WTH is so special about the AI?

[Moraelin]

True, the whole culture thing is plain screwed up. IMHO a more realistic effect would be that individual people would deffect to your city, because of high culture. (Or in game terms, once in a while a unit of population would leave their city and join mine.) NOT that whole cities deffect, swallowing entire armies stationed there without a fight. Think of what happens IRL. People try to sneak into more evolved countries all the time. But did you hear of any whole city deffecting, say, from China to Japan or from USSR to a scandinavian country? Without a fight?

Incidentally, the same effect should happen INSIDE your empire. I.e., some people from backwards cities would try to move to more advanced and happier cities.

It should also be possible for one of the opressive governments (e.g., communism) to reduce this effect by forbidding emigration. I.e., that your army and/or police stations in border towns could, at the expense of causing more unhappiness, act as a deterrent to population units deffecting.

THEN it would make sense to squeeze towns into narrow no-mans-land areas between two borders. I mean WTH, they would grow slower because of population deffecting, BUT you would still get to hold on to your city, and whatever strategic resource you tried to control.

I.e., it's not that being expansionist is a fault by itself, it's that the AI and the rest of the game system seem to have been written by people who never even talked to each other. I mean it's not necessarily that its actions are unrealistic, it's that they're unfit for the game they're in.

But I don't think that everything between two cities should automatically be divided between the two. A city already can dominate far more area than it can even get resources from. E.g., unlike CTP2, here the max resources area has a radius of 2 no matter how far its culture stretches

Actually, Barchan, I don't even think it's simply programmed to expand. I'm starting to think it's going through hard-coded phases. (Or if it's not hard-coded, there must be something else that leads to that effect.)

[Venger]

Originally posted by LaRusso

do you actually believe the above quoted sentence or is it the fact that you were only 9 back in 1996 and the AI looked comparably more difficult?

The current AI provide me no more challenge than the Civ2 AI - in fact less of a challenge.

The current AI will make peace with no sense. Knock over 4 cities, make peace, consolidate one turn, knock over 3 cities, make peace, consolidate one turn. Stupid stupid stupid.

The current AI will not defend itself at all, I have repeatedly knocked over cities defended by riflemen and swordsmen when infantry have been available for literally 40 turns.

The current AI will build ridiculous, obsolete units. Again, see above, and it keeps putting old ships to sea...likely partially a result of the "great" new resources system...

The current AI will send ruinous suicidal waves against entrenched defenders - I killed 35 cavalry in 2 turns and broke the back of the Aztec army by simply holding ground with 5 infantry units.

The current AI is simply not a challenge. Civ2 would come at me with enormous navies, masses of bombers, and I'd have to knock over a dozen entrenched mech inf in every city. A Civ3 military AI would get it's ass kicked by the Civ2 military AI, at least as far as pure ability to use what's in the damn game.

Venger

[Herder]

I think the early AI is good. Its aggressive, expands nicely.

The late game AI needs some work.

[Fidel]

Originally posted by Venger
The current AI is simply not a challenge. Civ2 would come at me with enormous navies, masses of bombers, and I'd have to knock over a dozen entrenched mech inf in every city
Venger

Strange. In Civ2 they would always be so pathetic. No bombers. One destroyer. Helpless transports and empty carriers. I DoW and blitz them in one turn. They simply did not put up any fight.
AI in Civ2 was extremely sucky after a while. Diplo was very linear and there were not any borders to talk of....sometimes I had to erradicate whole civs just to stop their stupid tresspassing.

[Venger]

Originally posted by Skanky Burns
Civ 3 AI actually uses boats to invade other landmasses.

Did you play Civ2? The AI will definitely show up on your shores with tanks.

They protect their troop ships with military ships.

Improved.

They bombard improvements around the cities to cause your empire damage.

Same deal in Civ2, although because of the power of the coastal fortress and mechanized infantry, they'd not do it very well. They'd pick off a remote island city though, that I know all too well.

They can launch well-organised strikes against your weakest city.

Guess I'm just kicking the AI's ass too bad to see this in action...

Yes, the AI isnt perfect. It isnt even great once you get to know it. However, it wipes the floor with the Civ 2 AI, which is about the best you can ask for.

So why doesn't the Civ upgrade it's defenders? All it does is draft riflemen for Christ's sake. Did you ever play Deity on Civ2? Because the AI would stack 8 alpine or mechanized infantry troops in every city, and cruise missile you to death, along with send out wave after wave of bombers, as well as huge naval armadas (which tactically weren't all that great). The Civ2 AI knew how to at least defend itself. Civ3? Bah. I conquered a larger Aztec empire WITH EASE and without access to any oil! Where were all the oil units, tanks and dsetroyer and battleships? He'd had oil for 20 turns before I hit him, and all he did was swarm me with Jaguar warriors whose ass I kicked up around their ears... Where were the tanks? Destroyers? His only decent unit was cavalry, and that he used up breaking like a wave against a fortified infantry stack. Artillery? None - oh I'd occassionally take a city with one or two in it (sometimes three!), but he NEVER used it on me. It'd get a shot off occassionally as I attacked the city, but that's it. Only when he had only 1/3 of his cities left did he sortie a battleship, which I of course blew apart with artillery and an ironclad (ha ha). And why do I keep taking cities that have unused battleships and bombers in them? They never attacked me, and they weren't rush built, there were too many. Civ3 AI? Bah.

Until someone writes an AI that learns and adapts, we just wont have an AI that can stand up to a human player. No point knocking this (very good) attempt by Soren.

I don't buy that - you can make a better AI than what we have now. Just look at all the things people have discussed in the game...would you like 100 gold for only 10 of yours? Yeah, great AI...

Just saying this again, the Civ 3 AI wipes the floor with the Civ 2 AI.

Having played both, the Civ3 AI needs major work. Having played Civ2 deity a solid 50 times, I can tell you it defends itself a whole lot better. Is it perfect? No, it's downright stupid at times. But it never defended itself with legions if mech. inf. were available.

Venger

[Venger]

Originally posted by LaRusso

Strange. In Civ2 they would always be so pathetic. No bombers. One destroyer. Helpless transports and empty carriers. I DoW and blitz them in one turn. They simply did not put up any fight.
AI in Civ2 was extremely sucky after a while. Diplo was very linear and there were not any borders to talk of....sometimes I had to erradicate whole civs just to stop their stupid tresspassing.

Holy $hit, a thoughtful post!!!

Did you play on Deity level?

Yes, diplomacy in Civ2 was very limited, but it did work at least - countries that you'd screwed would never forget and would never make peace if they could help it, and would sucker punch you in a heartbeat. That of course was a big Civ2 play bug, the "you cannot contact them or attack them despite seeing them mass troops at your border" scenario...

Borders still aren't fixed...

Yes, they couldn't use carriers - simply couldn't. Of course, the carriers in Civ3 are not exactly 100% either, so...

All in all, the AI in Civ3 is richer, but in effect, less of a challenge, especially when defending itself.

That said, the Civ3 AI can likely be made better and these issues recitified (PATCH!!!!)...we'll see.

Venger

[Venger]

Originally posted by Th0mas


Then your going to have fun with CTP2..

Yeah I heard the AI was weak in CTP2, but I've downloaded alot of mods that have .slc improvements to the AI - hopefully that'll help...

Venger

[benjy]

in the real world, even in centuries gone by, 1000 english settlers couldnt sale from london and set up a new city outside Edinburgh. there's a million reasons why they couldnt, political, military, social etc, which clearly cant be simulated by a game.

so the game has to find some other way of simulating the impossibility of doing this. i think the border system is a good bet.

Moraelin, obviously there would be need to be parameters for such a system to work, otherwise we'd just place a city at each corner of the map, and the whole continent would be ours! there'd be a certain radius of terrain that say 4 cities could colonize; i think it could be done without making cities too powerful.

right, i think ive flogged this to death now!!

[Fidel]

Originally posted by Venger


Holy $hit, a thoughtful post!!!

Did you play on Deity level?

Yes, diplomacy in Civ2 was very limited, but it did work at least - countries that you'd screwed would never forget and would never make peace if they could help it, and would sucker punch you in a heartbeat. That of course was a big Civ2 play bug, the "you cannot contact them or attack them despite seeing them mass troops at your border" scenario...

i played on emperor

i also miss the reputation thingie. i cannot determine it now and it is not transparent when it is damaged and what does it. i mean, if i raze 5 cities or nuke someone, i should be DoW by everyone. i am sure that some of that stuff will come out in a patch.

still, i disagree about AI being watered down. deity was all about cheating and bonuses and there was no real AI intelligence, just the fact that it could build massively whatever. in my civ3 games, they do have some obsolete units, but i also keep some sometimes and garrison occupied cities with warriors in order not to lose some precious tanks through cultural conversion (kinda militia patrols, if you can abstract hehe). anyway, there are some things i am less happy with, but much less than they were in civ2 when i first plopped it in my cd rom.

[Kookullin]

Originally posted by Barchan


Uhh, I'm not sure what area of the woods *you* live in either, Moraelin, but in the United States at least (where the EULA was written, BTW) you can and actually do renounce legal rights all the time in a contract. Frankly, the whole concept of a contract is that you agree to limit and/or renounce your legal rights. For example, if I sign a contract with Firm A as an exclusive supplier of my widgets, I have renounced my legal right to supply Firm B with my widgets as well. Standard clauses in many consumer contracts involve giving up the legal right to sue the manufacturer/supplier for certain damages and the right to choose your legal forum; many contracts either specify that if you do sue the other party to the contract it must be in such-and-such state or, if in your own state, shall use a particular state's laws. Also, many employment contracts forbid you from disclosing a firm's confidential information to other firms once your employment is over. Heaven forefend! You just signed away your First Amendment right to speak freely to another person! Quick, call the United Nations!

True, there are some contracts that are void ab initio, such as the slavery example you mentioned. But I hardly believe that anyone feels, regardless of how bad or buggy they think CivIII might be, that they've entered into anything tantamount to a slavery contract with Infogrames by purchasing a $50 computer game.

(Yawn) Barchan, at the risk of turning this thread into a hair-splitting extravangza, the hyperbole and tone of your reply prompts me to intervene on Moraelin's behalf.

Much of what you say about contracts is correct and probably universally true for all jurisdictions that rejoice in the common law.

However, within the European Union (which includes two states where the common law's writ runs - Ireland and the United Kingdom), certain restrictions on the freedom of contract have been imposed with the benefit of consumers in mind. Those restrictions mean that software producers are, in theory at least, not as immune from legal action as they might think.

In the legislation enacting the consumer protection laws of the European Union, it is expressly made impossible for a business to require that a consumer abandon them.

So even if the EULA says that the law of (say) New York shall govern the contract and that the consumer relinquishes his right to sue for certain flaws in the product, European Union law will override those terms so that a consumer in any of the Union's member states will retain his statutory rights and will be able to enforce them in the courts of the member state in which he lives.

However, even if Moraelin lives in the European Union, the news is not good.

The trouble with Moraelin's position is that if he were to try to sue Infogrames for breach of one of the statutory rights, he would have to rely on his subjective perception that the game is not fit for the purpose which Infogrames represented that it could perform. All that Infogrames would have to do to win the case would be to point to (a) the objective fact that as a game, it works (sort of) and (b) the subjective impressions contained in about half the posts in this thread to the effect that the AI is challenging.

Still, seeing Infogrames squirm on the RECEIVING end of a legal action would be lovely. Go on, Mor, I'll represent you.

[Moraelin]

Yep, I happen to live in Germany. (And no, I'm not biased against Infogrames for slapping their German fans with a lawyers' bill. I got used to that kind of moneygrubbing logic a long time ago.)

And indeed, there are all sorts of rights that you cannot relinquish in a contract. Not only on the consumer side, but also for example when I sign a contract with an employer. I do have certain rights as an employee, and I can not relinquish them in exchange for, say, getting more pay. And here the courts seem to actually uphold the people's rights, not just cave in to whoever has more money.

And to the best of my knowledge, actually the US has quite a few of those provisions too, regardles of what the software publishers would like you to believe. E.g., Origin had to discover the hard way that you can't have unpaid "volunteers" working for a moneymaking corporation. If the law says that there'S a minimum salary per economy, no kind of contract can take that away, and "we'll let you play for free in your spare time" doesn't count as payment. And even in the software realm, there have been quite a few EULA's overruled in court even in the US.

But I am NOT going to sue either Infogrames or Firaxis. I mean, wth, I can easily think of games far worse than this. Civ 3 is merely a disappointment, not some totally horribly buggy piece of crap.

The whole point is that I'm tired of posts that boil down to "you have no rights. Now be a nice doggy and wag your tail, or you won't get a patch." No. I do have rights. I have the same rights as if I had bought a car, or watch, or a jacket, or even something as cheap as a pencil.

At the very least, I have the right to ask for my money back if it's broken. Or if it doesn't work as advertised. Yes, even if I've opened the box, and even if I've used it a bit. Heck, even if I've played it for a week, until I got bored with it. The whole current status quo, that we buy a game broken and patiently wait for patches is nothing more than goodwill on the buyers' part. It's not something I HAVE to do, regardless of the EULA I've clicked OK on. The fact that it even needs a patch, would already be more than enough legal reason for me to go ask for my money back. If I choose only to whine about it for a bit, I'm already letting them keep the money for it. Be happy.

[Qnuc.dk]

I know it's not our job to make the fixes but if we can do it, we might as well

2 quotes ..........

1) The AI will cheerfully build and send forward the most obsolete units it can possibly

build. (Just look at how YOUR governors always want to build longbowmen and galleons, even

in the 20'th century. The AI does just that.)

.

http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=da&threadm=uyYneLBfBHA.1732%40cpimsnntpa04&prev=/groups%3Fhl%3Dda%26group%3Dalt.games.civ3

From: Balgewolf

Found the best way to get rid of this, make them all upgradeable
For some reason if a Unit can't be upgraded the AI leaves it in the Build
Menu, if you make them upgradeable in CivEdit they disappear as soon as a
newer version is available


Examples
I've made Swordsmen upgradeable to Musketmen
Cavalry to Tanks
Frigates to Ironclads ( Most early Ironclads were actually built this was
anyway) and Ironclads to Destroyers ( In reality this should have been
Battleships but I felt tat was too big a jump)

Also Longbowmen to Musketmen

And went thru the Civ Specific Units to make them all upgrade appropriately




--
John Simpson

http://users.bigpond.net.au/spectre/

Nighthawk on #babylon5 , Oz.Org IRC

GM "Ok you missed finding the Trap, So what are the rest of you doing?"
The Rest of the Party " We're no where near the Thief" In Unison
--

[LotC]

Here's a little story on the AI's use of units.

Here I am (Persians) with a fleet of over 60 battleships, 30 carriers, 25 destroyers and starting on AEGIS cruisers. The Aztecs FINALLY get Combustion and I see a destroyer leave one of their coastal cities. So you would think that after having gotten a ship worthy of competing with mine, they would have sent it out onto the high seas...but no...it does the infuriating 4 square patrol and then GOES BACK INTO PORT! What's up with that?

[HalfLotus]

Do you really think his fleet could compete with yours?

[Sze]

Some anecdotes:

The American AI adjacent to me sent its entire wroker fleet to a single mountain square that was in its national borders but not in any city radius to build a railroad there in a single turn. The last twenty or so workers got there only to discover there was nothing to do so they wandered off.

The French battled down one of my border cities until I had one musket left with 1 HP. Before finishing me off, it moved 8 to 10 of units into the city radius to destroy infrastructure. Later that same turn it took the city and couldn't move any defenders in because it had destroyed the roads. I took the city back the next turn having to only beat one cavalry unit in the city.

---

I understand that a computer player will not be able to approach human intelligence any time soon. However there are some startling shortcomings in this AI that are hard to overlook. Moraelin's original post addressed most of them.

The civ3 corruption model was implemented primarily to stop or stall city sprawl right? It seems the AI is unaware of that because they'll build cities just for the sake of building cities even though it hurts their entire empire.

The different national AI's don't seem to behave all that much differently. I remember in civ1 or 2 that the Americans and Chinese would build small, prosperous, tech nations while the greeks and english would build a ton of cities and the romans and germans would try to kick your ass any chance they got. In civ3 even non-expanionist civs act like they're expansioist and non-military civs act like they are. There's even a BONUS now to play a particular style and yet they don't.

The algorithm to select what a particular city builds extremely weak if my governors are any indication. It seems like they have a formula for the proper ratio of defense, offense (slow), offense (fast), naval, artillery, etc... units. If I'm about to get tanks, I'm not going to start building cavalry, but yet the AI only sees 'deficient offense (fast)' and wants to build cavalry. How does the AI determine which city builds a wonder? If it's like my governors it's not the best city for the job but the next city that comes up. It tries to build the forgotten palace every ****ing turn. The first place it tried to build it was in the city adjacent to my capital.

---

What the AI should be good at is micromanagement, but that's exactly how it gets beat by human players. One of the reasons I hate the current waste/corruption model is that there is waste inherent in the production process. If a city capable of producing 30 shields builds a worker, it sees 67% waste for that turn. There's your waste. If I have 10 cities preparing for war, I don't take the time to figure out how to best minimize overproduction. The AI should though. Each AI city only decides what it's going to build at a snapshot in time (at the point it finishes something). There's no big picture whatsoever. It should never have more than a few extra lightbulbs either, yet I'll bet it has just as many as I do.

So instead of really improving the AI, they handicapped the game so that it appears smarter. They capped science production, made the AI only accept rediculous trades, pumped up corruption, etc...