Turn-Based Games sources: http://www.game-research.com - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

About This Presentation
Title:

Turn-Based Games sources: http://www.game-research.com

Description:

Turn-Based Games sources: http://www.game-research.com/ www.gamespot.com Wikipedia.org Russell & Norvig AI Book; Chapter 5 (and s) Jonathan Schaeffer s AAW 05 ... – PowerPoint PPT presentation

Number of Views:77
Avg rating:3.0/5.0
Slides: 36
Provided by: cseLehig6
Category:
Tags: based | com | game | games | http | research | sources | turn | www

less

Transcript and Presenter's Notes

Title: Turn-Based Games sources: http://www.game-research.com


1
Turn-Based Games
  • sources
  • http//www.game-research.com/
  • www.gamespot.com
  • Wikipedia.org
  • Russell Norvig AI Book Chapter 5 (and slides)
  • Jonathan Schaeffers AAW 05 presentation
  • My own

Héctor Muñoz-Avila
2
Turn-Based Strategy Games
  • Early strategy games was dominated by turn-based
    games
  • Derivate from board games
  • Chess
  • The Battle for Normandy (1982)
  • Nato Division Commanders (1985)
  • Turn-based strategy
  • game flow is partitioned in turns or rounds.
  • Turns separate analysis by the player from
    actions
  • harvest, build, destroy in turns
  • Two classes
  • Simultaneous
  • Mini-turns

3
Turn-Based Games Continues to be A Popular Game
Genre
  • At least 3 sub-styles are very popular
  • Civilization-style games
  • Civilization IV came out last week
  • Fantasy-style (RPG)
  • Heroes of Might and Magic series
  • Poker games
  • Poker Academy

4
Some Historical Highlights
  • 1952 Turing design a chess algorithm. Around the
    same time Claude Shannon also develop a chess
    program
  • 1956 Maniac versus Human
  • 1970 Hamurabi. A game about building an economy
    for a kingdom
  • The Battle for Normandy (1982)
  • 1987 Pirates!
  • 1990 Civilization
  • 1995 HoMM
  • 1996 Civilization II
  • The best game ever?
  • 2005 Civilization IV
  • 2006 HoMM V

5
Side-tracking Game Design Contradicting
Principles
  • Principle All actions can be done from a single
    screen.
  • Classical example Civ IV
  • But HoMM uses two interfaces HoMM IV

6
Coming back How to Construct Good AI?
  • Idea Lets just use A and define a good
    heuristic for the game
  • Search space a bipartite tree
  • After all didnt we use it with the 9-puzzle
    game?
  • Problems with this idea
  • Adversarial we need to consider possible moves
    of our opponent (s)
  • Time limit (think Chess)

7
Types of AdversarialTBGs (from AI perspective)
Chance
Deterministic
Chess, Go, rock-paper-scissors
Perfect information
Backgammon, monopoly
Bridge, Poker
Imperfect information
Battleships, Stratego
Civilization, HoMM
8
Game tree (2-player, deterministic, turns)
  • Concepts
  • State node in search space
  • Operator valid move
  • Terminal test game over
  • Utility function value for outcome of the game
  • MAX 1st player, maximizing its own utility
  • MIN 2nd player, minimizing Maxs utility

9
Minimax
  • Finding perfect play for deterministic games
  • Idea choose move to position with highest
    minimax value best achievable payoff against
    best play
  • E.g., 2-play game

10
Minimax algorithm
11
Properties of minimax
  • Complete?
  • Optimal?
  • Time complexity?
  • b branching factor
  • m moves in a game

Yes (if tree is finite)
Yes (against an optimal opponent)
O(bm)
  • For chess, b 35, m 100 for "reasonable"
    gamesTherefore, exact solution is infeasible

12
Minimax algorithm with Imperfect Decisions
13
Evaluation Function
  • Evaluation Function
  • Is an estimate of the actual utility
  • Typically represented as a linear function
  • EF(state) w1f1(state) w2f2(state)
    wnfn(state)
  • Example

14
Example Evaluation Function
all things been equal White moves, Who is
winning? Is this consistent with Evaluation
function?
Black
Yes!
15
Evaluation Function (2)
  • Obviously, the quality of the AI player depends
    on the evaluation function
  • Conditions for evaluation functions
  • If n is a terminal node,
  • Computing EF should not take long
  • EF should reflect chances of winning

EF(n) Utility(n)
If EF(state) gt 3 then is almost-certain that
blacks win
16
Cutting Off Search
  • When to cutoff minimax expansion?
  • Potential problem with cutting off search
    Horizon problem
  • Solution
  • Fixed depth limit
  • Iterative deepening until times runs out
  • Decision made by opponent is damaging but cannot
    be seen because of cutoff
  • Quiescent states that are unlikely to exhibit
    wild swings in the values of the evaluation
    functions

17
Example Horizon Problem
all things been equal White moves, Who is
winning? Is this consistent with Evaluation
function?
Black
No!
18
a-ß pruning Motivation
  • A good program may search 1000 positions per
    second
  • In a chess tournament, a player gets 150 seconds
    per move
  • Therefore, the program can explore 150,000
    positions per move
  • With a branching factor of 34, this will mean a
    look ahead of 3 or 4 moves
  • Facts
  • 4-turns human novice
  • 8-turns typical PC, human master
  • 12-turns Deep Blue, Kasparov
  • How to look ahead more than 4 turns? Use a-ß
    pruning

19
Example
  • Finding perfect play for deterministic games
  • Idea choose move to position with highest
    minimax value best achievable payoff against
    best play
  • E.g., 2-play game

20
a-ß pruning
21
a-ß pruning example
22
a-ß pruning example
23
a-ß pruning example
24
a-ß pruning example
25
Principle of a-ß Prunning
  • a is the value of the best (i.e., highest-value)
    choice found so far at any choice point along the
    path for max
  • If v ? a, max will avoid it
  • Therefore, prune that branch
  • ß is the lowest-value found so far at any choice
    point along the path for min
  • If v ? a, min will avoid it
  • Therefore, prune that branch

26
The a-ß algorithm
27
The a-ß algorithm
28
Properties of a-ß
  • Pruning preserves completeness and optimality of
    original minimax algorithm
  • Good move ordering improves effectiveness of
    pruning
  • With "perfect ordering," time complexity
    O(bm/2)
  • Therefore, doubles depth of search
  • Used in PC games today (9 moves look-ahead, Grand
    Master level)

29
Deterministic games in practice
  • Checkers Chinook ended 40-year-reign of human
    world champion Marion Tinsley in 1994. Used a
    precomputed endgame database defining perfect
    play for all positions involving 8 or fewer
    pieces on the board, a total of 444 billion
    positions.
  • Chess Deep Blue defeated human world champion
    Garry Kasparov in a six-game match in 1997. Deep
    Blue searches 200 million positions per second,
    24 processors, quiescent identified with help of
    human grand masters
  • Othello human champions refuse to compete
    against computers, who are too good.
  • Go human champions refuse to compete against
    computers, who are too bad. In go, b gt 300, so
    most programs use pattern knowledge bases to
    suggest plausible moves.

30
Additional Notes
  • The next 5 slides are form David W. Aha (NRL)
    presentation at Lehigh University in Fall04

31
Example Game FreeCiv(Chance, adversarial,
imperfect information game)
Civilization II? (MicroProse)
  • Civilization II? (1996-) 850K copies sold
  • PC Gamer Game of the Year Award winner
  • Many other awards
  • Civilization? series (1991-) Introduced the
    civilization-based game genre

FreeCiv (Civ II clone)
  • Open source freeware
  • Discrete strategy game
  • Goal Defeat opponents, or build a spaceship
  • Resource management
  • Economy, diplomacy, science, cities, buildings,
    world wonders
  • Units (e.g., for combat)
  • Up to 7 opponent civs
  • Partial observability

http//www.freeciv.org
32
FreeCiv Scenario
General description
  • Game initialization Your only unit, a settler,
    is placed randomly on a random world (see Game
    Options below). Players cyclically alternate play
  • Objective Obtain highest score, conquer all
    opponents, or build first spaceship
  • Scoring Basic goal is to obtain 1000 points.
    Game options affect the score.
  • Citizens 2 pts per happy citizen, 1 per content
    citizen
  • Advances 20 pts per World Wonder, 5 per
    futuristic advance
  • Peace 3 pts per turn of world peace (no wars or
    combat)
  • Pollution -10pts per square currently polluted
  • Top-level tasks (to achieve a high score)
  • Develop an economy
  • Increase population
  • Pursue research advances
  • Opponent interactions Diplomacy and
    defense/combat

33
FreeCiv Concepts
Concepts in an Initial Knowledge Base
  • Resources Collection and use
  • Food, production, trade (money)
  • Terrain
  • Resources gained per turn
  • Movement requirements
  • Units
  • Type (Military, trade, diplomatic, settlers,
    explorers)
  • Health
  • Combat Offense defense
  • Movement constraints (e.g., Land, sea, air)
  • Government Types (e.g., anarchy, despotism,
    monarchy, democracy)
  • Research network Identifies constraints on what
    can be studied at any time
  • Buildings (e.g., cost, capabilities)
  • Cities
  • Population Growth
  • Happiness
  • Pollution
  • Civilizations (e.g., military strength,
    aggressiveness, finances, cities, units)
  • Diplomatic states negotiations

34
FreeCiv Decisions
Civilization decisions
  • Choice of government type (e.g., democracy)
  • Distribution of income devoted to research,
    entertainment, and wealth goals
  • Strategic decisions affecting other decisions
    (e.g., coordinated unit movement for trade)

City decisions
  • Production choice (i.e., what to create,
    including city buildings and units)
  • Citizen roles (e.g., laborers, entertainers, or
    specialists), and laborer placement
  • Note Locations vary in their terrain, which
    generate different amounts of food, income, and
    production capability

Unit decisions
  • Task (e.g., where to build a city, whether/where
    to engage in combat, espionage)
  • Movement

Diplomacy decisions
  • Whether to sign a proffered peace treaty with
    another civilization
  • Whether to offer a gift

35
FreeCiv CP Decision Space
Variables
  • Civilization-wide variables
  • N Number of civilizations encountered
  • D Number of diplomatic states (that you can have
    with an opponent)
  • G Number of government types available to you
  • R Number of research advances that can be
    pursued
  • I Number of partitions of income into
    entertainment, money, research
  • U Units
  • L Number of locations a unit can move to in a
    turn
  • C Cities
  • Z Number of citizens per city
  • S Citizen status (i.e., laborer, entertainer,
    doctor)
  • B Number of choices for city production

Decision complexity per turn (for a typical game
state)
  • O(DNGRILU(SZB)C) this ignores both
    other variables and domain knowledge
  • This becomes large with the number of units and
    cities
  • Example N3 D5 G3 R4 I10 U25 L4
    C8 Z10 S3 B10
  • Size of decision space (i.e., possible next
    states) 2.51065 (in one turn!)
  • Comparison Decision space of chess per turn is
    well below 140 (e.g., 20 at first move)
Write a Comment
User Comments (0)
About PowerShow.com