AOE-II the Brainless beating Barbie thread

[wattle]

thank you for the info :-)

 

[Brainless]

my dear readers and fellow community members,
a new chapter has been opened in the world of AOC AI!

thanks to scripters like.. scripter, TheMax, CheeseOnToast, Promiskuitiv, Aleph and more (sorry for not knowing you all) we are entering a new era of challenging AI's.

Until recently, Barbarian was the benchmark. Promi was 2nd best, but only as a variation to Barbarian. After playing 100's of games versus those AI's, we know what they do. Yes, they have many different strategies, but in the end they were limited by the programming options of the game, and it became in some way predictable. We know how to cripple it, how to fence off its attacks, to break its economy.

But now there are new things!
1 - First of all, Userpatch 1.5. No introduction needed.

2 - Secondly, a new generation of AI's that are written for UP1.5 . And these are good! Not the monsters in eco like barbarian still is, but tactical, with map-awareness. They have new ways to hurt you, or complicate your game. For now, my friend and i have used The_Unknown and Subjugator. They are still work in progress, but main bugs are mostly written out by now. They show interesting things i have never seen done by an AI before. Housewalling, microing units, forward builds, etc.
The best thing yet is their diversity. Like in human team games, you are not all clones. By mixing the AI's: Barbarian, Promi, The_Unknown, Subjugator there is really an AI-dreamteam running. It is maybe less hard then 4xbarbarian, but it is much less predictable. This mean as a human counterplayer you have to watch them carefully and adept. This is good, because, with all respect, barbarian became something like a punching bag. (a large one that could swing back at us, but still predictable)

3 - Random AI selector. This thing makes it complete. It selects AI for us, hiding their ID behind generic names like Alaric the Hun. The team composition is random, with a set chance for every AI to appear. Now we don't know what we are fighting against, and really have no idea at start what it is going to do. Sometimes there is a weak player, or a very strong one. We dont know which one at start, so we dont know who to target first.

We just played 2 games with this setup working perfectly. I add the recs below.
I really hope these AI's develop more and more, having new tricks and surprises. Also it is good to have 3 or more that are challenging like this. I still like to mention and add Illuminati and The Horde, they can be tough as well. If they would be evolved into the UP1.5 level, that would be great.

 

[leo_169]

very good news! :D

 

[scripter64]

Thanks, Brainless!

 

[willworkforicecream]

I'm not a AI scripter but I like watching AI matchups. Thanks for all you guys do for the community.

 

[k_the_foodie]

my dear readers and fellow community members,
a new chapter has been opened in the world of AOC AI!

thanks to scripters like.. scripter, TheMax, CheeseOnToast, Promiskuitiv, Aleph and more (sorry for not knowing you all) we are entering a new era of challenging AI's.

Until recently, Barbarian was the benchmark. Promi was 2nd best, but only as a variation to Barbarian. After playing 100's of games versus those AI's, we know what they do. Yes, they have many different strategies, but in the end they were limited by the programming options of the game, and it became in some way predictable. We know how to cripple it, how to fence off its attacks, to break its economy.

But now there are new things!
1 - First of all, Userpatch 1.5. No introduction needed.

2 - Secondly, a new generation of AI's that are written for UP1.5 . And these are good! Not the monsters in eco like barbarian still is, but tactical, with map-awareness. They have new ways to hurt you, or complicate your game. For now, my friend and i have used The_Unknown and Subjugator. They are still work in progress, but main bugs are mostly written out by now. They show interesting things i have never seen done by an AI before. Housewalling, microing units, forward builds, etc.
The best thing yet is their diversity. Like in human team games, you are not all clones. By mixing the AI's: Barbarian, Promi, The_Unknown, Subjugator there is really an AI-dreamteam running. It is maybe less hard then 4xbarbarian, but it is much less predictable. This mean as a human counterplayer you have to watch them carefully and adept. This is good, because, with all respect, barbarian became something like a punching bag. (a large one that could swing back at us, but still predictable)

3 - Random AI selector. This thing makes it complete. It selects AI for us, hiding their ID behind generic names like Alaric the Hun. The team composition is random, with a set chance for every AI to appear. Now we don't know what we are fighting against, and really have no idea at start what it is going to do. Sometimes there is a weak player, or a very strong one. We dont know which one at start, so we dont know who to target first.

We just played 2 games with this setup working perfectly. I add the recs below.
I really hope these AI's develop more and more, having new tricks and surprises. Also it is good to have 3 or more that are challenging like this. I still like to mention and add Illuminati and The Horde, they can be tough as well. If they would be evolved into the UP1.5 level, that would be great.

How and when can I play with these ai and options?

 

[Brainless]

my dear readers and fellow community members,
a new chapter has been opened in the world of AOC AI!

thanks to scripters like.. scripter, TheMax, CheeseOnToast, Promiskuitiv, Aleph and more (sorry for not knowing you all) we are entering a new era of challenging AI's.

Until recently, Barbarian was the benchmark. Promi was 2nd best, but only as a variation to Barbarian. After playing 100's of games versus those AI's, we know what they do. Yes, they have many different strategies, but in the end they were limited by the programming options of the game, and it became in some way predictable. We know how to cripple it, how to fence off its attacks, to break its economy.

But now there are new things!
1 - First of all, Userpatch 1.5. No introduction needed.

2 - Secondly, a new generation of AI's that are written for UP1.5 . And these are good! Not the monsters in eco like barbarian still is, but tactical, with map-awareness. They have new ways to hurt you, or complicate your game. For now, my friend and i have used The_Unknown and Subjugator. They are still work in progress, but main bugs are mostly written out by now. They show interesting things i have never seen done by an AI before. Housewalling, microing units, forward builds, etc.
The best thing yet is their diversity. Like in human team games, you are not all clones. By mixing the AI's: Barbarian, Promi, The_Unknown, Subjugator there is really an AI-dreamteam running. It is maybe less hard then 4xbarbarian, but it is much less predictable. This mean as a human counterplayer you have to watch them carefully and adept. This is good, because, with all respect, barbarian became something like a punching bag. (a large one that could swing back at us, but still predictable)

3 - Random AI selector. This thing makes it complete. It selects AI for us, hiding their ID behind generic names like Alaric the Hun. The team composition is random, with a set chance for every AI to appear. Now we don't know what we are fighting against, and really have no idea at start what it is going to do. Sometimes there is a weak player, or a very strong one. We dont know which one at start, so we dont know who to target first.

We just played 2 games with this setup working perfectly. I add the recs below.
I really hope these AI's develop more and more, having new tricks and surprises. Also it is good to have 3 or more that are challenging like this. I still like to mention and add Illuminati and The Horde, they can be tough as well. If they would be evolved into the UP1.5 level, that would be great.

How and when can I play with these ai and options?

anytime you want in singleplayer mode. Or invite a friend for an IP game ( host the game via AOC starting menu to select > multiplayer > internet TCP/IP connection for directplay, and give you friend your IP number to connect )

for the AI's you best go to:
the UP1.4 AI's ladder: http://aok.heavengames.com/cgi-bin/forums/display.cgi?action=ct&f=28,40898,,30

UP1.5 AI's:
The Unknown by Offwo200: http://forums.aiscripters.com/download/file.php?id=4539
Subjugator by CheeseOnToast: http://forums.aiscripters.com/download/file.php?id=4604
Bruteforce by CheeseOnToast (discontinued, prefer Subjugator): http://forums.aiscripters.com/download/file.php?id=4558

download the AI's of your choice and extract their files into the game's AI subfolder.

 

[jojkov]

Thank you for the news, i didnt know about The Unknown and Subjucator, finally more AI's on WK. Btw, some days ago MadCadder founded a way to play with Barbarian and other old good AI's on WK.

It is possible to play Barbarian with WK single player. You will need to edit the WK.xml file in order to do this. It is usually located in: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Games\Age of Empires II\Games and looks like this when you open it in notepad:


In order for Barbarian to function, you can change the civ names in the XML to a name that Barbarian is programmed for:


Barbarian doesn't take advantage of the expansion content, but I've found it's still better than Bruteforce. I don't know if it works this way with multiplayer though.

Multiplayer works, it is enough for host to have those AI files changed.

Incidentally, for single player, if you want a certain AI (ex Barbarian) to be the default, you can go and find the ai files: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Games\Age of Empires II\Games\WololoKingdoms\Script.ai

Rename Barbarian.ai and Barbarian.per to RandomGame.ai and RandomGame.per respectively.

This way you won't have to switch the computer slot to Barbarian for every single time you want to play, and in-game, the computer will have a name like "Richard the Lionhearted" instead of "Barbarian".

 

[Brainless]

Incidentally, for single player, if you want a certain AI (ex Barbarian) to be the default, you can go and find the ai files: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Games\Age of Empires II\Games\WololoKingdoms\Script.ai

Rename Barbarian.ai and Barbarian.per to RandomGame.ai and RandomGame.per respectively.

This way you won't have to switch the computer slot to Barbarian for every single time you want to play, and in-game, the computer will have a name like "Richard the Lionhearted" instead of "Barbarian".

this one is good. If you would replace it with the random AI selector i have you can end up with a very variable (unpredictable) AI opponent.
I just still dont know if the random AI script is free for me to share. I still want to ask scripter

 

[jojkov]

this one is good. If you would replace it with the random AI selector i have you can end up with a very variable (unpredictable) AI opponent.
I just still dont know if the random AI script is free for me to share. I still want to ask scripter

I always choose "random" opponents from all AI's i have. It would be cool, if it choose one automatically without me knowing. Let me know, after you ask.

 

[kingthegreatone]

my dear readers and fellow community members,
a new chapter has been opened in the world of AOC AI!

thanks to scripters like.. scripter, TheMax, CheeseOnToast, Promiskuitiv, Aleph and more (sorry for not knowing you all) we are entering a new era of challenging AI's.

Until recently, Barbarian was the benchmark. Promi was 2nd best, but only as a variation to Barbarian. After playing 100's of games versus those AI's, we know what they do. Yes, they have many different strategies, but in the end they were limited by the programming options of the game, and it became in some way predictable. We know how to cripple it, how to fence off its attacks, to break its economy.

But now there are new things!

1 - First of all, Userpatch 1.5. No introduction needed.

2 - Secondly, a new generation of AI's that are written for UP1.5 . And these are good! Not the monsters in eco like barbarian still is, but tactical, with map-awareness. They have new ways to hurt you, or complicate your game. For now, my friend and i have used The_Unknown and Subjugator. They are still work in progress, but main bugs are mostly written out by now. They show interesting things i have never seen done by an AI before. Housewalling, microing units, forward builds, etc.
The best thing yet is their diversity. Like in human team games, you are not all clones. By mixing the AI's: Barbarian, Promi, The_Unknown, Subjugator there is really an AI-dreamteam running. It is maybe less hard then 4xbarbarian, but it is much less predictable. This mean as a human counterplayer you have to watch them carefully and adept. This is good, because, with all respect, barbarian became something like a punching bag. (a large one that could swing back at us, but still predictable)

3 - Random AI selector. This thing makes it complete. It selects AI for us, hiding their ID behind generic names like Alaric the Hun. The team composition is random, with a set chance for every AI to appear. Now we don't know what we are fighting against, and really have no idea at start what it is going to do. Sometimes there is a weak player, or a very strong one. We dont know which one at start, so we dont know who to target first.

We just played 2 games with this setup working perfectly. I add the recs below.
I really hope these AI's develop more and more, having new tricks and surprises. Also it is good to have 3 or more that are challenging like this. I still like to mention and add Illuminati and The Horde, they can be tough as well. If they would be evolved into the UP1.5 level, that would be great.

How and when can I play with these ai and options?

anytime you want in singleplayer mode. Or invite a friend for an IP game ( host the game via AOC starting menu to select > multiplayer > internet TCP/IP connection for directplay, and give you friend your IP number to connect )

for the AI's you best go to:
the UP1.4 AI's ladder: http://aok.heavengames.com/cgi-bin/forums/display.cgi?action=ct&f=28,40898,,30

UP1.5 AI's:
The Unknown by Offwo200: http://forums.aiscripters.com/download/file.php?id=4539
Subjugator by CheeseOnToast: http://forums.aiscripters.com/download/file.php?id=4604
Bruteforce by CheeseOnToast (discontinued, prefer Subjugator): http://forums.aiscripters.com/download/file.php?id=4558

download the AI's of your choice and extract their files into the game's AI subfolder.

These links are not working.
Please can you tell me how to download "Subjugator" and "The Unknown".
Also, do confirm if they can play "with" WK civs.

 

[Brainless]

These links are not working.
Please can you tell me how to download "Subjugator" and "The Unknown".
Also, do confirm if they can play "with" WK civs.

i can not confirm this myself. If you make an account at forums.aiscripters.com you can read about them yourself. Also, you can download the latest versions of them. Or you could just wait until they are published (and tested) officially.

 

[Brainless]

one thing... why is this thread under AOC HD? None of my games was played in HD, i never played HD.

my latest games were played in AOC UP1.5
The latest is this one: a 4v4 humans and Barbarians, pop 400 open map, Mad random package. It was a tough fight, as goths i did not have a counter to all they (Franks and Britons) threw at me. The only thing i could do was outflood them, until the other flank lost and they ran out of wood.

EDIT: it is great the game stats and mappreview for UP1.5 are fixed now!

 

[Brainless]

We have played versus a variety of AI's lately. Tribal Warrior was one of the better ones. Here is one game, which was fun, but does not do it right actually...

 

[Brainless]

a few more games with Tribal Warriors. You can find the latest version of this AI at forums.aiscripters.com

 

[Brainless]

some more AI games...

by the way, this is not Wololo Kingsdoms, but regular AOC with userpatch 1.5.
I do my best to always use the latest userpatch and the latest AI versions. So the date of the rec could tell you which version has been played.

 

[scripter64]

Thanks for the recs, brainless!

 

[Brainless]

a few more 3v5 games
those are the games we won, i also have games we lost... i didnt find them very pleasing to watch however

 

[Turbo_t11]

a few more 3v5 games
those are the games we won, i also have games we lost... i didnt find them very pleasing to watch however

A lot of sent/receive tributes with AI Barbie..., I wonder if they funnel resources to more heavily attacked civ and the n switch up when recovering.

I checked out a few of the Viper/Daut ones on YT.

I don't think they have won a game yet...?

Back in the day when I was a young whipper snapper, I could beat old hardest AI 1 V 3 but it's nothing like Barbarian.

T

 

[Brainless]

A lot of sent/receive tributes with AI Barbie..., I wonder if they funnel resources to more heavily attacked civ and the n switch up when recovering.

I checked out a few of the Viper/Daut ones on YT.

I don't think they have won a game yet...?

Back in the day when I was a young whipper snapper, I could beat old hardest AI 1 V 3 but it's nothing like Barbarian.

T

these AI's tend to send tributes if they have resources they dont need. Even if the receiver doesnt need it either, they just send. This is usually late-game and post-imp. That is something different as slinging as a strategy, which happens early game, which they also do in an all-AI team. and 3rd, there is the recovery-sling, they sling an injured player if he asks for resources.

Indeed,these AI's are nothing like the game's own AI. Years of research and development by community scripters has been put into them. Not only the AI's themselves have developed, also the programming possiblities the game offers has improved significantly since Userpatch 1.4 and 1.5. Most AI's are still being rewritten to take full advantage of UP1.5 possibilities. I keep a close watch on what is being released, because, you aint seen nothing yet. I expect much harders AI's to be released.

 

[Turbo_t11]

these AI's tend to send tributes if they have resources they dont need. Even if the receiver doesnt need it either, they just send. This is usually late-game and post-imp. That is something different as slinging as a strategy, which happens early game, which they also do in an all-AI team. and 3rd, there is the recovery-sling, they sling an injured player if he asks for resources.

Indeed,these AI's are nothing like the game's own AI. Years of research and development by community scripters has been put into them. Not only the AI's themselves have developed, also the programming possiblities the game offers has improved significantly since Userpatch 1.4 and 1.5. Most AI's are still being rewritten to take full advantage of UP1.5 possibilities. I keep a close watch on what is being released, because, you aint seen nothing yet. I expect much harders AI's to be released.

Yep..., agreed. On one of the Viper/Daut attempts, AI even puts weakest skirm at the back and send fresh ones forward.

They do (or used to) do some dumb things too though, like 6 vills on berries then when a sheep or boar comes in they all walk all the way across their base, harvest boar then walk all the way back to berries wasting production time.

Crazy stuff.

T

 

[Brainless]

here some hard candy

AI is either:
20%"Promi"
20%"TRiBaL_Warrior"
18%"Barbarian 2.17"
12%"Barbarian 2.18beta"
10%"Illuminati"
10%"The Horde"
10%"The_Unknown2"
all player names generic or Brainless-style

 

[scripter64]

Thanks, Brainless

 

[Brainless]

Thanks, Brainless

as you might notice, i modified some of the AI's (Promi,Tribal) so that they hide their AI marker. They appear instead as "****less"(nameless,homeless,careless etc) It might be hard to know which one is which, what is exactly the intention of this. But they still give away themselves in their chat. (i edited their chat too, btw)

If this works well for us, i would like to create a "blended random hard-AI pack" with your selector, if other players are interested in such a thing. All with credits the the scripters off course.

 

[guitarizt]

What are your thoughts on playing the ai's for improvement vs human players?