Why isn't there any news about the AI?

[Kautilya]

Now I don't want to sound gloomy like a few people *cough*... yin...*cough* but is anyone else worried by the almost complete absence of news about any effort to improve the AI?

For me and for most Civers , I think, AI ranks right up there among the very most important things that we would like to see improved (albeit also among the most difficult to improve).

You can have some great gameplay improvements (and actually I think the culture model and new diplomacy/trade system sound great) but in the long run they mean squat if the AI is crap. There is no fun thrashing the AI no matter how cool the gameplay. And if the AI is poor it won't be able to exploit the cool new gameplay anyway.

Multiplayer might be a solution for some, but only a fraction of Civ players play multiplayer and even hard-core multiplayers probably would like a better SP experience.

If Firaxis was thinking about making significant improvements to the AI they would have hyped it no end. So conversely their failure to say anything seems to indicate they aren't putting too much effort there.

One of the most depressing things in empire games is how there is so little improvements in AI over the years. Almost all aspects of PC games in general improve consistently year after year but it wouldn't surprise me if the AI in Civ 3 is no better than in Civ 2 or even Civ 1.

What do you think?

[Sabre2th]

In many cases, the strength of the AI comes right down to computing power. There will never be a truly smart AI (until actual artificial intelligence) and the AI won't be challenging without having it cheat at least a bit.

[Zanzin]

why haven't they talked about the AI??

Well, if it's as poor as the graphics we're seeing, it doesn't suprise me they're not talking about it!

[yin26]

In fact, my 'review' of Civ 3 puts almost the entire failure on horrid AI. Thus, your question is a profound one. Not even the silly tag lines, like "The best AI ever seen in the genre" have been thrown around. At least give me the option to ignore the AI hype...but to have NONE is, well, "interesting."

[Sabre2th]

For some reason, I don't know why, I think that Firaxis is holding information back so that they can really surprise us later when the game is finished/close to finished.

[Alex 14]

Me too.

[Kautilya]

sabre,
I hope you are right but one problem with your theory is that Firaxis has in fact been hyping their game rather a lot so it's hard to believe they are trying to reduce expectations.

As yin has noted in his thread they have hyped the graphics to the sky but from the screenshots the graphics will , at best , be at the level of CTP-2 ie. decent but nothing great. At worst they could be even worse than Civ2 in certain areas.

The basic question is: if something like graphics, which Firaxis has hyped, is going to be average, how much worse is something like AI which they have ignored going to be?

The more I think about it the more I am becoming like yin.

[LewsTherin]

Well, if something Firaxis hyped is bad (graphics) then maybe something they didn't hype is good... at least I hope so...

[yin26]

The more I think about it the more I am becoming like yin.

God help you, friend. But it IS awfully hard to think they are just keeping the cutting-edge AI a 'secret,' eh?

[Inverse Icarus]

that and the fact that the status of the multiplayer system is questioinable at best.

[Nazgul]

Well AI takes so much time to make and mostly to fine tuned and balance, that it is usually the last thing the development team work on.

So you are unlikely to hear anything about the status of the AI until quite late in the development.

The real question would be how far are they in the completion of that game?

Nazgul.

[Wiglaf]

Well AI takes so much time to make and mostly to fine tuned and balance, that it is usually the last thing the development team work on.

If that's the case, forget it, civ3 will be a failure.

Work on the AI should begin immediatly, seeing as the game is overcomplicated in its current stage. To try to cram all these features (trade, diplomacy, etc) into the computer at the end of development is like studying for a final thirty minutes before it's handed out. No good.

[H Tower]

they probably haven't been working on it too much. They might have just copied and pasted the civ2 ai into the civ3. afterall, they aren't messing with the game eingine much, except for this whole culture and border thing. Heck, they might be using the SMAC ai and game engine because then they would only have to add culture to it...

[SerapisIV]

Originally posted by H Tower
they probably haven't been working on it too much. They might have just copied and pasted the civ2 ai into the civ3. afterall, they aren't messing with the game eingine much, except for this whole culture and border thing. Heck, they might be using the SMAC ai and game engine because then they would only have to add culture to it...

Firaxis Mike posted a while ago here saying that the game began originally as SMAC with placeholder art and iterated ever since to the point where maybe 10% of the engine is still SMAC, so it's pretty much a new game engine. I'm not a programmer, but it would seem that the AI is part of the game engine.

edit: 10% was Firaxis Mike's number, not mine

[H Tower]

Oh oh

I was right!? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!

*runs away screaming*