Designer Diary: Artificial Intelligence #1 (Patreon)

Note: This post and all the AI posts that are coming up are open to the $5 tier as an experiment, if there is a large quantity of interest and support I will keep the Designer Diary at $5 going ahead (and lower the level of the others to match). The goal of the Designer Diary series is to allow me to generate additional revenue that will be invested in creating content - including unique art and so on, however the amount of work involved in each of these articles tends to be in the hundreds of hours. 

The goal, is that eventually get to play a game that is wholly created by me from scratch. This game, if kickstartered will include content that is exclusively for people who supported my patreon - I have already designed that element.

OK, so this one. This one is an absolutely massive part of custom content and it's the most difficult element of creating a monster. Programming how a monster behaves is a huge undertaking and there are a host of rules that Adam has built into the process that we can only tease at via reverse engineering. I'm going to do what I can to help you understand these rules and also allow you to create your own monsters.

AI vs. HL Cards

The very first thing, before we do anything more, is you should understand that the monster's personality and behavior is actually split between two independent forms of AI.  The AI cards themselves are the monster's proactive behavior, while the Hit Location cards are it's reactive ones. We are going to look at HL Cards in the future because that's also an absolutely massive subject, but I wanted to make it clear here that we will be dealing with just the 'Proactive' part of the monster's programming.

Also, we need to put an exception into this already, because AI Mood cards are an oddity because they are often reactive cards (which we just established is the HL card's realm of operations). So the first rule which is AI Cards are Proactive is already broken in the case of mood cards.  Moods are an entity which will get their own post along with traits (coming after this one) because they are an absolutely massive thing that allows you to express the individual nature of each member of your monster species while also providing a huge amount of ways of switching up the difficulty and even the flow of the fight.

The Rules of AI Cards

We'll start with a list, because it's always easier to remember things when you work that way, and then we'll expand on each item, explaining why this rule is a thing and also what benefits/workarounds/role it holds.

• You must always have an instinct action and trigger
• Your instinct must allow the monster to be threatening or harmful in some manner
• Each AI Card name has a fixed profile, you cannot reuse AI Card names for different profiles
• Monsters can borrow cards from other monsters, but it is not normal
• Decide what counters to your monster are acceptable
• Limit your number of monster themes based on Lantern Year arrival
• Nemesis Monsters are less variable in behavior than Quarry ones

Instincts

Instincts are not just a throw away piece of monster design, while you may find that you rarely get to see the instincts for some monsters because of the way you play, as someone who manipulates the AI of the monsters a great deal to break their targeting I can tell you that a solid Instinct matters a LOT.  

The early instincts that monsters have generally exist to help keep them in the fight. We're going to look at a few different instincts here because I think these ones exemplify the different styles of monster and also demonstrate the strengths/weaknesses of each style.

Sniff - White Lion

As first instinct that most players will encounter, this is one of the most important experiences you'll have as a player. The White Lion is a hugely 'facing + threat' orientated monster, so it often has no viable targets. Sniff not only evokes the theme of a large cat hunting prey that's hiding from it, but it exists to counter one of the more powerful early gear cards - the Fecal Salve - but it also exists to ensure that the White Lion's grab mechanic doesn't cause the monster to fail to find targets after it's knocked them down. 

Essentially, this is your baseline kind of instinct - it makes sure that survivors who are avoiding your threat based AI will not get away with it repeatedly and it also makes sure that your knockdown based mechanics are less likely to cause problems or provide survivors with safety windows. 

Finally we have the 3+ White Lion bonus, and I personally think that this one is one of the stronger design decisions, accuracy tokens are hugely important to monsters when survivors start loading up on evasion. High speed and Damage is often countered by the catchall umbrella of evasion followed by negating the few hits that do get through via Block or armor soak. It's a solid design decision that can keep the L3+ White Lion threatening (along with one of its legendary trait cards).

In contrast we're going to quickly look at some weaker Instinct designs, ones that have resulted in exploit techniques coming up.

Graze, Menace, Guard

Yes, that's right - all three of these Instincts are not as well designed as the White Lion's.  The Screaming Antelope's means that when there are no AI cards left it becomes completely harmless if all the Acanthus has been eaten/collected and it has also become a safety net for Antelope Crit Farming.  Likewise the Butcher's Menace and Threat based targeting has allowed for this rather silly exploit to happen and the King's Man has issues not just with it's threat based targeting allowing for it to be kited into Amber Poleaxes over and over - but it's also a completely harmless instinct. Without Silent Hymn the King's Man would be almost no threat at all at the higher levels.

Menace is the best of these, it does work well with the design of the Butcher and is harmful, but the Butcher's AI programming means that it can be exploited in a very vicious fashion (I blame the Screaming Horns for this one). Honestly Menace needed to make all survivors a threat at the same time, so the Butcher wouldn't Menace over and over without doing anything else. 

There are some core monsters with incredible instincts however, ones that demand you pay attention to them at all times and I think these ones are superb examples of how to pressure players into not gaming the AI card and taking it each turn.

Disdain, The Penalty, Absorb

These three monsters get a lot of flak from the community (though personally I love the Hand and I adore the design on all three of these).  In each case, what the monsters do here is a phenomenal amount of pressure and an excellent use of the Heal mechanic (in the case of the Watcher). 

The Phoenix's is the simplest of these, it's got a combination of the Butcher's menace mechanic, but it hits all non-deaf survivors (themed as such because it's noise) and it triggers Spiral age which is one of the most threatening mechanics in the game.  The Hand's penalty is possibly more threatening again because it reads 'let The Hand do what it wants to you or you will suffer the price. It's a phenomenal piece of theming for the monster and really sells the design of a powerful being that can snuff you out of existence on a whim. Even the name of it speaks volumes about the monsters's level of sentience.

The Watcher's Absorb is great for a different reason, Heal is a great mechanic on a non-resource based monster (because they do not provide locations that can be critically hit for resources), when you are focused on surviving and killing the monster Heal is a huge problem and point of pressure for survivors, but when you are farming for resources it is an exploitable benefit. In short, be careful with how you use Heal and be aware that any monster that heals itself may end up being farmed if you allow for that in its design - it is what happens to the Screaming Antelope (Chow Down), White Lion (Lick Wounds) and Flower Knight (Cocoon).

Also avoid doing things like this as your instinct.

I'm not going to go into massive details on this expansion, there are a lot of flaws in this Steam Workshop item and you can explore them yourself if you have Tabletop Simulator (here it is), but the main issue I'm highlighting here is that this is a nemesis monster and this Instinct is just not any kind of threat at all (and if you want a lesson in things that should be scrapped the Charged mechanic a primo example of something that should have been abandoned - learn to murder your creations people). The Storm Knight's instinct is as poor as the Butcher's and the King's Man's - and it is a failure both on the mechanical and the thematic level. 

So ultimately you should look at the instincts of all the monsters in the game, consider what the implications of them are, how threatened as a player you would be by them and use those official ones as a basis for your own creations. I really can't recommend enough that you start there, even as a thought experiment trying to figure out how to make Graze a threatening thing is a good exercise. In fact, answers in the comments below on how you'd fix the Screaming Antelope's Graze to make it something players don't want to trigger.

"Unique" AI Cards and Borrowing from Existing monsters

Next rule! AI cards are normally uniquely named. By that I mean if you want to call a card Bite, then it will have one of the following profiles - .

What I am getting at by this is the following, most AI cards are uniquely named and the actions that happen during it are always the same, every Bite by every monster will be the same as the Butcher's or the Antelopes. (I chose bite because it actually breaks the completely unique nature of naming, most AI cards are 100% unique in their names).

This has a benefit, you can use existing cards as a part of expanding your own monster and you will know that they are balanced in the framework of the game (example Black Lion 1.0). However it also means you're going to need to have access to all the cards in the game when you are naming your AI cards (or at least a list of all the card titles). If you want to have a card about the monster biting the survivors, and it is not going to use the Bite profile. Well you're going to have to look up some synonyms for bite (chaw, gnaw, chomp, snack, nibble, crunch and so on) or add a modifier to the start such as Savage Bite or Bite of Despair.

In fact the titles of your cards are very important to the monster personality, they convey a part of the monsters' style. So choose carefully how you are going to convey things. Look at these three lists:

Monster One

• Scratch
• Wallop
• Headbutt
• Head Thrash

Monster Two

• Perfect Thrust
• Hook & Pull
• Kneel
• Cleave

Monster Three

• Rude Slap
• Liver Blow
• Bullet Jabs
• Small Uppercut

Can you identify these three monsters from those card titles alone? I can, because they evoke the themes of the monsters really well and describe their main weapons of attack in a clear and evocative fashion. The last one for example fights like a boxer/puglist, while the first one uses more brutal and animalistic attacks and the middle one clearly has a weapon of some kind.

So on the naming front - why use, Punch when you could pick Overhand, Bolo Punch or Knuckle Sandwich? Why write 'Claw' or 'Strong Claw' when you could use Lacerate, Rip or the terrifying sounding Mangle? The more 'flavorful' your AI card titles, the more poetry and storytelling you put into the monster. It's one thing to be hit by 'Attack with Foot' and it's something else to be on the receiving end of the '1000 Stomps of Agony'. 

If in doubt, ask what a JoJo character would say before attacking. A card named 'Platinum Star' or 'The World' really makes people's imaginations go wild.

Monster Themes and Counters

Every monster in Kingdom Death is built around several themes and mechanics, you should establish what themes you are looking for early on in your monster design, a great example of what can happen when your themes go wrong comes from a story about the Dung Beetle Knight told by Zachary Barash.

The DBK was originally constructed by Adam, and the main themes of it are grand weapon fighting, throwing the ball around as a weapon and resin. It's a blend of dodgeball, a dung beetle and a swordsman. However, there was a major issue with it's original design that Zach B was asked to solve, it would throw the dung ball once and then ignore it for the rest of the fight. Adam couldn't fix this (either it was a time issue, or he was too close to his creation to see what the solution was). Zach removed one of the original themes of the monster and rejigged things - it was an absolute success, the DBK is beloved. 

Now in itself, that's a great example of how murdering aspects of a problematic creation can save it. But the story has another element to it. The theme that was removed from the DBK?

Rampage.

Yes, that's right, the Rampage mechanic from the Lion God originally existed on the DBK. And that's a massive thing to remember, just because you've abandoned something, a mechanic, some gear, a monster doesn't mean that it's wasted effort. You can reuse it later on, either directly as designed or with some tweaks after you've spent time developing your skills.

Now that moves us onto counters. Players are always going to figure out how to beat your monster, that's the point of making them, but you should be designing ways for them to do it. They will figure out inventive and unusual methods you did not consider, but the typical (and most powerful) ways that monster AI gets countered are:

• AI Abuse
• Instinct Abuse
• Evasion
• Dash Cancelling
• Ranged weapons

So you should always be thinking if you are Okay with these main methods being employed and if not, how you want to cancel them. 

AI abuse is undertaken via the Rawhide Headband - Durations are the main counter to this but they are something you should be hesitant to employ in large quantities, especially for early game monsters. However, there is an alternative option, and that is to provide a replacement Skinnery location with a new rawhide set as a compulsory part of your expansion.

Instinct Abuse is a subject I covered above, if your monster has an abusable Instinct then that should only be there because you have decided it is the case. This cannot happen by accident.

Evasion is something that is given out too freely in Kingdom Death, so it's always a problem. As monster accuracy on the cards is capped at 2+ it is not hard for survivors to cause the monster to end up hitting only on 9 or 10s with just a few items. This can hugely limit design on cards, because anything with a 5+ accuracy on a low level monster will struggle to hit. It's something of a shame and you'll just have to live with it (unless you want to redesign the entire Skinnery/Bone Smith/Organ Grinder combo for your custom content). However, accuracy tokens and ways of gaining them (either on your monster's stats or through moods/AI cards/Traits) is a great way of overcoming this and stopping the fight from devolving into a whiff fest with the occasional block thrown.

The other method is to use traits that cap the minimum accuracy the monster can be held at, the Lion God employs this method (traits are used to ensure it can't be removed the way that a mood can). Though you do not want to use this all the time because it's something of a crutch and can harm player interaction.

Dash Cancelling is something that can only be countered via monster movement, you can't Dash Cancel the Hand (or Black Lion) because of the way that they move around and you can't easily Dash Cancel the Sunstalker because it has 16 movement. So for the most part you need to decide if your monster is going to be Dash Cancelled, or if you're going to make sure that it can't be countered this way. Be aware that Hollow Point Arrows + Shielded Quivers are starting to creep into the meta now that players have realised how bonkers stacking minus movement tokens onto monsters are. Having your monster replace the Phoenix or giving it other protections against ranged attacks (see below) is one way to handle this if you don't want it impacting on your experience.

Finally we have Ranged weapons. Ranged weapons are the single most overpowered category of weapon in the game at the moment, Range can utterly crucify monsters - and while Thrown Weapons have enough inherent limitations that they are not problematic in themselves Bows are a different matter.  If you're not sure what the issue is here, you should try out an 'all bow user' campaign and experience what happens to poor monsters like the Flower Knight or low speed ones like the Butcher when they are shot down by monsterous beasts using the Arc and Vespertine bows.  You can give your monster ranged attacks to compensate for this the Manhunter and Tyrant both employ them, while the Phoenix uses materialize. It's just something you need to bare in mind, ranged attacks can make a mockery of your monster design, you need to decide if that's OK.

There is a LOT more to go into on the AI portion, at the moment we've just looked at some broad sweeping principles, some of which are thematic and some of which sit at the heart of how to design monsters, and as we continue through this AI portion, we'll look at each aspect in full one at a time, so next time we're going to discuss Attack cards, Intimidate Cards and monster stats!