WTH is so special about the AI?

[benjy]

oh, and this happened on the opposite end of the continent to the roman border. i like to see the AI aggressvely pushing moving its borders, colonising open land, but sending a ship around the coast to bypass 25 Greek cities and building a city a 1000 miles from its nearest town is stupid.... i really hope they tone that down a bit.

[Wrong_shui]

AI is as smart as the person(s) who programmed it.

So firaxis employ 5 year old taiwanese children in sweatshops.

J/K love the game and the AI is ok for me

[Barchan]

As someone who's struggled and failed to write "Hello World" in VB (although I can do it quite easily in Word, thanks to Mr. Gates!), here's my worthless contribution:

The AI is actually quite canny about borders; whether or not the regard yours is a function of your relative diplomatic/military (diplotary? ) relationship. If you're strong and it's weak, it pretty much keeps out and leaves fast when you threaten it. If it's the other way ‘round, it comes and go as it pleases and demands you leave as soon as you set foot on it's turf.

And I have seen the AI refuse RoP if you sneak attack its units. It might not be HAL, but it does have some memory of your past behavior.

I have to agree with Libertarian on the level of "AI" we should be expecting. Sure, chessmaster whatever-version-it's-at can kick butt. And yes, chess is a complicated game. But it's also only got 64 squares to move to, 16 pieces to move and set rules in how they move. This (I’m forced to assume) is much easier to program a machine to do than to plan, organize and execute something as complex as war against a human opponent. At this point in time, you might as well expect to be able to train a weasel to successfully snatch eagles from the sky.

I think the AI in CivIII is better than most strategy games I've seen, but it shouldn't be expected to outsmart human players. Overwhelm with numbers, yes. Surprise them with new strategies, sure. But be able to counter the human player with new and dynamic play over the long run? Not yet. Probably not for a while. Hopefully sooner than it'll take me to do any damn thing with VB, that's fer sure....

[Herder]

Originally posted by Libertarian
Helping what?. His points are utterly unoriginal and have been discussed to death. Firaxis can't win with these people. Release it, and all hell breaks loose. Wait, and the same crap.

Already, there are threads cropping up screaming, "Where's the damn patch!? Hurry up!" Jackasses.

What do you find hard to believe about a customer that spent money on a product and finds the execution of that product to be disappointing?

The fact that these issues have been discussed to death only proves that his points are valid, whether you agree or not.

Nobody asked Firaxis to release a game that is heavily advertised (on TV no less!) and then not expect to be bombarded with requests to fix it?

Can't believe you would call someone a jackass that paid MONEY for a game and expect satisfaction. I hope you don't work in the Service industry.

[Libertarian]

A tedious and loud tiny minority screaming the same crap without ceasing, taking over the forums by opening duplicate threads by the hour, and generally behaving like spoiled brats DOES NOT constitute the validation of any point. Their complaints were noted, logged, organized, and given to Firaxis from at least two different major discussion boards. Civ3 went platinum in three days despite the screaming nine-year-olds.

There comes a time to move on, dammit.

And as I said, those who complained that Firaxis released the game too soon are now complaining that Firaxis is taking too long to release the patch. Please explain to me why such people are not jackasses.

[benjy]

Barchan - i agree the AI is great at taking into account your reputation/military power regarding the violation of your borders. early game versus rome, they continually brought troops into my territory. i was very weak at this stage. mid game, i had a big bad army, and i didnt get any problems.

Herder - AI has been discussed to death, but i wouldnt say there's any particular consessus of opinion on it. some people hate it, some think its great, some think it does the job. i dont think the fact that its been heavily discussed proves any particular point.

[Ralf]

Originally posted by Moraelin
Just look at how YOUR governors....

DONT use governors then. I never do.

[Deathray]

Originally posted by Ralf


DONT use governors then. I never do.

Just like automation, governers are useful if you use them properly. I use them to control the citizen moods in all of my cities. Otherwise I either have to check on them every turn, or lose two turns of production every time a city goes into disorder (and also risk nuclear meltdowns).

[Moraelin]

Originally posted by Libertarian
A tedious and loud tiny minority screaming the same crap without ceasing, taking over the forums by opening duplicate threads by the hour, and generally behaving like spoiled brats DOES NOT constitute the validation of any point. Their complaints were noted, logged, organized, and given to Firaxis from at least two different major discussion boards. Civ3 went platinum in three days despite the screaming nine-year-olds.

Libertarian, if you've had your parents buy the game for you, lucky you. Or I don't know, maybe you've pirated it. But some of us actually spent our money on it.

I realize it might be hard to understand for your little "grateful puppy" brain to grasp this, but we're not talking free mods, we're not talking charity work on Firaxis's or Infogrames's part, we're talking something that's done for MONEY. So whether you act like a grateful doggy and wag your tail or not, no, you're not getting an extra bone and a pat on the head.

The whole "let's pretend we're happy and that there are no bugs, to make the developpers happy" fanboy idea is brain-dead. Because between you and those happy developpers there's one more link: the PUBLISHER. Who's out to make some money, and couldn't care less about anything else. (See how they had no conscience problems with slapping their German fans with a lawyers' bill.) And flaming fanboys like you are just giving the PUBLISHER one idea. You know what it is? It is: "hey, they're still happy to get a buggy unfinished game, with some quick hacks to cover for the total lack of AI. Maybe we can cut down on the beta-testing some more."

[Libertarian]

The whole "let's pretend we're happy and that there are no bugs, to make the developpers happy" fanboy idea is brain-dead.

It is also a strawman that is beneath any reasonable debate.

C'mere. Let me tell you something you either don't know or don't comprehend: THEY'RE WORKING ON THE BUGS.

Stop staring at me! Eat your checkers.

[Frito]

Originally posted by Wrong_shui
taiwanese children in sweatshops.

Something about that doesn't seem right...

But seriously, they have a duty to fix known bugs, but they don't have to do anything about gameplay issues that a few people don't like. Just because you pay money for something it doesn't give you the right to satisfation. Civ3 is like Star Wars episode I, it had gungans that sucked and fans complained yet it was still a good movie. Look at the good side, lucas couldn't put a patch out that killed the gungans, but firaxis can patch Civ3's "gungans".

Hope you like the analogy.

[Moraelin]

Originally posted by Libertarian
C'mere. Let me tell you something you either don't know or don't comprehend: THEY'RE WORKING ON THE BUGS.

Let me tell YOU something that you obviously don't understand: they should have worked on the bugs BEFORE releasing the game.

Same as when I buy a TV or a watch or anything else, really. I expect it to work NOW, not in half a year when they get around to patching it.

The customer protection laws DO apply to software, too, regardless of the BS in any license aggreement. In fact, I don't know about your neck of the woods, but HERE the law says that you can't renounce your legal rights in a contract, even if you actually wanted to. E.g., you can't sell yourself into slavery, no matter if that was your lifetime dream, if the law says you should have more rights than that. Likewise, you can't renounce your customer rights, regardless of what kind of contract or license aggreement you've had to sign/click/whatever.

So chew on this: the fact that we're "whining" instead of talking legal action, is already one heck of a lot of goodwill on everyone's part. A lot more goodwill than Infogrames had with their German fans, that's for sure. So if I only whine while still waiting for a patch... be happy it's only whining.

[Frito]

Originally posted by Moraelin
Let me tell YOU something that you obviously don't understand: they should have worked on the bugs BEFORE releasing the game.

They did start working on the bug before releasing...didn't dan say they're on like the 7th revision since release??

[Venger]

Moraelin has some very good points - the AI is not only eminently beatable, but in many ways less of a challenge than the Civ2 AI. I don't know how much you guys have played the game, but the AI blows...an utter inability to defend itself, an inability to recognize it's own self interest, an inability to trade properly, ad infinitum.

I consider the Civ3 AI at almost an alpha level release level - there are too many substantive problems to consider it beta level...

Venger

[Libertarian]

Good grief.

No software I've ever seen has been warranteed to be bug-free. Or for that matter, even warranteed to keep your computer from blowing up because you used it. No one can guarantee perfection in any matter whatsoever. And any government that has managed to make such a ridiculous law needs to have in place one hell of a litigation infrastructure.

The fact is that no one is taking legal action because no one has a legal leg to stand on.

The Pick any Two Law: Price, Quality, Speed