Hope for the AI

[SerapisIV]

Well, there's a lot of debate over whether the AI will be good in Civ3 or not. Here's something I found while looking for recent Firaxis posts:

Soren Johnson's Stanford Homepage

Looks like in college he worked on building a better AI using genetic algorithms (Advanced Protection). One that learns and matches the player's strategies based on their skill. Now I don't have time to go further then reading the webpage, but I'm sure a few people out there will try out his game for insights into Civ3.

All in all, my faith in an AI better then SMAC and being very challenging overall is growing every day. So to all you pessimists

[Provost Harrison]

So he is a bit of an AI buff eh? Well that is promising then...

[HalfLotus]

Very promisong indeed. Great find Serapis!

[Sava]

Again, I'm not worried about the AI. I'm starting to dislike arguments about things that you people have no facts on. You are arguing about conjecture. It's good to have an opinion, but at some point somebody (ME) has to say, "just wait for the damn game to come out" Then you can argue all you want without hearing my objections.

[Patriqvium]

From Soren's page:

Check out my adaptive turn-based strategy game (entitled Advanced Protection) which dynamically switches between genetically-evolved strategies to match the user's playing style.

This sounds too good to be true...

[MarkG]

I worked as a programmer on EA Sport's Knockout Kings 2000 for Sony Playstation.... Most notably, when the computer kicks you in the groin, that is my code

will we see something like this in civ3?

[Sava]

Originally posted by MarkG
I worked as a programmer on EA Sport's Knockout Kings 2000 for Sony Playstation.... Most notably, when the computer kicks you in the groin, that is my code[/q]
will we see something like this in civ3?

LOL

[Sabre2th]

Go Soren Go

[mactbone]

Thus, my project involves constructing a game which allows such an adaptive AI to be developed. The game, "Advanced Protection," was carefully designed to allow for such an adaptive AI system to be created. In other words, the game has only a few decision points for the user, so that the system has a limited amount of data on which to train. This fact is important because the AI needs to switch quickly between strategies- few users will enjoy a game which takes hours, minutes, or even many seconds to train between turns.

I think that Civ3 may have too many options

Cool idea though!!! Civ4 implementation

[dainbramaged13]

i played the game.. first of all, i couldn't figure it out, and second of all, it froze my 256ram COMp!!

a good sign? i think not...

[PGM]

Re: Hope for the AI

Originally posted by SerapisIV
Soren Johnson's Stanford Homepage

Nice work, mr. Bond.

[Sarxis]

Re: Hope for the AI

Originally posted by SerapisIV
Well, there's a lot of debate over whether the AI will be good in Civ3 or not. Here's something I found while looking for recent Firaxis posts:

Soren Johnson's Stanford Homepage

Looks like in college he worked on building a better AI using genetic algorithms (Advanced Protection). One that learns and matches the player's strategies based on their skill. Now I don't have time to go further then reading the webpage, but I'm sure a few people out there will try out his game for insights into Civ3.

All in all, my faith in an AI better then SMAC and being very challenging overall is growing every day. So to all you pessimists

Yes! The AI is the lifeblood of Single Player CIV. Without it, SP is just SimCity.

[Nikolai]

Here I come home from my holyday, and what do I see?

YEEEEEEEEEEHAAAAAAAA!!!

Looks promising!

[Roman]

Is this programmer working on civ 3 ?

[SerapisIV]

Soren is the Firaxis guy who they feature in the video as getting lost in the game instead of checking for "memory leaks" as he was supposed to. It's nice to know that the "one-more-turn" syndrome is able to infect the programmers as well.

Here's a new quote from Firaxis.com's "Team" page:

Soren's primary mission is writing the AI for Civilization III

Further good news. Hopefully he's able to stand good on Sid's promise of "best AI in the genre" in Civ3.