Spring RTS Engine

There's been alot of discussion recently as to which AI is the most competitive and how to make an AI stronger to play against.

Personally I believe that single player is very important for the advancement of spring, many people like to play single player, some even to ally with their friends against an AI or two.

If we accept that an AI is going to cheat in order to provide a comptetive game in spring perhaps its time to consider what makes an AI fun to play against in the first place?

For me the AI should push you as early as possible, it should be a challenge to expand and take territory to build up an army. From there probably the most fun is having to build up a massive army or uber untis to storm a well defended AI base.

If we know what makes an AI fun to play against and accept that it'll just cheat then perhaps we can produce a simple cheating AI that will satisfy new players thirst for single player? Perhaps we don't need an uber AI at all, just an AI that cheats in the right ways to give a good game and one that can be made stronger / weaker easily by a novice user...

It differs per player.

Some want an AI that leaves them alone for 30
minutes while building a huge base protected by
seven billion Annihilators so they can blow stuff
up with a vengeance, rather than being kept on
their toes and harassed constantly (insofar as
AI's are able to do so).

Others want an AI that has them fight for every
inch of terrority from start to finish, sometimes
winning and sometimes losing but never letting
the balance tip in either direction, so they don't
get frustrated playing one-sided games all the
time.

Still others want an AI that plays as well as or
better than the top 1v1 human players out there,
with or without cheating, no ifs or buts, just one
that lives up to the 'I' in AI as much as possible
(or uses plain brute force to compensate), and
don't care if they lose often. (AI's like this are sadly
hard to come by. )

I guess the main point is there's no one-size
fits-all AI, and fun is in the eye of the beholder
(of course, maintaining KAI means I lean toward
competitiveness as the primary criterium, but
YMMV ).

Kloot wrote:
Others want an AI that has them fight for every
inch of terrority from start to finish, sometimes
winning and sometimes losing but never letting
the balance tip in either direction, so they don't
get frustrated playing one-sided games all the
time.

Still others want an AI that plays as well as or
better than the top 1v1 human players out there,
with or without cheating, no ifs or buts, just one
that lives up to the 'I' in AI as much as possible
(or uses plain brute force to compensate), and
don't care if they lose often. (AI's like this are sadly
hard to come by. )

These 2 traits are what I like in an AI. I like fighting for my meals

I think an unpredictable AI that reacts to you rather than blindly playing and shows some vestiges of intelligence is best.

I noticed that when i or another AI dev added in something small that affected second to second micromanagement a little just to make the units seem a little smarter it had a big impact on how the AI was viewed. My dgunning routines earned me quite a lot of kudos for a while, despite them usually only affecting a single unit in the game, and it made a world of difference.