'Neurotic' is Best RTS strategy 186
An anonymous reader writes "Austrian researchers experimenting with adding emotion to game AI say that 'neurotic' software is best at RTS. They developed aggressive, defensive, neutral and neurotic bots to play Age of Mythology, based on psychological models of emotion. Neurotic bots beat the standard game AI every time and faster than the other personalities."
Result is specific to AoM? (Score:5, Insightful)
This tells us more about the game-play balance in AoM than how to approach games in general. I'd be more interested in seeing these bots play CiV 4 where I doubt that neurotic behaviour would triumph.
Re:Result is specific to AoM? (Score:5, Insightful)
My guess is that the advantage is limited to games with "learning" AIs, where the AI attempts to extrapolate your behaviour based on your past events. The neuroticity adds an element of unpredictability which will confuse the hell out of an AI that works using extrapolation or neural net training. If the game has a rigid rule based AI there should be no advantage, just the opposite.
AoM AI (Score:4, Insightful)
Since Software is a reflection of its makers... (Score:3, Insightful)
i.e. would have Hitler been considered neurotic?
Re:Makes sense (Score:5, Insightful)
If current RTS bots resemble their cousins from five or ten years ago (I haven't played in a while,) an emotionally-balanced bot would take a bold, successful strategy and "balance" all of the effectiveness out of it, leaving a milquetoast strategy that does no harm to his own civilization and usually no harm to the other guy's civilization, either.
No, we don't cater to the lowest forms if life her (Score:5, Insightful)
Everytime you tell a story you have to set a certain limit where you just have to assume the person you are talking too understands your words. For instance, you just seem to assume that I know what an acronym is. That I get your use of the word "drift" what does your racing style have to do with slashdot editors?
This is slashdot, we do NOT explain words like RAM or CPU. If you don't understand those acronyms, you do not belong here. This is furthermore the game section of slashdot and Real Time Strategy is a well known genre of games. Do we have to explain FPS as well? (First Person Shooter) How about 3D?
At a certain point you just have to decide, allright my audience just knows this, and if they don't they are not my audience. If you don't, you end up like mainstream publications that have to dumb down everything to such an extent that EVERYONE feels insulted.
One of the more intresting approaches I have seen is/was (not sure if it still exists) is the dutch childerens news. It leaves out some stories but uses the extra time to more deeply explain the rest so that a person with limited world knowledge (like a kid or an american) can still follow what is happening in the world. You can also clearly see the problem there, they need a lot more time to cover the same event.
So unless you want slashdot stories to run several pages and be linked to hell to wikipedia, you are just going to have to use your own brain. This is the internet, the answer is only a few clicks away.
Re:Result is specific to AoM? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:crazy leaders? (Score:5, Insightful)
As opposed to todays political leaders who are all striking examples of stable minds?
Re:Since Software is a reflection of its makers... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Result is specific to AoM? (Score:3, Insightful)
To me, that sounds about right for a game-winning AI. Most AIs seem nice and placid and just wait around for the players to attack, and then under-react to the attack.
-Jeff
Re:addiction (Score:4, Insightful)