People Over Estimating the AI?

[jsw363]

I read that the AI will handicap the game for you on Warlord and Chieftan levels and then on Prince there will be no cheats. King and Emporer will have AI handicapping. Deity I think as far as the last review I read is so far unbeatable by firaxians. If this is all true, then I think we can expect a lot from the AI. It will be a challenging game.

I also read an encouraging account of an AI civ betraying a human player at a critical point in the game. Sounded like they put a lot of effort into making it a true opponent. I am looking forward to trying it out...

[Lawrence of Arabia]

Im gonna start at Prince. After I win three times in a row (with different victory conditions) im gonna move up to the next level etc. By the time i beat Deity, i hope Civ3 multiplayer will be out.

[Mars]

Originally posted by jsw363
I read that the AI will handicap the game for you on Warlord and Chieftan levels and then on Prince there will be no cheats. King and Emporer will have AI handicapping. Deity I think as far as the last review I read is so far unbeatable by firaxians. If this is all true, then I think we can expect a lot from the AI. It will be a challenging game.

I also read an encouraging account of an AI civ betraying a human player at a critical point in the game. Sounded like they put a lot of effort into making it a true opponent. I am looking forward to trying it out...

yah, but they also said civ 1 deity was unbeatable, and later the said civ2 deity was unbeatable. although i do think it should be a good challenge

[TCO]

Originally posted by dennis580
I think people are SEVERELY UNDERestimating the AI in Civ III, but I guess that's only natural since Civ II's AI sucked so bad.

One of the things I think the AI will really be good at is cutting off our resources from our roads. Jeff Briggs said the AI was pretty crafty, and I think this might be one of the parts where the AI will be surprising a lot of people.

That's just marketing hype saying the AI is strong. We've heard it before with Civ2 and SMAC. I expect a very similar AI to last time. The emphasis was on adding new features. Not on improving the AI. Just listen to all the crap about different civs etc. Very little real play on aa ny revolution in AI.

[joey703]

Originally posted by jsw363
I read that the AI will handicap the game for you on Warlord and Chieftan levels and then on Prince there will be no cheats. King and Emporer will have AI handicapping. Deity I think as far as the last review I read is so far unbeatable by firaxians. If this is all true, then I think we can expect a lot from the AI. It will be a challenging game.

I also read an encouraging account of an AI civ betraying a human player at a critical point in the game. Sounded like they put a lot of effort into making it a true opponent. I am looking forward to trying it out...

People keep saying that they're gonna play on prince because the computer doesnt cheat for or against you. I've never seen someone offer proof as for this being true. If Civ3 is like CIv2, CIv1,civnet,smac, then it should be that on the difficulty level king there will be no cheating at all.

Btw, I plan to play the game on king my first game. Additionally, i expect that the reason no one at firaxis can beat the game on deity is not because the ai is better than previous civ games, but due to the ai cheating a lot more on the deity level in civ3.

[VetteroX]

What a joke, they REALLY said diety was unbeatable in Civ and Civ 2? LOL maybe unbeatable for a chimp... no... even he could do it. maybe they meant for a house cat randomly walking over the keyboard diety is unbeatable. I also dont take much stock in previewers saying the game is hard.... remeber, they are writers/reporters first, gamers second. While they were writing about games, we were playing Civ, so I doubt we would have the same ideas of hard as they would.

[Comrade Tribune]

I suppose if we found the game challenging, the reviewers would give it a bad mark, because they would believe it´s unbeatable.

[dennis580]

Well I will make Yin look like a saint on this board if Civ III's AI is anywhere even close to Civ II's AI.

[Kc7mxo]

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What a joke, they REALLY said diety was unbeatable in Civ and Civ 2? LOL maybe unbeatable for a chimp... no... even he could do it. maybe they meant for a house cat randomly walking over the keyboard diety is unbeatable. I also dont take much stock in previewers saying the game is hard.... remeber, they are writers/reporters first, gamers second. While they were writing about games, we were playing Civ, so I doubt we would have the same ideas of hard as they would.
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Deity is very easy. After you've put a rather large amount of gaming time in and you know the correct strategies to win.

Don't discount the game too badly. The ai isn't great, but by its nature the game makes it self challenging.

However, I agree that the the firaxis team probably didn't spend much time thinking about ai. most of their time was on those stupid leader heads.

[The Negotiator]

I'm just thinking how much time it would take to do the AI stuff when playing with 16 civilizations.

Ahh I still remember those days with Civ 1 when I still had Amiga 500. Expecially later in the game.

[dennis580]

Well from everything i have reid it seems to me like they have put a lot of time into the AI.

[old dog]

One unknown variable is how well the AI will do in attempting the new kinds of victory. In my experience, the AI wasn't too bad at the spaceship victory. If they also are clever in attemting diplomatic and cultural victory, you could face an interesting challenge. And, has been said by others, the AI may be clever at denying you needed resources, which could also be interesting.

[Peter Triggs]

GP:

That's just marketing hype saying the AI is strong. We've heard it before with Civ2 and SMAC.

You missed one:

just about all of the AI code was rewritten, so it's difficult to answer lots of specific questions. Let's suffice it to say that it's much smarter and much more conniving, and you can expect much better attack strategies from AI players.

That was written about CTP2's AI! Since then, I'm from Missouri.

edit: this was written minutes before the Soren Johnson interview was released. His comments have more content than those I quoted above.

[Rhysie]

Actually they did not say civ 2 was unbeatable in deity. At some point in the manual (hey, I read it a number of times, I am a sad civ fan) they actually thanked someone for ensuring that deity _could_ be beaten. So they have themselves beaten civ 2 on deity to prove it could be done before it was released.

Just wanted to clear up that apparent misconception.

[Imran Siddiqui]

http://apolyton.net/misc/interviews/civ3_2sorenjohnson.shtml

You are welcome