AI War: Fleet Command

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http://www.arcengames.com/aiwar_feat...

This is a 2d space RTS, which boasts a heavy duty AI, and 8 player co-op! It feels odd, slightly, but it supports the tactical level zoom of SupCom. The tutorial levels are quite easy to breeze through, but the last tutorial is a small 10 planet scenario, and it looks like its about 3 hours to complete. I'm about half way through, and the AI is giving me a good slapping at the moment. When you're on the strategic campaign level, 2d icons is all you care about, so there really isn't a lot lost in terms of graphical wow. It would be nice to see these Sins of a Solar Empire style 3d graphics, but I think this game is all about the strategy and less about the oohs and aahs of space loving visuals. Its only $19.99 on Impulse, and they are claiming more free DLC to come.

Looks interesting for $20 but is there a demo?

Demo here - typical try it, buy/get license and unlock the rest of the game. Demo claims to be 1 hr of gameplay before asking for the key.

Brizahd wrote:

Looks interesting for $20 but is there a demo?

Hey there, I'm the developer of the game -- thanks for your interest in AI War. We do indeed have a demo available here: http://www.arcengames.com/aiwar_buy.php

The demo and the full version are actually the same download, it's just a matter of unlocking the full version with a license key if you like the game. Hope you love it!

Chris

Color me interested. Think I'll download the demo later tonight.

x4000 wrote:

Hey there, I'm the developer of the game.

Hey, can you tell me more about the AI. I assume it's still rule based even though there are more agents involved. Can you elaborate on the structure you used to set those rules up? I'm interested in how it internally works.

Nightmare wrote:

Demo here - typical try it, buy/get license and unlock the rest of the game. Demo claims to be 1 hr of gameplay before asking for the key.

Specifically, that's one hour per regular campaign, but you can start as many campaigns as you want (each one usually takes 10-12 hours to complete, so that's just playing the very start of each one). And also, if you play the simulated campaign tutorial, you can play for however long it takes you to complete that one (usually around 3 hours) without worrying about the time limit.

Lucan wrote:
x4000 wrote:

Hey there, I'm the developer of the game.

Hey, can you tell me more about the AI. I assume it's still rule based even though there are more agents involved. Can you elaborate on the structure you used to set those rules up? I'm interested in how it internally works.

Hey, sure thing -- I'm going to be writing a full article on this topic in the next couple of weeks, but here's a quick rundown. First, the way that AI systems in most games work is via giant decision trees (IF A, then C, IF B, then D, etc, etc). This can make for human-like behavior up to a point, but it requires a lot of development and ultimately winds up with exploitable flaws. My favorite example from pretty much every RTS game since 1998 is how they pathfind around walls; if you leave a small gap in your wall, the AI will almost always try to go through that hole, which lets human players mass their units at these choke points since they are "tricking" the AI into using a hole in the wall that is actually a trap. The AI thus sends wave after wave through the hole, dying every time.

Not only does that rules-based decision tree approach take forever to program, but it's also so exploitable in many ways beyond just the above. However, to emulate how a human player might play, that sort of approach is generally needed. I started out using a decision tree, but pretty soon realized that this was kind of boring even at the basic conceptual level --if I wanted to play against humans, I could just play against another human. I wanted an AI that acted in a new way, different from what another human could do, like playing against Skynet or the Buggers from Ender's Game, or something like that. An AI that felt fresh and intelligent, but that played with scary differences from how a human ever could, since our brains have different strengths and weaknesses compared to a CPU.

The approach that I settled on, and which gave surprisingly quick results early in the development of the game, was simulating intelligence in each of the individual units, rather than simulating a single overall controlling intelligence. If you have ever ready Prey, by Michael Crichton, it works vaguely like the swarms of nanobots in that book. The primary difference is that my individual units are a lot more intelligent than each of his nanobots, and thus an average swarm in my game might be 30 to 2000 ships, rather than millions or billions of nanobots. But this also means that my units are at zero risk of ever reaching true sentience -- people from the future won't be coming back to kill me to prevent the coming AI apocalypse, haha. But I can get much more intelligent results with much less code and fewer agents.

There are really three levels of thinking to the AI in AI War: strategic, sub-commander, and individual-unit. So this isn't even a true swarm intelligence, because it combines swarm intelligence (at the individual-unit level) with more global rules and behaviors. How the AI decides which planets to reinforce, or which planets to send waves against, is all based on the strategic level of logic -- the global commander, if you will. The method by which an AI determines how to use its ships in attacking or defending an individual planet is based on a combination of the sub-commander and individual-ship logic.

Here's the cool thing: the sub-commander logic is completely emergent. Based on how the individual-unit logic is coded, the units do what is best for themselves, but also take into account what the rest of the group is doing. It's kind of the idea of flocking behavior, but applied to tactics and target selection instead of movement. So when you see the AI send its ships into your planet, break them into two or three groups, and hit a variety of targets on your planet all at once, that's actually emergent sub-commander behavior that was never explicitly programmed. There's nothing remotely like that in the game code, but the AI is always doing stuff like that. The AI does some surprisingly intelligent things that way, things I never thought of, and it never does the really moronic stuff that rules-based AIs occasionally do.

And the best part is that it is fairly un-trickable. Not to say that the system is perfect, but if a player finds a way to trick the AI, all they have to do is tell me and I can usually put a counter into the code pretty quickly. There haven't been any ways to trick the AI since the alpha releases that I'm aware of, though. The AI runs on a separate thread on the host computer only, so that lets it do some really heavy data crunching (using LINQ, actually -- my background is in database programming and ERP / financial tracking / revenue forecasting applications in TSQL, a lot of which came across to the AI here). Taking lots of variables into effect means that it can make highly intelligent decisions without causing any lag whatsoever on your average dual-core host.

Fuzzy logic / randomization is also another key component that I forgot to mention earlier. A big part of making an unpredictable AI system is making it so that it always make a good choice, but not necessarily the 100% best one (since, with repetition, the "best" choice becomes increasingly non-ideal through its predictability). If an AI player only ever made perfect decisions, to counter them you only need to figure out yourself what the best decision is (or create a false weakness in your forces, such as with the hole in the wall example), and then you can predict what the AI will do with a high degree of accuracy -- approaching 100% in certain cases in a lot of other RTS games. With fuzzy logic in place, I'd say that you have no better than a 50% chance of ever predicting what the AI in AI War is going to do... and usually it's way less predictable than even that.

Bear in mind that the lower difficulty levels make some intentionally-stupid decisions that a novice human might make (such as going for the best target despite whatever is guarding it). That makes the lower-level AIs still feel like a real opponent, but a much less fearsome one. Figuring out ways in which to tone down the AI for the lower difficulties was one of the big challenges for me, actually.

Lastly, the AI in AI War follows wholly different economic rules than the human players (but all of the tactical and most strategic rules are the same). For instance, the AI starts with 20,000+ ships in most games, whereas you start with 4 ships per player. If it just overwhelmed you with everything, it would crush you immediately. Same as if all the bad guys in every level of a Mario Bros game attacked you at once, you'd die immediately (there would be nowhere to jump to). Or if all the enemies in any given level of an FPS game just ran directly at you and shot with perfect accuracy, you'd have no hope. Think about your average FPS that simulates your involvement in military operations -- all of the enemies are not always aware of what you and your allies are doing, so even if the enemies have overwhelming odds against you, you can still win by doing limited engagements and striking key targets, etc. I think the same is true in real wars in many cases, but that's not something that you see in the skirmish modes of other RTS games.

In AI War, to offer procedural campaigns that give a certain David vs Goliath feel (where the human players are always David to some degree), I made a separate rules system for parts of the AI versus what the humans do. The AI's economy works based on internal reinforcement points, wave countdowns, and an overall AI Progress number that gets increased or decreased based on player actions. This lets the players somewhat set the pace of game advancement, which adds another layer of strategy that you would normally only encounter in turn-based games. It's a very asymmetrical sort of system that you totally couldn't have in a pvp-style of skirmish game with AI acting as human standins, but it works beautifully in a co-op-style game where the AI is always the enemy.

Hopefully this answers most of what you wanted to know, although this is kind of a surface-level overview despite how long it turned out to be. I'll do a more structured, in-depth article in the next few weeks, like I said. But if you have any other specific questions about how the AI works, don't hesitate to ask! I'm not shy about talking about the inner workings of the AI system here, since this is something I'd really like to see other developers do in their games. I play lots of games other than my own, just like anyone else, and I'd like to see stronger AI across the board.

x4000, thanks for the breakdown of the AI and a very interesting take on AI in general. You mentioned Enders game over on Wargamer.com forums, and I think thats a really cool hook for the game, and others looking into it.. just don't mention it to OSC himself

I think I've put in about 4 hours now to the game, and would definitely recommend your video guides to get people to not only see some of the mechanics of play, but also to appreciate how the local planetary tactical actions you take affect the bigger galactic strategy to the game. Ultimately its a game of search, secure and destroy, and not all about galactic domination by overwhelming the AI enemy with numbers. Although your fleets may have quite a considerable number of ships and defensive mechanisms.

The securing of planetary systems through wormhole blockades, and then the en masse jumping of your main fleets, can surely invoke thoughts of cylon evasion. And indeed, sometimes you have to plan your wormhole "plugging" to be able to transfer your fleet, you have to switch off production and resource usage at key areas to enable your "wave" of progress through the planetary systems, often having to recoup defensive equipment quota's by dismantling/recycling.

As I'm playing the game, I am often reminded of a real time version of the old turn based game Stars!, and such thoughts start to question whether there is room for the likes of the Mystery Trader in the game.. a sort of unknown quantity sailing through space delivering unique/novel tech to species at a high cost. Perhaps there could be a lone AI trader, who can be beneficial to the co-op players at a cost?

Anyway, the game has certainly captured my attention, and I look forward to seeing how it develops in the future.

spelk wrote:

x4000, thanks for the breakdown of the AI and a very interesting take on AI in general. You mentioned Enders game over on Wargamer.com forums, and I think thats a really cool hook for the game, and others looking into it.. just don't mention it to OSC himself ;)

To be clear, this isn't a game version of Ender's Game, and I don't intend for this to be a real hook for the game. That would be copyright infringement, and really the game is a lot more complex than what was talked about in the context of Ender's Game. But, as OSC talked about various influences on him that helped him to create Ender's Game, such as Isaac Asimov's Foundation series, and some military novels that inspired him to a certain degree, Ender's Game was that sort of inspiration for me. Maybe I shouldn't mention that, to avoid the risk of copyright infringement -- there are a dozen other influences on AI War other than OSCs work, plus a lot of original ideas -- but it was just meant as a passsing comment.

spelk wrote:

I think I've put in about 4 hours now to the game, and would definitely recommend your video guides to get people to not only see some of the mechanics of play, but also to appreciate how the local planetary tactical actions you take affect the bigger galactic strategy to the game. Ultimately its a game of search, secure and destroy, and not all about galactic domination by overwhelming the AI enemy with numbers. Although your fleets may have quite a considerable number of ships and defensive mechanisms.

This is very true, if you just try to take every low-value target (as you would in other games), the AI will get too powerful and will probably win. One of my biggest inspirations for the game was actually Chess, because I love how every action in that game has a consequence. You can't just sacrifice bishops for a low value objective, and you can't ignore the strategic value of your pawns. So a lot of the structure of AI War was inspired partly from my love of Chess.

spelk wrote:

The securing of planetary systems through wormhole blockades, and then the en masse jumping of your main fleets, can surely invoke thoughts of cylon evasion. And indeed, sometimes you have to plan your wormhole "plugging" to be able to transfer your fleet, you have to switch off production and resource usage at key areas to enable your "wave" of progress through the planetary systems, often having to recoup defensive equipment quota's by dismantling/recycling.

All very true, but I had never thought of the comparison to Battlestar: Galactica. I'm peripherally aware of the basics (cyclons vs humans, etc), but that was never a show I got into. I was into Star Trek TNG as a kid, and really enjoyed Firefly recently, but I don't watch enough tv to see all the good scifi shows. I need to probably give Battlestar a chance on Netflix, though.

spelk wrote:

As I'm playing the game, I am often reminded of a real time version of the old turn based game Stars!, and such thoughts start to question whether there is room for the likes of the Mystery Trader in the game.. a sort of unknown quantity sailing through space delivering unique/novel tech to species at a high cost. Perhaps there could be a lone AI trader, who can be beneficial to the co-op players at a cost?

Oh, cool comparison -- I never played that game, but it's awesome to see comparisons outside of the games I'm actually familiar with. It's funny that you mention the unique/novel tech idea, because I do plan to have a feature kind of like that in the first expansion pack for the game. That will come out late this year, and one part of the massive amounts of new stuff the expansion will add will be "Golems," which will basically be these singular and powerful ships that are scattered amongst the junk in the planets. They become another secondary objective, so that you can go capture them, bring them back to life, and then use them to wreak some destruction (but if you lose them, then they are gone forever). That sort of "what might I find out in the galaxy" exploration element is also something I'm going to keep emphasizing through the free DLC, so that there are more and more rare ships that you might find in some campaigns, but not most.

spelk wrote:

Anyway, the game has certainly captured my attention, and I look forward to seeing how it develops in the future.

Glad to hear it!

Neat. I will check this out when I have time. So much already on the pile! -_-

Added to my list to check out - we'll see if it runs in Wine.

Aetius wrote:

Added to my list to check out - we'll see if it runs in Wine.

If you find out one way or another, do let me know, won't you? I'd love to do a Mac/Linux version at some point in the future, but that's a significant undertaking (the game is in C#, and my past experiences with Mono have not left me overly excited just yet), and I'm the sole programmer. My dad's a big Linux enthusiast, though, and I have a couple of other relatives who are Mac fanatics, so they are hoping for a version on other platforms, too. We'll see what happens, I suppose, but for now it would be awesome if the game does work on Wine for Linux, and on VMWare for the Mac (which I presume it would).

Wow... that was one helluva interesting post on AI! Thanks for sharing that info! I've been mucking around with a few game prototypes lately and that gave me a lot of new ideas to consider. Do you regularly blog/post development concepts like that? I'll make sure to try out the game soon as well.

LockAndLoad wrote:

Wow... that was one helluva interesting post on AI! Thanks for sharing that info! I've been mucking around with a few game prototypes lately and that gave me a lot of new ideas to consider. Do you regularly blog/post development concepts like that? I'll make sure to try out the game soon as well.

Thanks! I'm not a very reliable blogger (too busy programming, most of the time), but now that AI War is out I am writing a number of articles about things I learned through that process. The index of all those articles is here: http://arcengames.com/forums/index.php?board=5.0

I just finished an article on optimizations that let the game run such intense AI and so vastly many ships (and in C# no less, haha). If you're into game development, you might find some more interesting ideas in there: http://christophermpark.blogspot.com/2009/06/optimizing-30000-ships-in-realtime-in-c.html

Sounds interesting. I'll definitely check out the demo.

Hella impressive post x4000. I'll have to check it out.

We've had a couple of threads going around regarding people looking for new space sim battle games. You should have a good audience here.

Johnvanjim wrote:

Sounds interesting. I'll definitely check out the demo.

Cool stuff -- hope you love it!

Bullion Cube wrote:

Hella impressive post x4000. I'll have to check it out.

We've had a couple of threads going around regarding people looking for new space sim battle games. You should have a good audience here.

It's always good news to find a group of people interested in one's game. Our player population is fairly small at the moment (just having really started getting exposure last week, and only via a few channels so far), but the playerbase is growing and various positive word of mouth around the Internet is really helping it to grow. Thanks for your support and interest!

x4000 wrote:
Aetius wrote:

Added to my list to check out - we'll see if it runs in Wine.

If you find out one way or another, do let me know, won't you? I'd love to do a Mac/Linux version at some point in the future, but that's a significant undertaking (the game is in C#, and my past experiences with Mono have not left me overly excited just yet), and I'm the sole programmer. My dad's a big Linux enthusiast, though, and I have a couple of other relatives who are Mac fanatics, so they are hoping for a version on other platforms, too. We'll see what happens, I suppose, but for now it would be awesome if the game does work on Wine for Linux, and on VMWare for the Mac (which I presume it would).

I haven't had a chance to try it yet, but I can tell you that .NET stuff rarely works on Wine - there are still a number of problems with the .NET Framework installer, let alone things working once installed.

Aetius wrote:

I haven't had a chance to try it yet, but I can tell you that .NET stuff rarely works on Wine - there are still a number of problems with the .NET Framework installer, let alone things working once installed.

Oh, okay, then I am almost positive this won't work in Wine. Nuts. This uses .NET 3.5, and it uses a lot of advanced features from there such as Generics and LINQ. That's part of why it would be extra hard for me to port it to Mono at the moment, too, aside from the OpenGL/DirectX conversion that would be required. Sorry about that, hopefully the state of Wine and or Mono will continue to improve. I do want to have a Linux version of my stuff at some point.

(edit: fix report URL)

x4000 wrote:
Aetius wrote:

Added to my list to check out - we'll see if it runs in Wine.

If you find out one way or another, do let me know, won't you? I'd love to do a Mac/Linux version at some point in the future, but that's a significant undertaking (the game is in C#, and my past experiences with Mono have not left me overly excited just yet), and I'm the sole programmer. My dad's a big Linux enthusiast, though, and I have a couple of other relatives who are Mac fanatics, so they are hoping for a version on other platforms, too. We'll see what happens, I suppose, but for now it would be awesome if the game does work on Wine for Linux, and on VMWare for the Mac (which I presume it would).

I just gave it a shot, thought I'd give you an update. (FYI: I'm on Mac OS X)

It is possible to use cabextract to unpack the installer, so you don't have to go through it trying to install .net 3.5, and I was able to install SlimDX through wine and it happily accepted the wine install of Mono 2.4 for Windows that I had. Every time I ran AIWar.exe it would complain about a directory that's missing, and I'd mkdir it manually and guess at what files need to be moved there.

Eventually I couldn't get any farther after this error trying to load the 3.5.0 version of the System.Core assembly:

System.IO.FileNotFoundException: Could not load file or assembly 'System.Core, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a 5c561934e089' or one of its dependencies. Exception from HRESULT: 0x80070002 File name: 'System.Core, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089' at AIWar.GameForm.DrawDirect3D() at AIWar.GameForm.RunNextCycle(Boolean DoRendering, Boolean DoScrollingAndInput) in C:\vcprojs\AIWar\GameFormParts\GameLoop.cs:line 1061 at AIWar.GameForm.gameLoop() in C:\vcprojs\AIWar\GameFormParts\GameLoop.cs:line 219 at AIWar.GameForm.GameForm_Load(Object sender, EventArgs e) in C:\vcprojs\AIWar\GameFormParts\Startup.cs:line 242 at System.Windows.Forms.Form.OnLoad(EventArgs e) at System.Windows.Forms.Form.OnCreateControl() at System.Windows.Forms.Control.CreateControl(Boolean fIgnoreVisible) at System.Windows.Forms.Control.CreateControl() at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WmShowWindow(Message& m) at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WndProc(Message& m) at System.Windows.Forms.ScrollableControl.WndProc(Message& m) at System.Windows.Forms.ContainerControl.WndProc(Message& m) at System.Windows.Forms.Form.WmShowWindow(Message& m) at System.Windows.Forms.Form.WndProc(Message& m) at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.OnMessage(Message& m) at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.WndProc(Message& m) at System.Windows.Forms.NativeWindow.Callback(IntPtr hWnd, Int32 msg, IntPtr wparam, IntPtr lparam) WRN: Assembly binding logging is turned OFF. To enable assembly bind failure logging, set the registry value [HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Fusion!EnableLog] (DWORD) to 1. Note: There is some performance penalty associated with assembly bind failure logging. To turn this feature off, remove the registry value [HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Fusion!EnableLog].

I guess there isn't a way to build with generics/etc. but target a .net 3.0 runtime like java does? (eg, like javac -source 1.6 -target 1.4) Mono is up to C# 3.0 support, including LINQ, in 2.4.

I ran Mono's "migration tool" and there was very little in the runtime that it complained about. Note that it warns about PInvoke whether the target DLL exists or not since it is a sign of potential problems at runtime.

You can grab the report here.

Thanks for the info, Ranger Rick! That's awesome information, it sounds like it is getting a lot closer.

.NET Version 3.0 was not really a major release of the core framework (it did not extend the core language, just added some stuff like WPF, if I recall). I've ported a couple of .NET 2.0 applications over to mono in the past (my Manuscript Analyzer tool, primarily), but performance was terrible -- analyzing a manuscript went from taking under a second to taking over a minute, and both were still on windows. Just to see what would happen, I switched the application output over to .NET 3.0 and tried to build. The main thing it was missing was LINQ, other than that it seemed pretty happy (generics came in during 2.0 of .NET, but for a good while I know they were not in Mono -- glad they are now).

The main other issue is that I am still constantly updating the application every week (free DLC, and all that), and plan to be doing so for another year or so. As a one-man shop I'm not sure I have the resources to do that, plus builds for Mono, plus work on my other projects (upcoming games and expansions, etc). So in an ideal world, at some point Mono will be to the point where I can just convert everything over to that and be done with it, thus keeping a consolidated source repository without having to sync two divergent builds.

If you know another way to easily port existing assemblies to Mono without having to recode them from the Microsoft assemblies, then that would also be awesome. Potentially if they add .NET 3.5 support, maybe that would be all that is needed (if performance is okay). It's a challenging situation, mostly due to time constraints and the still-evolving nature of Mono. But I'm watching it with interest, and if someone who knows more about it than I do has some ideas of a way to easily manage the workflow of simultaneous development between the two (maybe Mono has some tool or something already for that), I'm definitely open to it. Still having the underlying SlimDX/DirectX dependency seems like it would potentially be problematic -- how does Wine do with that? If Wine is okay with that, then maybe this is all a lot closer than I think it is (that would be a nice surprise!).

Anyway, it looks like this is getting progressively closer to being a viable thing, which is great.

x4000 wrote:

Still having the underlying SlimDX/DirectX dependency seems like it would potentially be problematic -- how does Wine do with that? If Wine is okay with that, then maybe this is all a lot closer than I think it is (that would be a nice surprise!).

Don't worry about it. The Wine DirectX support is decent up to 9, and is being constantly improved (they release every 2 weeks). If it doesn't work, installing the full DirectX 9 is trivial, and almost always works. DirectX 10 support is still in the works, but requiring DirectX 10 for a game is essentially impossible for the moment, so that's a future worry.

Aetius wrote:
x4000 wrote:

Still having the underlying SlimDX/DirectX dependency seems like it would potentially be problematic -- how does Wine do with that? If Wine is okay with that, then maybe this is all a lot closer than I think it is (that would be a nice surprise!).

Don't worry about it. The Wine DirectX support is decent up to 9, and is being constantly improved (they release every 2 weeks). If it doesn't work, installing the full DirectX 9 is trivial, and almost always works. DirectX 10 support is still in the works, but requiring DirectX 10 for a game is essentially impossible for the moment, so that's a future worry.

Sweet, that's good to know. The SlimDX libraries are a .NET wrapper for the full DirectX, by the way -- so both need to be installed. But I don't plan on doing anything with DX10 or D2D anytime soon, so sounds like there should be no issues aside from .NET 3.5 support and whatever performance issues might be present, if any. But that's getting pretty darn close.

Wow, that AI description was terrific.

I'm interested, and I have to admit, the fact that you created an account and have been an active poster in the thread makes me even more interested. I think I'll give the game a try, even though I know it's going to make my head hurt.

TheCounselor wrote:

Wow, that AI description was terrific.

I'm interested, and I have to admit, the fact that you created an account and have been an active poster in the thread makes me even more interested.

Thank you! It's a pleasure for me to be able to connect with the community.

TheCounselor wrote:

I think I'll give the game a try, even though I know it's going to make my head hurt.

Haha, okay -- hopefully the four tutorials will ease you into it pretty well. And if there is anything that might make it easier for you to transition into playing actual campaigns after that point, let me know. On various other messageboards, I'm involved in a few discussions on that point. Most people who are already familiar with RTS find the transition pretty graceful, even though it is so different, but every player is different (and many have different expectations based on what their history in the genre is, so that can also make it easier or harder for various people -- for instance, the transition from SupCom is a really easy one, the transition from Starcraft not quite as much).

Anyway, point being -- hope you enjoy it, and if there's anything I can do to help make things easier for you as a new player, let me know and I'll see what I can do.

x4000 wrote:

Haha, okay -- hopefully the four tutorials will ease you into it pretty well. And if there is anything that might make it easier for you to transition into playing actual campaigns after that point, let me know. On various other messageboards, I'm involved in a few discussions on that point. Most people who are already familiar with RTS find the transition pretty graceful, even though it is so different, but every player is different (and many have different expectations based on what their history in the genre is, so that can also make it easier or harder for various people -- for instance, the transition from SupCom is a really easy one, the transition from Starcraft not quite as much).

Anyway, point being -- hope you enjoy it, and if there's anything I can do to help make things easier for you as a new player, let me know and I'll see what I can do.

Thanks for the offer!

How similar is it to a game like Sins? That game made my head hurt. I've played a bunch of Company of Heroes. I played some Starcraft in it's day, although not really much multiplayer. I always like the idea of RTSs in theory, but I never feel proficient enough at them. I kinda feel the same way about fighting games, but at least those matches only last a few minutes.

TheCounselor wrote:

How similar is it to a game like Sins? That game made my head hurt. I've played a bunch of Company of Heroes. I played some Starcraft in it's day, although not really much multiplayer. I always like the idea of RTSs in theory, but I never feel proficient enough at them. I kinda feel the same way about fighting games, but at least those matches only last a few minutes.

Well, that seems to be one of the first questions that everyone asks, because I guess on the surface there are a lot of similarities between the two -- they are both set in space, have multiple planets, are RTS games, etc. All that is valid, and in general the controls are basic mechanics are similar between this game, Sins, and most other recent RTS games.

The actual strategic aspects are really different, though -- there are a lot of longer-term decisions to make here, and in many ways the overall sort of decisions you are likely to make are a lot more like Civilization IV or something. The main thing is that you have plenty of time to make decisions, and you have many specific goals and sub-goals. So it's not like it just throws you in and says "do whatever!" which I think is what overwhelms a lot of people. Too many options, none of which seem particularly more valid than any other, can be paralyzing. AI War has tons of options, but they are filtered somewhat by what your objectives are at the moment, which helps to give a sense of short-term purpose.

The intermediate tutorial teaches you a lot about how the overall flow of the game goes, and it also teaches you about a lot of tactics and strategies that you can use to be successful, but you might also find this entry from our mini-guide to be quite helpful: http://www.arcengames.com/aiwar_miniguide.php#gen_start (That list won't seem so long once you have some familiarity with the game, I imagine.)

I know exactly what you mean about fighting games, by the way -- I never feel proficient at those, and wind up just button-mashing a lot. That's one of the few gaming genres that I'm not really into.

One other thing that mitigates complexity in AI War, at least a bit: each campaign plays out over 10-12 hours (or longer if you need, there's not a time limit or anything), so there's lots of time in which you can make decisions, test out your decisions, and see the results of them. In a lot of other RTS games you often have to make decisions a lot more quickly, and then the game ends within 45-60 minutes one way or another, so it's sometimes hard to see what worked better and what did not.

So while you might find AI War, like a lot of other RTS games, a lot to pick up right at first (tutorials aside), hopefully you'll actually start to feel proficient at it after a campaign or so, even if that hasn't happened in other games. I don't really know if that's the case or not, but that's my speculation based on the factors I mentioned above. If you do wind up getting the game, let me know how it goes on that front, if you don't mind -- I'd find that very useful information.

Thanks again for your interest!

By the by -- can anybody tell me if there is a way to subscribe to these threads, via email or rss or whatever method?

x4000 wrote:

By the by -- can anybody tell me if there is a way to subscribe to these threads, via email or rss or whatever method?

Unfortunately no, the best you can do with the forum itself is go the My Account section then Track. I haven't tried it for the forums, but you might be able use ChangeDetection.com to notify you of updates. Not sure if it would be triggered by people changing their signatures, location, etc. or not.

Awesome, thanks LiquidMantis -- the ChangeDetection.com is great, even if it does sometimes give false positives.

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