PC I think the new zombie AI is a little /too/ good.

I've been playing around in multiple worlds with different settings for the past few days on the new update. I'm really enjoying it so far, however I've noticed something that I think could be a problem with the new and improved zombie AI.

A challenge is always great, it makes you think a little harder about your decisions and often times forces you to work with other people. However, a sandbox game like this should feel like you also have a little more room to play around with what you create in terms of your home, instead of a set "Meta" for what will work, and what won't.

I bring this up because I noticed that the zombies on regular nights and horde nights, happened to be extremely good at getting through defenses I set. I did a little testing by placing traps inside of my own base, and the result I found was a little shocking - And slightly annoying.

To test this out I decided to go into a creative world and set up a small, square base. Inside of the walls I placed spike traps on every floor block apart from one gap. The gap I filled with much, MUCH stronger material - Concrete to be exact. Every other wall block is wood frame, upgraded once.

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Note that this means the zombies would break through extremely quickly if they targeted the wooden blocks, which have far less health points than the concrete. Yet as I expected, they ignored them near completely. I set the day and night speed to be much faster so I could test this efficiently. All I had to do was wait.

Here you can see the first two zombies that show up immediately go straight for the concrete. They shouldn't know that there's any traps on the inside, which should realistically mean they'd go for the wooden blocks, as they're weaker. Or at least choose blocks at random. They do not do this. However this is only two zombies, right? And maybe it's to do with where I positioned myself while waiting. So I made sure to sit as far back as possible in the next screenshot after this one.

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It's taken a lot of damage now, and as I thought - Every zombie that shows up immediately targets these blocks. The only time they damaged the wood was when there were too many zombies around, and some got pushed to the side.

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I could be simply wrong, but it feels to me that this is a little bit of a weird addition. As if zombies have a sixth sense for where traps are placed.

 
The pathing program looks at total cost for a zombie to travel a path and then the zombie chooses the cheapest path. If you do three walls of triple thickness blocks and one wall of single thickness they will always attack the single thick wall because the pathing program knows it's the cheapest.

So yes they are provided knowledge they shouldn't have. It isn't perfect and it is only the first version of the new system and faatal has plans to improve and expand the system with randomness and "stupid" zombies that will take a less optimal path. But that isn't in yet.

Regardless, with all it's current flaws the new system for zombie behavior is far and away an improvement over the past. There are ways to game it and exploit their behavior but at least they aren't just running in circles or standing below us impotently any longer.

 
What a fascinating experiment!!

Firstly,

Thanks for posting that Sunshine.

That's really interesting.

I love picking things apart and seeing how they work.

AI is no different.

Even more interesting is human behaviour with regards to AI.

It's funny how fascinated we are with AI and how compelled humans seem to be with regards to figuring it out.

Loving this thread.

And..... now... to exploit the crap out of the AI using said knowledge!

Buwaahahahaahha!!!

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AI usually knows everything in a game. Not uncommon. Like in RTS games, the fog of war doesn´t exist for the AI, they see everything on the map all the time. Otherwise they would be too easy to beat.

I just did the usual early game POI strat, with removing stairs, scattering spikes and fortify the walls. Worked as good as in A16, but you can´t just stop shooting them and still be safe now, like we could before.

 
'Path baiting' is a thing. Make zombies too smart, and you're basically not playing a survival game and instead playing "Beat the devs at their own game". With some research, it's very easy to lure them into drops if you provide an "Open" path. In my case, focus them into a concentrated killzone with what little damage assistance I can muster.

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The perimeter wall is continuous along the opposite side. What you see are the only 3 pit traps along the perimeter, and the spike pits 'fake' a level, direct path to the barn. However. as they destroy the cheap-o spikes, or the spikes destroy themselves with self-damage, the pit becomes 'unpathable' and they seek a fresh path directly into another pit.

This does pretty well to bunch them up too, as lobbing a molotov into the pit quickly prevents higher hp zombies from causing too much damage to the spikes in the pits. WHat you are seeing is, in fact, correct. DOORS. Both outer perimeter doors are 'doubled up', so they never prefer to attack through them. The flagstone wall is MUCH more preferential, but the wall only exists to ♥♥♥♥ with their heads and pathing.

The barn reinforcements were a total waste of time. 1000hp+ is nothing, and the stragglers that make it through always breach the walls and have a dance session inside the barn, but never cause too much damage for some reason.

 
The pathing program looks at total cost for a zombie to travel a path and then the zombie chooses the cheapest path. If you do three walls of triple thickness blocks and one wall of single thickness they will always attack the single thick wall because the pathing program knows it's the cheapest.
So yes they are provided knowledge they shouldn't have. It isn't perfect and it is only the first version of the new system and faatal has plans to improve and expand the system with randomness and "stupid" zombies that will take a less optimal path. But that isn't in yet.

Regardless, with all it's current flaws the new system for zombie behavior is far and away an improvement over the past. There are ways to game it and exploit their behavior but at least they aren't just running in circles or standing below us impotently any longer.
Now that's what I wanted to hear!

 
The pathing program looks at total cost for a zombie to travel a path and then the zombie chooses the cheapest path. If you do three walls of triple thickness blocks and one wall of single thickness they will always attack the single thick wall because the pathing program knows it's the cheapest.
So yes they are provided knowledge they shouldn't have. It isn't perfect and it is only the first version of the new system and faatal has plans to improve and expand the system with randomness and "stupid" zombies that will take a less optimal path. But that isn't in yet.

Regardless, with all it's current flaws the new system for zombie behavior is far and away an improvement over the past. There are ways to game it and exploit their behavior but at least they aren't just running in circles or standing below us impotently any longer.
YEAH! Tell'em Roland!! But those jumping spider's freek me out a bit! lol Maybe at least keep that part!!!

 
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