Reliable WarCraft III Melee Game A.I.

[StonemaulMidget]

Hello, this is StonemaulMidget,

To digress, I'm not the kind who wants to fuss around with the AI Editor.
Ever wished you had a "smart" AI that actually uses units and buildings and abilities with custom changes made to them, so the game is played more easily? I could tell you right now, I could sure use a practical AI that...
- trains <melee/campaign/custom> units inside <melee/campaign/custom> buildings provided to the computer player.
- has <melee/campaign/custom> worker units build <melee/campaign/custom> structures.
- has <melee/campaign/custom> units utilize <melee/campaign/custom> abilities.
All without having to touch the AI Editor one bit.

If someone could point out that "smart" AI to replace the current AI, the latter which relies on the AI Editor, then that will make me very happy!

 

[Dr Super Good]

I think a large part of why such an AI does not already exist is that Warcraft III lacks, or at least lacked, the functionality required to make one. I do not think it is possible to get the data graph of Warcraft III in a generic way so that some reasonable guesses on the use of various unit types and abilities can be made. Maybe a trigger scripted solution could be made using the new natives but then it has to inefficiently emulate many basic AI features.

This concept would be a lot more viable in StarCraft II since the AI shared the same script environment/virtual machine as the triggers and so did support mixing data lookup and graph iteration inside AI files.

 

[StonemaulMidget]

Okay, thank you.

 

[Riki]

- has <melee/campaign/custom> units utilize <melee/campaign/custom> abilities.

People normally base their custom abilities on others that can be utilized by AI units. While this is an easy way for most users, it has major drawbacks, as AI casters don't use all abilities but only a specific list of standard abilities. Here is the list of those abilities, if you want to take a look:
Base abilities for custom spells cast by melee-game AI units

Now, the other method is to use a custom system that tries to mimic the behavior of the AI units regarding custom spells. This would give you more versatility and you could basically order them to use whatever spell you want to create. An example of this type of system is my AI Behavior Controller, which I designed specifically to solve these types of problems:
AI Behavior Controller v1.3 [GUI-friendly]