Replying to Skirmish AI 2.0 Beta 4 - Post Comments In Thread!

The monolith is a bit buggy. I'm aware of three problems with it which seem to be hardcoded bugs:

First is the monolith not getting repaired by the builders for some time although they've nothing else to do. This can take minutes, and eventually they 'get' it suddently and repair it.

Second is the monolith not getting upgraded to restored status for some unknown reason. The buildcontroller tryies to build him, but the buildplan fails since there's no valid build channel found. What often helps is when the other two monoliths are upgraded. One of those always seems to work.

Third is the monolith not getting upgraded to tier3 because he 'thinks' that tier 2 addon was not researched. But tier2 was already researched and the monolith on the field a 100% tier 2 upgraded monolith.


And speaking of necrons:
The lord has a tendency to get stuck even on open field when ressurected. Although I've also seen ork gretchin squads getting stuck, so that's not a specific necron problem.

Oh.. thats completely different.

The monolith DIED as in it was returned to tier3 status by getting too damaged, so it didn't approach its base, it was teleported back via the emergency mechanic (NOT the AI's mechanic, what happens when you "kill" a restored monolith).

Hmmm.. the Scarab Builders should have repaired that Monolith as it approached its base. Odd..

sup battle scarabs

Yup, they tried to get into the SM base. The necrons also had a monolith that needed repairs but they just ignored it.

Yeah, they're completely ignoring the damaged monolith that came back when it was damaged in restored mode.

edit -

To clearify, the mono was "killed" by the SM. It was stunlocked by terminators and forced to do its 20% emergency teleport thing, putting a tier3 monolith with 20% of its life back in the necron's base. After that happened, all of their workers suicided the SM base. They rebuilt the workers, but don't seem to notice that monolith. Additionally, they aren't upgrading the other two they have to a restored monolith. They do repair other stuff. They also do have a 20/20 16/20 army in their base waiting for action.

I have a fairly good feeling the bugs with the teleporting are relic issues as I have experienced them in human vs human games without the AI mod.

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Well, I have only experienced the disappearing Monolith or Monolith teleporting bugs with an AI present, but in my case, it was the human player who was experiencing the bug.

Anyway, you are right, it's probably a Relic hardcoded bug that Arkhan and Larkin can't touch, but every once in awhile, these guys surprise me and find a workable solution while they are in there tweaking the AI. Sometimes they fix something in the AI and it seems to magically carry over into other things as well -- some kind of global variable thing that they clean up or stabilize, most likely. It's happened before with other things, from what I remember, but obviously not if the whole thing is hardcoded and locked in stone by Relic.

Wouldn't surprise me if Thud were to write, "we can't do that, because it's a Relic bug," and it wouldn't surprise me if one day Arkhan writes, "I found what was wrong with the nearly damaged teleporting Restored Monoliths, and I fixed it, for the AI at least." I have seen it go both ways.

Well I know the monoliths have nothing to do with the AI, since I was experiencing this bug before the DC beta even got in my hands.

Try a different faction on that spot where the Orks didn't build properly. I find that highly suspect. See if that other faction on that spot does the same: not tech/build correctly until you attack. Somethings not right: I tried 3 times and all AIs preformed beautifully.

I would HIGHLY recommend turning off FogOfWar and simply see what those factions are up to.

I did reverse the starting location Thudo. I haven't posted the replay so you didn't know. But yes I did.

In that match from Beta 4, the Necrons are at the starting location where the Orks were during the Beta 3 match. And the Orks are placed, in Beta 4, where the Chaos were in Beta 3 (and the Chaos played properly).

As Arkhan said, there was indeed a bug, so it must had nothing to do with the actual starting location.

It would seem the monolith's auto-teleport near death is fairly buggy. In one game vs a human I was able to "have" 4 monoliths at a time.

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Buggy indeed!

In one of my games, plain vanilla, my Restored Monolith was about to die and teleported back to base. It got there all right, but one of my other monoliths just completely disappeared from the map. Pressing the Home key, repeatedly, showed me that I only had two monoliths after the teleport whereas I had three before.

There was just that emtpy square thing there where the disappeared monolith used to be, and it wouldn't allow me to build another monolith, so I was stuck for the rest of the game with access to only two monoliths and no way to upgrade to a Restored Monolith. I was all locked out.

Buggy indeed!

I would have lost that game if it weren't for the Necron Lord's Resurrection ability, and the ability to teleport Flayed One's directly to the Enemy's Stronghold and resurrect them on site with the Necron Lord.

This bug with a teleporting nearly dead Restored Monolith can go both ways. Can give you and extra monolith or can take away one of your three.

Sometimes when Arkhan or Larkin are in there looking at the code, they actually find a way to change or fix these bugs, if they are AI related. Here's crossing our fingers!!

Hey guys, is it possible to make build orders specificialy for the Insane difficulty? I might try my hand at modifying some of the existing build orders to make something for my large insane games, but it will be moot point if it can't be limited to that difficulty.