Anyone got the AI to work properly?

[gul bacha]

I've searched a lot on google and couldn't find anything really useful unfortunately.

My issue is the game slow down with the AI. I always have to eventually quit games on any map larger than 10x10 when facing AI because of the slow down. I already have the sorian AI update and it didn't seem to help much. My computer can run this game perfectly fine on the max possible settings so I know for a fact this isn't due to graphical reasons. If anyone has some sort of fix I may have missed, I'd really appreciate it. I want to try maps larger than 10 x 10...

[Sheppy]

game slows down if there aint be enough CPU power, AI consumes CPU power, AI slows down game

no real fix for that, play multiplayer, smaller maps, try to atack earlier

[Falaris]

With that said, you should definitely check out Sorian's AI mod. It is widely regarded as a must-have AI improvement, and in addition to other things, it is a bit faster, if I read it correctly.

Note that each unit is mapped individually, so a much bigger reason for the slowdown is unit cap. You may want to limit the unit cap rather than limit the map size.

[Sheppy]

Първоначално публикувано от Falaris:

With that said, you should definitely check out Sorian's AI mod. It is widely regarded as a must-have AI improvement, and in addition to other things, it is a bit faster, if I read it correctly.

Note that each unit is mapped individually, so a much bigger reason for the slowdown is unit cap. You may want to limit the unit cap rather than limit the map size.

sorian AI is overall better (also in terms of playstyle) but the later-game slowdown is as hard as with normal AI

[Softly]

The sorian AI mod will cause desync issues late in the game if not everyone has it. Thats without playing with AI.

[Sykoste]

what is your computer specification?

[Sarabi]

IF you're having simulation slowdown issues, you might want to try core maximiser

http://forums.gaspowered.com/viewtopic.php?t=15556

It optimises the games threads to work better on more cores, thus improving overall simulation speed. For me it's a must have little gizmo.

[Sheppy]

the core maximazer does nothing on win vista/7 because what it does is windows already doing countless tests have proven this

[gul bacha]

Yeah I got the core optimizer a while ago and I doubt it really changed anything.

[gul bacha]

I just stick to small maps and play big ones online.

[Flukeworm]

There is no way around the slowdown in skirmishes or matches with AI. You could use a NASA supercomputer, and it would still slow down in the later stages of the game. The AI somehow bottlenecks the game, regardless of amount of units on the map; it's a programming issue. I tested this quite a few times, and have been down to only one AI remaining, with one building or unit left, and the game was still excrutiatingly slow. Whenever I defeated the last AI, the game would speed up to normal (or increased speed, if it was set to that) as soon as the game recognised the AI as defeated.
If I remember correctly, some community released a patch that fixed this (since the devs weren't patching it anymore). I can't remember where to find this patch, though. Without the patch, your'e better of not fighting against AI at all.

tl;dr: slowdown is a fault in the game, not your hardware. some community patch that fixes this is on the internets somewhere

[Sheppy]

Първоначално публикувано от Flukeworm:

tl;dr: slowdown is a fault in the game, not your hardware. some community patch that fixes this is on the internets somewhere

they fixed no disappearing wrecks, it's not a programming error, he AI is just very complex

[Sykoste]

If you are playing a game versus ai then you need at least a quad core and lots of ram and a nice solid state drive does not go amiss. i7 and 16gb is nice (vista - win8 handle this even when the game doesn't now, no need for core maximiser). And yes SSD does make a difference when the ram runs low (not runs out, just low and vram kicks in to handle op codes). If you have slow down issues graphics-wise, the main one is AA settings - turn em off, you never look at them close up edges in RTS anyway. We often run 6 v 2 ai games over the internet with 2000 units each player with max slow down at around +4, which is playable. However - we also have 100mb-100mb broadband so that helps a tonne.

With the sorian mod and 2000 units limit imagine what your machine is handling if you have say 6 AI and 2 human players. That is somewhere in the region of 16000 units, a potential 500-1000 wrecks, 2 way network traffic of all that info, 16000 x 10000 opp codes and god knows how many projectiles and explosions. If you want the game to speed up above +1 in this scenario, its time to start killing off the AI as soon as possible. As with all large unit count rts games, each ai that dies frees up some processing power and speed will return, eventually. In fact its pretty amazing how stable this game actually remains under this kind of pressure. It may be slow but it rarely crashes.

One item that causes the main issue with AI speed in supcom and FA is bottlenecking of units. Open flat maps can help with this issues as there is less chance for units to get stuck, waiting for each other to get out of the way. Another cause is that the AI rarely builds in a 'pretty' base fashion like humans do. The AI follows a strict 'base building set of rules' pattern system and cares little for the actual terrain and how it suits a base 'design' or base asthetics. If you as a human see a nice mountain valley, you would tend to defend its high ground and build in the centre, so units move through the valley. AI will just 'best fit' its base pattern and if this means a factory sits on a hill with a tiny unit exit path route, then so be it. This then easily clogs up. Each unit that is blocked looks for an alternative route and adds to the total computations required for the pathfinder - operation codes. This continues for some 10000 (so I believe) operations before it trys again, so bear that in mind. The game was only designed to handle 500 units per player, so going to 2000 per player is asking a lot, so be patient. Tech has not moved on that fast really, its just got cheaper to run. (the last 5 years of tech dev have been about saving energy rather than any real speed increase)

Also bear in mind the 'terrain-build-footprint bug' too. If a section of map has over 75% tile area in which to build say a factory on a flat level, then it actually terraforms the map slightly to make the area more 100% level ready for building (try my 'pierpressure xtreme' map for a great example of this happening in action with AI on the slopes). This can actually turn a once passable slope into a then unpassable large step sequence which the Ai cannot handle and units can no longer traverse. Slap a few hundred units coming out the front door of said factory and it becomes a swarm of op codes eating your cpu that go nowhere and never get close to attacking you. The AI doesn't know that the way is shut, so it keeps doing what it does and pumps out the regular unit swathes into a dead end accoring to its LUA script. Time for a few tech 3 bomber swathes of your own to release those CPU cores!

To avoid things like this I like to use Sorian AiX adaptive. It switches between AI types like rush and air depending on what the map deals to it during play. However this can also have detrimental CPU usage if the map is complex or highly 'terraformable'. One AI I played against on my 'radiator' map switched to mass transporting of units when confronted with path blockages, which was nice and unexpected. This does happen from time to time so I have designed maps to encourage this AI thinking (google sykoste mappack for some maps which add different types of play than the standard maps) You will also notice that some of my maps have NO AI PATH routes - this is deliberate as on some complex multi-level maps like CorePrimeCanyonForts adding AI path nodes increases the slow down rate as the stuff I mentioned above occurs more with node to node navigation. The AI will always find you and will always make it's own route eventually which is sometimes more effecient than the map designers 'route of looking good' An example is AI that follows a road, versus AI that spills randomly over a cliff into your base. You decide which is more fun for you!

[InsideOut]

What an awesome game this still is...

[Xeonzs]

the core optimizer was so awesome before it broke, best tool ever.

[Sheppy]

it never "broke" dude, but what the core maximazer was supposed to do is automaticly done by win7/bista anyway so it doesnt change anything