Cheating AI or am I missing something

from AshesoftheSingularity Forums

So I created a game with some insane-difficulty AI just to watch how they play and they were creating units incredibly fast. Brutes were taking ~6 second to build and archers were taking ~4 seconds to build. I thought the whole praise of the AI in this game is that they do not cheat... Am I missing some critical technique to reducing my units build times or is the AI in fact cheating?

Edit 1:

So I just did some testing to see how much the AI cheats and here are the results:

(all percentages and times are approximate as I just used an iPhone and manually timed each event)

Insane - 80.6% Reduction in unit build time -- 80.8% Reduction in structure build time
Painful - 22.3% Reduction in unit build time -- 16.7% Reduction in structure build time
Tough - 11.2% Reduction in unit build time -- 10% Reduction in structure build time
Challenging - 0% Reduction in unit build time -- 0% Reduction in structure build time
Normal - 0% Reduction in unit build time -- 0% Reduction in structure build time
Easy - 130.5% Increase in unit build time -- 133.3% Increase in structure build time
Beginner - 388.8% Increase in unit build time -- 400% Increase in structure build time

Insane - Archer build time in seconds: 3.5/18 -- Factory build time in seconds: 5.75/30
Painful - Archer build time in seconds: 14/18 -- Factory build time in seconds: 25/30
Tough - Archer build time in seconds: 16/18 -- Factory build time in seconds: 27/30
Challenging - Archer build time in seconds: 18/18 -- Factory build time in seconds: 30/30
Normal - Archer build time in seconds: 18/18 -- Factory build time in seconds: 30/30
Easy - Archer build time in seconds: 23.5/18 -- Factory build time in seconds: 40/30
Beginner - Archer build time in seconds: 70/18 -- Factory build time in seconds: 120/30

Conclusion- It looks like from this simple test that at first glance Normal and Challenging difficulties are the only two AI settings that do not cheat/handicap. I am guessing (and hoping) for now that Challenging AI will just play  better than the Normal AI without cheating, but it may very well cheat in a manner that I haven't observed yet such as resource collection rate,  unit attack/defense stats, etc.

Edit 2:

Draginol (developer) has confirmed that the AI does get a resource boost on Challenging. Thanks!

10,353 views 8 replies
Reply #1 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

at higher levels it does cheat i believe..and the whole praise of the ai is that majority of people cant beat the normal ai..and they are only improving the ai so...theres the praise.

Reply #2 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

I already responded to you here:

http://steamcommunity.com/app/228880/discussions/1/412449508287467785/

 

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Reply #4 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

All of the game files are readable plain-text. You can read the AI settings including their resource multipliers in the "Ashes of the Singularity\Assets\GameCore\DefaultPlayerAI.xml" file.

 

Challenging AI has increased metal, radioactive and logistics multipliers.

Reply #5 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

Quoting Moomo, reply 4

All of the game files are readable plain-text. You can read the AI settings including their resource multipliers in the "Ashes of the Singularity\Assets\GameCore\DefaultPlayerAI.xml" file.

 

Challenging AI has increased metal, radioactive and logistics multipliers.

 

That is awesome! Can I edit this file to make the Normal AI which does not cheat play with the personality/aggression/decision making of the Insane AI?

Reply #6 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

Yes and no. You can edit the file, which will make changes to the AI level of cheating and the behaviour. However, many of the actions of the AI scripting is heavily dependent on requisites mainly metal and radioactive resources. From my qualitative experimentation, I have found that many of the behaviours that are observed from the Insane AI are only observed due to its cheating allowing these requisites to be met before I have overrun the AI.

 

I have observed several crashes when heavily modifying this file, so it is an at-your-own-risk. As I understand it AI modding is on the to-do list.

The last few major patches have significantly improved the AI. I trust that this will continue to be an area for improvement.

Reply #7 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

If you look into the file, you can see lots of different ways to change what hte AI does.

Now, eventually we'll have it such that you can create your own AI personalities with the goal being to let us have AI vs. AI contests.

Reply #8 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

AI cheating is too much when it hits Insane. Painful AI is still beatable, although very difficult (considering late-game they outpace your quanta generation so fast that their units have 3-4x your health due to all the upgrades they get), but Insane AI is verifiably unbeatable. Using the fastest possible build order, by the time you have your first cruiser they will have 4 or 5 in addition to air units and a comparable (1.5-2x bigger) T1 army. The idea that there's a difficulty level that is actually unbeatable is not helpful to the game. I'm hoping that there will be a patch to reduce the difficulty to just a bit harder than painful, because the difficulty between painful and insane is insurmountable.

 

*edit* Ok, I just read that Insane AI's are supposed to be for multiplayer compstomps. Never mind. I guess I was pulling my hair out for no reason.