removed

Ever since I first played Majesty and Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom I have been dreaming of a day when AI could do basic tasks and thus remove the incessant clickfest of modern RTS games like Starcraft 2.

It's mostly game design since the impetus is just whether or not to wait for an interruption from the player's mouse click/keyboard, although unit path algorithms are a complex thing too.

Mostly the game design issue is about engaging the player with activities. The same situation you describe exists in turn-based 4X games in that the player might be able to rely on a "viceroy" to give orders to factories and assign research priorities. Some game designers figure that engaging the player means keeping them busy every second (e.g. micromanaging in Starcraft or DOTA), and others like the player to set up more complex macro orders (e.g. Supreme Commander series).
 
I know that a lot of companies, and to be fair players, are obsessed with physical skill and micro based games. Its probably because you can solve strategy for static games outside of the game, whereas execution cannot be outsourced to an online game guide.

Their solution was to just remove strategy, whereas I prefer the system of increasing the game complexity so that you just cannot rely on a small subset of strategies. Interestingly enough, people often cite chess as a game that focuses on depth over complexity, but its still quite complex, even 1000s of hours of studying openings and gambits and such allows you to win by reading a strategy guide on a website.

Many people claim that balance suffers from this though. Who knows. Either way its more of a play space and less of an esport which I approve of.

I have to disagree with the above statement, which I tried to avoid in my initial reply to because in fact the "click-fest" games actually may/may not have strategy involved regardless of the click-fest aspect. Which makes the "click-fest" aspect kind of silly unless the game play has a touch of team deathmatch to it (like DOTA), which is why I agree with your original post in part.

Also strategy of execution in real-time games does exist, at least in the abundance of DOTA guides for character builds. Sure some aspects are not codified, probably more for the competitive aspect, or because they are more effectively learned by watching game play (e.g. in DOTA one can rapid fire "wiggle" move to make it more challenging for other players to connect a micromanaged hit to your character). DOTA is a bit of a perfect RTS in my opinion for having multiple strategy layers----position (map), team composition (different characters have different power curves, different skills though they are primarily the same 5 or so skills redistributed in different ways with different features), and the strategy of building any one character (reaching a maxed out equivalent character is somewhat rare in a DOTA match so one's play style and leveling of the 3 primary and 1 accessory skill plus passive stats is a focus of strategy) is multi-variate.

But in support of what you say, yeah there's definitely many a RTS that has strategy/thinking content diminished by a simplified ruleset that it's like playing rock-paper-scissor at a fast rate. Kind of like an odd typing/mouse tutor program run as a competition. That's one of the original criticisms of real-time games that they were unrealistic click fests with poor rulesets compared to older strategy games (turn-based) for the PC and even earlier paper boardgames (which themselves probably didn't start to die until consoles and first person shooter games improved). Different types of micromanagement were added in as a sort of thinking person's depth to improve the games from just watching waves of health bars attack each other.

But don't over generalize the criticism to all real-time mouse-clicker games, as there definitely are some that evolved to have both subtle and chess-like strategy (DOTA and other MOBAs) in which there are standard openings and also variations, positional control, unit relationships, and distinct phases to the game-play.
 
Well I was separating MOBAs from RTSes. I guess I should have been more clear.

I think that MOBAs are mostly tactics, with a thin strategy layer like lets pick a gank team comp or a push one. I guess tactics are distinct from APM.

The thing about MOBAs is that although they are quite tactical and even have some strategy elements, they only dodge the clickfest problem by focusing on a single controllable unit.

Its pretty hard to have a 500 APM when you only have 1 unit with 4 skills on pretty long cooldowns. Well I mean, you can do it, but the difference between 500 APM and 200 is pretty much nil as far as winning goes.

But I do agree, MOBAs are not really clickfests.

I think it's a little hard to separate the two since MOBAs are really a subset of RTS, and that's what they were created from. They basically evolved from the concept of an ultra-micromanaged unit in RTS, to the point that it was the most important unit in the match.

I'd disagree on the amount of strategy involved in a MOBA match as the units are designed for team composition and the matches don't reduce to being either about team deathmatch or territory capture, but a combination of that.
 
I think it's the general problem of game designers not making a decision about who the player is.

Is the player a single soldier (1st person shooter) or a general giving the large orders and not getting involved in the moment to moment actions of any particular soldier.

Even a Sargent doesn't control his soldier's moment to moment actions.

The same issue can be found in most 4x games as well.
They have you being the President, the top General all the way down to the head of the department of public works, and in the case of Civ games, even the shovel bearer working the land.

Too many hats.

I'd like a 4x game that allows the player to delegate to sub-managers.
They may not always do the best job or make the best decisions, but that's true even in the real world where these things actually have consequences.
Yet, the CEO delegates as do the other executives, middle managers and supervisors.

It's true for RTS games as well.
Captains don't micro the troops, they give general directives to lieutenants who give general directives to Sargents.
A leader can't follow every units around giving orders.
Ultimately, the individual soldier is on his own in the moment.
 
I would assume one of the reasons why this doesn't happen that often is that designing the AI becomes more complex as the player sees more of what the AI is doing. When the AI is only controlling the enemy its easy to miss their mistakes or to overlook them when they benefit the player but when the player is relying on the AI then bad AI decisions are going to have a much bigger negative impact. For something like targeting this easier to ignore but troops moving towards the enemy too soon or too late would become an annoyance (probably realistic though...)

So for instance in Civ 3 the advisors would decide that newly conquered cities with massive corruption and possibly lacking a barracks should start building military units which probably wouldn't complete until the end of the game. Or with path finding where a unit has a third of a movement point left so it makes sense to move back to safety rather than moving that extra tile to be easily picked off by the enemy. Or where a unit type turns out to be basically useless but the AI still build them or a unit type is particularly important but the AI doesn't prioritise it enough.

Another example that I've come across is in the total war games where you could have multiple armies involved in the same battle where it was possible to let the AI control the other armies and then have more troops on the battlefield but this was rarely a good idea as the AI wouldn't co ordinate with the other armies.
 
Even that can be tricky sometimes as well. As an example on age of empires 2 defensive structures like castles and towers were powerful with only a few ranged units (trebuchets and cannons) that were strong against these defenses so whenever these units showed up it was important for your fast units to target them first. The same thing happens with monks where they need to be killed quickly before they convert your units. The other thing is that in the first example is that your units need to respond to something happening in the line of sight of the castle rather than their own line of sight.

It seems feasible that an AI could be designed to handle the above but there are still more complex situations like when there are high value enemy units to attack but which are protected by enemy defensive fortifications so retreating to a more favourable location is the best option. Or another alternative would be where something needs to protected at the same time as attacking dangerous units so ideally only a small number of units will attack whilst the rest defend.

I guess your plan is to only auto pick targets in the first example and not cover the second portion of retreating, guarding or attacking although there is a link as melee units need to close in to attack which sometimes is what the player wants to happen whilst at other times the reverse is required. If the AI is poor or buggy then there is also the risk that the biggest army always wins as units don't counter each other.

Eidt: Just to add I think it would be nice to have more games where the AI handles the basic tasks.
 
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