Non-random BuildingAI

[chrstgtr]

43 minutes ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

Well the idea there is that if the fort helps more with 0 pop garrisoned, then your army would be at a significant advantage over the other army. Having to garrison to get more arrows might be good if you have no other options, but it would be better to actually use your army in an even fight with a fort nearby. Specifically because the fort can immediately get kills, reducing the damage output of the enemy

This is a bit more than just changing BuildingAI. Even still, that seems like a really expensive to basically function as ~3 towers. 

50 minutes ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

Definitely needs playtesting, but it seems a lot of players in the lobby are interested. Perhaps its best as a community mod branch for the time being.

I'm skeptical, but interested. It's something that is either going to work or fail. 

[alre]

make the AI dependent on stances and take the best of the two options.

personally, I like how bildingAI works now in terms of its effects on gameplay, and I don't even think rushing next to the cc needs nerfing, but I don't play the game anymore.

If anything, I think units should act more like buildings, not the opposite.

[Stan`]

One has to keep in mind that all the changes done to BuildingAI also affect ships. I also want to keep the unit preferences in the templates. 

[real_tabasco_sauce]

And siege towers.

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

I think we probably want to have a target selection similar to units before it gets put in community mod, I think it would reduce ways to exploit the new building AI and give players more control.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

As far as I understand, allowing players to control building arrows would be a much bigger undertaking than the simple behavior change I made. I agree that adding it as it is now puts siege towers and ships in an awkward spot in terms of game design. Perhaps this behavior can fully debut for buildings alongside @wowgetoffyourcellphone's ship rework and allowing siege towers to have a capture attack. That way the behaviors for buildings, ships, and siege towers are all logical and differentiated at the same time.

So, adding it to the community mod makes perfect sense to me.

@BreakfastBurrito_007 what exploits are concerning to you?

Edited March 11, 2023 by real_tabasco_sauce

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

 main concern is the meat shield meta now applying to this. Perhaps if melee armor/damage values are rebalanced in the next community mod, then it won’t be as much of a problem.

[Stan`]

On 11/03/2023 at 11:22 PM, real_tabasco_sauce said:

As far as I understand, allowing players to control building arrows would be a much bigger undertaking than the simple behavior change I made.

One could create a component like UnitAI using the same interface that would redirect the commands to BuildingAI, but do nothing else. This way you get ship behavior for them. But yeah that's some work.

 

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

11 hours ago, Stan` said:

One could create a component like UnitAI using the same interface that would redirect the commands to BuildingAI, but do nothing else. This way you get ship behavior for them. But yeah that's some work.

 

The ship behavior might not be bad with the simpler approach. I might do some tests.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

I guess one of the main issues would be discerning between rally point location (ie degarrison to attack an enemy) versus for the building to actually attack that unit.

I imagine players wouldn't want to lose the ability to degarrison "onto" an enemy unit with an attack command.

[Stan`]

2 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

I guess one of the main issues would be discerning between rally point location (ie degarrison to attack an enemy) versus for the building to actually attack that unit.

I imagine players wouldn't want to lose the ability to degarrison "onto" an enemy unit with an attack command.

Don't you have the same issue with ships?

[real_tabasco_sauce]

1 hour ago, Stan` said:

Don't you have the same issue with ships?

Which do you mean?

1) currently in a26,

2) with the current proposal, or

3) with added user input to buildingAI arrows?

I guess technically it is true for all of the above lol

The thing is, players absolutely want to be able to degarrison their swords directly onto rams.

Perhaps there will need to be some function(s) to distinguish building (or ship or siege tower) attack input from rally point input. @wowgetoffyourcellphone this will probably be needed for ships if they should function as units and as transport (unless transport is only as a non-fighting transport ship).

For buildings, the default right click could be rally point and some hotkey (maybe force attack) could be used to target a unit in range. For ships and siege engines, IDK: maybe the same, or maybe the default should be attack, with some modifier to set the rally point.

Edited March 13, 2023 by real_tabasco_sauce

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

27 minutes ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

Which do you mean?

1) currently in a26,

2) with the current proposal, or

3) with added user input to buildingAI arrows?

I guess technically it is true for all of the above lol

The thing is, players absolutely want to be able to degarrison their swords directly onto rams.

Perhaps there will need to be some function(s) to distinguish building (or ship or siege tower) attack input from rally point input. @wowgetoffyourcellphone this will probably be needed for ships if they should function as units and as transport (unless transport is only as a non-fighting transport ship).

For buildings, the default right click could be rally point and some hotkey (maybe force attack) could be used to target a unit in range. For ships and siege engines, IDK: maybe the same, or maybe the default should be attack, with some modifier to set the rally point.

Just do it how they do it in Age of Empires. no need to reinvent the wheel or require hotkeys.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

23 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Just do it how they do it in Age of Empires. no need to reinvent the wheel or require hotkeys.

I'm not familiar. Is it degarrison unit and unit for the building to attack are the same? I guess that would be pretty logical, and no need for extra confusing hotkeys.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

is someone familiar with preference values from GetPreference() in Attack.js?

It's not clear if values are ascending with increased priority or descending.

For instance, my guess is that a tower with a preference class of ['Human'] will give humans a preference of 0 and anything else a preference of 1, but maybe this is wrong.

Edited March 19, 2023 by real_tabasco_sauce

[real_tabasco_sauce]

It seems to me that if the preferred class length is 1 (['Humans']), then the only possible preference value is 0 or undefined, where humans get 0 and anything else gets undefined.

[Lion.Kanzen]

On 07/03/2023 at 2:26 PM, Helicity said:

It would be favourable for towers to focus fire on 1 unit and killing it before moving on to the next unit, as this would weaken the enemy units quicker. In addition, I think sentry towers need some hard 3x counter against archer cavalry, as these archer cavalry units are currently impossible to counter in phase 2 for non-archer civilizations.

3x is very exaggerated.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

2 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

It seems to me that if the preferred class length is 1 (['Humans']), then the only possible preference value is 0 or undefined, where humans get 0 and anything else gets undefined.

yep, this is the case, and I was able to figure out the issue. I guess thinking out loud helps lol.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

https://gitlab.com/real_tabasco_sauce/0-a-d-community-mod-unit-specific-upgrades/-/compare/main...buildingai2?from_project_id=36954588&straight=false

It will need to be rebased when the a27 community mod is live, but this is the branch for building arrows.

My hope is that in the first release, it can be merged alongside unit upgrades (https://gitlab.com/real_tabasco_sauce/0-a-d-community-mod-unit-specific-upgrades/-/compare/main...unit_upgrades?from_project_id=36954588&straight=false) and a melee damage and armor adjustment.

These three would be pretty big changes, but the idea is they need long term playtesting and any necessary adjustments can be made in following community mod versions.

[Yekaterina]

11 hours ago, Lion.Kanzen said:

3x is very exaggerated.

You will think that this is very conservative after you get rushed by 60 archer cavalries while playing as a non-archer civ.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

 

 

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

2 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

 

 

Difficult to see what is happening. Standard UnitAI or a modded BuildingAI? 

[real_tabasco_sauce]

Its just buildingAI https://code.wildfiregames.com/D4964 with an additional component that stores the targeted unit. Then I give the selected unit the best preference before sorting.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

9 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Difficult to see what is happening. Standard UnitAI or a modded BuildingAI? 

You make a good point though. The modified buildingAI behaves very similarly to how a ship would if it used the unitAI attack.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

3 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

You make a good point though. The modified buildingAI behaves very similarly to how a ship would if it used the unitAI attack.

But at least with a modified BuildingAI, garrisons can still affect number of projectiles? Standard UnitAI does not allow this.