Better AI through replay copying

[broken wind]

While I know programming AI to be smart in a game like Phobies is extremely difficult, I wanted to put out the idea that the AI could copy someone's replay from that rank bracket and probably end up with a better strategy than some of the bots on the ladder and in Practice. Especially for the Arena mode which is lacking players and speeds people through the ranks so quickly that they inevitably end up facing someone much stronger than their average.

The AI could either copy their Phobie levels or fix the levels at 10, 15, 20, 25 for the highest difficulties/ranks. It's unlimited content since there are replays recorded at each rank every day and could be employed in the Practice mode difficulties. This could also be followed up with an overall reduction in ranked points obtained on new accounts in Arena.

While this would have an innate cost to develop, I think the long term effects of having an AI that can copy replays on the lower to middle ranks of the ladder and play those strategies would shorten queue times and give players a more realistic progression through a ranking system that is otherwise lacking players. As it sits, there are AI on the ladders that make massive blunders and offer little resistance to players.

This could also be a way for them to come up with Challenges since they could use high level replays as a "find the win in one turn" and allow players to experience premium units being used correctly to advertise them.

TLDR; The AI would copy the replay and roll out the same units but use the tactic of controlling points and keep it's relative priority of capturing panic points the way it already does, just not as aggressively

[runic rampart]

It has come up before, and the Phobies team conveyed that the development time is prohibitive.

I do want bots added to Arena queues to smooth out matchmaking, though - even if they are just easy wins, it's better than throwing the big dogs sacrifices.

I also want daily challenges, and I think this can be reverse-engineered from player matches via an algorithm.

[broken wind]

Yeah I might genuinely get more joy beating an AI that is level locked at 15-20 like me than beating up on someone 7-10 levels lower than me in Arena or losing to someone 10 levels above mine.

I definitely know it's challenging to make it, I just figured having it copy what's already there is easier than developing an entire system of decision making, but it would have to do both to some degree regardless

[broken wind]

It does feel like something that would level up the entire game though. The challenges, straightening out the ladder, more natural progression of opponents. Could extend the game's longevity greatly and help retain newer players

I wish I knew more about it tbh, I have no idea what developing something like this looks like or what it would cost. Maybe if they can find a way to monetize better, it would bring more money to allow something like that.

[runic rampart]

They are kind of the same thing, in the end. You can read about it from a former Phobies dev here:
#❓︱dev-qna message

[broken wind]

Interesting, it seems like they have the framework for it's decision making. There has been a lot of progression with AI since this was written. I wonder how that would make it easier or more challenging.

I can tell you some of the AI that play in Arena are not afraid of lava but that is from watching ManinYellow, not my own experience. This is actually what prompted me to write about this because the way that bot was playing was like the easier difficulty Practice bots.

I spent a little bit of time playing into the Practice AI but by about the 2nd or 3rd day of playing, I had solved most of how they play. At the very least, I do feel like the Practice AI should have higher difficulties and go up in level as I think Inky is like mostly level 9 Phobies. Which is pretty low for the hardest difficulty practice

And this idea of comparing screenshots would hopefully be made obsolete by it's copying of the replay turn order. It wouldn't be making any decisions on Phobie selection, but would instead just play a set strategy that another player played on that map (and at that rank)

It seems like this game has a lot of data that an AI could use with the replays and average Phobie level of players being known by the game.