'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

Re:Result is specific to AoM?

[SatanicPuppy]

It's a bit interesting. AoM is a game with great scope, allowing for unusually "large" game boards by the standards of other RTS. Consequentially, the AI has had to be somewhat "toned down" from the kind of cutthroat AI you got in WarIII or even startcraft. I'm a big RTS buff, and while I _liked_ AoM I never found it all that difficult. Some games are a lot more forgiving of a failed attack, and that's one of them. You have enough resources and fast enough build times that even if your grand fleet gets crushed, you're probably okay.

Reading the article, (which is freaky low on detail) it seems more like "Neurotic" in this case is meant to signify a lack of caution. Aggressive won every match, and neurotic won every match, but neurotic did it faster. This suggests that irrational risk taking (the article mentions that the AI skews its internal numbers about how many resources it thinks it has) can beat a more cautious opponent.

In both cases it seems clear that aggression carried the day, and that the only real difference was that the AI that lacked caution won faster. To me, that suggests a big problem with the regular AI, because that lack of caution is usually pretty easy to exploit...A counterattack on a resource gathering operation would leave the crazy AI crippled, due to low reserves. The regular AI's counterattack algorithms must be pretty weak, or it's build order is too cautious or something.

I'd love to see a better description of the AI programming.