Does this make AI fair?

[Krill]

Sometimes you ought to be a little more cunning to hide yourself. Hide in plain sight, so to speak...

[Solver]

Not everyone is as good at it as you Brits

[Krill]

This is quite an interesting way to hold a conversation, wouldn;t you say, Solver?

[Solver]

For the middle of the night, sure

[Willem]

Originally posted by Wiglaf
I think my solution makes it more fair. Not completely fair, obviously. Still better than the way it is now, with humans taking advantage of tons of exploits the AI doesn't even know exist.

Well back on track:

I think your solution is absurd frankly. Why put all these features into a game and not use them? Now that's really what I'd call dumbing down the game.

Incidentally, about your comments concerning Blake's AI not declaring war. I stopped using his mod because I was encountering the exact opposite. I was playing games where I'd find myself in a state of perpetual warfare with several civs at once and it just got to be "no-fun" after awhile.

[Wiglaf]

I think that was a problem with the earlier versions from 1/30 to 2/8. In those, Blake made the AI declare war 95% of the time instead of 5% in some cases. Yes quite a serious bug, but he fixed it by making AI way too passive. Then he left the forum without saying anything...

Anyway, yeah it's dumbing it down. of course you can never make an even game. I was just trying to justify not micromanaging, since in my view that just compounds the problem of having an equal playing field..

[Robert]

I assume that it's quite dangerous for a tester to be in a speculative thread. If you're playing an unreleased game long enough then I think you're not very able any more to know the exact differences between the vanilla game and the expansion you're testing. That means that you may by accident reveal information that wasn't revealed yet.

That's obviously a good reason for non-testers to try to pull testers into speculative threads Maybe they drop some info by accident

Regarding the AI, I think that it's impossible to code an AI that pulls everything out of a game like the human player does. I do think that it's possible though to code an AI that can micromanage. The question is if that wouldn't slow the performance too much down.

[Willem]

Originally posted by Wiglaf
I think that was a problem with the earlier versions from 1/30 to 2/8. In those, Blake made the AI declare war 95% of the time instead of 5% in some cases. Yes quite a serious bug, but he fixed it by making AI way too passive. Then he left the forum without saying anything...

No, I was using the last version available. The AI was still too trigger happy and they wouldn't go for peace unless you actually hurt them in some way. Which meant that wars with civs on the other side of the world never ended. And so what if he left without saying anything, that's his right. He doesn't need your permission to do anything.

[Jaybe]

Re No War vs. Too Much War w/Better AI

You two might want to compare what your game settings were:
Map size/type, game speed, number of civs, settings (e.g., aggressive AI), etc.

edit: subject added

[Wiglaf]

Originally posted by Willem


No, I was using the last version available. The AI was still too trigger happy and they wouldn't go for peace unless you actually hurt them in some way. Which meant that wars with civs on the other side of the world never ended. And so what if he left without saying anything, that's his right. He doesn't need your permission to do anything.

Yes, there is a problem with wars never ending. BetterAI removed the "50 turns of inactivity = end of war" code from Civ 4...which was a big mistake.

Also, of course blake doesn't need my permission. Just because you don't HAVE to do something doesn't make you right to not do it, though. I don't have to help an old lady pick up the meds she dropped, but I'd be an ass to not do it.

[Wiglaf]

Originally posted by Jaybe
You two might want to compare what your game settings were:
Map size/type, game speed, number of civs, settings (e.g., aggressive AI), etc.

I was using Fractal, standard world, 6 civs, no aggressive AI.

I think, on this setting, the AI is ridiculously passive BUT if it does decide to go to war, it will almost never end it unless it is very near death or is losing massively.

This is why Better AI is unplayable. Standard Civ4 AI has fairly aggressive AIs and a built in timer to prevent endless inactive wars.

[Ecthy]

Why don't we close this thread and let Wiglaf perish in dignity...

[Robert]

Because we'd rather see Wiglaf perish in freedom of speech

[Willem]

Originally posted by Wiglaf


I was using Fractal, standard world, 6 civs, no aggressive AI.

I think, on this setting, the AI is ridiculously passive BUT if it does decide to go to war, it will almost never end it unless it is very near death or is losing massively.

This is why Better AI is unplayable. Standard Civ4 AI has fairly aggressive AIs and a built in timer to prevent endless inactive wars.

And I'm playing on Fractal, Huge map, 11 civs, standard AI. And sometimes I'll see some civ declaring war on me after I've just barely planted my 2nd or 3rd city, when I'm still trying to get a grip on the barbarians. Sometimes at some point in the game I'll find myself at war with 4 or 5 civs at once and as soon as I make peace with one of them, another civ will step in to take his/her place. Even though there is absolutely no reason for it to declare war on me. Even my power rating will have little impact. I can be in the top third and some low rank civ will declare on me even though he has to pass through two other civs to get to me and never actually sends more than a couple of Catapults and a Horse Archer my way. All these things happened in the last game I played with Blake's AI and was what forced me to remove it.