Nvidia ACE: AI advisor helps in “Total War Pharaoh”
Nvidia shows how ACE tech aids games: In “Total War: Pharaoh,” an AI advisor gives info on army strengths and rebellions.
(Image: Nvidia)
Nvidia and Creative Assembly have introduced an AI assistant for the strategy game “Total War: Pharaoh” that can help players with their campaigns in ancient Egypt. The AI helper is intended to understand the current game situation and answer questions about, among other things, how one's own army strength compares to that of the enemies and how rebellion can be prevented in a province.
This is based on Nvidia's ACE technology, which can interact with video games in real-time. In the past, Nvidia has shown NPCs that, thanks to ACE, can understand current game circumstances and thus behave more realistically. In “Total War: Pharaoh,” a new scenario is demonstrated in which an AI advisor can provide players with specific information and assistance in their current situation.
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For this purpose, the advisor AI was trained with a database of game data and tables, which it can compare with the current game state. According to a demo video from Nvidia and “Total War” developer Creative Assembly, you can interact with the advisor via a chat box. You ask it questions, similar to how you would with ChatGPT. The answer is also output as text in the video; there is no AI voice output.
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AI advisor needs a lot of VRAM
Currently, the AI advisor in “Total War: Pharaoh” is still in an experimental stage. In the coming months, Creative Assembly plans to test it with selected members of the community. No further details are available yet. Prospectively, such an AI assistant is likely to be of particular interest to new players. “Pharaoh,” like other “Total War” games, is only moderately complex, at least on the campaign map – after a few hours of play, AI assistance should no longer be necessary.
The experimental AI advisor in “Total War: Pharaoh” still has a major disadvantage: it runs locally and alone consumes 6 GB of VRAM, reports OC3D.net. The memory requirements of the actual game must still be added. According to the current Steam Survey, only about 10 percent of Steam users have more than 12 GB of VRAM available; most have 8 GB – which is likely not enough for the AI advisor. So, before a release, Nvidia and Creative Assembly will have to reduce the VRAM hunger of the AI advisor.
Nvidia is also working on Project G-Assist, a chatbot designed for video games that can also answer questions about games and change graphics settings. In contrast to the ACE advisor, however, it interacts less deeply with the actual game and is intended more for general performance questions. Microsoft is also working on a similar tool, which the company calls „Copilot for Gaming“.
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