KAI - beyond-all-reason/springrts_engine_wiki_mirror GitHub Wiki
KAI is an AI originally being developed by krogothe. The latest version by Krogothe is currently version 0.11 and was up to a challenging standard of play. Kloot has now taken over development of KAI, and released KAI version 0.12, which has been included with Spring 0.74b3.
It has several limitations such as frequent crashes, but it still manages to produce a decent challenge in groups of three or more due to its relentless attacking and decent economy. For best results play in a flat, large map with specific mex spots..
There are many goals Krogoth is pursuing with KAI. These mirror the goals of other AI developers in many ways - universal mod compatibility, for example - with a few twists that other AI authors are not currently pursuing, such as real objective-based use of its units.
Let's say Human has relatively weak air defence but ironclad antitank defence. KAI will start building a group of bombers while putting a mission together to take the anti-air out - its attack force, balanced against the defenses there will target the anti air as highest priority and if successful will bomb the base. Turn the tables on this scenario and KAI will start building heavy tanks while planning how to eradicate the weaker antitank defence. (Objectives have not been implemented yet, although KAI will try to balance its units against the enemy forces in the test build, and even against the terrain.)
While the AI is in an early stage, there are many developments which give a hint of the immense promise KAI has. The most impressive, yet one of the simpler, is KAI's ability to think in chokepoints. According to Krogothe, this took five to ten minutes 'under the current framework', so whatever the framework is, it is certainly impressive.
KAI is closed source, although Krogothe has released a few AI utilities for other developers to use, the most notable of which is his Metal Class, used in one form or another by almost all AI developers.
KAI does show great promise in testing, and v0.11 is a worthy opponent even with the relatively high probability of crashes. It should be noted that KAI's prowess is largely down to maphack functionality; the AI will always know where your units and structures are, and does not need to scout like a human does. KAI was always planned to have this trait.
Info
- Status : Early test build (v0.11)
- Compatible mods : Most commonly played mods
- Playability : Challenging, crash-prone