in a 4X game before (Note: I've only played MoO2 & 3 in the 4X genre, but I'm a big fan, especially of FO, it's about time something was done about micromanagement and MoO3's tax-form simulation attempt at a successor to MoO2)
The enemy is retreating! As always, there is no cuteness about them. Dammit

marhawkman
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Re: AI behaviors

#19 Post by marhawkman »

One thing that has always bugged me is that AIs NEVER surrender. Um seriously, he has one tiny outpost and no military left. What could he possibly do to win?
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General_Zaber
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Re: AI behaviors

#20 Post by General_Zaber »

Exactly my point, I absolutely hated that when I first started to play MoO2. No matter how much visible damage you had done and could still do to your enemies, the AI was designed not to think about the odds of winning, just give it all you've got. So I thought perhaps it should be the empire's idea as a whole to surrender when there is clearly no chance.
The enemy is retreating! As always, there is no cuteness about them. Dammit

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Amenhotep
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Re: AI behaviors

#21 Post by Amenhotep »

there was (as it seems) a difference between AI and human controlles empires,
because often you get a GNN newsflash that says smth like "the elerian empire has surrendered to the silicoids".
so it looks like AI surrenders to AI but not to human players.
even if you test it for fun, to bomb everything down except one small system...(as already said before)

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Robbie.Price
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Re: AI behaviors

#22 Post by Robbie.Price »

Goodmorning all,

RE: AI, I should REALLY hope that Non-War alternatives be made available and viable. I've played quite a number of 4X games, and I've generally found the over pronounced tendency to war to be quite . . . disheartening.

Even classically 'Warrior arc type' races (to speak Trekkie, the Klingons, the Romulans . . . to name a few) where/are Peaceful Most of the time. *sure they pick fights, and walk on political raiser edges*

The only true exception being the Borg(and even they made peace with one ship, against all comprehension given previous behavior).

I would hope to see somewhat more reserved behaviors from 'most' FO races. (basically the universe might have one small 'war ' going on between two races which essentially can not ever really hope to beat the other *boarder wars, attrition wars, wars of historical hatred* at any given time. And then be Pot marked with the occasional huge Multi(or almost all) empires wars).

These Huge wars would occur, after sudden changes to socio-political norms *major even shakes stuff up, war loving societies try to take advantage of the confusion and declare war*, but crucially I don't think proper 'wars' should happen without a 'cause'. Building up a massive force on your boarder would of course cause an arm's race between you and your neighbor, but crucially, the arms race wouldn't degrade into a 'war' without some external force acting upon the situation.

Also, I would hope that somewhat more 'realistic' outcomes from wars might be possible in FO. Typically in 4x games you conquer a city, and it's yours, conquer a territory and it's yours. I personally find this makes it too easy/repetitive land expansion. Not to make a realism argument . . . but i think FO could learn a lot by partially modeling realistic war outcomes. . . mainly even after HUGE wars (ww1 ww2) the geopolitical map did not change significantly, In many real wars, territories are effectively completely conquered, only to have *virtually* all their colonies/cities/what have you's returned to them by the 'winner' of the war. . .


That being said . . . Wars should be made considerably desirable, even for races which plan inevitably to win by conquering the galaxy.

I'm going to have to think . . . a lot . . . about a model for how to achieve this withing the FO framework.
. . . I'll probably post a preliminary sketch in a few days . . .

*anybody have any ideas on making a galactic forum system, for a 4x game, which doesn't suck?[see GC, SMAC, MOO, for examples of bad models.]*

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Re: AI behaviors

#23 Post by Rho »

Citizens...

If the AI citizens can surrender, so should the human player's citizens... Unless there's some culture of honor or sheer stubborness that prevent certain races... Hey, different rules for different species/civs! :D This would tie in perfectly with my "values"-idea on the religion thread. If the civ values power, maybe they'll surrender to a more powerful enemy. If they value survival highly, they might surrender when outgunned and outnumbered. If they value honor highly, they'd probably be too good to surrender, certainly if the enemy isn't honorable.

--

And wars... Why war?

Big wars come from someone getting too much power and the others thinking this power is gonna be abused. If a spy uncovers the development of certain fobidden technologies, or such technologies are used in battle, maybe the other civs are gonna turn against the civ with the forbidden ones. Especially if it's someone with charm matching that of the Ithkul.

Or religion. A religion or worldview challenging that of another often lead to conflict. This happened in history, happens today, gonna keep happening, and makes for nice gameplay. Two large groups of civs sharing a number of values encounter each other, and find themselves not sharing values. Be this left vs right, religion vs atheism, red vs blue...

Even without incorporating my values idea, this could be done using governments. Two numbers for each government, and if either or both numbers are too different from those of another civ's government, you've got yourself tension. Add some diplomatic incident, and you've got the recipe for war. That leads to increased tension between other civs' governments. More great war.

Each race could have their own modifiers to these numbers, and the numbers could provide some bonuses as well.
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Amenhotep
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Re: AI behaviors

#24 Post by Amenhotep »

Ok nice idea but shoudln't there be some "downcounter" on these numbers?
Perhaps every 10turns without any conflict you like each other a bit more and the higher number is decreased.
So that both civs become more similar with the time, perhaps you can explain it with heavy trade or
exchange of scientists, adventurers, etc etc. but this number should only change the "basic attitude",
nothing else.

and, i like the vision of religions. this might be an interesting factor to make a totally new gameplay.

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Re: AI behaviors

#25 Post by Rho »

Forgot to mention many wars come from someone wanting the resources of someone else. That's obvious tho, but rich civs that don't trade or exchange techs should become unpopular enough for any worldview conflict to be used for justification for war.

Gameplay:

You get "Nice" points for every trade treaty you've got or have had recently. You get "Envy" points for everything you got (how much for what needs to be figured out later). Your Envy is cancelled by another civs Envy, but when the remaining Envy is greater than your Nice, you should be getting unpopular. Certainly with those you don't trade with.

Maybe there should be a "Pity" factor too? Negative Envy, which means... what?

Anyway, that's some ideas for diplomatic behavior.
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Orz
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Re: AI behaviors

#26 Post by Orz »

Amenhotep wrote:there was (as it seems) a difference between AI and human controlles empires,
because often you get a GNN newsflash that says smth like "the elerian empire has surrendered to the silicoids".
so it looks like AI surrenders to AI but not to human players.
even if you test it for fun, to bomb everything down except one small system...(as already said before)
That is not true. I have had AI empires suddenly surrender to me when they were losing the battle with a stronger AI opponent. I believe that the surrender aspect depends on your relative strength to the AI opponents.

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Re: AI behaviors

#27 Post by Orz »

As far as AI go, all of the suggestions are fine and dandy. In 0.3.1R6, the AIs simply died of stupidity. When I discovered their home worlds, the world was dead. The space fleet with the lone colony ship wandered aimlessly.

As a start, how about enough of an AI to at least survive on their home world and colonize slowly? :mrgreen:

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Re: AI behaviors

#28 Post by marhawkman »

Orz wrote:
Amenhotep wrote:there was (as it seems) a difference between AI and human controlles empires,
because often you get a GNN newsflash that says smth like "the elerian empire has surrendered to the silicoids".
so it looks like AI surrenders to AI but not to human players.
even if you test it for fun, to bomb everything down except one small system...(as already said before)
That is not true. I have had AI empires suddenly surrender to me when they were losing the battle with a stronger AI opponent. I believe that the surrender aspect depends on your relative strength to the AI opponents.
I've seen that happen too. but rarely do the AIs beat each other up to that degree. I've seen an empire that I'd been steadily taking over suddenly Surrender to someone else.

yeah this game really needs an AI funtion that just says: "I give up".
Computer programming is fun.

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Re: AI behaviors

#29 Post by General_Zaber »

marhawkman wrote:"I give up".
That's an incredibly good point. There could be a function by which, when the citizens are tired of a long and destructive war or empire-wide blockade or any kind of other pressure the AI could simply "give up."

Because it's a natural human reaction anyway not to want to go on with something you know isn't going to work (I know there are plenty of arguments against this but I'm just being pragmatic and general) This can explain why an AI player can be convinced by their citizens to surrender while a human player merely gets a serious morale penalty on most of their worlds, if not all.

Actually morale is an idea in itself, perhaps that is what the AI would consider it's decision to surrender on.
The enemy is retreating! As always, there is no cuteness about them. Dammit

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Re: AI behaviors

#30 Post by Rho »

How about if, aside from species-specific, government-specific, and other circumstance-specific AI behavior, there'd be several AI personalities that react differently, much like poeple react differently.

We can have an AI that will role-play to be a good leader, that will surrender to whomever will keep his people alive; or an AI that's stubborn and is gonna live and play for as long as he can.

This means the different species, civs, govts, they'd be slightly different every time you play. Some level of unpredictability.

Other factors could be determined by AI personality preferences too, such as whether you want to reach for the center of the galaxy or establish your corner of it first, whether you'll prioritize colonizing large worlds and plan to terraform or worlds with suitable terrain, whether to pick a government left or right, blue star or red star, etc.. While these should only influence the decisions the AI makes, they could still be written as contributing factors, which makes you wonder, when you encounter an alien of a particular species and govt - "can I trust this creepy slimy thing?"
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