Posted by Ian Cummings about adaptive AI
A really cool part of this system is actually the ability to directly modify attributes under the hood, simulating true on the fly “learning” of a defender. For example, if an offense is running the exact same play over and over again for big gains, we would boost the defense’s play recognition ratings to emulate them learning for their mistakes to have a better chance to react when they see the same look again. Same goes for something like continuous out routes…a defender will get better and better at man coverage if you keep running the same route over and over again, but would drop back down to his original rating if you keep mixing it up. It should also be said that were keeping some integrity by not modifying physical attributes like speed, jumping, or acceleration.
Having individual defenders make realtime adjustments meant that we could implement Adaptive AI for online and head-to-head play as well (i.e. not just for the CPU players). So if your opponent starts running something that is becoming overly effective, and you don’t feel like you can’t stop it with your play calling, then at least your teammates will start learning how to stop it on their own.
One key detail is that we can also change the ‘output’ numbers per skill level. So for example on rookie or pro mode, the defense may actually know what you’re doing and have a solution for it, but we might actually have them wait a little longer and let you run the same thing a few more times before they start stopping it.
We have added a ton of inputs and outputs that allow us to really tweak the AI in a relatively simple manner. Here are some examples:
Play Types
- Play Action
- Screens
- Counter
- Draw
- Pitch / Toss
- etc

Play Style
- Scramble
- No Huddle

Route
- Entire Route Tree (i.e. in, out, comeback, streak, etc)