Age of Empires IV, announced four years ago, could get artificial intelligence that over time embrace such knowledge that nobody would stand a chance against it…

Adam Isgreen, World’s Edge franchise creative director, told Kotaku how the next Age of Empires (which needed more than fifteen years after AoE III) will make good use of machine learning that could create a relentless AI opponent: “We use machine learning in training the AI right now, but we want to take that even further. Down the road, not at launch, we’ll probably look into having a merciless AI that keeps learning the more people play against it, to the point that it’ll be unbeatable.

But we’re OK with that because if you opt in to that difficulty and want to make the artificial intelligence better at beating you, go right ahead. We can use that in different aspects of how we cut it up for the other difficulties. Like, we did a lot of that in Killer Instinct 2; we had AIs that would learn how to play like players down to even the taunts.

For a game like Killer Instinct, when did the player teabag, how did they move around while waiting for a player to get up? I think we can start applying a lot of that to a real-time strategy game. But the AI does things that players do; we try to imitate and add in strategies that players use,” Isgreen said.

Age of Empires IV will launch on October 28 on PC via Microsoft Store and Steam. If you have an Xbox Game Pass subscription, you can start playing from day one. Until then, take a look at the Gamescom trailer for the real-time strategy. It’s been a long sixteen years since the launch of Age of Empires III.

Source: WCCFTech