Reactionary

[MrElephant]

Well, here is it folks. The one and only Reactionary. Love it, or hate him.

A while ago I had a combined thread with Reactionary and some of the other AIs I made at that time. This thread will solely be used for updating Reactionary.

History of the AI:
Started in December 2020. The original name of this AI was Frankenstein. The goal of the AI was to rush towards castle, and attack early with knights. That mission really hasn't changed for the most part. However, many- many changes have taken place. I am very proud of the AI though, and recently it has become even stronger. Very lately, it has taken games off of HD and a couple of other higher level AIs. It doesn't win every time, but is still an accomplishment nonetheless. This AI participated in a couple of events. One of which was the previous Davis Cup. In that event, Reactionary failed his team when a major TSA glitch occurred. To this day, that event was a very sore spot for Reactionary I am proud of this AI though, as he has previously been a training partner for Alpha and other AIs to help them improve

Strengths and Weaknesses:

Reactionary loves to rush. He wants to attack early. He is kind of a beggar if you are on team games with him. His main Civ is Byzantine, but he wont resign if you choose another civ. His early attack can put down quite a number of AIs. The code is supplemented now by Fireball's micro skirm code- so thanks to him for that.

Other notes and the future of this AI:

Reactionary is very difficult to work on. His code is messy. The AI was the second main AI I ever worked on. There will be improvements that will need to be made. Reactionary will be participating in Arandi's new tournament coming up, so you can look forward to seeing him there.

That's it for now. Let me know what you think of the AI

Versions:

V19 - Its an older version that can play on UP and DE. (different from the one in the group DC6 ai pack) that's been slightly modified.
V20 - is another version of Reactionary before it became more modern with knights. An in-between so to speak.
V23 - uses DUC to control knights. The strategy was contorted to support this strong feature. DE only.

[Bandit1990]

Great AI - a fast castling Reactionary gave Bright Spark quite the scare in a 4v4!

In terms of feedback I have a couple of points which I hope will help make it even stronger

1) Choose a point to prioritise upgrades over production - a Reactionary pocket reached castle age and made a load of skirms and knights to counter Bright Spark's mostly skirm army, great! Problem was they overwhelming numbers but had no upgrades so they dies very quickly to tower and TC fire. Halting knight production for blacksmith upgrades is particularly nice and easy because you rely on the same resources.

2) When upgrading prioritise armour upgrades for melee units and range/damage upgrades for ranged units. The first upgrade I saw was a damage upgrade on knights, which it wouldn't get to use because ranged fire took it out. I think armour upgrade for knights would have allowed them to take down my TC, rather than the TC take them down.

3) All 4 Reactionarys went for fast castle with blacksmith and market which leaves them vulnerable to feudal rush - that may be a choice and if that is the case then you may want to play with the idea of one flank or a pocket to sling the other flank so one side makes it to castle age and counters rather than both flanks dying before reaching castle.

Great tower and castle placement, these really helped protect bases in the right places and they came up pretty quickly so your eco was set up well to create the defences.

I'm gonna try a team game with Reactionary pockets and BlackKnight flanks, I reckon they'll complement each other really well