This is an improved version of MidasLeGrand. He cant win a DM, did never try a regicide match, but can be very annoying at all water maps with his navy except highland with a river. Works also on land maps with all sizes, all pop limits (at least I hope so).
Please give me comments about his behaviour.
This new AI is a big improvement over the first Midas AI; I like the unit mixes much better. This is the best non-cheating water AI I have seen so far.
Test results:
Small (3-player) Arabian random map, 75 pop, hard difficulty, Standard resources, Dark Age start, conquest
MidasNT (Viking) vs Slak Bot (Viking)
Result: Slak Bot wins in 1:05:44
Feudal Age: 15:40, Castle Age: 23:56, Imperial Age: never
99 kills vs 157 kills
MidasNT (Franks) vs BingAI v2.3 (Franks)
Result: BingAI v2.3 wins in 1:05:49
Feudal Age: 15:20, Castle Age: 23:16, Imperial Age: never
20 kills vs 161 kills
MidasNT (Turks) vs Blackwind Religion (Turks)
Result: Blackwind Religion wins in 1:43:52
Feudal Age: 15:11, Castle Age: 23:10, Imperial Age: never
200 kills vs 259 kills
Small (3-player) Islands random map:
MidasNT (Celts) vs Standard AI (Celts)
Result: MidasNT wins in 1:04:37
Feudal Age: 13:15, Castle Age: 20:05, Imperial Age: 46:53
100 kills vs 30 kills
MidasNT (Japanese) vs Slak Bot (Japanese)
Result: draw after 8:06:27 but MidasNT ruled the seas
Feudal Age: 13:31, Castle Age: 20:41, Imperial Age: 46:34
617 kills vs 530 kills
(The AIs got stuck in this game which seems to happen often on island maps. MidasNT had a huge navy, but eventually its villagers stopped working which caused its resource stockpiles to drop to zero. Slak Bot was driven off the seas and ended up with almost its entire pop limit in soldiers that marched back and forth from one end of its island to the other.)
My suggestion would be to give more priority to military upgrades before building large numbers of military units. While human players can win by using intelligent strategy and tactics, AIs must fight grinding battles of attrition. Large numbers of unupgraded troops are thrown into stupid attacks by the tactical AI where they are usually chopped to bits, wasting the resources spent on them. Upgrading before producing the units provides the best protection for the resources invested before the tactical AI can put them in danger.
popyo
Posted on 05/10/00 @ 02:00 AM
Bigman, keep up the ai tests. Great way to rate ai's.
Dan Cieslak
Posted on 05/10/00 @ 03:00 AM
Great job, Midas!
It's nice to have another non-standard watery-map playing AI to test against. Yours definately handles the Navy earlier and therefore better.