AI for Hegemony

[cylentwolf]

I like the idea behind having the rules based on the planets themselves. The only issue I had with the article is that I am not sure what form the "roleplay" aspect of the hegemony game takes. I am assuming there are some conversations going on at the space port or via emails between players.

It is interesting that you call the AI in the article organic. By its description you have the first layer of an agent based AI in use. In my musings I think there are two ways you can beef up such a system.

1) Give the individual agents a more powerful rule set. Adding, inward or outward or the support idea. Or even give them qualities such as important or unimportant and then rank the orders based on that. There by giving support to an important planet is activated rather than support to an unimportant planet.

2) The way that I think is more interesting is do the first suggestion and then also create a master AI, kind of like a player, who has needs and wants. Such as wanting to erradicate a certain area of space or build the biggest fleet, or what not. This high level "planning" AI could then update orders and shift resources to reach his overall goal.


Either way, good article, look forward to seeing what you got in a week.

[jdrake3]

What you describe may be new in on line game design. However, your description exactly matches Rodney Brooks' discussion of behavior based robotics and/or a subsumption architecture.

A starting point for subsumption architecture:

http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/cogarch0/subsump/


A good description of behavior based robotics can be found in the book:
_Mobile Robots: Inspiration to Implementation_

or on line at:

http://www.aboutai.net/DesktopDefault.aspx?tabindex=1&tabid=2&article=aa032901a.htm

[ShannonA]

Thanks for the various pointers, and thoughts. I knew, of course, it wasn't an original idea, but did like this application.

Shannon

[ShannonA]

Originally posted by cylentwolf
The only issue I had with the article is that I am not sure what form the "roleplay" aspect of the hegemony game takes. I am assuming there are some conversations going on at the space port or via emails between players.


In a regular game of Hegemony, players just fight with each other, initially taking over a galaxy populated by non-responsive NPCs.

In a roleplay game, there's a bit more of a storyline, and the NPCs tend to be active rather than just sitting around, hence the need for AI.

Shannon

[jdrake3]

Originally posted by ShannonA
Thanks for the various pointers, and thoughts. I knew, of course, it wasn't an original idea, but did like this application.

Shannon

It is a great application, and also a good example of emergent behavior. I'd like to hear more about the implementation.