'Neurotic' is Best RTS strategy

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."

Comments

Result is specific to AoM?

[Chief Camel Breeder]

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?

[arivanov]

Dunno about Civ4.

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.

Re:Result is specific to AoM?

[Chief Camel Breeder]

You're right: Civ is turn based. However, I'd guess that RT vs. turn-based matters little to the bots; I'm guessing that they are fast enough for the RT aspect not to hinder them.

Re:Result is specific to AoM?

[Jaeph]

If I understood correctly, a nuerotic AI is one that exxagerates negative feelings. So it panics earlier at losing resources, or someone's scout, or whatever.

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

AoM AI

[gEvil (beta)]

This whole study compares how the four AI bots did against the game's built-in AI. I'd like to know how the four "personality" types did against each other, as well. Even then, the whole study is limited to the gameplay mechanics of this one game. That's not to say that the information isn't useful--just that it's pretty limited at this point.

Since Software is a reflection of its makers...

[3seas]

... is this perhaps reflective of real life personalities, such as those who are best at war mongering?
i.e. would have Hitler been considered neurotic?

Re:Since Software is a reflection of its makers...

[Anonymous Coward]

This isn't a Hitler/Nazi comparison for the sake of ending an argument, it's a perfectly valid suggestion.

Re:Makes sense

[try_anything]

Bots also have a terrible inability to fully commit to a strategy or to change strategies quickly. A good short-term RTS strategy often involves inflicting terrible damage through a phase of committed, unbalanced, unsustainable action that also damages the attacker's civilization but leaves him in a position to recover faster than the opponent.

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

[SmallFurryCreature]

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:crazy leaders?

[FredDC]

maybe this goes to show how the neurotic leaders of ages past came to such power. some of the roman emperors were not known for being the most stable minds.

As opposed to todays political leaders who are all striking examples of stable minds?

Re:addiction

[oatworm]

The door swings both ways. Biology + cultural reinforcement inclines women (at least American women) to want romance (especially to be seen in public with a man who is showering affection on her). Learn to grant and withold that, and you can start getting your way too. Women don't react rationally (or perhaps they do?) to such deprivation of stimuli - with them, if you deprive it once, they'll assume you will always deprive it and react accordingly. This would be consistent with the "pessimistic-neurotic" approach mentioned earlier, and is the complete opposite of the male "well, she put out once - maybe she'll do it again" school of thought. The solution, of course, would be for the male to realize that, if she's weaponizing sex, she will continue to weaponize sex even after the man "behaves", but that solution just leads to a scorched-earth policy called "divorce".