AI little to determined?

[Andy Mac]

The only way at this point to make the AI better is to let it cheat and I got my fingers well and truly burned on that one before so I aint going there again.

[janh]

I guess cheating is quite fine, at least with regard to AI knowing a little more about player's force setup and situation. I.e. giving AI recon bonuses that prevent the described actions. Getting some bonuses for organizational and logistic tasks is ok, too. I didn't understand why people got worked up about that -- as long as it leads to events in the realm of possibilty and are not too obvious cheating (i.e. allowing AI to win situations it shouldn't ever).

But maybe you guys could think about adding some more AI functionality for more complex scripting to one of your future patches, something that allows to store and manipulate local and global variables, test some conditions for units, and exchange results between scripts so that one could connect a few of them into something pseudo-dynamic?

PS. Why does AI split carriers up, particularly KB? I would understand temporarily dispatching a CarDiv of 2 CV, and reinforcing it with the remaining KB if enemy CV's are sighted in the local theater of operations, but I would expect that AI would be better off not to split it too often but move it around more frequently.

[Misconduct]

One of the only bugs in the AI i've noticed so far is when the KB does split up, it tends to only leave a single destroyer to escort it, where some CVE's run around with a battleship, few cruisers and 8 destroyers the poor KB splits and has a single destroyer or two escorting.

[vinnie71]

Yes the AI landed at Rockhampton (?) when most of the forces (including naval units) were sent to hold Timor. Having failed to invade Timor because I destroyed the invading convoys through combined air and naval action.
 
Seems that the AI refocused its efforts after its failure and headed south... Two heavily protected convoys arrived and I have to redeploy my militia units to dig in below Rockhampton. Fortunately I have an American Division arriving in Sydney in 2 weeks which combined with Aussie armoured units could provide some punch.
 
Actually at this point I'm hoping that the AI commits further units in order to be able to destroy as many as possible where they stand.
 
BTW silly question - what does CMF stand for? and when do they get upgraded to AIF 42?
 
What is also interesting is that the AI is also on the offensive in Southern China, concentrating 4 divisions and other units in one battlegroup. Seems to have gone the offensive in two areas. Does it mean that the AI is doing 2 scripts at one go?

[Misconduct]

Very much so Offworlder, the way scripts run are basically a set of waypoints designed to steer the AI, simplest way to describe it is the AI is given a set of waypoints for example december 7th to take city (A) in China using LBA and ground troops. Once the scripts start then aircraft/troops begin attacking until city (A) is taken and the script is completed, the script will determine if the AI needs to build it up, move aircraft, how much to defend it then the script is closed and a new script is started.

This is my basic understanding, I used to write scripts for many games like Panzer General however its nothing on the size of WITP:AE at all, im sure Andy implimented as much as he could, however he did talk about threshold which is the biggest problem in the AI right now.

Basically the Threshold can only go around 50% any higher what happens is things get extremely weird and causes the game to crash, scripts to be broken. If I was allowed to see some of the scripts for AE I could probably better understand the system, however I think Andy did a wonderful job so far.

[Andy Mac]

The scripts are all exposed in the editor ??
 
You can tinker to your hearts content I want folks to so I can play against the AI - its no fun if you know what its going to do
 

[Andy Mac]

To avoidthe KB running around unescorted play Ironman
 
Japan simply does not have enough surface assets to adequately protect everything it needs to and the AI is unable to think
 
Janh - development is done and what you want is a whopper not going to happen in this game I think

[Andy Mac]

This is the Ai screen on the editor

[janh]

Thanks Andy for answering our questions. I realize that my idea might involve a lot, but I just wanted to put the idea out. Maybe it will end up only a features list for WITP 3, if I ever live to see it.

Anyway, I recall that you posted in some thread on the Modding Section that a script can override/quit over scripts when triggered. I can't remember the exact example though. How do you do that? Say for example, I see 4 scripts organizing attacks on Luzon (001-004) in your screenshot. How do they interact? Will one quit the others, say if 14th Army fails, will it trigger any other scripts or quit the other attack Luzon scripts?

[Andy Mac]

There are triggers than can end a script early if a base falls
 
So if you look above that script ends when Bataan falls
 
The mutliple scripts for attack Luzon are different groups of units attacking on different axis.
 
In each of the 13 AI Files these scripts will have slightly different force mixes and different axis of advance to give some variability also different start times
 
So the exact date that the Ai commits its theatre reserve (19th IJA Div in the case above) varies and the bases it gets committed to varies.
 
So 16th and 48th and 14th Army scripts are the core script for taking Luzon
 
19th script is just in case the AI needs to reinforce, heavy arty script is to help out in sieges
 
Andy