Are AI managers just plain dumb?

Don't get me wrong, in a way I like they're dumb as I keep winning but on the other hand doesn't bring that much satisfaction as it is almost expected. I'm currently training Benfica and my biggest rivals are Porto. Now Porto hired Matthaus as their manager in 2011 and he likes to play in 3-5-2 (firstly he didn't had the squad to play that formation so he had to go the market) but that is his option. What frustrates me a lot is that he is completely dumb as a tactician. I normally play in a 4-3-3 with wingers and - without exception - when I play Porto, Matthaus starts with his 3-5-2 (nothing wrong to stick to your tactic) but by halftime he is on a 5-3-2 and already losing as my wingers are creating havoc in his defence. I'm currently in 2014 and this has happened everytime we play and I always win. Surelly he should had figuered by now that it's not the correct approach to face my team.

And when he goes to 5-3-2 things normally get worse for him as my fullbacks are rampaging down the flanks and my CM are going forward and cutting his defence like a hot knife in butter.

So my question is, shouldn't AI managers learn? the way AI managers are created is just awful, they should start with a reputation based on their history - I wouldn't rate Matthaus as a continental reputation as a manager - and then develop like human managers do. Untill this moment he hasn't won a single throphy - not in Porto and not at his previous club - but he has a continental reputation and is a talented manager.

do you feel this in your games as well?

I agree with everything you say. Unfortunately, for the AI to be good enough for these things not to happen, I think we'd need genuine Artificial Intelligence.

It would be great if ai managers changed their preffered formation once in a while.

It would be great if ai managers changed their preffered formation once in a while.

Almost everything they do is set with a single value.

How good they are, how good they can be, what style of football they utilise, what type of training/coaching they do, how they handle the media are all managed by a small range of single values .. and these values are static.

Thier coaching area skills change over time.

There are 4 possible values for formation use, and if not set then they seem to default to 442 in all of them, when all four options are set only 2 are ever used with any regularity.

This is why they are crap, they never really change, they are inflexible and rigidly constrained into an extremely narrow frame of play.

Until SI change how AI staff are handled by the game, they will remain crap.

AI is per definition "dumb". If there aren't proper commands for it, the computer can't figure out how to counter your formations. Creating "intelligent" AI is a very difficult thing to do, as the human mind will 'always' outsmart it in some way, or do something unexpected.

In a long term game ai regen managers get even dumber, their mental stats are low and use only formations like 4-4-2, 3-5-2 and 5-3-2.See my topic about regen managers.

There is also the main problem with FM when compared to almost all other computer games

Difficulty

FM has 1, and no options (nor do I want them, it's the wrong type of game) for any change to the difficulty of the game.

Then compare it to an RTS, that can have 4-6 difficulty levels. (I'm using RTS style games as they share an AI'esque element with FM)

The AI in RTS games is just as poor and stupid as the AI in FM, however they gain certain benefits as the difficulty rating is increased

Do more damage, whilst taking less from you

You do less damage, whilst taking more from the AI

Any of the following -> Higher health, Armour, Shields, Longer firing range, Faster firing rate, Movement Speed, Enhanced LoS

Increased unit caps for the AI, standard for you.

Start with bonus resources, and receive extra bonus per gametick (whilst you get standard in both)

Thats how RTS developers work around the limitations of AI scripting, they don't try to create an Intelligent opponent they just create an extremely boosted AI, bruteforce over smarts ......

No to difficulty levels. (Though I understand your point and that you arent advocating for difficulty levels)

Yes to AI improvements.

It's probably hard to program different levels of AI for difficulty levels, as you will still have the stupid and the genius within each level which need differentiating, which is why difficulty levels will (hopefully) never be in FM. Some tweaks to the AI would be good, so you see AI managers developing over time and improve (or get worse) with age and experience. The set stats (for tactics etc.) from when they're 30~ till when they retire is a bit unrealistic and maybe giving managers CA/PA would work in this sense.

yeah definitely CA/PA, i think that has been developed well with players so why not managers? Then like the players get slower physically at 30 they can get slower mentally at 65+ and start making mad decisions (but no-one would dare fire them straight away because of their legendary status and the relationships they have built up in footballing circles... ring any bells?)

AI is per definition "dumb". If there aren't proper commands for it, the computer can't figure out how to counter your formations. Creating "intelligent" AI is a very difficult thing to do, as the human mind will 'always' outsmart it in some way, or do something unexpected.

Actually I'm sure there are far smarter computers than our human brain. It is possible to build an AI system which is smart but that takes time and costs a bucket load of money to get right - not to mention the amount of time it would take to get it right.

I want difficulty added in the game.

I want difficulty added in the game.

I 100% do NOT want difficulty. The game has natural difficulty anyway. Blyth Spartans >>>> Man Utd. I'll say again, this game does not need difficulty levels, it's a lazy way to get around poor AI.

Yeah this is a problem, i think that the game should be made more realistic having better AI systems in place.

On the other hand, i do not want difficulty settings, i like how everyone is in the same boat and people suceed or do not. Plus it is more realistic, i mean managers in real life cant just change the difficulty different challenges provide different diffuculty within themselves.

Actually I'm sure there are far smarter computers than our human brain. It is possible to build an AI system which is smart but that takes time and costs a bucket load of money to get right - not to mention the amount of time it would take to get it right.

Nope .. Computers can do bruteforce number crunching better and faster than us, we can think 'outside of the box' ..

see This for some human beating a supercomputer fun.

calculators are digital and therefore only estimate a mathematical answer (but can do so to a greater degree of decimal places depending on cpu) are brains are analog and will give an absolute answer

so to say computes can do number crunching better is still a bit of an ambiguous comment

I agree with everything you say. Unfortunately, for the AI to be good enough for these things not to happen, I think we'd need genuine Artificial Intelligence.

This. It would be incredibly hard to program learning AI and I don't think any game features it yet. Although perhaps some sort of rock-papers-scissors thing could be programmed, say that if a manager playing 3-5-2 might be more willing to consider other formations if facing 4-3-3 say.

Actually I'm sure there are far smarter computers than our human brain. It is possible to build an AI system which is smart but that takes time and costs a bucket load of money to get right - not to mention the amount of time it would take to get it right.

And probably there will be none in foreseeable future.

The most powerful CPU's today hasn't reach even a fracture of human brain's processing power, speed and precision.

It`s impossible to program AI to act like a human would do.Heck AI is an unproper name for anything that the computer controls, since there is no intelligence in a software, just programming.

It would be sick if the AI evolved and adapted to handle our teams, cause I hate the way I know my formation will tear through any defence for like 5 years straight...and no manager has figured out how to handle it.

Companies having been trying for years, and have spent millions of pounds trying to program computers to be able to beat humans in a mental game: see Deep Blue playing chess.

It took 13 years of the greatest technological minds to get a computer who was just about able to outsmart a human in a single match, so you can imagine the difficulties of extending this to cover millions of football personalities, and the memory demands of then remembering the techniques against every manager and player in the world.

Takes a bit of demand.

As for the difficulty level, I think SI does incorporate it - have you tried taking over a lower league team with international experience? You'll make your club more attractive to every player on the market, while the players you do have will do everything for you. Then try taking over Man City with no experience - barely a single player will be happy to pull their finger our for you.

This is kinda the point I was trying to make.

A computer can beat a human at chess, only because they programmed it to calculate possible outcomes for 'x number of moves' by 'y number of pieces'

they then made sure it had enough raw processor power and memory space to work out the most optimal move from the available possibilities .. this is a perfect example of "Bruteforce Number Crunching", Encryption Key decoding is another good example of this type of work where computers excel.

A decent Chess Programme on a powerful enough machine will beat a human, purely because it can process the details of 2500+ moves per second whilst an average human can do maybe 5 moves per second on a good day.

Give the same computer a nonlogical, spacial awareness based problem to solve however and it's going to fail epically. Whilst it's something we do easily and instinctively without thought.

Nope, there is none.

And probably there will be none in foreseeable future.

The most powerful CPU's today hasn't reach even a fracture of human brain's processing power, speed and precision.

I think you'll find we have a fraction of what the government can get a hold of. Do you honestly think we would have the best CPU power at the moment similar to what military and co would have, nope. We probably have the equivalent of what they had in the 80s.

Well if you want to play against smart, adaptable managers (or a chance thereof), go buy FM Live, no? or start a network game.

I think you'll find we have a fraction of what the government can get a hold of. Do you honestly think we would have the best CPU power at the moment similar to what military and co would have, nope. We probably have the equivalent of what they had in the 80s.

Actually, we have. If you read a bit of technology magazines you would find out that the 'supercomputers' being used at IBM, NASA and such consist not of computers, but of GPUs (video card processors). Those are the fastest ones out there, faster than many other 'pure' CPUs as your quadcore and such. A little while ago I`ve even read that one consisted solely of 320 Playstation 3s together, which was pretty funny to read. So we have the ability to rival them, but do you really have the money to buy 320 Playstation 3s and then figure out how to use them together to use their processing power for anything you want to calculate?

As for AI, there are 2 different kinds of AI:

1. The 'crunchy' kind. The one who simply calculates all the options and then applies weighs to which one he would have to pick to be the best option.

2. The 'learning' kind. I`ve experienced a bit of this at college and it`s interesting stuff, but incredibly hard to do. Not only does it need to do the AI part 1 as described above, but it also needs to learn from its mistakes. So if it loses the match because its tactic doesn`t work against the tactic you apply, after a few matches it should do the AI part 1 for a different tactic to apply. Now, it can be programmed that it actually learns after a while, but then they have to program everything it can do to counter it. Which is not too hard, but considering the tons of information which should be taken into account, you can safely say that they will most likely never create the perfect FM. But since the have the same engine and improve it, rather than renew it, they should get at least better at things eventually. Just don`t expect revolutionary steps within the next 2 FMs, because it`s that hard to do. Pure respect for all the people who have created something this complicated so far, three thumbs up from me

Problem here is that the learning process goes both ways, so it also learns from the other AI managers, leaving you a world where every manager can technically become unbeatable unless you put a PA on it. Luckily managers already have a CA and a PA

Funny thing about AIs is that there are always ways to make them suffer. A while ago they made an AI which could keep a conversation and could apply all kinds of calculations in order to determine whether you were old, young, male or female and adjust the tone to something similar. Childish for kids, mature for adults and so on. It couldn`t calculate that the persons were lying though, so it ended up with wrong assumptions eventually and the test results ended up badly.

Yes the long term playability of the game is not great as the AI managers in all facets of the game are just not good enough IMO. You just need to see the number of people that can take a BSN/S team up the ladder to premiership glory and European doomminace with ease. Back in the days of CM97/98 it used to be a big challenge, but not anymore IMO I'm afriad!