Why hasn't AI improved in the same way that e.g., graphics has?

[Wizzington]

While it is true that graphics sell more than a good AI. The problem is what is a good AI? A competing AI thats almost impossible to beat, an AI that acts historical(Read scripted) or one that is trying to find the middle ground? The AI in paradox games try to act like it have free will and will make irrational choices sometimes. Sometimes its on purpose to ad immersion and sometimes it is something thats overlooked during development.

I also think that I have way higher expectation from the AI today then I had as a kid. Then it was all about the childish fun of playing computer games. I don't think I even noticed or cared if my opponents where simply standing there and allowed me to attack them as long as it was fun to do it and it gave me an ego boost. The more I play games, the more I tend to expect from the AI to keep me playing.

I don't know how many hundreds of hours I clocked in EU3 before I started to actually see AI glitches. It was simply because of every playtrough I got better and better at beating the AI. Nowadays when I have gotten used to PDS games, I see the PDS AI do stupid things after some years of gameplay in every new game I try. Not because it is bad, but because my brain semi-know how to beat it before I even try it. Thats probably the reason why people find it really great, when the AI finally manages to launch a successful naval assault in TFH.

However, if they ever release a new game with an AI simply made for powergaming, they would turn of allot of new players. There is also the fact that the only way to tweak the AI is to play the game over and over again. That is something that is taking allot of time and effort to do. Its also time consuming to reproduce AI behavior in these kinds of games, where the AI are taking most of its actions with calculating maths and the roll of a dice. Both the numbers it have to crunch and the numbers on the dice will change for every playtrough. It will even change on loaded saves.

PDS are taking the AI seriously. They recently hired Wiz from this board as an AI programmer. He have apparently been working on HOD AI and stuff. Hope he actually is an AI programmer and manage to do some amazing stuff in the future. That he isn't just payed with a lifetime supply of games to work as a scapegoat, so we have someone to yell at.

Wait, I'm supposed to get paid in something other than games?

Who is the kid they hired?

That would be the 30-year old kid that is me. Hi.

 

[Wizzington]

Sooooo Wiz while you are here and we have your attention, are you really working on the AI?

Unless I've been imagining the last few months, I sure am.

 

[Wizzington]

So Wiz, whats your take on this topic? Its always interesting to hear devs talk about such things. To hell with it, you and Shams could do an whole episode in his show on Twitch about the subject.

...and btw, congratulations with the job.

I'm going to be brief since I'm working but if I had to name one reason that AI hasn't seen the kind of steady improvement we've seen in other game mechanics I would chalk it down to lack of planning. In my opinion, a good AI needs to designed along with the game and accounted for on all stages. Too often, AI is something that is thrown on after the features are already long finalized (rarely with sufficent time budgeted to do a reasonably good job at it) and so you end up with a feature that is fully realized to the player but only understood by the AI on a shallow surface level.

Processing power should not be discounted, but I don't think it's the primary problem. With enough time and skill, you could make strategy AIs vastly superior to the ones we see today, but without proper planning you end up wasting a lot of that time and skill. The way I see my job here at Paradox, besides doing the actual AI programming, is to be the 'voice of the AI' during the design process, commenting and making suggestions from its perspective. Of course I'm not in charge of feature design or anything like that but no matter how good your game designers are (and ours are very very good), it still always helps to have someone whose sole responsibility is to back the AI's corner, so to speak.