J'Accuse!

[Drakan]

Hi Lebensraum. As Joncnunn correctly points out, starving AI citizens is not nearly as bad as razing their cities, although it still affects their attitude.

The bible on this is Bamspeedy's AI behaviour article which goes into great lengths to explain what I've briefly highlighted.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=44999

[Terra Nullius]

oops. sorry dis. i completely forgot to reply to this. well, actually i was giving my subconscious mind time to mull over it. that's my excuse anyway and i'm sticking to it!

Originally posted by Dis
how hard can it be to randomize something?

as far as i understand it's actually impossible to randomise a determined number. i haven't done detailed research on the topic, so somebody may yet contradict me, but to the best of my knowledge, any given algorithm will always produce a determinate result.

the term 'randomising algorithm' is a complete misnomer. by 'randomising' all we really mean is that the algorithm produces a set of numbers which approximate a bell curve. but there's nothing remotely random about it. given the same 'seed,' the algorithm will always produce the same set of results.

Are you saying Firaxis can't write code as good as IGT

i haven't had the pleasure of working on gaming machines, although it seems i may occasionally have contributed to the welfare of certain showgirls who shall remain nameless.

i would expect most gaming machines to implement randomising through the hardware. it's not even remotely difficult, but makers of pc motherboards don't usually bother with it.

failing that, there are two other possibilities i can think of.
1) it doesn't have to be random.
as long as the machine produces results that fit the bell curve within a given tolerance, it should satisfy legal and business requirements.
2) use a random seed
you could simply use the system clock. for eg. take the last digit of the current time and feed it into an algorithm to produce a wider range of results. perhaps after a certain period or event, the previous seed would be retired and you could go back to the clock to start over again.

basically, it doesn't matter how good the coding is, starting from a determined number, the results cannot be truly random. having said that, considering the amount of money involved, i would certainly expect gaming machines to have better code than firaxis could afford.

[Terra Nullius]

@ jon et drakan

yay!!! another item to add to the list of reasons why everybody hates me.

Originally posted by joncnunn
actually I think starving foreign nationals somewhat improves your relations with the AI because the AI doesn't like you having foreign nationals in your empire.

oh no! should i make them hate me by enslaving their populace or is it better if they hate me for the famines?

i'm so conflicted. meh, they's all gonna be furious sooner or later.