Problem with AI not recruiting enough workers when rebuilding buildings

[JimmRaven]

Hello? I am a player who is enjoying this AI well. First of all, I would like to thank you for developing this artificial intelligence.
However, there is a very disappointing problem, so I would like to make one request. Could you please check this?

After a certain amount of buildings are destroyed by the player, the AI ​​becomes an idiot. In particular, the AI ​​rarely hires workers, making it difficult to raise money. Therefore, even if the player fails to rush, if only a certain amount of damage is inflicted, the game collapses and the difficulty level drops sharply. I hope an update is made so that AI can be revived.

[jncraton]

Thanks for reaching out. I'm glad that you are enjoying the play experience overall!

I have experienced the behavior that you describe. There unfortunately isn't much I'm aware of that I can do about it. This tool makes use of Blizzard's original AI scripting system that is fairly limited and has been basically unchanged since 1998. The primary way it operates is by executing a sequence of instructions in order.

I've designed the system to select from a number of different build orders that I've optimized assuming limited harassment.

If the early build is disrupted, or a large amount of damage is done to the main later in the game, the script's difficulty will drop sharply as you noted. One of the more extreme and obvious examples of this is a gas steal. Most of the builds explicitly wait for a refinery to be built. If this is not possible, the build will stop.

While I'm open to hearing specific examples that are problematic, or merging PRs that address specific problems without causing other issues, I'm afraid that there isn't much that can be done about this without switching away from the game's native AI scripting.

[JimmRaven]

I understand. It won't be easy to solve.
However, I would like to research whether there really is a solution using conditional statements, etc.
For that, I think I'll need a full list of Blizzard script commands.
Is there a link where I can see a list of scripts?
Or not if you don't mind, could I get the text file of the AIScript.bin file before it was converted to binary?

[jncraton]

I appreciate your desire to dig into this.

For that, I think I'll need a full list of Blizzard script commands.

There are various sources of info about available commands. I have compiled a list including info borrowed from several sources over the years.

Is there a link where I can see a list of scripts?
Or not if you don't mind, could I get the text file of the AIScript.bin file before it was converted to binary?

I don't separately publish the .pyai scripts in the releases, but they are intermediate build artifacts that are easy enough to extract from the build directory after a build. I've created a gist with the current combined.pyai script for you.

I would like to research whether there really is a solution using conditional statements, etc.

One of the challenges is that there isn't much information available to conditional statements. The available statements are grouped together in the flow control section. The only information available that I've found helpful for branching is:

• A Boolean indicating whether we control at least one of a given unit or structure (counts are not available)
• A Boolean indicating whether our opponent controls at least one of a given unit or structure (counts are not available)
• Our current minerals and gas
• Our opponents minerals and gas
• Total time elapsed

There is no way that I'm aware of to reliably get information about units we have lost, current worker counts, current supply, or other values that would be very helpful in adapting to the current state of the game. Variables or other forms of arbitrary data storage are not provided, so it is difficult to build more complex logic. There is also a hard limit of 64KB for aiscript.bin. The current scripts are 39KB.

[JimmRaven]

OMG. Thank you very much for your kind and detailed response. Thank you for sharing the information you have collected over the years. If any results are achieved, it will be thanks to you. I will research carefully and take into account all the information you provided. Really appreciate it!