My Name Is Sprayber And I'm A Control Freak!!

[corb01772]

I'm trying a fully automated game right now (standard rules,
huge random map, citizen difficulty)

I chose the Hive for this experiment. I will set SE to Police State/Planned Economics/Power/Thought Control when I can, which is what I think Yang would choose. That militant bastard.

This is a COMPLETELY automated game: every unit that is built gets a SHIFT+A, including colony pods and military units, I'm not giving my governors any priorities, just letting em build what they want.

The only part that isn't automated is the conversations with other factions. I'm trying to act as much like Yang as possible: basically, being an ******* to everyone.

I wonder how far the AI will get (or how bored I will get).

[Lefty Scaevola]

No reason at all to use governors for production when you have ten production queue templates available.

[Kassiopeia]

Corbo, there's no reason if playing the game at all if you keep playing on like that. It fights against the basis of PC games; suffering your a§§ off for trying to manage.

[death_head]

Why don't you just set yourself to permanent pact and watch the others fight it out instead?

[corb01772]

kassiopeia it's not how I play, usually I am a control freak like the rest of you: the whole reason I even read this thread.

It's just an experiment, wanted to see how far the AI would go, and some stupid mistakes aside, they aren't doing too bad...

But then again it's citizen level, maybe I should try Trancend and see how far the AI makes it. *gets out stopwatch*

[Avenoct]

I'm sure you know this Corb 01772, but you can fully automate the whole game. Start a game. Press the cheat button, Command-K. Yep yep, scenario editor ON! Menu..scenario..switch sides change factions. Click on ol Yang. Choose 'Watch Faction' instead of play. Turn off the Editor. Turn ON end of turn prompt. Place something heavy and fitting on the enter key.

Two hours later...oh, take the object of the enter key and momentarily you will be given a bit of control. You will be prompted for diplomacy and such, but no matter what you do, the AI will make the actual decision in this mode. Fun Fun! Play whole games while you're at work: 'Gee, I won, again? That's not so hard'. The major difference is that the AI you watch gets all the benefits of an AI faction, but you can interupt that and take over whenever you want.

-Happy Crawlering,

Smack

[corb01772]

Yeah Smack, but I am wondering though if player automated AI differs from the AI of the computer factions.

It would be interesting to find out if there is any strategy difference between a completely computer controlled faction, and a faction that is technically human controlled, but has all the units on fully automated.

[Earwicker]

Interesting experiment, Corbo. Keep it up, if you can stand it -- as a fellow manager, I'm sure the temptation to intervene must be great

And it would be different from being an AI (as smack suggested), since your faction wouldn't enjoy the benefit of the same AI cheats.

[death_head]

Isn't that how they balanced the game?

[Ned]

Death Head, They say they balanced the factions by running them on automatic to see if any one consistently became more powerful than the others. However, despite trying numbers of games on full automatic, I have never seen a game actually complete other than by running out of time. Usually the factions stabalize and pound on each other without significant effect. They never seem to research all the technologies, despite the year being 2500. But in virtually every similation I ran, the game became a flooded mess due to numerous global warming events. It was sickening to behold.

(BTW, and this is a little off topic here, while in Japan last week, I understood the reason the Japanese support the Kyoto treaty is the fear that the Artic Ocean and the sea glaciers surrounding Antarctica would melt, raising sea levels and flooding Japan. One question: How does melting sea ice raise ocean levels? Isn't this contrary to fundamental physics?)

[Blake]

Antarctica is a rocky landmass, so when the glaciers on Antarctica melt the runoff raises the sea levels, the same effect shouldn't happen at the "north pole" icecap, seeing it is floating, although no doubt there are plenty of glaciers in countries like Greenland which are just waiting to melt and raise the sea levels.

Melting sea ice cant directely raise the sea levels (although often sea ice tends to be fresh... not sure what effect that has on displacement...), presumably the melting sea ice is more of a warning sign, if the sea ice is melting the glaciers cant be far away...

One thing melting sea ice does do is put more water in the atmosphere, which increases the green house effect, also ice is reflective so that means with less ice more heat is absorbed, in the short term this could accelerate the warming process (= more land ice melting), in the longer run the increase in cloud cover acts to cool the earth, and the process reverses, possibly starting an ice age. (wouldn't that be ironical).

[Ned]

Blake, Thanks for the comeback. I was pretty sure the Japanese were talking about ice shelfs in Antarctica and the North Pole ice. This makes sense b/c Antarctic ice shelfs could break off, drift North and melt in a matter of decades. In contrast, there is a known 50,000 year response time between change in climate and affects on the massive land glaciers on Greenland and on Antarctica itself. In other words, Global Warming, as we know it, can only affect sea ice in the next millenia or two. But that should have no effect on sea levels. So what are the Japanese afraid of?

BTW, the paper I was reading in Japan stated that fear that some of the Antarctic ice sheets were melting were not supported by the evidence. In fact, due to increased snow (more water in the warmer atmosphere?), the ice shelfs were apparently growing.

Also, Blake, if you know, the Ozone holes over Antarctica appear to be growing. In part, these holes are caused by severely cold weather. Doesn't this indicate that the air above Antarctica is growing colder?

Ned

[Tokamak]

Smack said...

"In a similar vein: "Hence one who attains power by favor of the people must keep the people always friendly to him, which will indeed be a simple matter, since all they ask is not to be oppressed; but one who, against the people [...] by favor of the nobles, must above all seek to win the friendship of the people, which will also be easy if he extends his protection to them." This one's easier, 50 EC's to the source of the source!"

That sounds like Machevelli's The Prince. Am I right? BTW, was I right about your other quote coming from 1984?

Blake, you were dead on about global warming. Do you study astronomy by any chance?

Ned, I've never heard of cold air contributing to the ozone hole, but I conceed that it is possible. The holes appear over the caps primarily because the earth's magnetic fields pulls free radicals (such as those created by CFCs) to the poles.

[Avenoct]

Ah, no WONDER I feel a pull to the poles...

Anyways, FILO, Toka, the first power quote was from Gibbon's 'The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'. This one's from the Prince, you got it a couple hours after Kassiopeia. Both books are quite entertaining..humorous in fact, but I don't think I ever had the concentration to read them until this year, though I'm older than that sounds. I'm going to have to find a tougher one for my next quote.

I just have to jump in here, having trained a bit in the sciences. Ditto Toka r/e Ozone. Ditto Blake r/e sea ice vs. land ice, though any ice melting will raise the ocean levels to a degree, well, except the ice in my drink here. As to the 50000 year cycles and/or delay in glacial effects, this is very much up in the air in the scientific community. Most climatologists on the cosmic scale would agree that the earth is actually in an Ice Age right now...in one of the Long-cycles (50-250 thousand years). Within the long cycles are smaller cycles apparently, hence the recent what we call Ice Age was really a small-cycle iceage within a large one. Does that make any sense? Been awhile..and as to delays in effect. That's just questionable...some say 8-10 years, some say 100, but I've never heard of 50000 years, unless you are referring to maybe their foundation or movements? Many scientists would, and do, argue that climatic changes within this century have been mirrored in glacial changes-melting-shifting-growing somewhere else-retreating, what have you. There was a report about a town in Alaska going underwater just this week on NPR, not that that news agency is objective.
Rant--read at your own risk...
Prattling on.. I think the biggest thing about global warming that is misunderstood, beside the mechanisms, which Blake alludes to, is that there are facts, and there are opinions, and there are disputes of facts. Science is like Geometry in the sense that most 'facts' remain unproveable in the final sense. But the Theory of Gravity doesn't get questioned very often. Most scientists agree that global warming is occurring, they have 'proof', and indeed, the industrialist scientists have pretty much had to agree. Furthermore, most scientists agree that current warming trends are indeed linked and partially caused by atmospheric pollution. 99%. But it's perfectly legitimate to say you have 'proof' to the contrary, as it's all just a theory, like the theory of gravity, or that parallel lines never intersect. ('We were unable to disprove our Null Hypothesis....blah) Finally, most agree that Earth's ice is melting and will continue to melt. To me, asking if the seas will rise is like asking if the sun will rise. No, it's not as solid as the theory of Gravity, but it's similar. What annoys me no-end is that the public does not seem to grasp that these 'facts' are entirely in the interest of Big Business to dispute, and to 'Environmental' groups to support. The wanton abuse scientific evidence to support and to justify political positions is not a new game, it's just an annoying one.

-Smack

[Blake]

Thread Hijacking

Just to add to Smacks rant, the thing which REALLY annoys me is that all these businesses and governments are willing to gamble on the future of EARTH, and why? Greed, pure and simple (I'm a nice person, so I'll assume that no-one wants to melt the ice-caps for malicious purposes).

There are the facts, and the opinions, but the simple fact remains that we are gambling the fate of humankind on these opinions. That is probably why japan is so worried, they have everything to lose in this gamble.

Fact: If the opinions are wrong, then a lot of people are going to suffer.


There are two sides to global warming, the more spectacular sea level rising, and the more real climatic change.
My home country New Zealand is at the mercy of global weather patterns (being too small to have continental weather) and over the past century the climate has changed, crops and native species can now grow much further south, the weather has become more extreme, with longer droughts, in some areas there are harder frosts, which have caused more agricultural problems.

Unlike sea level change, climatic change WILL effect everyone, some countries for the better, but most for the worse. Changing temperature and rainfall will make hostile conditions for "traditional" crop, which will screw up agriculture and possible cause food shortages while new, hardier crops are introduced.

Using technology to fix problems caused by technology:
(how I expect the powers intend (the future generation) to solve the problems caused by global warming)

Luckily humans are adaptable, and whatever happens I expect that civilization will continue, in fact technology may make it possible to continue life as normal even with fairly radical changes, some technologies which will help include:

Genetic Engineering:
Like it or loath it, GE crops will be the way food is grown in the future, basically it should be possibly to work around almost any climate change by introducing new GE'd crops, if this is planned in advance even radical climate change should have minimal impact on food production.

Ocean farming: Fairly self explanatory, we'll have more ocean in the future, and as farmland is destroyed by climate change or rising seas sustainable ocean farming could continue to feed the masses.

Sea Cities: Guess Japan and Florida will be pioneering construction of these, in it's simplest form just build sky scrapers on big pillars so they poke out the water, or just use some sort of (super-tensile) seal on existing buildings to prevent water entering the lower stories, then use tunnels / walkways to connect them. Roads would be one thing which would have to be phased out in a sea city, and replaced by forms of public transport. Due to it's technological construction sea cities would tend to be wired, and people wouldn't really need to regularly travel large distances.

Local Weather control: Slightly beyond our current technology, but IMO less than you may expect, quite possibly climatic change due to global warming could be nullified by weather control devices.

Global Climate Control: Probably implemented by space mirrors, or perhaps by changing the ratio of gasses in the atmosphere, basically just cool the earth if it gets too hot, space mirrors could possibly be useful for deflecting hurricanes from sea cities. Ofcourse in order to have Global Climate control, global co-operation between nations would be necessary, which would probably be as large a hurdle as the technological details.


While fixing technology with technology is great, it is very expensive, and tends to leave poor nations up the creek without a paddle, and in any case fixing a global problem with technology requires very large scale co-operation, which quite frankly is not something humans are very good at it, if large scale global warming does happen then new "social engineering" (ahem) will be required, with the major requirement being a lot less emphasis on "self" and more on "community". Basically a move away from capitalism to a more socialist society, if such a change doesn't happen (and it would take a couple of generations to occur anyway) then humankind can look forward to a bleak future, where an elite few live in technological comfort, and the hungry masses, don't.

wow, long post. I must be putting off doing something constructive.