I recently dusted off my copy of Sins of a Solar Empire. It's been fun so far, except for the way the Hard AI is programmed. Apparently Iron Clad only taught them a few ridiculously cheap tactics. My favorite is when they warp to your sector with 15+ planet destroying ships. Due to the game design (bad, in this area), ship combat is such a slow affair that there is absolutely no way to destroy them, even outnumbering them 3 to 1 with legitimate, upgraded warships, before they trash your colony. Losing a colony means a loss of an 8000+ credit investment and several minutes of development time. Another fun one is the fact that trade, colony and builder ships are warship magnets. If one of these is in the area, the enemy will, without fail, ignore your ships and chase them around the gravity well like a love struck teenager. It would be fine if these were tactics used once in a while, but this is the only way they fight. Period. I understand they are effective, but thats not really the point. If this is the way its going to be played, the planet destroyers need to have 1/3 of the health they currently do, or something along those lines. This must be in the code somehwere if(noncombatshipinwell == 1) { target = noncombatship } Sloppy. I need some mods.
Unfortunately AI is one of the area of a game that hardly ever gets enough attention during game development (unless of course the whole game is hinged on the AI). Played a bit of C&C 4 last night, and while the general tactics AI is good, the pathing system is just horrid
lol one of my favorite games and one of my most despised games already mentioned in the thread I definitely agree that AI is never looked at enough. The same AI strats annoy me as well in SOASE and as for CnC - the SAGE engine was never good at pathfinding.
Yep, I honestly wish that someone would build a system that does for the AI side of games that Havoc did for the physics of games. (I know I'm generalising in game requirements) Something that revolutionises the system.
the sins of a solar empire AI actually had loads of community input into making it - they wanted to make it able to beat a human. As such, they will kamikaze planet destroyers if they think they can get away with it... but it is a simple ai check I guess - can you destroy planet before human fleet destroys your fleet? Yes? Acceptable losses. Against a human there's a lot more psyching out and 'if I attack there, I'm left vulnerable here' whereas AIs will baserace a lot more based on numbers, except in games where the AI has a specific trigger for if base is under attack, pull back everything - which is just as abusable by using one harassing unit to stave off attacks almost indefinitely.
I never played Sins against the computer, so I can't complain about that at all I think what makes Sins great, it's exactly playing against another human, in my case I played it a lot against my brother in our private lan. But yes, other posters are right, AI generally doens't have much love, and in a strategy game it's really a must if they want to suceed in making a interesting experience in single player.
AI isn't necessarily overlooked, it's just tough to make one that generally trumps humans, but also one that doesn't absolutely destroys everyone. That's the thing really, stock AIs just can't be made to be outright insane, because then the players would hate the game. With that said, FEAR and STALKER (maybe Crysis) had some great NPC AIs. And in terms of strategy games, Civilization IV had decent AI, as did occasionally the Total War Series.
[HIJACK] +shakes head and starts loading rifle+ Sir... why do you insist on playing that heretical game, Command and Cufflink 4?! Awful game, with Awful playability with AWFUL units and AWFUL storyline... sir, report to the nearest cliff and destroy yourself, Blade style [/spam] [/HIGHJACK]
WHAT! How could you say such a thing!! C&C 4 is an awesome game with an awesome story and........ Ok, ya, you got me. I'm a OCD completist, what can I say.... <reports to nearest cliff>
