Improving the AI in TripleA

[Panther]

In another thread, redrum, the “intelligence” behind the ‘Hard AI’ in TripleA, wrote

@redrum:

…
Glad the new Hard AI is giving you a challenge. I don’t read these forums much so if you have specific feedback on the Hard AI then I’d recommend posting over at the TripleA dev forums: triplea.sourceforge.net/mywiki/Forum

The naval priorities need some work still as the AI will often end up getting its ships stuck in various places and doesn’t always do a good job of defending its transports. I’m currently working on the air AI in order to minimize the number of times the AI leaves planes in undefended locations.

If you or anyone is interested in actually assisting with the AI development just let me know and I can give you an overview of how to get started.

Being interested in this subject, I asked him

@P@nther:

Welcome to the forum, redrum, and thanks a lot for your efforts to improve the AI in TripleA.  :-)

Can you please be a bit more specific on “assisting with the AI development”.
Do you need Java programming skills or do you need just testers?

I will open a new thread about this, as this important topic may get lost here…

So this is the new thread regarding this subject.

If anyone is interested in being a part of this, please comment here or on
triplea.sourceforge.net/mywiki/Forum

Thank you  :-)

[redrum]

@P@nther - Thanks for the warm welcome and for creating this thread.

@all - So to give some background, I decided to create a new AI for TripleA about a year ago mostly since the existing AIs were well… sort of… yeah…

Overall, it has been an interesting journey and I can confidently say that TripleA has a much more competitive AI today than it did a year ago. As P@nther mentioned, most of the AI development conversations are over on the TripleA dev forum and in particular this thread is the core AI development discussion that gives a good overview and documents the past year: tripleadev.1671093.n2.nabble.com/AI-Development-Discussion-tp7585227.html

Currently, I’m the only developer working on the AI and there are a handful of users that pretty consistently help test the new AI pre-releases that I put out. I’m looking for assistance in both development of the AI (need to at least know Java) and in testing in the AI (need to enjoy beating up the AI and posting about it). I tend to put out an AI pre-release about every 2 weeks or so that adds or enhances certain features of the AI which I spend some time testing myself but my testing is somewhat limited since it takes a considerable amount of time.

Now that the core AI phases have been written and its released in TripleA 1.8.0.5, I’m looking to improve things based on the community’s feedback. I recently held a poll on the TripleA dev forum asking what users would like to see improved in the Hard AI: tripleadev.1671093.n2.nabble.com/Hard-AI-Feedback-and-Priorities-tp7587499.html. This ended with the following priorities that I’m currently tackling:
1. Improve Performance on Large Maps (complete for now)
2. Value Exposed Units When Attacking (complete)
3. Improve Air Units Landing Safely (currently working on)
4. Scrambling
5. Valuing Objectives

So previously, I haven’t really been involved with the community here and I’m not sure what percentage use TripleA. I’ve mostly been on the TripleA dev forum and the TripleA war club forum (which is pretty dead now). The final thing I’m looking for is a few potential PBEM games so that I can better learn some of the popular TripleA maps. I’m personally a WW2V2 (revised) player and tend to do a lot of the AI testing on it because I actually understand the map/rules and know the optimal moves. I would like to get better at some of the other popular maps so that I can better train the AI on them as well.

If your interested in either assisting with AI development, AI testing, or playing me on some of the popular maps (PBEM) then please post here or on the TripleA dev forums.

[Panther]

Very interesting, redrum, thank you for your detailled explanation.

So the triplea.jar to be found in
http://sourceforge.net/projects/tripleamaps/files/TripleA/prerelease/
is already a further development of that one that is shipped with the 1.8.0.5 release?

Personally I would like to invest a bit of my rare spare time in supporting your project,
as I have always been very interested in the development of TripleA
(though having no Java programming skills).

I will PM you about that, soon.  :-)

[redrum]

@P@nther - Correct. The pre-release is essentially the AI from 1.8.0.5 plus all the improvements I’ve made since that release (development in Jan and Feb). It can be a little unstable since its less tested with the idea of trying to find any bugs and get feedback on the latest changes. Eventually, it will become the next version of the Hard AI in the next TripleA stable release (1.8.0.6, etc). Users pretty much download it and replace the JAR that comes with the 1.8.0.5 download (I’d recommend saving the JAR that comes with the 1.8.0.5 download in case you want to revert). Then most users play a few games against the Hard AI on their favorite map and post on why they were able to crush the AI :)

[Panther]

OK, first thing I will do is to replace the triplea.jar with the prerelease version!  :-)