Ok, word: The AI gets cost cheats at nearly every difficulty level:

[-Ab-]

Can YOU think of every possible action some of these guys playing CIV will take in EVERY possible situation? I can't.

nor can i but teh number is finite and you could work it out if you really wanted to

Now, Civ: There are over 40 types of pieces (I tried not to UU's because they replace units, they are not extra) and over 10,000 squares = 400,000 possible moves with only one unit per type. Now, with no restrictions on squares to move to or pieces to capture this remains almost infinite throughout the length of the game.

if you will allow that city management and tech management could be considered a separate AI, something simple to manage those aspects , then consider this
in chess you do not move a single piece
every piece is connected to (almost) every other piece and all of them move as a whole
you cannot define the game as "oh pawns move 8 possible directions and thats it" because it doesnt work like that

in civ4 the units on the board have little or no interaction with each other even tho there are more of them
in danger of going off topic here but chess is at the same time extreamly simple and infinately complex and absolutley nothing like the simplicity of civ 4

you can spend a lifetime playing chess and still find new levels in it
you think that will apply to any civ game?

[padillah]

Originally posted by -Ab-

Can YOU think of every possible action some of these guys playing CIV will take in EVERY possible situation? I can't.

nor can i but teh number is finite and you could work it out if you really wanted to

The number of stars in the sky is finite as well, but I'm not going to count them. The number of actions a person can take in any given turn in CIV is, for all intents and purposes, infinite. Given the fact that they need not take any action, or they can move every piece in any conceivable direction.

I think you are underestimating what you are asking. To foresee EVERY action a person may make. Is so close to infinite as to be indistinguishable.

if you will allow that city management and tech management could be considered a separate AI, something simple to manage those aspects , then consider this
in chess you do not move a single piece
every piece is connected to (almost) every other piece and all of them move as a whole
you cannot define the game as "oh pawns move 8 possible directions and thats it" because it doesnt work like that

As a matter of fact, it does. Ask any master and they will tell you: play the board, not the man. But, let's set that aside for a second, I want to talk about why you feel the creation of units and the management of those units are seperate actions that don't impact each other? How can the Romans move their Conquistadors? They can't, because they can't MAKE Conquistadores. If I'm going to attack a city one of the first things I should do is be certain I've MADE enough units to support the taking of the city. How can you possibly sepperate these two? How can you say that to attack a city within two turns of discovering Gunpowder doesn't affect the decision to wait for the TECH, MAKE the units, and then attack. If you think those are seperate and irrelevant decisions you are probably losing more games than you are winning.

As for chess being about all the moves, yes. There are "lines" you can address but this can be dangerous and has tripped up many a master who's concentrating on his line and looses sight of the rest of the board. I've seen several examples in the Waitzkin tutorials that come with Chessmaster 2000.

in civ4 the units on the board have little or no interaction with each other even tho there are more of them
in danger of going off topic here but chess is at the same time extreamly simple and infinately complex and absolutley nothing like the simplicity of civ 4

you can spend a lifetime playing chess and still find new levels in it
you think that will apply to any civ game?

Only inasmuch as a human has given you a different view of a certain board position. Like I said, even with the limited pieces and space of chess not all the moves have been calculated. It's just too broad.

None of which has anything to do with the effectivness of an AI. You simply cannot seperate the Tech, City Management, and piece movement portions. They depend on each other completely. You can't move a piece that your city has not built. You can't build a piece your technology hasn't discovered. They are related by more than just their positions on the "game board" as the pieces in chess are. They are actually related to each other.

Tom P.

[-Ab-]

I think you are underestimating what you are asking. To foresee EVERY action a person may make. Is so close to infinite as to be indistinguishable.

and i think you over estimate it by a very long way

As a matter of fact, it does. Ask any master and they will tell you: play the board, not the man

As for chess being about all the moves, yes. There are "lines" you can address but this can be dangerous and has tripped up many a master who's concentrating on his line and looses sight of the rest of the board

indeed i agree
my point that every piece is connected

Only inasmuch as a human has given you a different view of a certain board position. Like I said, even with the limited pieces and space of chess not all the moves have been calculated. It's just too broad.

thats pretty much what deep blue did
it calculated every possible move.. or more accurate to say it calculated more than the human is was playing could - infact it counted ahead a ridiculas number of moves,i forget the exact figure
all it proved is that computers can perform certain specific tasks better than flesh and blood
it brought that poor guy it was playing to tears aswell
did it calculate every possible move? i dont know

How can you say that to attack a city within two turns of discovering Gunpowder doesn't affect the decision to wait for the TECH, MAKE the units, and then attack. If you think those are seperate and irrelevant decisions you are probably losing more games than you are winning.

because i dont credit civ4 AI with anything like that lvl of complexity,and unless its units are exactly 2 turns away from your citys and in a position to be upgraded its not going to happen

i dont think it plans ahead very much at all tbh and it doesnt have to, the game is set up so the AI can follow its 1 single path thru the game
as the skill level increases so does the AIs bonus % and its beats you on techs and wins the space race
what can you do about that ?
conquer it?..
ok but on higher levels it pays less for upgrades and will make war more trouble than its worth
expand perhaps... beat it at its own game.... more science, more gold, bigger and better
but no thats not allowed either - to combat ics apparently

i havent tryed for a culture victory

i think the AI has a system to count how good you are,victory points perhaps
and if you are rated over a ceratin level it will take what ever the scripted action is to combat you,to slow you down
so long as you never pass that level the AI will leave you alone , and is secure to do this cause its not like your going to invade and steal techs is it?

the AI in this game is simple and its supported by the rules of the game at every turn

You simply cannot seperate the Tech, City Management, and piece movement portions. They depend on each other completely.

i think the AI has 1 path thru the tech tree,there is no desion making involved,ever noticed how it always has certain techs ? even tho you would consider other techs to be more valuable because you have some sort of strategy
as for city management, 20 squares not including the center, each with a certain value according to how the AI calculates it,not awfully complex to make it choose the best ones and to say after a ceratin point of production it makes a specialist

thats my view on it anway
perhaps i expect too much from what is just a game

[padillah]

Originally posted by -Ab-

I think you are underestimating what you are asking. To foresee EVERY action a person may make. Is so close to infinite as to be indistinguishable.

and i think you over estimate it by a very long way

Again, I am forced to ask: did you look up the link I included? It goes a long way towards enumerating the possibilities when a human is left to their own devices.

thats pretty much what deep blue did
it calculated every possible move.. or more accurate to say it calculated more than the human is was playing could - infact it counted ahead a ridiculas number of moves,i forget the exact figure
all it proved is that computers can perform certain specific tasks better than flesh and blood
it brought that poor guy it was playing to tears aswell
did it calculate every possible move? i dont know

This, I have to say, is a gross misstatement. Kasparov won the first match, DeepBlue the second and then three draws until DeepBlue won the last tie breaking match. Kasparov welcomed the match and the "beating" since it opened up lots of interest in chess and made people think about chess again after a long time. It was the same with Kasparov v. The World. It's a publicity stunt. And Kasparov welcomed it. It did NOT bring anyone to tears.

http://www.research.ibm.com/deepblue/home/html/b.shtml

http://classic.zone.msn.com/Kasparov/Home.asp

And PLEASE look into the "Technology" links to see what is really going on in a game of chess.

because i dont credit civ4 AI with anything like that lvl of complexity

Then I appologise. I was arguing that a superior AI would be difficult to build. I didn't realise you were talking about the current AI in the game now.

You may well be right in your assumptions, there may be a singular tack each civ takes through the tech tree and so forth. That may currently be the best way to handle the issues.

My arguments were against waiting for a more advanced AI. They can get pretty darn complex.

Tom P.

[-Ab-]

im pretty sure i saw the end of that match on tv and kasparov looked most upset
rumour had it he was quite close to throwing a tantrum over it,altho you hear all sorts of things so who knows

interesting link to IBM there
i didnt realise deep blue was anything other than a chess machine,i think IBM is pushing its luck a bit with the HAL comparisons tho

[JohnUghrin]

I'm quite confident that more advanced AI is possible both from a programming and processing standpoint. The problem is development and training. Which is to say that AI is one of the most neglected areas of game (and anything else) programming development. From a business standpoint, you'd be hard pressed to find programmers properly trained in advanced AI development and you'd be even more hard-pressed to predict their performance and set release dates for them.

IMHO it would be relatively easy to build an AI that could learn to beat a given player. Thus forcing human players to continually evolve new strategies. I'm not sure why this is not done. ::shrug:: However, its certainly not impossible.

[Saurus]

[SIZE=1]

This, I have to say, is a gross misstatement. Kasparov won the first match, DeepBlue the second and then three draws until DeepBlue won the last tie breaking match. Kasparov welcomed the match and the "beating" since it opened up lots of interest in chess and made people think about chess again after a long time. It was the same with Kasparov v. The World. It's a publicity stunt. And Kasparov welcomed it. It did NOT bring anyone to tears.

This is starting to get off-topic but Kasparov was VERY unhappy about the outcome of the game and in fact quite openly accused IBM for cheating since he thought that during the second game, DeepBlue made moves considered impossible for a computer to make all by its own.
Kasparov have made a rather lenghty tv-document about this . It's rather intresting.

[-Ab-]

well i didnt actually want to say it,jut sinse you have
yes he shouted cheat,stamped his foot and cryed like a wuss
was like something out of a game of counterstrike

unsurprisingly the kasparov site doesnt mention this, limiting itself to somethign along the lines of "kasparov was a pale shadow of himself in the second game"

still to be fair he was "the man" the unbeatable and everybody had been building this match up and the pressure was on him

[padillah]

Whatever. I did find the accusations of cheating but I found nothing of him crying. I will admit he can get quite animated and has been berated for his "antics" by human players as well. He'll get up from the table in the middle of a game, sometimes he'd stare off into space...
If you guys can find something, please post it. All I can find is below:

http://www.cs.vu.nl/~aske/db.html

http://www.ishipress.com/blue-1.htm

http://www.ishipress.com/blue-2.htm

http://www.ishipress.com/blue-3.htm

http://www.ishipress.com/blue-4.htm

http://www.ishipress.com/blue-5.htm

http://www.ishipress.com/blue-6.htm

I can't find a whole lot. Quite a few sites I found were missing.

Thanks for the help, I've been interested in this for a long time but missed the actual match. To find such humiliating behavior would certainly be interesting.

Tom P.

[-Ab-]

its sort of hints at it in this

Perhaps most surprising was Kasparov's performance at the postgame news conference, which was not the exuberant celebration envisioned by the tournament sponsor, IBM, but rather a tense occasion in which Kasparov's griped, apologized and vowed revenge

but the reason i remember it mostly was because it was on the evening news

tbh i think deep blue is more interesting that kasparov,are you a fan of his or something ?

If the articles were to be believed, a Deep Blue victory would do irreparable damage to mankind's self image, comparable to the impact of Galileo's and Darwin's work. The press exaggerated this story out of proportion to create the false image of a technological monster, playing on their audience's fear of the unknown

see? they had been winding him up about this for a while before the game
it really was a major deal to him

[padillah]

Originally posted by -Ab-
tbh i think deep blue is more interesting that kasparov,are you a fan of his or something ?

Kinda, yeah. I remember him from the "Kasparov v. World" match back in 1999. He was always presented as quite outgoing and always maintained he was doing this for the good of the game and he wouldn't mind if he lost to the World Team so long as people got interested in chess again... Hearing him act like a three year-old having lost to DeepBlue is so incongruent with the image I got of him in '99 that I got to wondering if that was a put-on.

It would be very disappointing to discover that he's just as egocentric as Fisher. I thought that chess was getting away from the "locked in his room as a kid smarter than everyone else" diva Fisher left us with in the 70's.

Very disappointing.

Tom P.

[wattro]

Originally posted by Lucilla
wattro,

take a course in software development, get a job at Firaxis with your brilliant ideas and then sell us the ultimate game.
Then we have something to lough about.
I notice, that this is your first post. Makes me think that this might be a....DL?

What's a DL? You going to lough at me? lmao...

Besides, what does a first post have to do anything with the quality of my (or anyone's) ideas? It's often the outsider's POV which brings the best POV to the table.

Originally posted by Soren Johnson Firaxis


well, it may be BAD AI. Not the same thing as cheating AI.

Looks like someone agrees with me.

[joncnunn]

That's exactly how I feel about Prince one level up.

Originally posted by MattPilot
IF you are getting beat at noble in the first place, there is something wrong with your stategy, and not the fact that the AI gets advantages

[joncnunn]

I was pleasently surprized to see my neighbor upgrade his armed forces to Riflemen right after he discovered the tech for it.]

[I did the same thing myself a century a so ago when I got that tech.]

And Firaxis has also appeared to eliminate all the human exploits from Civ III I used.

(Mobile walls against AI settler-unit pairs, yo-yo the enemy stack in it's zest to get to an empty city, blockading against coastal assult with obsolete units [and workers])

Also, most tech deals seem to make sense.
My only complaint is it seems to be that the AI is wanting aprox 2 times what the tech poster says Drama costs to research. (And this is after having gone the Music route for the free artist bypassing Drama.)

Originally posted by kgsan

No complaints, so far in my limited playing, the AI seems much improved over earlier Civ games. In addition, I know past practice has shown that Firaxis will certainly patch any major problems which come to light. However, there have been some comments on the forum that Firaxis plans AI improvement in a future patch as well. Is there any chance that the "man himself" could let us know if there is anything to this?

[Targonis]

My own complaint....

The thing that bothers me is when you run the game with raging barbarians turned on and the AI at all difficulties doesn't seem to get the full effect.

For those who havn't tried it, the game starts fairly normally with the usual animal "barbarian" units. In time, these are replaced with the "true barbarians", and again, you only need to deal with one here or there.

Past that point though, unless you swarm-build the best units and station them around your territory, the barbarian units will suddenly appear inside your territory. I'm not complaining about barbarians comming from unexplored areas and attacking, I am talking about being SWARMED by barbarian units unless you have a LOT of them spread out around your cities, not just in them.

If the AI were dealing with this(and yes, you can have AI know the barbarians will be there in force and deal with it), then they would expand slower the way humans need to expand slower because we need to concentrate on defense while normally we might be expanding to 3, 4, or 5 cities. Under Chieftain, it IS a bit easier to keep the swarm from happening, but warlord and up has the barbarians being spotted well inside the borders of your civ.