"Civilization IV"... Confirmed?

[ThePlagueRat]

Originally posted by Toby Rowe
I really hope that in Civ 4 "Stategic" resources will be exactly that- Strategic: Coal in certain squares, Iron in others, leave them there so we can plan a strategy!!
Toby

I always hoped for many more tiles containing strategic resources, all around on every continent... More resource-tiles combined with an output per turn rate for each one, would set a strategic production limit so that in order for you to build a large legion army, you would need to collect many iron sources, so you would have to expand in direction of those in order to support more units of that type. Now it's so lame just having a few iron tiles on the map and one of them is enough for a monsterstack of 200 swordsmen.

[Maquiladora]

Originally posted by notyoueither
That's part of the map. I doubt it was fixed since knowledge of the map was the one advantage given the AI.

Hense the 'AI settled a useless tundra tile... oops, there's oil there!'

Which turned into, 'I know there has to be something there if the AI was determined to settle a useless area. Let's take it.'

IOW, the advantages of the AI came to become advantages for the human who was patient enough to learn.

Its a different kind of cheat than just knowing where continents or current resources are placed.

I think its funny how these vision cheats for the AI, that were supposed to increase the longevity of the game (?), turned into a huge advantage for the human to exploit and pretty much killed any chance of playing the game normally anymore once the exploits were discovered.

Using game bugs/imbalances to beat the AI is one thing, but using its own best cheats against it to lure it in proves these kind of over the top easy fix AI cheats dont work in the long run for a decent AI.

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by Toby Rowe
Are you serious?

Play on a huge world, 12-16 nations, once rubber appears whether by your tech level or another, If you have to fight a large nation, capure the supply and a new one will appear soon after- Now you've made me think about it, I might even play another one- I vowed my current game will be my last until Civ 4 arrives.

(I'm now just moaning and contributing nothing about a game that is going to be replaced anyway- so why am I moaning?)

Anyway, I think the massive imbalance between Cavalry verus Infantry during that long period was designed to annoy you, just like having to build factories in order to keep up with the AI, but then suffer the pollution, you needed the Tank so badly, investment and tedious pollution is the only logical course.

I once did a test on the AI tech cheating in Civ 2: I built 8 Islands and surrounded all others with mountains bar mine. I visited all of them, but never disclosed the map, when I could build Nuclear Weapons they were learning how to use Muskets at best.

But at least Civ & Civ 2 were honest in AI cheating- a pop-up box told you so whilst it engaged in it.

Civ 3 pretends it doesn't happen- that is annoying, even more so is the expansion in AI cheating Infogrammes programmed in Civ 3 once the legal battle over ownership of the title was resolved. Anyone know how they managed to win? Was it SMAC that won it?

Toby

I'd love to see a save where the rubber does that. You have one, right? It happens so often you must have a save where you take one rubber and then another appears, and then you take that and a third appears, and so on.

Regarding the last bit, I can only guess that you think the AI trading tech is a cheat. Do I have that correct?

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by Maquiladora


Its a different kind of cheat than just knowing where continents or current resources are placed.

I think its funny how these vision cheats for the AI, that were supposed to increase the longevity of the game (?), turned into a huge advantage for the human to exploit and pretty much killed any chance of playing the game normally anymore once the exploits were discovered.

Using game bugs/imbalances to beat the AI is one thing, but using its own best cheats against it to lure it in proves these kind of over the top easy fix AI cheats dont work in the long run for a decent AI.

I agree that some limiters could have been placed on AI behaviour to make it less vulnerable to the human taking advantage of the AI advantage.

However, it is one cheat. Complete knowledge of the map simply had several consequences.

[snoopy369]

Toby -

The only fixed cheat is indeed that the AI has full knowledge of the map.

However, there are a few 'options' that your difficulty level gives that can be either handicaps or cheats depending on the difficulty level.

"Free Unit Support": At higher levels than warlord, the AI gets a reduction in its unit support costs (more as the levels get higher). IE if Republic gets 1 unit cost/town, 3 per city and 4 per metro or whatnot, giving your civ ... 58 free, then 2gp per unit. The AI at various levels gets more free - 68, 78, 88, etc., then pays 2gp per unit. It also at higher levels gets a bonus per city.

"Free starting units": At higher levels the AI gets free starting units of the highest offensive and defensive power (respectively) available to it, as well as workers and settlers.

"Reduced Anarchy": Higher levels of AI get limited lengths of anarchy.

"Reduced Trading Costs vs. AI": Each level of AI values its trades at a certain percentage of normal when trading with another AI. I don't recall the exact numbers, but it is intended primarily to allow AIs to keep up and not get left far behind in the tech race; also allows the lead AIs to bypass the human advantage that is AI tech leeching (trading an unowned tech to various AIs for tons of GPT) at very high levels (somewhat).

"Cost Factor": At higher levels, the AI pays less for its improvements (possibly units as well, I forget.) Regent = 100%; Chieftain and Warlord it's actually higher, while at Sid you have as low as 40% (reducing from regent 10% each level and 20% from deity to sid).

These are all easily viewed in the editor at "Difficulty Levels". It's also easy for you to get around them if you want, by modifying any given difficulty level to the appropriate amount of cheating you think is right.

In the scheme of things, Toby, it seems you don't like it because it makes the AI too hard. What level do you play at? I can say that Monarch is the recommended level for most casual players who like a challenge, as Emperor is where the AI gets drastically tougher (because of free unit support doubling, barbarians being 50% harder, and significantly more starting units). Regent is the level at which the AI is exactly as a Human, no penalties or bonuses other than map knowledge; Monarch has a slight bonus but not very high.

Plainly put, these advantages are what you'll have to live with in an AI, until someone programs an actual A.I. that has creativity. Humans gain an advantage in creativity, and by creativity I mean the ability to see creative ways to move, creative ways to build, and creative ways to use the rules that might not have been as the designers intended. I seriously doubt that the Civ3 programmers intended for humans to be able to take advantage of AIs so easily in the resource city grabbing, or in the tech trades for high GPT (thousands!) late in the game, etc. Human creativity allowed this, as it did bomber interdiction in civ2 (using bombers to prevent units from moving), and transport chaining (in several civs!). You'll notice I mention several "cheats", from some people's point of view; that's essentially what creativity does, allows a human to "cheat" from the AI's point of view - do things the AI isn't allowed to do. Thus, until an AI can be programmed to be creative as well - and trust me, that is a long way off, to the degree I'm talking - the AI will have to be hardcoded with cheats.

[snoopy369]

Originally posted by notyoueither
Of course you have a save or two to support the elastic rubber supply, yes? 'Cause I've never seen that. Has anyone else? Iron and oil, yes, because their disappearance/appearance numbers are fairly high. But rubber?

Still, I agree that the resource system is both a strength and a weakness. I have never been happy with how it has been implemented, and C3C just made it worse, IMO.

I've never seen rubber move, and that's not a surprise, because in C3C it has a disappearance rate of "0". That means it *cannot* disappear ... as far as I understand anyway ... but posted autosaves before and after a disappearance would mollify me (nothing else )

Iron and Saltpetre have disappearance rates of 800, the highest; aluminum and coal 400; oil 200; uranium 100. That's it. I am not sure what the number means relative to what, but i'm fairly sure the higher the number the more likely the disappearance (iron and saltpetre i've certainly seen move often). In one PBEM game I had 3 of 4 irons in my part of the pangea and then had the fourth disappear from an opponent and reappear next to my capital ... arty:

[Max Sinister]

I can't tell all the cheats hidden in Civ3 since I didn't program it, but I know that I had more fun with civ2 and even civ1, despite they obviously cheated with the wonders.

[ThePlagueRat]

Well, the AI-cheating is not well camoflagued. Some cheats are easy to notice. You might easily notice AI production and AI tech sharing is proportional to the difficulty level, but then you might call it other things than a cheat. (but it's only a question of definitions) It's just a quick and dirty way of making difficulty levels...

There you have one reason to only play Civ3 against human players.
AI vs. human diplomacy is IMHO the worst part of the game. I really hope they will not implement that sort of nonsense in Civ4!

[alva]

Have a look at the release date.

http://www.ebgames.com/ebx/product/255945.asp

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by ThePlagueRat
Well, the AI-cheating is not well camoflagued. Some cheats are easy to notice. You might easily notice AI production and AI tech sharing is proportional to the difficulty level, but then you might call it other things than a cheat. (but it's only a question of definitions) It's just a quick and dirty way of making difficulty levels...

Production is handicapped according to difficulty. You can play with you having a massive advantage (Chieftan) or the AI having one (Sid). That is not a cheat, since it is totally under your control. If you want an even playing field, play the middle difficulties.

Tech trading is a cheat? Someone should have told me that I was cheating all those times I whored techs around.

[ThePlagueRat]

It was not that I meant. The AI have tech alliance at higher levels, while you can't whore around because they wont sell it for all the gold and resources in the world.

It makes a diplomatic situation where it's you vs all AI-players. Thus a harder game. This is not the case on lower levels of course, where diplomacy kinda works neatly even for player vs AI.

[Toby Rowe]

Hi All,

Thankyou Snoopy & Notyoueither for the replies.

First, Snoopy;

Rubber doesn't disappear, it only ever increases in supply!!

If you really want a save of this AI cheat (new Rubber) then I will monitor it, but I'm now into a late period in my current game, which is one game more than I promised I'd play of Civ 3, simply as notyoueithers' comments renewed my interest in checking certain aspects of the game.

I currently have 3 nations left, all of which are too small (I think) for the AI to place a new source of Rubber once I capture the original supply. Any reader of this; by careful examination of a LARGE-ish (!) nation before being attacked/attacking them should simply look at their map closely and noting the current rubber locations. I noticed that if a nation was down to about 10 cities-ish during the war (they started with me :-)) then the AI didn't give them a fresh supply.

Of course, the nation also needs at least one square of plains or jungle terrain for this cheat to occur.


AI difficulty;-

I play on Monarch level (with map editing), and have no problem with AI cheating to counter the human brain. I do however tend to get annoyed when it is very blatent and "in yer face" as most of the AI cheats in Civ 3 are. To be quite honest, I saw better AI behaviour in the 1994 "Colonization" game than I've witnessed in Civ 3.

Basically, the obvious cheats in Civ 3 are there as the programmers were too lazy/ or financially "worried" to programme a credible AI based upon current standards, let alone try to break new ground. The "silent" cheats you have listed are to be expected in any strategy game, for the very reason you mentioned (humans).

Civilisation is held up as THE benchmark of Strategy games and I quite frankly expected much more from the programmers. Removing extremely useful keystrokes that appeared in Civ 2 is an indication of that, the AI seeing your Subs just made me laugh- why even bother to programme in the unit- was it just to annoy everyone when an AI Ironclad sunk one?!!

notyoueither;

You might as well "whore" (not my choice of word) all your techs around as all 3 Civ's ensure the others are never far behind you.

This is what I would love to see a change in most of all- I actually want the difficultly levels to reflect the amount the AI can cheat in in this field.

If I choose say "impossible" level in Civ 4, then I expect the AI nations perhaps to only need to spend 1/10th gold I need to discover the same tech.

Conversely, that means I expect the AI nations to not freely give away discovered techs to each other at that level, should I actually gain a lead in the tech race.
That is called a challenge, AI Civ cheating on this key issue is now getting boring, and all 3 versions are guilty of it!

Toby

[SSBLoveU]

Oh well, the war is over. All I have to do is to wait for the ambush. Now, I have to figure what to do next, so I decided to read some post. I thought in CIV IV people could commit navel support or troop support. Or my allies could put some troops under my command. Or we could unite and plan on boundaries. It gets a little boring in peace time when the only activity you can do with your neighbors is to declare war, and then you find out the AI cheated on the location of the resources.

[Toby Rowe]

Hi SSB,

I prefer to learn how others think and feel, rather than argue, as arguements achieve zero.

I think that the programmers are pulled 3 ways in benchmark games- impacient publishers, gamers and shareholders, I hope Civ 4 appears when the game is ready, not when the above 3 groups want or need it.

Some Yank guy mentioned "forward basing" with your allies, NATO couldn't exist without this concept, and I've been in a joint UK/US base within mainland Europe, and have also unwittingly tested stuff within SHAPE many moons ago, in order us Europeans were propected against a very real threat.
Co-operation is important with allies.

Having an ally actually mean something in Civ 4 would please me all lot, forward basing by US forces in the Cold War was a clear demonstration to that nation in Europe that they had an ally whose nation was prepared to "defend to the death" not only the right of free speech, but the existance of a nation full stop.

I'd like this translated into Civ 4; Allied units should be able to stack together, My units should be able to do R&R in an Allied city and our level of respect OF any ally should be far greater than it is in Civ /2/3, simply as the word "Allied" really means nothing to the AI model.

The treaty exists only to be broken, no other Strategy game treats this treaty with such a level of disrespect.

Toby!!

[Vince278]