AI that helps the player: Task Delegation

Interface/Gameplay related idea

from Elemental Forums

Since everybody loves various levels of complexity and micro-management, I was wondering if it would be possible for the players to have artificial intelligence that could work for them.

For example, in civilization, I don't like having to manage level up of units when they get too much experience. So one thing that could be cool is to have the option to let unit level up be managed by an artificial intelligence. So when a unit level up, it will not bother me and it will choose the unit upgrade by itself.

This is just a small example, but you could have a whole list of AI task that could be delegated by the player and changed in the middle of the game. For example, when your empire size is too large, a player could delegate certain task. Which still makes micromanagers happy for those who has a small empire.  Maybe for each AI task, you could have some options that the player could set.

For our unit level up above, here are some option idea:

- Warn me when a unit level up: "yes/no"

- What type of powerup should be taken: "Offensive/Defensive/Balanced"

- What are the powerups that should never taken: "list of power ups, check/uncheck"

If there is a lot of customization, you could allow players to make AI templates. A player could for example make 3 template: "No Delegation", "Small Empire", "Large Empire". Each template would active and deactivate some task to the Artificial Intelligence.

What do you think?

10,842 views 5 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

Certainly an option, but any time you're handing control over to the AI you walk a fine line betwee 'reducing mcromanagement' and 'the game is play'g itself. 

We'll be keeping this in mind though! Great suggestions!

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

OK, I really like that idea.  Probably a lot of programming involved, but it certainly might save on micromanagement.  I've noticed that each time a game is "improved" it usually means some element (e.g. research) gets broken into many, many fragements or additional, pointless steps.  So, for example, perhaps you could tell the AI to concentrate on (long range) or (short range) fire spell research for (25) turns then pop up a reminder for you to evaluate progress at that point.  Some games do have AI support, but I find you usually can't give it much in the way of guidance; it's sort of "all or nothing" and the "all" is usually not what I had in mind.

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Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

Probably a lot of programming involved

Well not necessarily, because there is already an artificial intelligence in the game which is probably subdivided into many modules. The only difference is that the high leveldecisions are taken by the players which give command and priorities to each AI module, that should already exist in the game, that will do the small micromanagement jobs.

I have heard that MOO3 had this kind of AI support, and that a player actually won the game by clicking "next turn" 400 times since everything was delegated to the AI. I don't ask for something that sophisticated, I still think that high level decisions should be taken by the player.

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

Certainly an option, but any time you're handing control over to the AI you walk a fine line betwee 'reducing mcromanagement' and 'the game is play'g itself.

I'd actually like it if I could set some rules along the lines larienna describes (and many more) and let the game play itself if that suited my mood. Even more, I'd like to be able to train my own automation as I learned the game and developed my playstyle. I'd have a few war wins in the GalCiv2 Metaverse if it weren't for the click-tedium of the mopping up phase.

larienna, I'm very glad to see this idea come up again. I've been interested in seeing this kind of support provided through champions assigned to civilian duty (as opposed to being out leading troops or on quests). But I'd take it however I can get it, and I've always thought it shouldn't be all that hard to re-use code that manages computer-player factions to help human players manage their own. But then I'm not a coder...

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

Controllable managment AI might be nice, but at the same time, if there is some feature that eveyone just automates, that feature might be unnecessary.on the other hand I want to play a game, not play a spreadsheet(not that excel isn't fun but...)