Article: Decision Making Levels in RTS Games

Decision Making Levels in RTS Games

[Muhamad Hesham, 2010]

In this short blog post, Muhamad divides the actions in RTS games in three different levels:

1. High level strategic decisions
2. Intermediate level tactical decisions
3. Low level micromanagement decisions.

The high level strategy resembles the general of a real army. The actions include building a base, training units, attacking enemis, etc. The perception at this level is based on the information from the lower levels.

Medium level actions resemble a commander that groups units into fighting elements and control them in a large war sense.

Finally the low level actions are most commonly known as actions like moving units or using a unit's special ability.

This is how players make decisions while playing RTS games and AI creation can be made to resemble this behavior. Each level should not care on how the lower levels will carry on a specific task, for example, in the high level, a decision has been made to attack the enemy, so the message arrives at the medium level. Here, it is decided which troops will move and where and finally the low level will be in charge of finding the best path and maintaining a strong formation within the group of units.

The author concludes that medium-level AI is the most complex of all and is usually lacking in most games because of this. The amount of feedback information that is needed and complex plans that need to be made make this level AI worth considering.

Read the full article here.

Hesham, Muhamed (2010). Decision Making Levels in RTS Games. Obrained in July 10th, 2011 from Adaptive AI Engine for RTS: www.rtsairesearch.wordpress.com/2010/10/27/paper-read-an-integrated-agent-for-real-time-strategy-games/