Eve of the Apocalypse: Twilight

More AI updates & testing.

HEY FORUM TAKE MY FILE

DarnYak

Are you going to make the new AI use their crystal in things like weapon and armor upgrades again?

they already did =/

edit: Actually read the post this time, hadn't realized it was disabled

No they do, they just waste it on agi/int/str too much atm. I have plans to fix it.

DarnYak

Bane's AI isn't that great. I've seen him cast Caustic Breath at air.

It hits air. Is that the only problem with bane?

DarnYak

I should have been more clear about air. By air, I meant absolutely nothing.
For some reason, Bane also died more often than IS. He should also only cast Acid Rain while sieging.
Nothing to do with his AI, but Acid Sheath is terrible by getting overridden by Polarize and triggering Roth's shield.

UD AI are definitely one of the better AIs around (except maybe Reek & Neph), especially thanks to the UD revamps. My Creep AI allies basically fed their team the whole time except for Tree.

On the general side, I'm still seeing suicidal charges by low-levelled AI into enemy bases in chasing heroes.

Nothing to do with his AI, but Acid Sheath is terrible by getting overridden by Polarize and triggering Roth's shield.

Changing the shield to not work from spells, it probably has some weird procs from other spells as well.

UD AI are definitely one of the better AIs around (except maybe Reek & Neph)

Reek's AI has some sort of weird bug, it doesn't seem to want to use Maw (and obviously doesn't benefit from its secondary effects - I'll get to that eventually. The whole secondary caster system needs to be looked at for computer players).

I've barely touched the creep AI's, partly from planning to revamp them soon.


DarnYak

so yea I approve of these bot changes, epic replay go

Fungal Armor doesn't always add 25% of the old shield's life or is there some kind of limit to the shield's health?
Recasted a shield and went from 1002 health to 1019 health with -s stating a shield health around 769. Probably would have been broken if it did work since Fungal Armor is pretty hard to take down.
Shields don't always consistently block damage from spells either, like BG's stun hammer.

Looks like AI heroes can still get stuck in VF after Font battles with nothing to do until they get engaged.

watermelon wrote:Fungal Armor doesn't always add 25% of the old shield's life or is there some kind of limit to the shield's health?
Recasted a shield and went from 1002 health to 1019 health with -s stating a shield health around 769. Probably would have been broken if it did work since Fungal Armor is pretty hard to take down.

1002 * 0.25 + 769 = 1019. Seems to add up just fine.

Shields don't always consistently block damage from spells either, like BG's stun hammer.

Just to be clear: due to coding reasons, shield's don't always block damage because they can't. Technically they just automaticaly heal the hero the instant before the hero takes the damage. Which means if they're full health, or nearly so, they can't actualy prevent it all.

Looks like AI heroes can still get stuck in VF after Font battles with nothing to do until they get engaged.

Yea I haven't seen it on the other maps yet so I assume it's directly related to fonts, but trying to puzzle this one out.

DarnYak

Well that was dumb of me.

@Rofl: Were those insane computers?

The management AI is pretty good though workers sometimes try to repair buildings while enemies are still in the base. Not so sure about the general hero AI itself.

Not sure what to take from that beyond a strong arguement that inf needs to be nerfed ;P Yea they're terrible against a well played Inf, and I'm not sure how to code around that (so much of Inf fighting generay involves intuition - computers dont have that, they either know or they rely on a random chance. In a way only the first 5 minutes of that game is valuable, they end up so painfully far behind after that that it made me want to add surrender code.

And as a general note, this replay might seem like a good guide to playing Inf. Sure the computers are idiots, but I'm not sure to what extent human players would even handle it better. Hell I might even start a topic based on this replay tomorrow.

BTW I'd love to see more replays as other heroes - preferably ones where some particular ability doesn't completely screw with the AI (Inf, Mind Fog, probably BP).

DarnYak

Update: The above post actualy gave me a revelation of sorts when dealing with fungal armor. I've been wondering why it seemed so strong compared to other shields.

In short: When your hero is full health, fungal armor acts as a self regenerating shield, due to the fact that shields only block damage up to the point the hero is missing life to begin with.

For example, if your at full health, and fungal heals 20 hp/s. You then take 20 damage. Fungal passes that through to the hero, and the hero takes 20 damage. 2 seconds later, you take 20 more damage - but your back to full health, because fungal healed you. This applies to bigger hits too in a not too uncommon situation. Say you take a 500 damage backstab from full health. Shield is still full, but your -500 health. Any damage in the meantime will deplete the shield. Assume inf had to run away breifly or whatever and sneaks back in 15 seconds later. 300 health has healed, missing -200, next backstab does 300 to the hero, 200 to the shield. The shield at this point has effectively negated 500 points of damage while taking only 200.

In other news: I think I've found the cause of the AI freezing up after Font battles. It has to do with the AI resetting itself when a certain distance from a fountain - right in the distance where font battles take place. Doesn't entirely explain why it fixes itself when anything else comes near though, and it shoudl fix itself when hitting full health or mana....

DarnYak

@water: yea those were insane comps on their side and a normal one on ours

You should probably add Neph to the hero list that screws up AI. =P

You could make shields block at full health if you add some kind of bonus life ability to the target as it takes damage, heal the target, and then remove the ability.

Would be interesting to see the AI surrender.

I caught RK casting grand rune in one of those games, then cancel it right before it finished. Not sure what happened there, as channeling heroes generaly never interrupt spellcasting, and i'm not sure blizz's built in spell AI tried to cast anything either.

Edit: Also, one thing to note is that when you 5ai v 1+4ai on normal, the 4 will all pool most of their gold to the human player, so that one particular player. I wouldnt go so far to say as it necessarily makes the player stronger (due to normal still getting a bonus), but it certainly makes it a lot more even. Hell, all those comps that die also give no crystal due to a human being on the team.

DarnYak

I've noticed the AI randomly glitching and stop doing things when they are heroes like gravel and cant really do anything to a flying hero when he doesn't have his club, he'll sit there trying to boulder the hero and then stand around getting hit without being able to retaliate. Also druid spawns seem to break when you get the revitalize upgrade, they just stop moving after casting and don't push forward with the rest of the group.

Didn't finish the game because it annoyed me too much. Probably won't try to play with insane computers again, unless with real people.

Anyway, you should probably not make the AI chase invisible heroes since they can be lured to be attacked by towers.

Had an crash error while playing Neph. Game immediately exited following me attempting to use the passive on the Dragonhelm. I had the gem that gave mana back (knowledge?)

Caustic Breath's damage text tag for heroes doesn't state the actual damage dealt; it just shows the -s value.