Shroud/Fog Aware AI

[Sangel]

I understand that this is a major feature request, and very difficult to implement. However, in my opinion, it's a critical one, as it gives the AI an edge it should not have.

Could we make the AI affected by Shroud and Fog? Perhaps as a scenario-by-scenario tag (so that you can have scarily omniscient AIs in some scenarios).

[Dave]

I understand that this is a major feature request, and very difficult to implement. However, in my opinion, it's a critical one, as it gives the AI an edge it should not have.

Could we make the AI affected by Shroud and Fog? Perhaps as a scenario-by-scenario tag (so that you can have scarily omniscient AIs in some scenarios).

We already have an AI that's affected by shroud and fog of war. It's called 'idle_ai'. :-p

Seriously, this is a 'quality of implementation' issue. We can make an AI that's affected by fog/shroud, but exactly how intelligent do you want it to be?

The AI could be made to 'kinda' understand how to play under fog conditions. Basically this would entail making it not know about units that are under the fog at all. It'd play as if they didn't exist. To actually make intelligent estimates about where enemy units are under the fog would be much, much more difficult.

Making it play with shroud would also be very difficult. Programming an AI that can see everything already feels like stumbling around in the dark. To make it have to work with shroud would be really, truly hard.

It'd make a good Master's Thesis or something though

David

[Sangel]

Well, a very simple (and effective) first step would be to make the AI unaware of troops under fog/shroud for the purposes of recruitment. That way the AI won't have tailor-designed its force to beat yours before you even meet it.

[Dave]

Well, a very simple (and effective) first step would be to make the AI unaware of troops under fog/shroud for the purposes of recruitment. That way the AI won't have tailor-designed its force to beat yours before you even meet it.

If you want to do this, just turn off the AI recruitment flag.

Code: Select all

[ai]
recruitment_ignore_bad_combat=yes
[/ai]

David

[AT]

Could you make it so it does recruit intellegently, but only against units that is has seen?

[Dave]

Could you make it so it does recruit intellegently, but only against units that is has seen?

This would be fairly difficult, and would likely barely change its behavior anyway.

David

[Dacyn]

Could you make it so it does recruit intellegently, but only against units that is has seen?

There would be a way to approximate this, if the AI settings were modifiable eventwise in WML.
but I don't think we should make settings that are specifically for shroud/FoW unless we are just going to do it straight. Of course the prototype could be allowed to cheat in some circumstances...

[Sangel]

Actually, I've thought of where Fog/Shroud awareness might be critical: Targets. If there's a level where you're meant to, say, sneak Konrad through without being spotted, and he has a target value assigned to him, then you need to be able to tell the AI to ignore him while he's under fog or shroud.

[miyo]

Shroud -> AI needs to understand how to scout (and reveal terrain)
FoW -> AI needs to understand to use scouts to see further, also to leave some units in strategical places to prevent sneak attacks.

- Miyo