The AI has been rebuilt from the ground up, and should be overall improved, especially with regard to being a more effective defender against earlier rushes, not building useless units, and focusing mostly on the main attack units for a given factory, instead of just randomly building a few of everything.

This is the first iteration of the new TA:T AI, so it will likely need further adjusting, tweaking, and so forth. Feedback, suggestions, etc, are always welcome.

Remember, you must delete the old "ai" directory under your TOTALA directory and copy over the new one from the installation to get the updated AI.

Additionally, I have created different versions of the AI that use only a restricted set of units. The different versions are below:

Normal (No Tree Restrictions)

Ground only (KBots and Vehicles only. Includes Hovercraft Platforms)

KBots only

Vehicles only

Aircraft only

Water only (Includes Floating Hovercraft Platforms, Amphibious Complexes, and Seaplane Platforms)


and then a level 1 version of each of the above (Level 1 units only, level 1 ground only, level 1 KBots only, etc).


I have included batch files to automatically swap in the desired profile. The profiles and batch files are located in the "profiles" sub-directory of the ai directory (Most likely CAVEDOG\TOTALA\AI\profiles). The batch files may be run at the command prompt or double clicked through Windows. As might be obvious, you should exit TA before changing profiles, and then restart the game for the change to take effect. Running the "AI-MENU.bat" file will display a menu listing the different profiles and the batch file to run for each. The menu is also presented here:

Normal (No Restrictions):              Run n.bat                 
Normal Level 1 only:                   Run n1.bat                
                                                                 
Ground (Veh/KBots/Hover) only:         Run g.bat                 
Ground (Veh/KBots) Level 1 only:       Run g1.bat                
                                                                 
Kbots only:                            Run k.bat                 
Kbots Level 1 only:                    Run k1.bat                
                                                                 
Vehicles only:                         Run v.bat                 
Vehicles Level 1 only:                 Run v1.bat                
                                                                 
Aircraft only:                         Run a.bat                 
Aircraft Level 1 only:                 Run a1.bat                
                                                                 
Water only:                            Run w.bat                 
Water Level 1 only:                    Run w1.bat                
                                                                 
n, n1, etc, are batch files that will replace all of the AI map  
profiles (Such as default.txt, airbattle.txt, urban.txt, etc)    
with AI profiles restricted to the units of your choosing.       

This will allow you to experiment with playing strategies against a specific tech tree. For example, you might choose the aircraft only profile, and then play a game to practice defending against aircraft or aerial combat in general. Or, you can pick a profile to fine-tune your game experience to your choosing. You may want to play a game where the AI does not use air, so you can focus on ground strategy, or a game where only level 1 KBots can be built by the AI (This would also probably give you a strong advantage in the long term, should you make it to advanced tech yourself).

The three skill levels of "Gentle|Moderate|Suicide" are approximate, and Gentle may still be fairly difficult for the beginning player. Again, feedback here would be appreciated. Post on the TA:T forums or send me email at twilight13@gmail.com.

-Twilight
August 30th, 2007