Hmmm. If having ships in somebody else's space bothers them, I wonder if some games can be played with giving ships to a third party in somebody else's space, just like I did in SE4. That might be one way to cause trouble in a "FlowerPower" game -- buy a ship from somebody, sell/give it to somebody else so the proximity bothers them.

(Unless the ship warps away to the new owners space when its transferred -- hmm. I gather that there's some rules regarding fuel/range; is it only possible to receive a ship that's already in range of your own planets?).

Well, Frogboy did state in another thread that the AI does *not* cheat, except in the impossible setting, at which it gets an economic bonus if I remember correctly.

Since he wasn't playing impossible, it would stand to reason the AI was not getting unfair bonuses of any kind.

fleabitfox

The AI didn't get any bonuses over me in that game.

It was playing by the same rules I was.

I suspect some people have no idea just how much most strategy game AIs cheat.

Without naming names, I know well known strategy games where each turn the AI gets a set amount of free money. Where it randomly gets a free unit give to them. Where their units get hidden bonuses in battle.

In GalCiv, nothing is hidden. You can, for instance, use espionage, and see exactly how they are spending their money. You can see how much each planet is getting per turn.

And they have the same choices you do. They have to use leases, adjust their taxes, spend rates, destabilization, etc. They are playing the same game as the player is and that is what I think many strategy gamers, myself included, want to see.

>

I know that has been MY "holy grail" for my 23 years of gaming!

And honestly, if the "intelligent" setting is the AI at 100% with no bonuses/penalties, and there are settings above and below that, what is the advantage of a "slider"?

Personally, I think it's good the AI has the option to "cheat" at higher settings in case I get good enough to want a more challenging game. The fact that even when it is "cheating" it uses all the same game mechanics as I have to and I know my enemies will be affected by my actions in the exact same way I would be by theirs retains the STRATEGY element in the game.

A big example: MOO1 - AI players did not have to pay ship maintenance. In one game, my strategy against the Mrrshan (who had a rediculously HUGE fleet) was to obliterate their economy so they could not pay their ship maintenace and would have to scrap ships I had no chance to kill myself. I made a clever plan to do this and after totally ruining their economy where I knew there was NO WAY they could afford to pay that kind of maintenance, guess what? THEY NEVER HAD TO SCRAP ONE SHIP. What this did for me was make me feel like my "strategy" was USELESS, because the AI did not play by the same rules as me. There are many other similar examples from almost every game I have ever played.

So what will be the "holy grail" to me is the fact that in GalCiv, I will never have any obvious cheating like that to render my creative strategies "useless". And the fact that I can choose to play AIs that don't cheat at ALL and are still by all accounts very challenging is in itself something I have not seen in anything other than a chess-like game.

--Soulfire

I suspect some people have no idea just how much most strategy game AIs cheat.

The AI in many games cheats, not just strategy games. Take shortcuts the AI can't take in Mario Kart 64 and watch the AI catch up to you anyway.

My point was that if the AI on a setting other than Intelligent is having it's economy altered in some way (either up or down) it isn't following the same guidelines you are. It's certainly not on the level of getting free units, not paying upkeep or knowing where all your units are without being able to "see" them... But you're still fiddling the figures for them.

The idea behind some sliders/switches for the economy would be that a human player could select some of the dumbed down AI to fight against, but still have their economies be on a par with their own, for a truer match up. Or they could even choose the most stupid AI, set their economy to massively restricted and set their own economy to enormous boosts for a walk in the park.
Or, for the insane, set the AI to get a massive boost on the most intelligent level, for a little humiliation.

I'll say it again, for clarity - It's great that we can play against an AI that (apparently) doesn't cheat. It's not so great giving the impression that the AI can never cheat, or get any advantage you can't also obtain.

That first line was a quote from Frogboy, didn't realise I can't use italics to quote, sorry.

I'm not sure of exactly which quote you are citing, but I understand where you are coming from. Honestly though, from what I have seen of Frogboy (and this company in general), they seem to try very hard to be honest and forthcoming.

It's really not very easy to make every statement 100% accurate under every possible circumstance with no possible room for misinterpretation. Usually when we communicate, as much as we try to be clear, we assume to some degree that people understand what we "mean" even if we mis-word something slightly. In all fairness, he was extremely forthright about the circumstances in which the AI can possibly "cheat" in more than one thread I have read, so it's not like he seems to be trying to hide anything.

I guess all I am saying is I don't believe Frogboy intended to mislead anybody.

As far as the slider goes, yes I can see where that would offer more flexibility to tailor the AI to operate at precisely the combination of intelligence and production bonus/penalty you want. The only question is: would that extra level of flexibility be a more worthwhile investment of their development time in terms of how much FUN it actually adds compared to something else they could add or improve in the same amount of time? Obviously each of us will have a different opinion on that. *shrug*

--Soulfire

Certain percentages of people will use some features to the detriment of their own fun, and not even realize it. Artist guide us as well as entertain us.

"The only question is: would that extra level of flexibility be a more worthwhile investment of their development time in terms of how much FUN it actually adds compared to something else they could add or improve in the same amount of time? Obviously each of us will have a different opinion on that. *shrug*"

Maybe as a "bonus pack" feature, then? They seem to be trying to cram as much stuff into that as possible. I don't know how the game setup screen works entirely, but if there's some kind of "advanced" setup, surely a box could be added that defaults to a 100% economy, and people could change it from there?

As you said, Frogboy and the other people who work here do seem to be honest and truly willing to listen to the community, which is why I said anything in the first place. The AI in C&C: Renegade's skirmish mode was a farce, but I didn't bother telling Westwood that, because "they know better".

A slider bar doesn't make make sense, nor would it be easy to implement. For example, what would one more pixel of difficulty mean? Does the AI develop it planets more poorly, or trade tech more stupidly, or what? You can create broad categories of rules and algorithms for "dumb", "average", "smart", etc. but how they heck do you decide what one more pixel, or one or two more percentage of intelligence really is? How how do you tell that you got it right unless you play multiple games at every possible increment of intelligence? Broad categories can be tested - that's what we beta testers were for, but how could anyone possibly test all the increments on a slider bar? That's not practical.

Grifman

Me thinks that it would be better for those who haven't played the game to reserve judgement until after they start playing.

Our goal is to provide an enjoyable experience for the player. The reason the AI doesn't cheat was not out of some sort of philosophical reason but because it made the game more fun. If having the AI cheat like crazy would have made the game more fun, I would have done that instead.

Mythor, you're looking way way too deep into this. You say having the AI be penalized 10% is having it play is "cheating" (in favor of the human). I disagree. Having the AI penalized at lower levels has to do with making it play MORE like a less experienced human player.

Human players are rarely as efficient in strategy games as computer players. When you played Civ, did you EVERY TIME adjust your spending so that you didn't spend a single extra resource to get the next discovery? Did you, every turn, go through every one of your cities and adjust spending so that you didn't waste any resources on your next temple or legion?

Because the computer can do that. Every turn. It doesn't care and it can do it in milliseconds. So on lower levels what you do is introduce that human inefficiency. An expert human player, and I mean a truly top no holds barred human player, would probably go through and decrease how much they're wasting in resources each turn. But most humans won't. A "Normal" human player won't. And so when we turn the AI down to "Normal" what we are doing is having the computer player play more like a normal human.

No small amount of playtesting has gone into this game. I would argue that no commercial strategy game has had the single player experience more playtesting prior to release than this one.

Just curious, I've seen an example 1, 3 and 4 here but no link to two could someone post it ???

Good reply Brad, I had the just same thing in mind that you just explained, didnt have time to make a post though...

Full list:

http://www.galciv.com/play.html


~SDC~

Read them all. Ready to leed, ready to spread the human seed.
""I would argue that no commercial strategy game has had the single player experience more playtesting prior to release than this one.""
Glad to hear that.

~SDC~

Well I know damned well it's goona get a LOT more "playtesting" after I get MY grubby little hands on it! LOL

--Soulfire

I thought the same way as Mythor before the AI mechanics were explained, that is, the continual anal retentive updating. I'm not going to do that. The AI can and will do that, so there should be an offset for those who want an AI that behaves humanly. Anyway, I don't think Mr. Frogboy ever said the AI didn't CHEAT, he said it played by the same rules. I really can't wait to play this game and see how it works with the way I play.

So when you allied, did your ally seem to work with you, or did it do it's own thing, or a combination of both?

Thanks for the link

Me too Soulfire777. I've been talking it up to a couple people. I don't think it will be anywhere near perfect. It's just a game, thats meant to to draw in a wide array of intellectuals. But I'm betting it will be plenty interesting enough for this simple fella. And emotionally inciteing. Or at least as such as I can be emotionally stired. But thats another story.

~SDC~

How often does the "league of non-aligned worlds" group pop up? It appears in two out the four examples of play that you had. I suppose it could be fairly common to have groups of planets dissatisfied with their rulers to jump ship, but is it really that common for planets to split off in two out the four games? And, do they always have to be named the "League of Non aligned worlds"? How about the "Independent systems brigade" or some such phrase?

The Non-Aligned Worlds is largely dependent upon keeping your planetary morale up - and the same with the AI's. The Acerons' did a poor job in my last game, lost 3 or 4 worlds - none of the other civs did. I lost a couple playing sloppily, but soon reconquered them Alot can be dependent upon your difficulty level and whatever situation you/AI gets itself into.

Grifman

Regarding the AI playing by the same rules:

What I'd love to see is a client-server architecture where the game server enforces the rules, and the AIs and humans all interact with it through the same API. One could still tweak the production levels for the AIs to change the difficulty, but more fun (to us programming nerds) would be to get to write our own client, to help with the micromanagement while the human watches the big picture. Or write a completely new AI client and see if it can compete with the big boys.

Excellent explanation, Brad.
If the AI is being anal like that then I guess the economic penalty is a fair trade-off. The alternative would be programming it to be less fussy about resource wasting, but I suspect that would add stacks of code and the bugs associated with adding stacks of code.
A human player could still keep up with an infinitely anal AI, but it would have to be via superior strategy, rather than resource fiddling. Guess the setting where the AI gets no penalty will be the one for me.

For 'Grifman': The slider I was talking about wasn't one for the intelligence of the AI, that would obviously be an absolute nightmare to program. What I meant (and what I was referring to) was a slider to adjust the percent of normal economic revenue that the AI receives.
So the default might mean it gets 50% of what a human player would get. The "hard" setting might be 100% (ie; the same as what a human player gets) and the "Elite" level might be 150%, giving a 50% bonus to the economy of the AI.
Then when you're starting out in the game, you could penalise the AI fairly heavily. As you start to get into the game, subsequent games you could nudge up the slider on the economy, plus nudge up the intelligence levels of the AI.

What Brad has said sounds good, even if it's a bit misleading. I'm content to let the differences lie, though.

At least until I get the game and am, of course, proven right.

And don't get me wrong, the AI isn't unbeatable. As time goes on, we'll have to keep updating the AI. The AI is only as good as me and some of the top players. As new strategies come up, the AI can learn from that (i.e. by being coded). I came close to winning with all the AI players on genius for instance today.

~SDC~

Oh come on give us an unbeatable senerio too. Oops everyone good genius against me evil; medium galaxy medium planets. I haven't played yet, but I doubt we will be hurting for challenge.

~SDC~