Good feedback, Gnef.  Thanks for contributing and please share other thoughts as you give this a go.  A lot of time has been spent on tweaking the basic ai logic and then some additional time has been spent on tweaking individual dgs (basic logic has received the highest priority - things like buying the right citadel upgrades, purchasing intelligent skill/item builds, etc).  At the very least, you'll notice that the ai is purchasing useful upgrades at timely intervals, which means you can generally focus more on fighting/doing what you want than having to buy the critical upgrades yourself.  Anyway, thanks again for the feedback!

Wow, you guys have been busy. I havent read thru the whole thing either.  Huge improvement over the regular AI. Good Job! I did play several 3v3 on hard with the 26u and whatever the team was I found them doing the exact same thing at game start. After the mid fight for xp flag was done and captured by either team at least 1 AI would proceed to chase me towards either hp or mana lane on my side of map for no reason at all, even if I was towards full health. Sometimes they would get out of towers alive and seemed almost genius but most times not so great outcome. A couple of deaths but most times ended up with them having to march straight back to crystal in the first minute of game.

I played a 3v3 as rook one game against sedna. I found her silences very timely. Usually one at beginning of battle and then towards end. The first one was not just a random fire she actually waited for me to try slam or something then she'd silence, which I thought was cool but after that it just took even the slightest slam pump fake to draw it out of her leaving her out of mana after a few fakes. These were usually 1v1 battles so even tho timely it was not a wise use of mana.

Then I played a 3v4 on hard as sed. It was pretty rough. They were actually winning because of warscore but at like warscore 8-10 they just seemed to get completly dumb and just all bunched up around my mine flag. At least 2 were there(sometimes all 4) vs just me and they wouldn't push portal or even push tower. Double towers were still up. I didnt even have to engage just the sheer awesomeness of my prescence was enough to make them cower and feeze. We ended up winning because I just stalled a couple of them there and let my AI capture their port uncontested.

Had a good time tho. I'll read thru some of this and see if I can find anything that hasn't been mentioned and get a better format to report. Again good job guys.

yeah - I'm not sure if the rook "knows" how many towers it currently has up in a given location, but in a basic tower farm, then rook will drop towers in relatively the same place (humans use different placement based on aoe damage dgs in play, but no need to worry about that).  Then, once the initial farm is up, the rook can just farm creeps or engage enemy dgs IN the tower farm. 

-Thanks for the feedback again, brasher.  I'll likely be doing some test games tonight using favor 1.03, skirmish 26u (or latest version), and favor 2.1.2.

Peppe - would you be willing to rebrand this mod and start calling it Enhanced AI?  That would probably be best for inclusion in game.  Additionally, would you be willing to change your version numbering scheme to 0.0.0 (fill in whatever numbers you want and increment)?  That will make favormod and ai skirmish identical in version design.  Thanks.

v0.26.22:

http://peppe-dg-mods.googlecode.com/files/Enhanced_AI_v0.26.22.zip

http://peppe-dg-mods.googlecode.com/files/Enhanced_AI_v0.26.22.exe

Version switched to all numbers.

Renamed to enhanced ai

Rook farming and tower placement (flag if available).

Don't know if the AI can detect a fake casting of a skill.  How do players detect that?

Late game can use some work.  AI tries to make a flag capture + lock at 8, but maybe it should wait till warrank 10 to do that and try to destroy structures warrank 8 and 9.

Just what brasher was saying, how he could abort hammer slam and get the AI to use up its mana on interrupts. Is that something to worry about?

I'll see if i can add delete to the inno setup script i am using.  If i find something that looks like it will work I can also stop generating a new ID for each version, so the mod will stay enabled in the game.  The main issue of re-using the same folder is occasionally i remove a file from the mod and if someone's install has that old file it will cause issues.  

It's probably more just experience in that game. Like if every time I spit Erebus as UB he instantly mists then I might try to fake the spit then 2 sec later when he comes out actually spit him. So erebus should learn that I will fake so he might not instantly mist as soon as he sees the spit start to cast. It's still a guessing game. I doubt its something you can code.

I was more concerned with the 1v1 match up and mana usage of silence for the single nuke that can be dodged or even using it at all at almost full health 1v1. Idk what everyone else thinks but I'm trying to find a character that I would possibly use silence against 1v1 when I was higher health, maybe TB, delay the fireball, nova, ring for a sec. Even then I'd save it untill I was a little lower health. I usually just save it for the end to silence the sigil getaway or save myself or someone. I can see it being more useful as the numbers of enemy characters near her increases.

Maybe a higher priority for attempting pounce interrupt than just firing silence 1v1 at higher health. She was in pounce distance. I'll mess around with it tonight.

Idk what everyone else thinks but I'm trying to find a character that I would possibly use silence against 1v1 when I was higher health, maybe TB, delay the fireball, nova, ring for a sec.

It is frequently justified in 1v1 vs mage type (low hp, mana-intensive) skill-spamming characters: Occ, TB (especially Ice TB), QoT. 

Enhanced AI 0.26.22/uberfix 1.03/FavorMod 2.1.2

Settings:  cata/High Towers - all other settings on default
AI settings:  normal
da(h)/rook/rook v sed/rook/rook

Observed results:

Noticed something that should probably be altered in the ai logic if possible.  The ai generally does care if the enemy is capping a flag and there is another.  For example.  We my teams owns the health flag and the xp flag.  I have a rook that is coming back from the base and is heading towards the middle.  The enemy ai starts to cap the xp (middle) flag at this point.  My ai continues on to hp flag, which we still own instead of attempting to stop the ai from capping the mid flag.

I was impressed by one moment in particular.  An AI rook was enaging me at the center near our towers.  My ai rook was trying to cap the middle flag.  My rook recognized that he should change priorities and attack the ai near me instead of finishing capping the flag.

I really like what I'm seeing from the rooks spamming towers.  Unfortunately, both of the rooks on my team went hammer slam, but 2 on the other team choose towers.  Mid game, he was setting them up all around the hp flag.  Late game they were spamming towers like champs!

Noticed something off.  My team was ws8.  Their team was ws9.  When we were both ws8, my team did not try to TP to save portals at all.  When they hit 9, then I started seeing portal threatened messages and the ai porting once.  Then when the ai was needed to port again, it did not come, this time when 2 enemy ai's were trying to take a portal. 

Another instance, possibly related to the ai not understanding that its losing a flag - the ai rook was standing in front of the hp flag.  Just far enough away that it wouldn't be capping the flag.  I walk past and just sit there and take the flag back.  The ai doesn't even move towards me until after I've taken the flag.

Then, a little later, both of my ai's ported again to defend the flag.  In the instance where 2 of enemy ai's were pushing the portal and neither of my ai's bothered to tp in, my ai's were in the process of capping the xp flag.  So, perhaps its overriding the need to port if its in another process.  I noticed this time when they both ported in, they were just attacking creeps.

Another thing - I don't believe I ever saw the tower rooks use boulder roll.  stunning enemies in a tower farm is a great way to save your life or get a kill. 

Overall, the tower rook setting up farms was very very very much improved.  I found the game a little more challenging and had to flee back to base or heal up a bit more than normal. 

Edit  - if you code a change for the tower farm, see if you can make it cast boulder roll anytime someone comes in range of the tower farm.  Don't use it for interrupts, just have it cast to slow them down or stop them.

Enhanced AI 0.26.22/uberfix 1.03/FavorMod 2.1.2  

Settings:  cata/High Towers - all other settings on default
AI settings:  normal
rook(h)/rook/rook/rook v rook/rook/rook/rook

Observed results:

Noticed what I believe to be a big problem.  The ai rooks are really hesitant to move towards rooks towers (do they view them as normal towers)? There were a couple of standoffs I noticed early.  I put up 1 tower a little in front of the HP flag and 2 the enemy ai just stood out of range (while it was only me there with 1 tower).  Then, I noticed that in the middle, the enemy ai put up 2 towers by the xp flag.  My team had 2 full hp rooks that just stood and looked at the towers while of out range for like 40 seconds.  The MOMENT the towers dropped, my ai went and capped the mid flag.  So, we need to make the ai NOT as afraid of rooks towers (but still respect the normal towers as appropriate).

I saw another instance where my ai, which had started by targeting an enemy rook that had 1 tower up, walked past the tower like it was nothing.  It seems like if it targets and sees the towers firsts, its super cautious.  If it doesn't see the towers and see's something else, then it proceeds with other logic.

Another thing - at one point me and 2 other rooks on my team were tearing down a tower.  they lose about 1/4 of their hp, maybe a little more, and scurry off instead of finishing the job. Perhaps we can change the threshold for when the ai will run like hell?

On a more interesting note... at one point, 1 ai on my team ran to the back corner of the map near 1 of my portals (portal was never threatened) and just stood there for about 30 seconds... it was a special moment...

Good summary of my long post.

So, we need rook to be LESS afraid of towers.

Another request - let's drop hammer slam rook from the available rook builds for now (comment out) please. 

The capture action was using a tower search that i guess included rook towers.  Going to use another method that should only get real towers.

Think that move to the corner was from the looping to summon multiple towers in one action.  Ran a bunch of rooks and saw it a couple times, but only on the tower rooks.  Going to reset that to one tower built in the action, but weigh the action highly, so it will cast it more often.  Going to leave in the check for a flag within about a tower's range as the primary place to build the tower.  So we should still get a clumping at the flag, but the rook will do other actions.

v0.26.23:

http://peppe-dg-mods.googlecode.com/files/Enhanced_AI_v0.26.23.zip

http://peppe-dg-mods.googlecode.com/files/Enhanced_AI_v0.26.23.exe

Disabled hammer slam build.  Should be just tower rooks.

Playing with when to flee.  AI is a little jumpy at the moment and will probably flee around 70% in most cases.   I was thinking of setting some levels to flee around these situations:

if there are enemy heroes and enemy towers - keep this high like 70%.  Too low and the AI will pursue into towers more and probably kill itself.

If there are enemy heroes and no towers  -  50-60%?

If there are enemy heroes and ally towers - 40%?