Controlling AI difficulty with better options

from GalCiv2 Forums
I was thinking about this on a Journal response, but thought it deserved its own subject.

People have mentioned difficulty finding the right AI setting. Setting 'Intelligent' is too hard but the setting lower is too easy is a good example. Some (like me) remember from GC1 that they wanted to see the 'full power' AI, but were not good enough to deal with it.

SOLUTION.

Separate the AI from the Money cheat. This way people can titrate their game to exactly what they want. (Should also be very easy to do).

Have one slider control which algorithms the AI uses (say 3-5 possiblilities from simple to full power).
Have another slider control money cheat (say 32 possibilities from +200% human through +100% AI)

This allows those of us who wish to see Brads glorious AI in action do so without getting our @sses kicked. It is a very easy way (especially considering how difficulty is done now) to give us a better selection of choices.

Would love to hear Brad's take on this idea.

Chris.
11,173 views 6 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
Brad has already said he'd like to do something similar, if not identical, to that, IIRC.
Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
I thought the manual already stated that the difficulty settings take that into account. i.e. the lower difficulty settings have the AI with a limited set of algorithms to evaluate human responses. The easiest difficulty level does NOT have all of the AI algorithms enabled (according to the manual).

About the only thing you can't do with the default difficulty settings is have the AI with a limited algorithm but have the money cheat enabled (doesn't make much sense anyway).
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Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
The problem is that the money bonus/handicap is set for each difficulty AI setting, it is not adjustable. If it were adjustable, than we could all play with a good AI, instead of a handicaped one. We would just adjust the money bonus/handicap to what works for us.

Chris.
Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
I think this is an excellent suggestion ... it would be interesting to fight the computer playing its best, but with a massive starting handicap

Dano
Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top
Frogboy is just as anxious to get something like this implemented as we all are at having it.
Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top
I hope he is, can't help feeling the above idea would take less than 1 day to code, since everything is already implemented except the player's choice of money bonus/penalty independent of AI capability.

Chris.