Conversation on NPC actions.

Summary in the reply.

I was on Reddit talking about my game, asking for help and such when, and someone brought a few questions and issues to my attention:

"I have to mention, that this game will HEAVILY depend on AI. That brings a lot of challenges, optimization is just one of them. One of the reasons we rarely see smart AI is that advanced algorithms are simply too slow to be used in games. Especially when you have hundreds of agents. "

and

"If I was presented with a task to implement a system for your game, I'd be asking a few questions before starting.
1. How many entities can be active at once?
2. What kind of actions can they perform?
3. How much time will I have to compute the outcome (e. g. how long is an in-game tick? Paradox games tick once in a few seconds plus additional tick in longer periods for other events)"

Here was my response to the questions:

1. I've had that thought and encountered a similar issue running a Birthright game (D&D). Trying to track what distant nations are doing is not only difficult but a waste of time, so the solution is to just not or do so very lightly.
If it doesn't have anything to do with the player it can be assumed to be running fine.
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As for what the player *can* see I think Vicy 3's demographic system is a good one. Because even if it weren't a computing issue to have like 50 named characters who are all in Noble Families all doing actions - there's no way a player would be able to keep up with 50 names and faces and the complex web of who likes who. Also as for flavor text, who cares about Baron#354, the player only needs to know "Barons control _% of the land in this county"
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So to answer the question, primarily things that make complex decisions will be other Agents and heads of factions. I couldn't guess the actual number but its less than 50, probably.

2. Three kinds of things can take actions: Agents, Faction leaders and Lords.
Agents will be the most complex, since they have the biggest variety of options (skills).
Lords are landowners, their concerns are mainly about their own realm or conquering someone that isn't too far away. Their action options won't be too varied.
Faction leaders, they tell their Lords what to do on matters of state, things like "Move your troops here"

3. For this I'd draw upon my RPG experience again. In table-top-role-play-games(TTRPGs) there's something(depending on the system) called an action economy, you can only do so much per turn. So to keep things from being bogged down too badly limiting what an AI can do, what they can think, per turn would be my solution. I figure ticks will be every week in-game and another tick per month.
Flavor text wise - it's bureaucracy - a king says "Do a thing"
people have to go and do a thing, and then come back and tell him about it. Meanwhile an Agent feels they to go do X, Y and Z they just go and do it. Processing power is prioritized to those that have more of an impact on the player.

1. How many entities can be active at once?
2. What kind of actions can they perform?
3. How much time will I have to compute the outcome (e. g. how long is an in-game tick? Paradox games tick once in a few seconds plus additional tick in longer periods for other events)"
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1. Less than 50, most of them will be agents, but others will be landowners with limited options.
2. There's an entire list of Agent mission types I still need to work out, but landowners will be limited greatly in comparison.
3. I'm thinking 1 per week and 1 per month. The week will be for action tracking and the economy and other large scale stuff can be tracked per month.