Replying to Dawn Of Skirmish WA v2.00 AI for DC Mod is now LIVE!

Superb job guys, really well done. I played with this mod when it first started back with the original Dawn of War and was concerned, it seemed that for a time the project might slip into creating a "fun" and "unit zoo" AI, rather than one that dumped the shit and didn't fart around in its pursuit of victory. Hell, it used to lose to the standard AI, and while I don't see any way to pair them off against one another, I actually feel confident now that Skirmish mod would win almost, if not every, time. Thankfully the early aggression that was once lost is now back.

While there still a couple of units in the mix that I think are pretty useless (the imps for example seem to build one of every vehicle) it is a vast improvement. The AI is playing visibly better. I can take it a bit too easily in 1v1, and the SM AI doesn't make full use of skull probes and seems to struggle with stealth units early, but in a team game this thing is great

I tried out a 2v2 on Breach last night. Not the most subtle map, but I thought I'd give it a whirl. Despite pushing both enemy AIs right back into their bases, they held out, and then proceeded to annihilate my ally and I. It exposed the weakness of my long-term play nicely, I simply didn't balance my assault against keeping up in the tech war. I was SM, my ally was Orks and we fought the Tau and Chaos. In my campaign the Tau died mostly to the Necrons so I don't have much experience playing against them, and it showed as I failed miserably to counter them, having been suckered into a lot of missiles to beat Chaos only to lack the plasma I needed to waste the Tau.

I actually came back for a rematch later the same night, ended up with my SM and Eldar ally against SM and Eldar. Mirror, nice, now skill will show who is best. Yep, I lost again, despite being determined not to make the same mistakes as last time. We again, drove the enemy all the way back into their base as I played to my early game strengths, but I just couldn't quite bring the fire-power to bear to take down their HQ. My fault, should have brought a skull probe to deal with the stealthed rangers sooner, whose morale breaking meant my SMs weren't doing the damage they should. We withdrew and that was the last we saw of the enemy bases, and later we were crushed by an enemy who had managed their troop to tech ratio much better than me.

So, superb job lads. Look forward to further improvements.

So the problem me and the other guys are facing has nothing to do with your mod, but a bug in game manager that Relic still has to fix?

Exactly. The modding interface in DC was not really of any importance for Relic, except you consider a priority of zero as something important...

So the problem me and the other guys are facing has nothing to do with your mod, but a bug in game manager that Relic still has to fix?

Regarding the Eldar in DC AI Mod 2.0:

I too have noticed some things about them that I feel is worth mentioning.

First of all, I'm not completely sure but what if their problems are balance related. This past week I have played the AI Skirmish Mod with Aralez's UC Mod. The Ultimate Compstomp Mod or UC Mod is a rebalance mod that Aralez made, and it attempts to rebalance the AI Skirmish Mod. It was a first version for the AI Skirmish Mod, so some of the factions are still out of balance somewhat, including the Tier 4 Eldar.

Here's what I saw:

I did many tests with the 4 Eldar against the Forces of Evil (Necron, Chaos, Ork, Chaos) 4X4 teamplay on Kasyr Lutien WA, the KingForever.zip map that Aralez made. It's my favorite 8 player map for testing the AI mod and for testing the UC Rebalance Mod, as it was designed with the AI Skirmish Mod in mind.

On that map, the Eldar did just fine and even pressed forward into enemy territory with not much success. But, then when the Eldar got to Tier 4, they must have been running the numbers and decided that they were losing or were going to lose, and then they just stayed in their bases and waited for their demise, which came in short order. My interpretation: The Eldar lacked in Tier 4 what they needed to seal the deal. Not only couldn't their Tier 4 units continue to press the fight, but their Tier 4 units couldn't defend their bases, WHICH IS purely a balance issue in my opinion. I suggested to Aralez that he beef up the Eldar in Tier 4 hoping that they would be able to continue to fight in Tier 4.

So, that example and that KingForever map kind of told me that the UC Mod had made the Eldar fine in Tier 1, but that the Eldar still needed buffing or rebalance work in Tier 4.

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Here is one thing I did see that baffled me:

On one of Aralez's replays as 4 Eldar against 2 Chaos, 1 Ork, and 1 Necron on the 8P Hell Lutien map, using the UC Mod, Aralez took down one of the Chaos Bases Early with the help of an Eldar AI ally. But, then the remaining three factions started to catch up. Meanwhile, the Eldar built lots of nice secondary bases forward, and pumped out troops and tanks and had the enemy clearly outnumbered. But, the Eldar AI allies just sat there in their bases while Aralez finished taking the map pretty much by himself. The Eldar had so much extra to spare, but the Eldar AI would just bring the stuff forward halfway, and then completely retreat, and then rinse and repeat.

That example, I couldn't explain away purely in 'balance terms'. The Eldar outnumbered the enemy 10 to one, even had an Eldar Avatar, yet they refused to engage the enemy. Now, that looked fishy in terms of the AI.

Of course, I have found that sometimes strange AI behavior or unexpected balance results are a 'map thing.' In other words, the AI tends to repeat the same behavior on the same map. Also, with many of the maps, the position that a faction starts in determines how the AI is going to do, and sometimes determines who is going to win.

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Recently, I created a 1024X512 8P map that I call Lakebed Symmetry, in order to more accurately test the balance of the different factions in Teamplay and Annihilation only play. This map I designed to be open, played in a lakebed after all. There is no cover, so the map neither helps or hurts the AI by the position where the troops start. Each of the 8 AI factions have 7 strategic points, one relic, and two slag deposits all to itself. I haven't released the map yet, just been playing with it and trying to perfect it and making sure it still works and looks right in DC. The Lakebed Symmetry map is symmetrical in layout, meaning that each faction has access to the exact same number of nearby resources, near its starting point. It's a 4X4 layout that looks somewhat like Kaysr Lutien layout, but with lots of empty space in the 1024 middle.

On that 8P Lakebed Symmetry map, where there are plenty of resources, I did notice a few interesting things:

First, I noticed that if there is a single Eldar AI ally, the Eldar don't press all that hard to get their resources. I have noticed that too on lots of other maps. The IG AI ally is soon over there taking the Eldar's strategic points.

Second, this map only confirms what I have seen on many maps with the UC Mod, the Eldar AI often has the lowest score of all the Forces of Good when the game is over, and the Eldar AI is often one of the first AI eliminated, WHICH I TAKE to mean is a balance issue. But then again, I have been wrong before, because nothing is purely balance related and nothing is purely AI related. There's some overlap there when observing overall gameplay while watching replays.

Third, I noticed on this Lakebed Symmetry map, that the Necrons do rather poorly. This is the trend that I have noticed. The Necrons do really really well on low resource maps like Hell Lutien, but on a map like Lakebed Symmetry where there are plenty of resources, and no natural defenses to slow up the enemy, the Necrons are the first ones to go down. In other words, the 'balance' changes depending upon whether the map is low resource or high resource, especially where the Necrons are concerned. Which leads me to one of my old requests. It would be neat if there were some way for the AI to test the number of resources or test the size of the map, and then adjust accordingly. The Necron AI needs to do some things differently on a large open huge resource map -- the Necrons need to put more effort into preparing for the spam or the onslaught, whereas, the current Necron build programs seem to make the Necrons overpowered or unbeatable on the smaller lower resource maps. If the AI could somehow glean information from the map, and adjust its strategies accordingly, that might be the next step in AI evolution. The Necrons certainly have to do things differently on the Lakebed Symmetry map, because all of the AI just goes after them immediately, whereas, on something like KingForever or Hell Lutien, it isn't long until the Necron enemy AI is camping out inside your base.

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THE PLUG OR THE REQUEST:

Again, as has already been mentioned elsewhere by others, including Thudo, the map makes all the difference! All we can seem to do right now is create a generic AI and a generic balance that does approximately well on all maps in general. But, if it ever becomes possible to do a 'pre-diagnosis routine' that runs at the start of the game and analyzes the map and changes the statistics or the build program according to the information it gleans, then it might be possible to fine tune the AI to adapt to different types of maps -- this might be a SCAR thing, and something that our SCAR leader LarkinVB might someday look into because LarkinVB has also been interested in the past in how the balance affects the AI and how the balance affects the gameplay. Much of the time, it is a map thing! And, if the AI could adjust to the map or glean information from the map and then adjust, it would make for an even better AI. I know, this will take a long time, or may never come with DoW, but sometimes you guys surprise me and actually do the impossible once in awhile. You never know what is around the corner.

If there aren't any write protection flags or user rights involved, I've no clue. Anyway, it's just a temporary problem until Relic fixes the game manager...

I see, but I'm not gonna do that. Well, at least he can play against the advanced AI alone.

Do you have an idea why this problem could be happening to some people and not to others?

I didn't try it, but I think the two 'ways' are incompatible. The work around treats the mod as part of the game and not as a separate mod. Therefore I guess all players have to use the mod manager or the work around, but not mixed.

Yes, after he did that, I made a game and he still couldn't join it.

He has admin rights, he doesn't have read-only files in the folder, and he has tried what the FAQ says with no result.

Did you start a game to find that out? Since with this workaround, the mod starts hidden and neither will it show in the game manager nor is any mod/version info shown in the main screen. You'll only notice it, if you start a game.

I have a friend with the same problem. The shortcut opens the regular DC and the mod isn't in the manager.

He has admin rights, he doesn't have read-only files in the folder, and he has tried what the FAQ says with no result. Also he has not installed a mod before, so his installation is clean.

Please help, I want to play with him.