LOUD AI & Game Speed Improvement Project

[Saxxon]

Sprouto, I did notice that the LOUD AI does build a consistent base pattern. That said, it doesn't shield up very early which unless you are fighting for your life makes the AI actually fairly vulnerable.

In part that likely ties into resource demands, as for instance I have noted the cost for a T3 Pgen is 3+ times what it is in the stock game, plus the additional upgrade level added in. It does alter my progression, but for the AI it seems to forgoe shields for much longer (since it is sending waves of units at you fairly quickly), something which vs 1 or 2 AIs means I can easily dispatch at least one without much challenge (simply a decent army of T2 units will decimate that base).

Since the AI relies on a pattern base, I suppose its not placing structures adaptively to use the closer in MEX points of standard maps. In actuality it would be advantageous if it was able to, because of MEX adjacency you can reduce unit cost and thus effectively increase mass income by placing factories adjacent to the MEX and augmenting with MassFabs.

[Sprouto]

You're quite correct - his decision to begin shielding is based upon his energy output - and in stages - his interior shields - then his outer layer - then his perimeter shields. The consistent base design is of considerable value in minimizing unit traffic collisions and insuring that his platoon formations can move away far more cleanly than the previous 'blob' development of the stock and Sorian AI. This also has a marked impact on game performance in the middle and late game. It's also the reason why we have specifically marked maps for that insure that start areas are relatively open.

You're also correct - this vulnerability is partly intentional. In much older versions of LOUD, his defensive development was fairly orderly - and didn't make any allowance for relative threats to himself. No matter if you turtled, or didn't, LOUD spent the same amount of effort on his base defense, which, when completed, are formidable. The trade off however, was a lack of units with which to wage war. These days, LOUD is more dynamic. If he's generating good intel on you and you're not making a realistic threat on him - then his defensive development will be delayed - and that extra resource will be put into additional expansion. At all times - the goal of his economy is to keep all of his factories and engineers running - flat out. The addition of more engineers and more factories and expansion points are all controlled by his economic development - and his unit cap. It's all controlled by various trigger values which can be simply revised if we see that he's too cautious or too open - but as you can see - it's a balancing act.

There are some placement choices in his base layout that do indeed take advantage of adjacency bonuses - but most of them are power oriented. This is done mainly because, as you've noted, the power curve in LOUD is considerably steeper than in vanilla FA. Likewise, he takes greater advantage of energy storage in this layout, not only for the additional output on his generators, but for shield size, strength and regen adjacency bonuses that LOUD has. If you take advantage of the included Integrated Storage mod, which removes mass and energy storage units from the game, in favor of including them as built-in enhancements for the extractors, fabs, generators and shields, you'll see a very clean and orderly LOUD base, which is capable of simultaneously getting both mass & energy adjacency where it previously wasn't possible.

The overall base layout is mutable - and open to change. In fact - it can be customized by faction if desired and by function - having different layouts for different functions and conditions (ie. - the base layout on smaller maps, low unit cap games or situations where a starting enemy is within a certain range are all different from each other).

[Saxxon]

I did identify one of the problems on the map issue with MEX going into water, some are on the shoreline which even for waterborne structures won't be buildable. Ones that are fully in water can be built.

[Patro4591]

Hi,
Why AI in my own team can reclaim my own defences, low tech power generators in late game ?
It's so annoying as i need to pay attention if my allied units don't destroy my defence line

[Sprouto]

LOUD will reclaim any T1 or T2 defenses and power in his base positions as needed once he's fully transitioned into T3. He only does this at his own base positions. If you try to build in his base and DP positions this is normal.

[Patro4591]

Okay, but i created line of defence near my 2nd base and after about an hour, bot created somewhere near it's base.
I didn't build it when any it's buildings were nearby. I built first, it came, built itself and started to reclaim my defences :/

[Sprouto]

If you can get me a screenshot of the situation I'll examine it and see if we can understand what's going on better.

[ColdScout]

Greetings ColdScout !

Thanks for your comments. The first thing I should ask is have you checked for updates recently ? The artillery issues were dealt with about 2 weeks ago and they should all be good in the current version. Let the updater check for updates as we update almost every week.

As for the experimental attacks, those too had been under review and you should be seeing attacks larger than that with his experimentals. Essentially - if he has more than 8 experimentals in a base - it should trigger what we like to call 'the kitchen sink' attack. He'll take all the experimentals, and a good deal of whatever else he has at that base - and make a play. If he's not doing that, then we do have a problem and I would dearly love a replay so I can debug it - let me know.

[...]

Thanks to everyone who is participating.

Thanks for your reply. The issues were indeed resolved after an update. If only commercial companies would resolve issues as fast as you do...

Another issue would be LOUD AI keeping large numbers of mostly T3 bots/tanks in his base. This mostly happens when the AI's base has only one way in or out. Although after a while (hours ) it happens in all situations. Would it be possible to 'kitchen sink' these aswell? Having multiple AI's keeping 300-500 bots in their base slows things down a lot.
To be clear: the AI will still make large armies outside his base, that works fine, its the units getting stuck inside his base that need to leave.

Thanks again for all the work you've done sofar.

[Sprouto]

Yes - traffic issues are, and will continue to be, a significant problem for the game as a whole. Recently, we've started looking more closely into just the situations you've described.

We're convinced that while it is sometimes traffic issues that get him jammed up in his bases, we're presently convinced that there are two other triggers that are holding LOUD back right now;

- the LandRatio is a value that LOUD uses to tell if his land forces are doing well or not - and this value controls LOUD in that it will switch him from defense mode to attack mode. Sometimes he has lots of units, but his assessment of you tells him that you are many times more powerful than he is - and his attack platoons get inhibited in favor of mass raiding and defensive work. This is a tuning issue. Regardless - we have a 'kitchen sink' platoon that will simply do a 'Hail Mary' if there are more than a certain number of units in any given base. Unfortunately, that platoon (120+ units) can have real problems forming up (traffic issue).

- Unit Composition is the second most common problem. Because we use a lot of custom platoon compositions in LOUD, if the AI doesn't produce the units necessary to 'fill' the platoon - he won't get underway. That's a tuning issue that we spend a lot of time with, but it takes a lot of observation from yourselves, and ourselves. Keep reporting these situations as that's how we get them solved. For example, just this weekend, we're finding some considerable corrections for his Amphibious construction and platoon composition - you'll see some of this work in this weeks coming update - that should make him markedly more effective when faced with a water based problem.

[ColdScout]

Interesting, any chance this LandRatio value could become a game option?

I do recognize this 'assessment' when I'm too powerfull. It usually happens if you backup your short/mid-range defense (T3 PD + fatboy) with long range defense, specifically the Rapid Fire Artillery (mgubA31, mgubC31, mgubU31, mgubS31).
I haven't tested this with the current update, but before the 'kitchen sink' the AI would just build up experimentals until it felt strong enough to break this. That usually meant 20+ Colossus. (The assessment is correct though, a T3 army wont survive such a defense)
The next change, in my opinion, would be to give the AI the option to take it to the next level: if a 200 T3 bot army isn't powerfull enough, dump it and switch to full experimentals and/or arty and/or nukes. The same way a human player would do. To make this work the AI also has to work on getting enough income and buildpower. Maybe build ras-coms and/or Paragons as aggressive as any other unit? Because this is where the AI eventually loses: scalability and focus of economy, buildpower and attack force. Setting higher cheat values for the AI doesn't really do it.
The Sorian AI does this in a limited way, it keeps building nukes. Let it run long enough and there will be 40+ nukes per AI.
I know the Sorian AI just builds them around his base, turning it into a mess and making pathfinding a nightmare. That should be done differently.
Getting it to work elegantly with LOUD AI is probably difficult, but if you succeed it will become the scariest AI ever.

In my experience the amphibious armies are allright in my games. They only get stuck in the very late game (6+ hours).
Good to hear you're looking into it though.

I Just updated again and got a 'failed to download'.
The total download was 57 files. There's one file that failed.
Retried a couple of times as suggested. No luck.

Here's the log of a retry:

20-3-2018 00:50:10 - --'Check for Update(s)' selected
20-3-2018 00:50:11 - Connected to primary FTP server
20-3-2018 00:50:14 - Downloaded fciv.exe, Size = 84784 bytes
20-3-2018 00:50:16 - Downloaded fciv_Check_Auto.bat, Size = 54 bytes
20-3-2018 00:50:18 - Downloaded fciv_Main.xml, Size = 168871 bytes
20-3-2018 00:50:34 - Comparison of local and remote files complete
20-3-2018 00:50:34 - Number of game update files to download: 1
20-3-2018 00:50:35 - Connected to primary FTP server
20-3-2018 00:50:36 - doc/info.txt doesn't exist on FTP server, download aborted
20-3-2018 00:50:36 - Connected to primary FTP server
20-3-2018 00:50:37 - doc/info.txt doesn't exist on FTP server, download aborted
20-3-2018 00:50:38 - GameOptions check/update complete
20-3-2018 00:50:39 - Connected to primary FTP server
20-3-2018 00:50:41 - 'gamedata' directory cleanup complete
20-3-2018 00:50:42 - Connected to primary FTP server
20-3-2018 00:50:48 - 'maps' directory cleanup complete
20-3-2018 00:50:48 - 0 required update(s) successfully downloaded
20-3-2018 00:50:48 - 1 required update(s) failed to be downloaded
20-3-2018 00:50:48 - 0 other error(s) occurred during this update
20-3-2018 00:50:48 - Rerun the updater to complete the failed updates
20-3-2018 00:50:50 - 'root' directory cleanup complete
20-3-2018 00:50:50 - --'Check for Update(s)' completed

As allways, thanks for everything you've done sofar.