Feedback: AI difficulty

[Jacq]

Hi Devs. Just wanted to give a bit of feedback on the hard AI as I saw it's in beta still. It's works, but I think it almost needs a very hard version as the hard AI isn't a very aggressive player. I find it usually sits back and accumulates lots of eggs rather than tries to get a lot of bird cards on the board. Unless I get a "bad" draw at the start of the game and continue not to to get cards I need in the wetlands, a lot of the time I'll win even on the hardest setting at the moment.

[ChrisK]

Noted, thank you! If anyone else has feedback on the Hard AI, please let us know in this thread.

[ephemeraltoast]

All levels of AI, Hard included, seem to somewhat overvalue high-point-value birds. That makes sense, I guess, since it's probably easier to tell an AI how to tell which number is biggest than to teach it just about anything else. However, it makes it somewhat easy to predict and manipulate. If there's a Bald Eagle or a Swan up for grabs you can be almost certain the AI will try to grab it regardless of bonus cards in play, what the bird feeder looks like, etc.

It is also MANIACAL about spamming free food with Hummingbirds. I guess I shouldn't complain about free stuff, but it does make the game significantly easier for the human player, who can capitalize on the freebies much more strategically than the AI players can.

[shemp64158]

I agree that the AI usually grab the high point birds and tend to lay eggs. I played 100 games with me vs. easy AI, harder AI and two harder betas. Results -

avg. 1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th
easy AI 53.93 0 5 6 23 66
harder AI 62.66 3 12 26 41 18
beta 1 72.55 8 39 27 20 6
beta 2 72.85 8 36 32 18 6
me 88.90 81 15 3 1 0

I went hard after each end of round bonus and that seemed to work. There were 3 ties with the betas and somehow I won all three with the food in personal supply tie-breaker. The wildest was a 3-way tie with the betas and me each with 68 points. Fun way to play but a little tweaking to the beta and it would be a real challenge.

Les.

[WebBowser]

yeah, I think the AI needs to value tempo cards like the food gen birds more. The general play pattern is to play birds that give you more resources early (stuff like mallard, throatcatcher, hummingbird, etc) and then once you have decent resource generation then try to go for "point birds" such as the warblers, raptors, etc.

Of course, evaluating resource generation is hard. A simpler approach may be to value cheap birds in early rounds (aka rounds 1 and 2) and expensive birds in later rounds (eg 3 and 4). In particular, birds should be HEAVILY deprioritized in round 4, because it's very difficult to make playing a bird more valuable then laying eggs in round 4 due to the very limited number of turns you have to actually do things.

That's my opinion on the easiest way to improve AI.

[Yippo the Clown]

I don't tend to pay that much attention to the AI's individual moves, so can't give much detailed feedback - it does seem, however, that the Hard AI:
- Is less likely to play birds which give beneficial effects to all players
- Seems to go for a rather hit-or-miss playstyle - I find it can beat the normal AIs, but not with any degree of regularity.

[Jacq]

Originally posted by ephemeraltoast:

It is also MANIACAL about spamming free food with Hummingbirds. I guess I shouldn't complain about free stuff, but it does make the game significantly easier for the human player, who can capitalize on the freebies much more strategically than the AI players can.

^THIS
Yes it loves to spam food with hummingbirds or the bird on the title screen (name eludes me). If those cards come up, it seems to want to grab and play them, which if you combine it with it not usually taking full advantage of the free food and sitting back to make sure all of its birds are full of eggs, doesn't seem to lead to a good winning strategy for the AI.

[Jacq]

Every single player game I've played recently the AI has maxed out eggs on every bird it has played. Maybe it's just unlucky, or has the algorithm been tweaked because the AI's egg hording tendencies seem worse than ever now.

[greenzie]

Originally posted by ChrisK:

Noted, thank you! If anyone else has feedback on the Hard AI, please let us know in this thread.

The AIs are definitely too easy to beat. Please introduce a very hard AI for the online game too. It's annoying to have only medium AI in the online games. Thanks!

[Teg]

I would love an update introducing hard AI!!! The normal AI rarely ever get above 80pts in online matches! Love the game and hard AI would just make it even better

[Jacq]

Yeah, it seems less obsessive about egg hoarding these days a least so I think it has been tweaked (although it sill seems to often collect eggs in preference to other more pressing actions to get achievements.) Unless I get quite unlucky with the card draw, it's uncommon for the AI to win the majority of the time even on the hard difficulty. I don't think I've noticed a big difference between medium and hard settings. It's still too easy to beat and needs a harder setting (that's not the silly atomia or whatever it's called rules.)

[AronFJenks]

Originally posted by Jacq:

Yeah, it seems less obsessive about egg hoarding these days a least so I think it has been tweaked (although it sill seems to often collect eggs in preference to other more pressing actions to get achievements.) Unless I get quite unlucky with the card draw, it's uncommon for the AI to win the majority of the time even on the hard difficulty. I don't think I've noticed a big difference between medium and hard settings. It's still too easy to beat and needs a harder setting (that's not the silly atomia or whatever it's called rules.)

If you've lost a game to the AI, then the AI is decently programmed. It's exceedingly difficult to program an AI to play well. Have you thought about how involved it would be to write out a set of instructions for an AI to play Wingspan optimally or even close to it? Most human players probably do not realize how many different factors they are taking into account on every decision, even seemingly minor ones.

I don't think I would ever lose in a 2-p game to an AI, but I always play 5p, and occasionally I get bad card draws and one of the AIs seems to get all the luck and ekes out a win. I would say I probably lose no one than once out of 25 plays, one average, and even that might be generous.

But that's better than the Terraforming Mars AI, which is just abysmally bad and has zero chance of winning against any halfway competent human player.

Programming AIs is difficult. I'm not sure how the RFTG programmers did such a good job with theirs.

[Jacq]

I'm not disputing that it's hard to program AI's, or that the devs have done a good job with it, but the net result is still that the AI it is too easy. There are other potential ways to make the game more difficult if the devs don't believe they have the skill to make an AI more difficult than it already is like having a difficulty slider option to start the AI off with more resources or extra card draws.

[andrew_l]

Originally posted by ChrisK:

Noted, thank you! If anyone else has feedback on the Hard AI, please let us know in this thread.

(I am playing the Android version but I believe this feedback still applies) I think one simple Hard AI tweak would be to have them decline to play any bird that benefits other players - they currently will, I know this is my personal devious technique in game lol

[AronFJenks]

Or, stop having the AIs play a "play another bird" card without actually playing another bird.

Stop having the AIs activate their brown powers indiscriminately even when the powers help other players and cannot possibly help themselves.

Stop having the AIs play mediocre forest birds and then have no cards or food resources and no bird in the wetlands habitat.

Have the AIs actually compete for EOR goals, especially when they go last in a round and can easily win the goal outright.

Maybe program the cards with some sort of tier system so that the AIs actually play good cards instead of whatever trash cards they happen to have in hand.

All in all though, does it really matter? The goal when playing against the AIs should be to demolish them with as high of a score as possible. To play the best possible game given the cards and resources we have.