For the last month of development, we rewrote most of the code from blueprints to C++. The purpose of this process was modernization and optimization of Artificial Intelligence. So, we get an incredible result. Old algorithm, after hard optimization, took less than a second (instead of 20 seconds) to calculate AI opponent turn.
But, as you know, AI was too dummy and suited only for playing with it in the “puzzles” mode, and we decided to upgrade it.
Now it takes nearly ten seconds a turn and it’s decisions looks much more thoughtful, thus it became interesting to play with it 1 vs 1. At this moment it has no handicap and it was really hard task to make it competitive. It’s not so smart to concurrent with a highly experienced player, but it is ten times smarter than it was. We found out that coding complex algorithms like AI is much more easier and intuitive in C++ than in blueprints. Instead of dozens of blueprints we have just 1000 lines of code (without comments and path finding system) and it works really fast
The number of our AI parameters is too high and it will take a while for us to find best of them to achieve maximum result. Also we want to add several levels of AI difficulty and, maybe, some handicap system to make it interesting for the really good players.