Home » SIRTECH CLASSICS » Jagged Alliance: Unfinished Business » Vanilla Modding » Finite Enemy Resources
| Finite Enemy Resources[message #101183]
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Tue, 13 April 2004 04:03 
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 Tyco |
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Messages:188
Registered:September 2001
Location: Be'er Sheva, Israel |
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Just how much soldiers does that royal-pain-in-the-arse has? (I can never spell her name.  ). Im sure some of you on a really good game can top 1,000 total kills, not including enemy losses inflicted by freindly militia. The point is, in such a small country, how many man can... er, she stand to loose?
Do you soppose the AI could be allocated a finite amount of "man power" per game, depening on difficulty level? Instead of endlessly generating patrols, the AI would have a fixed amount of soldiers along with a certain value for "regenration" affected by control (or lack) of mines. The AI could then be given an operpowering desire to "live", there-by each AI soldier that survives a fight can fight another day. If the AI losses all its mines it will loose its ability to launch new patrols and would eventually be left without any soldiers, aside from those that are in a given sector.
Control of airports and mines dictates just how much new soldiers the AI gets a day. It will need to prioretize between holding junctions, patroling the country or taking back mines.
I guess this all depends if the AI can be reporgramed to control finite resources.
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Staff Sergeant
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| Re: Finite Enemy Resources[message #101185]
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Tue, 13 April 2004 10:26 
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| bobpa |
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Messages:1
Registered:April 2004 |
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Actually, HARD_QUEENS_POOL_OF_TROOPS, etc is only the size of the reinforcement pool. The actual number of enemy soldiers available at the start of the game on EXPERT is about 1560 or so (number varies for each game), which includes garrison groups, patrol groups and reinforcments available for those groups. If the reinforcement pool goes to 0, the queen can train more in batches of 30.
As for whether the AI can be programmed to control finite as opposed to unlimited resources, it certainly can. The question is: can this be done and still provide good gameplay. Anyone contemplating trying this should first read the AI programmer's comments at the top of STRATEGIC AI.C as to why he thought that basing the Queen's resources on mine income might be a bad idea as far as providing good gameplay.
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Civilian
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| Re: Finite Enemy Resources[message #101188]
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Tue, 13 April 2004 20:27
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| Yukinio |
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Messages:11
Registered:April 2004
Location: Helsinki, Finland |
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Quote:Originally posted by Tyco:
Wow-wee! They really DID thaught of everything, those wonderful programmers.
So what are the programmers comments on the STRATEGIC AI.C? Well, its better to read them from the actual file
but here is the start:
/*
STRATEGIC AI -- UNDERLYING PHILOSOPHY
The most fundamental part of the strategic AI which takes from reality and gives to gameplay is the manner
the queen attempts to take her towns back. Finances and owning mines are the most important way
to win the game. As the player takes more mines over, the queen will focus more on quality and defense. In
the beginning of the game, she will focus more on offense than mid-game or end-game.
REALITY
The queen owns the entire country, and the player starts the game with a small lump of cash, enough to hire
some mercenaries for about a week. In that week, the queen may not notice what is going on, and the player
would believably take over one of the towns before she could feasibly react. As soon as her military was
aware of the situation, she would likely proceed to send 300-400 troops to annihilate the opposition, and the
game would be over relatively quickly. If the player was a prodigy, and managed to hold the town against such
a major assault, he would probably lose in the long run being forced into a defensive position and running out
of money quickly while the queen could continue to pump out the troops. On the other hand, if the player
somehow managed to take over most of the mines, he would be able to casually walk over the queen eventually
just from the sheer income allowing him to purchase several of the best mercs. That would have the effect of
making the game impossibly difficult in the beginning of the game, and a joke at the end (this is very much
like Master Of Orion II on the more difficult settings )
GAMEPLAY
Because we want the game to be like a normal game and make it fun, we need to make the game easy in the
beginning and harder at the end. In order to accomplish this, I feel that pure income shouldn't be the factor
for the queen, because she would likely crucify a would-be leader in his early days. So, in the beginning of
the game, the forces would already be situated with the majority of forces being the administrators in the towns,
and army troops and elites in the more important sectors. Restricting the queen's offensive
abilities using a distance penalty would mean that the furthest sectors from the queen's palace would be
much easier to defend because she would only be allowed to send x number of troops. As you get closer to the
queen, she would be allowed to send larger forces to attack those towns in question. Also, to further
increase the games difficulty as the campaign progresses in the player's favor, we could also increase the
quality of the queen's troops based purely on the peek progress percentage. This is calculated using a formula
that determines how well the player is doing by combining loyalty of towns owned, income generated, etc. So,
in the beginning of the game, the quality is at the worst, but once you capture your first mines/towns, it
permanently increase the queen's quality rating, effectively bumping up the stakes. By the time you capture
four or five mines, the queen is going to focus more (but not completely) on quality defense as she prepares
for your final onslaught. This quality rating will augment the experience level, equipment rating, and/or
attribute ratings of the queen's troops. I would maintain a table of these enhancements based on the current
quality rating hooking into the difficulty all along.
//EXPLANATION OF THE WEIGHT SYSTEM:
The strategic AI has two types of groups: garrisons and patrol groups. Each of these groups contain
information of it's needs, mainly desired population. If the current population is greater than the
desired population, and the group will get a negative weight assigned to it, which means that it is willing
to give up troops to areas that need them more. On the other hand, if a group has less than the desired population,
then the weight will be positive, meaning they are requesting reinforcements.
The weight generated will range between -100 and +100. The calculated weight is modified by the priority
of the group. If the priority of the group is high, they
*/
//Modifies the number of troops the queen has at the beginning of the game on top
//of all of the garrison and patrol groups. Additionally, there are a total of
//16 sectors that are LEVEL 1, 2, or 3 garrison groups. The lower the level, the more
//troops stay in that sector, and the rest will also be used as a secondary pool when
//the primary pool runs dry. So basically, this number is only part of the equation.
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