Folks will beat the AI.   I fully expect the AI to be much better than Elemental, and I might not be able to beat it, but others will.  The question is whether exploits will have to be used (I'd say no)

The main issue is that AI is ultimately predictable, and humans can adjust to that.

I suspect you'll be right about folks claiming the AI is cheating as well- you just have to be open about it, maybe create a replay feature that can show a person how the AI isn't cheating when the game is done.

Well you could do this on single player until you perfect this. You also have the option to shut this off on multiplayer so you don't have to play against this. For the most part there is always someone who doesn't like a good concept, and it looks like your the one. I wouldn't mind this leaking over to improvements and tech research also.

Michael, you seem to think this is the way "it will be" in GC3, even though StarDock has not given us even a slightest clue how it will work.

galciv actually has decision-making...

you can't number-crunch a decision-tree (exponentially-hard problem)

I fully expect a non-cheating AI to lose simply because it won't figure out how to balance economy, military, and technology

that doesn't change until the AI is designed by an expert player (or actually learns how to play the game over time, which needs very advanced learning algorithms which probably haven't been invented yet)

designing the most optimal ship for a known purpose ('offense', 'defense', 'exploration', 'growth') isn't a hard problem

figuring out what purpose to focus on for the situation is the challenge (and imo where the fun in AI programming lies)

anyways, starcraft is (relatively) easy to program AI for because the actual strategic decisions rarely branch away from a flowchart

even then, unless the programmers really put the time into studying the professional metagame and model that entire flowchart the bots need something like 40% bonuses on gather rate before people consider it "good" (eg. starcraft 2's AI gets 7 resources per trip while the human workers only get 5)

What's exploits? What I would like to see is an Ai that itemized research, planetary improvements, and ships into catagories sort of like what they do to techs anyways. The narrower the field to put these into the better. That way when something doesn't work it could randomly pick items in the catagory it needs until if works. This could be saved everytime you save the game. As far as ships the computer could try the counter to this instead designing ships with defense to what the player makes. We could make Ai's that are good at espionage, so it could monitor how you do your tech research and planetary improvements. That way if you do better, so can the computer do better. This also works ship wise when your ships are into their territory, or when you fight them.

Good as long as I can't beat the Ai I will want to keep playing.

Does that mean there will be no heroes like Wintersong suggested.

There might be heroes I guess, but they won't in any case be spellcasters. I guess what Brad meant is that there won't be those kind of tactical combat features  that complicate stuff for the AI, if we compare to Fallen Enchantress. Features that are potentially very exploitable by a human player willing to do whatever it takes to win.

The strategical focus of the game also means a focus on the things an AI can do well, yes even better then a human, like for instance maximising efficient research vs production vs growth vs morale focus strategies.

Important that Brad is held responsible for his declerations in the past. I think he is doing a good job here.  

That's a bold claim. It's good to have lofty goals, but don't be surprised when someone figures out how to do it.

Hmmm, i don't like the look of this thread, cause i don't like an AI that will 'beat' me! What i want, is an AI that will 'withstand' me which is something very different entirely.

The problem i always encounter in the old Galciv games, if my difficulty level is too high, i get wasted early on in the game, but if i put the difficulty down a bit, yes the early game is challenging but then after that the AI flops over and dies and I'm sitting there wondering what just happened to my brilliant fun game i was just having??

I want an AI that won't stomp on me too much early on but also will withstand me later on - I love to be able to hit hard but without the enemy flopping over. On the other side, i do not so much like being the one receiving the 'hitting hard'!!

Make any sense?

You do remember, that I'm working on a pretty big mod for GalCiv 2, right? Speaking of which, if all goes well, I'll release a new version in the next couple of days.

For GalCiv 3? The forums, previews, and podcasts. Just like everyone else.

LOL!