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The Number One Educational Resource for the Game Industry

Session Name: Understanding Your Enemy: A Mathematical Approach to Unit Analysis
Speaker(s): Leif Walter
Company Name(s): Creative Assembly
Track / Format: Programming

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Overview: Most strategy games revolve around the interaction of units with each other. Understanding the characteristics and performance of units is key for many steps during the development process: from design, to AI decision-making, and as a supporting layer if combat between sets of units is simulated. Creative Assembly developed a new approach that relies on the mathematical principle of Taylor expansion: instead of trying to identify the accurate performance value of a unit in a specific situation, they linearize its performance around a baseline value within the situational space of their game. Therein, they use game model results to determine modifiers for different situational dimensions of their game (e.g. terrain, units involved) and linearize a unit's contextual potential around its base value by using these modifier values.This lecture will discuss the caveats that come with this approach and investigate its application for game design, AI, and on automatic battle resolution algorithm.

GDC 2018

Leif Walter

Creative Assembly

free content

Programming

Programming

Design

Design