It's 2005, why does the AI still need to cheat?

[Sleestax]

I understood, in the bad old days, why the AI needed to cheat. Computing power was low and heuristics were a budding concept.

What I don't understand is why the AI must "cheat" or to be nicer, be given certain advantages, given the state of technology today. Most gamers PCs are as powerful as a supercomputer was 15 years ago. Memory is abundant, gfx cards are powerful, etc...

That's frees up a lot of CPU for a smarter AI that doesn't need hardcoded "cheats" built into it.

I understand that this is a business and not an experiment. Perhaps Firaxis would open just the bit of code for the AI to the open-source community to allow them to build a better AI for Firaxis for free.

Opinions?

[Fried-Psitalon]

Memory is abundant? You must not be playing the same resource-demanding CIV many of the people here are complaining about.

Even within that argument, CIV is an extremely complicated, multi-situational game. One of the mantras that HUMANS have to accept about this game is that there is no single "always right" answer to almost every situation now. Now you want an AI to accept that? It's called "Artificial" for a reason.

The AI is going to be open, from what I understand, by the way.

Lastly - although this debate is certainly ongoing - I would argue that in fact the AI does not cheat in CIV.

Does it get bonuses on higher difficulties? Absolutely - the same ones YOU get on lower difficulties. Does that mean you're cheating on low levels? Other than that, it's on equal terms - it has no special awareness of units/resources, no bonuses when dealing with other AI, no combat advantages, etc.

CIV is about as "fair" a game as they come.

[Aileron]

Because it's still hard to code good AI. Not to say Civ4 AI is bad. I think it's better than any previous Civ/CtP, and the "cheats" are far less anoying. They did the best they could for the time and money they had, and then they added cheats for the parts that still weren't up to snuff.

[-Ab-]

because a clever AI needs lots of playtesting

[Ninot]

Yeah, and where the **** is my hover car?

[Aileron]

Originally posted by Fried-Psitalon
Lastly - although this debate is certainly ongoing - I would argue that in fact the AI does not cheat in CIV.

Does it get bonuses on higher difficulties? Absolutely - the same ones YOU get on lower difficulties.

Cheat, bonus, isn't that just semantics? I haven't tried this, but if you modded the XML and created an "Even" difficulty level where neither the you nor the computer players had any bonuses, wouldn't you find that you'd win every game very easily? Otherwise why did Firaxis give the computer players some bonuses even at the highest difficulty?

[Aileron]

Originally posted by Ninot
Yeah, and where the **** is my hover car?

I was thinking more like Terminator, what was that computer called, Skynet? I can see the headlines now "Computer game Civ5's AI so good, seizes control of DoD mainframes, launches nukes at China".

[Shr3dZ]

Its 2005, and we still have threads like this ?

[rockhopper]

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Arthur C. Clarke, "Profiles of The Future", 1961 (Clarke's third law)

AI in game design is the same. What difference does it make, as long as it seems to work?

Isn't Civ4 in its entirety itself a "cheat?" I mean, you are not really a world leader, are you?

[GodSpawn]

Non-programmers - or even programmers who have never tried or researched it - don't understand how brain crunchingly HARD it is to program decent AI or heuristics for anything other than games with trivial rules (such as chess, backgammon or go).

It's really REALLY hard! And if one was to do a little research, one would realise that AI programming has not gone very far in the last 10 years...

[Solver]

True AIs haven't been invented yet. So all that programmers are stuck with are making algorithms to make their AI play the game optimally. For a game as complex as Civ, where you BTW couldn't go through all the different move combinations if you tried to, this is a very non-trivial task.

[spy14]

Originally posted by rockhopper
Isn't Civ4 in its entirety itself a "cheat?" I mean, you are not really a world leader, are you?

Lol. Anyone who is unsure about this, check out the details for CivAnon.

[Zoid]

So true. Anyone can ***** and moan about "crappy" AI´s, but very few can actually program a decent one. But there´s no pleasing some people...

[opaque]

Just because computers may have the power to process a complex AI doesn't mean it has become any easier for programmers to write one.

All the people who are complaining about the AI seriously need to try and at least research what it takes to write one. As I mentioned in another thread, I'm making a basic city, defence, attack style game and I've been programming the AI for that. It's taken me hours to get to the point where the AI can just about put up a decent fight and still needs to cheat when set to "hard".

I understand you'll be able to edit the AI soon, so when whatever it is that lets you do that comes out, can all the people complaining about the AI please club together and write something better? We'd all be very grateful.

[-Ab-]

i hear what your saying but why should we have to?
people payed for civ4 ,they got a right to moan

now your saying the peopel that bought this game need to re write its AI ?