As we wrote in previous news article, we has some progress with AI Enhancement Tool programming. We decided to put the tool to test.
To do that we chose one of the maps selected for World Championship 2016 Heroes 4 online - W16 El Dorado. We let the AI play this map twice for two months. First playthrough was AS IS (AI-1), and second playthrough AI was aided by scripts from AI Enhancement Tool (AI-2).
H4MG AI panel settings:
Then we compared the results, and want to share them with you.
AI starting area:
AI without scripts did not claim resources just next to it's hometown even after two months:
The best AI-1 hero after 2 months development is a level 6 Paladin with 1 artifact.
Compare it with AI-2. It is a level 17 General with 9 artifacts:
Of course he is not using them efficiently, and his army is not the best in his own kingdom, and his skill selection could be better, but he will put a much better fight than AI-1. It may seem that all the differecne between lvl 6 and lvl 17 can be explained by initial 9 extra levels for AI-2. But number of experience points between lvl 1 - lvl 6 and lvl 10 - lvl 17 is not nearly equal.
Thieves Guild for AI-1. Green army had a single level 1 hero with 7 black dragons as a point of reference for the strength of the other AI armies:
Thieves Guild for AI-2. Same Green army here. For some reason Blue AI fares much better than before:
Kingdom Overview with armies and income for AI-1:
Same screen for AI-2. Much stronger economy, bigger reserves and more numerous armies:
Conclusion.
We have to remember that this is not really a better AI, it is just helping poor AI in hope that it can use our help and fare better. And this is the result of a single experiment. Despite the fact, that AI did not choose the best possible skills, did not use all the artifacts, did not raise an army nearly strong enough to defeat human player, was not aggressive enough to start an offensive, etc, etc, we can safely conclude that AI did not waste the help it was offered. It became stronger, which means that the whole idea behind AI Enhancement Tool is viable, and players can get more fun playing against AI on existing maps.
If you have ideas that can help develop better scripts for AI, we want to see them in comments below this article or in AI Enhancement Tool forum thread.
