Reasons for not wanting a better AI

[Mikko Lehtinen]

I used to think that every variant would want to implement 4GAI and make monster AI better in other ways.

Now I'm in a situation where my own variant, Fay, has a seriously antiquated AI. Monsters will behave even more stupidly after I introduce new terrain features. But is it necessarily a bad thing?

If the aim of my variant was increased realism and believability I would surely want to make many of my monsters more intelligent. Also if I wanted more difficulty it would be a good move.

But my main goal is not realism but adding tactical depth to gameplay! And Fay is already hard enough. Stupid monsters are often just what I want. If all bad jumpers were intelligent enough to not try jumping on tables when they can avoid it, tables would be much less interesting.

Making monster flow more intelligent would similarly hurt the gameplay. FayAngband has small levels, and even with stupid monsters it's not that easy to escape and find a safe place to rest.

Of course there are many elements in 4GAI that do increase tactical depth, like monster mana. I don't really know much about 4GAI, and there may be many more good bits that my variant could use.

Thoughts? What is the role of monster AI in your variant?

[Timo Pietilä]

Thoughts? What is the role of monster AI in your variant?

I'm not currently working on any variant (my own variant is eternity project), but I think there is more to monster AI than just AI. Monster perception of the world is one thing: Does monster see you when you turn off your lightsource for example. Stealthy character with invisibility? Does monster see invisible? Does it have infravision? If monster is aware that you are around does it know where exactly you are if it doesn't see you? Does it use sound or smell to track you down? Maybe echolocation (bats)?

Current vanilla angband gives all monsters ESP to know where player is at all times, there is no perception restrictions. If it is awake and you are in its detection range, it knows exactly where you are. If you are in LoS of awake monster it reacts to you even if its detection range is shorter than LoS range.

If you add more complex monster perception in the game it becomes much more "intelligent-like" even if you leave stupid combat and stupid dungeon flow intact.

[Therem Harth]

I think stupid dungeon flow is actually the bigger problem. In older varients, you can do stuff like hiding around a corner from a monster - the monster will keep banging its head against the wall, trying to get through to you. Personally I'd much rather have stupid monsters that follow the player around intelligently, than smart monsters that bang their heads against walls.

(There is the FLOW_BY_SOUND option of course... As far as I can tell, it does not do anything.)

That said, dungeon flow is probably hard, so I'd forgive you for not bothering to mess with it.

[Derakon]

Making monsters smarter at combat drastically changes the dynamics of the game, yeah. It's not to be done lightly. For example, if you compare NPP combat against a powerful caster to Vanilla combat, in NPP you pretty much have to start out by tanking their powerful spells/breaths (which requires burning healing items) until they run out of mana, since until they're out, they will use that mana for healing, rendering them more or less unkillable. Whereas in Vanilla the monster's too stupid to reliably pick the healing spell regardless of how many hitpoints it has. NPP monsters also tend to use their most powerful attacks more often, resulting in a common chain of "monster attacks for several hundred HP", "player chugs a healing potion", repeat.

These behaviors are clearly smarter from the monster's point of view, and make the game considerably harder, but they also hugely change the dynamic and you can't just blindly drop them into the game. The player needs to be able to handle having monsters spam their most powerful attacks several turns in a row, for example -- and of course, you absolutely have to have some kind of limit on monster spellcasting if they're smart enough to cast a healing spell when they get injured (and that spell can heal more damage than the player can do in one round).

[Storch]

I'm not currently working on any variant (my own variant is eternity project), but I think there is more to monster AI than just AI. Monster perception of the world is one thing: Does monster see you when you turn off your lightsource for example. Stealthy character with invisibility? Does monster see invisible? Does it have infravision? If monster is aware that you are around does it know where exactly you are if it doesn't see you? Does it use sound or smell to track you down? Maybe echolocation (bats)?

Current vanilla angband gives all monsters ESP to know where player is at all times, there is no perception restrictions. If it is awake and you are in its detection range, it knows exactly where you are. If you are in LoS of awake monster it reacts to you even if its detection range is shorter than LoS range.

If you add more complex monster perception in the game it becomes much more "intelligent-like" even if you leave stupid combat and stupid dungeon flow intact.

If I had my own variant, this would be the first issue adressed :-)

[Mikko Lehtinen]

If you add more complex monster perception in the game it becomes much more "intelligent-like" even if you leave stupid combat and stupid dungeon flow intact.

Sounds like a plan.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

I think stupid dungeon flow is actually the bigger problem. In older varients, you can do stuff like hiding around a corner from a monster - the monster will keep banging its head against the wall, trying to get through to you. Personally I'd much rather have stupid monsters that follow the player around intelligently, than smart monsters that bang their heads against walls.

I think in the specific case of FayAngband I'm going to let the monsters keep banging their heads against walls. The levels are so small that the player needs to have this advantage.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Making monsters smarter at combat drastically changes the dynamics of the game, yeah. It's not to be done lightly.

Thanks for the warnings! For now, I think I prefer the stupid combat and spellcasting AI.

In Fay 1.1 I actually made monster spellcasting even more stupid by implementing variable monster spell range. Spell range is 2d6+5 squares, and it is rolled every time a monster moves. Monsters never cast attack spells or breath beyond their spell range. Player range was reduced too. I feel these changes improved the gameplay.