How great is 1.29 at solving prior issues?

[tinyp3nis]

An interesting idea just crossed my mind... speaking of the level of the AI "intelligence" and how it should consider the conditions of winning, losing, or generally ending a game... have you ever realized that by conquering the last city of the human player in SP, the AI civs actually lose, too? 'cause the game is then pronounced over with the human losing, but nobody becoming a winner... a paradox, isn't it?

Would it satisfy you being able to watch AI's battle after your death? There is no paradox The AI does not exist for itself, it is for the human being.
Like you said:

That sounds so plain absurd to me that I will rather keep believing that the AI players are there to make the game interesting & fun for me, to pose a formidable, but defeatable opposition to my goals, and not because of actually winning the game...

Yes, but many wants the AI try to win... is that so hard to understand? Many consider this fun.

[Cyclotron]

It's fascinating how my response was interpereted differently by each "side." This is becoming a little too bitter for me, so I'll just remain ambiguous in my precarious position of being agreed with by all.

[vondrack]

Originally posted by tinyp3nis
If mil. victory is enabled the comps should gang up on the biggest nation in better fashion than they currently do, human or AI since it's their only way to win militarily. It's good for each individual nation too, not for the comp a whole, which is not intention here.

Yup, this basically means having distinct or at least slightly tweaked AIs for different types of victory conditions used. That's one of the possible solutions I mentioned in a past post of mine. If it was this way, there would be absolutely no need for this whole debate - I would simply uncheck the military victories and enjoy my immersion... But unfortunately, there is only one AI that behaves the same all the time, ignoring what kind of victory condition applies. If it start behaving more deadly (in terms on ganging upon the likely-to-win players), than it would pretty much spoil the game for me, as I would HAVE to play in a different way that I like. It would be a pain in the ass for me.

I do admit though that the current state of the AI may be just such a pain in the ass for... how to say it... for those that play to win only (no belittling). But hell... if I want to have the game stay the way it is, I have to raise my voice, haven't I? What if Firaxians actually read even this thread... I also admit that I believed "my" approach to the game was less rare - I even tried to find out what the actual ratio of "winners" to "immersionists" was in a poll. You are invited to vote there.

Originally posted by tinyp3nis
The second and third sentence tells about what I saw with my own eyes, Le Vil wants to play this game a certain way and is a somewhat preaching about it Le Vil, if I misread you I'm sorry but somehow I see little chance for that, you made really clear what you said. I didn't mention you here vondrack I think?
I'll try to reply to your long post anyway...
[snip]
Do not get you two wrong?? I think I only mentioned Le Vil.

You specifically mentioned Le Vil only, right. It's just that I feel/play exactly the same way as Akka described, so I felt much like his "comrade in dispute"... and therefore responded to your post. My post was not meant to find another "target" for an argument, but to clarify what I considered to be blatantly misinterpreted by someone else (not you!). My fault I didn't realize you had your own eyes...

Originally posted by tinyp3nis
You assume much, and _no_ it's not right even when you guess right. I have only adressed mil.victory in this thread so far, so why you tell me this? You got lucky that I do think AI should prevent others to launch the ship if itself has a reasonable chance of launching or starting building itself. I try too. Besides I think there should be a chance for peaceful players, i.e if they only checked the space victory box, the AI would only try to race them. But I don't want to try and balance the game here, so I won't get into any deeper (hint there is a flaw what I said about AI acting differently, because it also affects the "invisible" difficulty level).

Sorry for overassuming... And sorry for an incorrect wording. The last sentence of my paragraph should have read "...if one misunderstands..." or "...if ... is misunderstood." I didn't even think about if you did or did not understand this, it was meant as a rhetorical phrase only. My fault.

Originally posted by tinyp3nis
Not to hinder your point, but: Domination is actually harder and takes longer than Conquest on big maps (lotsa land), I assume that it's vice versa if the map is small. Not sure about the small maps since I haven't played them.

Is this right? I thought for Conquest you needed to completely destroy every single rival civ, while for Domination you needed to have 2/3 of "everything" under your control? I understand there could be the map size involved, but basically, razing/conquering every single enemy city seem to be always more difficult than simply controlling 2/3 of the world... doesn't matter anyway... I play Standard maps only and seldom trigger any military victory. I am The SpaceShip Launcher... quite adept one, however...

Originally posted by tinyp3nis
Building empires is the main thing, and war is just a tool. How important tool? Let me qoute someone you trust: I don't even need to say my own opinions about this

You naughty! How can I argue with you now when you used my own words? But seriously... by "natural" I meant natural from the game logic point of view. When there is only one civ remining, it is free to achieve any other kind of victory condition, as it has no opposition - it is a total and ultimate victory game-wise. I did not mean it would be "natural" from the "natural" point of view... bringing the world to ashes and declaring myself the "winner" seems rather... uhm... unnatural and uncivilized to me.

Originally posted by tinyp3nis
... Are you trying to sell me this game? You figured I dont know this or ??? Just wondering what this has to do with... umm with what?

Good point. You know, when I am writing my posts, I usually try to include not only my statement or opinion, but also the appropriate reasoning, assumptions, and/or context (often in detail), so that there is little to misunderstand. As it seems, I sometimes fail and make the whole thing just more difficult to understand...

Originally posted by tinyp3nis
Why can't it be both? Why dismiss his idea?

Because if the only way to stop somebody from reaching a peaceful-by-nature goal is to go to war, then it is rather contradictionary... at least I feel so.

Originally posted by tinyp3nis
Uhhuh. Go ahead, I'm not stopping you
I love you too man

You must now think I'm kinda ...

Originally posted by tinyp3nis
To be honest, I only said that Le Vil seems to try to diminish mil.victory.
I have to admit one thing, I didn't thing you didn't understand competion and such and had no opinion about your competiveness, but guess wh00t. EVenthought I didn't ask for it, now I do

This is really awesome. This thread might be as well renamed to "The Thread of False Assumptions, Misunderstandings, and Missed Points. Not only that I would never understand Akka's post as "diminishing military victory", but I would never thought you said he did diminish it!

Originally posted by tinyp3nis
Have you ever played MP rts? If you did were there such rules applied as no rush 30 minutes?
Ok, that was just mean of me , if you wan't to leave some rules out for ANY reason , civ 3 is SP, you are free to do so.

I have to admit I have never been into the RTS genre (with the exception of playing through the whole of Warcraft 2, which resulted in me realizing I didn't like this kind of a game... later confirmed many times by "tasting" AoE, AoK, Starcraft, and other famous RTS games. I assume (beware! this may a problem in this thread! ) that such an arrangement implies rookies or otherwise disrespected players, right? Well, dunno if I would be for or against such thing... playing other humans in an MP game, my expectations gameplay-wide would be quite different from the SP... I play SP to enjoy an immersive story. I would probably play MP to win and win only (even though I would probably still try to behave much like in the SP... but my determination to avoid "evil" or destructive behaviour would be seriously weakened by my determination to win or finish as good as possible...)

I would love to have a PtW match with you! There you would have a chance to check how competitive I can be...

Originally posted by tinyp3nis
I deserve a p3nis enlargement for being arsed to answer this long reply

Now this is awesome... Really brightened my day! May I use it for my signature? I would just add " - tinyp3nis after responding to a particularly long post of mine."

Just one final note: I have to admit that someone's posts and attitude in this thread really started me up... so I may have overreacted myself... I know I kinda enjoy arguing and pushing my opinion, but usually do my best to keep the discussion polite. Which was not exactly the case this time... I wondered why... and why this idea of a "ruthless" AI was so alien to me and why I felt the urge to explain and argue to such great lengths my reasons to oppose the idea... and something crossed my mind. What I love about Civ3 SP is that there are "good" and "evil" (AI) players... acting a bit as if in a "real" world... adds greatly to my feeling of immersion (unlike in most other computer games where it's you, the good guy, and "them", the evil enemies). If all the AI players started acting the evil way, cooperating in order to destroy my SS (which I thought and still think was the merit of the argument), this special quality of Civ3 would be gone. And I would sorely miss it... errrr... ok, repeating myself again... forget it.

Anyway, thanks for keeping your response decent, even if my post was not to your liking... (if it was or if it was not a matter of being or not being to your liking and I have just made another false assumption, just forget it, ok? )

P.S.: If you ever need another p3nis enlargement, just PM me and I will help you deserve it... not a big deal for me...

[tinyp3nis]

Is this right? I thought for Conquest you needed to completely destroy every single rival civ, while for Domination you needed to have 2/3 of "everything" under your control? I understand there could be the map size involved, but basically, razing/conquering every single enemy city seem to be always more difficult than simply controlling 2/3 of the world... doesn't matter anyway... I play Standard maps only and seldom trigger any military victory. I am The SpaceShip Launcher... quite adept one, however...

From my experience, smaller nation than 2/3 of the world can wipe out everyone, and playing nation that is really big takes a lot of time. Domination is the only victory I still don't have, I once went for it on a large map and when I had 1/3 I thought I'm too lazy to build tons of more settlers and just rolled my MA's over them. In my current game I was stupid enough to leave Cultural victory on, I have less than 40 turns I think before I hit 100,000, and my continent alone will not cover 2/3, so I have to conquer outside my continent and I'm just starting to build transports. There are only 2 continent's in that map.
Hmm to make say things shorter, bigger nation takes longer to play, and Conquer victory doesn't need 2/3 of the world to produce enogh units to kill everyone. Also I don't use governors so ----> tedium.

P.S.: If you ever need another p3nis enlargement, just PM me and I will help you deserve it... not a big deal for me...

But then I have to change my nick

[Akka]

I for one don't want the AI to completely ignore victory conditions if I click military victory on. Le Vil it's cool that you can play civ role game style but don't try to push it on others, people who play for military victory aren't that bad ok?

I did not bashed people that play for military victory, what I complained about was the mechanical behavior of AI's.
I don't like this kind of reasoning :
"he's big" => "he's more powerful" => "he's closer to win" => "I'm on the verge of loosing" => "let's gang-bang on him".
No matter if you were the most faithful ally for centuries, if you grow strong enough you WILL be backstabbed. It's mechanical.

I would like more "realistic" behaviors. I would like that, if a war is to start, it should be start in a more natural way. Not "I will attack you because you are bigger and it triggered me to attack because it will give challenge".
I consider ridiculous that a tiny little nation would attack a huge high-tech empire that never broke any alliance in 5500 years, just because it's "about to win".
I would rather think : "After all, we don't see Germany/France/UK sending troops to USA just because they are more powerful, do we ?"

If the player just want to make a bloodshed, fine, let's just say he plays as a Genghis Khan or an Attila. I don't dismiss military conquest, I dismiss the lack of "emotional behavior" from AI.

What we both oppose is the notion that the AI players should be focused entirely on winning the game, or - even worse - on preventing the human from winning it, instead of creating an illusion of a credible world that is fun to build your empire in.

Exactly.

Fighting my neighbours throughout the game because of the living space ("lebensraum") is fine. Fighting them because of resources and luxuries is fine. Entering wars as a member of alliances or MPPs is fine. All of these are perfectly valid reasons to fight in the real world, too. But attacking someone just to prevent him from launching his spaceship is a total nonsense in the real world... it makes some sort of wicked sense only in game terms... but even then, only if you misunderstand the nature of the game and the nature of the victory conditions.

I again mostly agree. Though, I could understand that the prestige gained through being the first to send an interstellar vessel would motivate rivals to prevent it.
But it would rather be sabotage than military attack (as a sidenote, I think that the "public opinion" should be made more present than it's already is), as I hardly see a prestige gain a reason enough to start a nuclear war with billions of deads.

But how do you define a great empire? Well, if your empire is [...] can be sort of "sure" they succeeded in their quest for a great empire. Adds to their fun with the game.

Wholefully agree !
I don't see as the world ending when you fulfill one of the "victory condition". I rather consider it as a mark that says "this day, the nation/civilization of X has reached such a high achievement in military/population/diplomacy/culture/scientific that it can be considered the greatest nation/civilization of all times".
Remember the countless polls and discussion about "which is the greatest civilization of all times ?" ?
We see people that say "Roman, because though they disappeared, we still look them with awe". Others will say "USA, because they are the most powerfull by now.". Others "French, because they just have an impressive culture that changed the whole point of view of the world". Others will say "UK, because they had the largest empire ever". Others will argue "China, because they are the most ancients".
Etc etc.
See what I mean ?
I don't consider the victory conditions as "this nation suddendly became the ruler of the world, all other are doomed", but rather as the judgement of the future generation, that will "evaluate" your civilization.
Somehow like critics read books and determine which one is the better.
I then consider it absurd that a nation will attack me just because I build a spaceship or because I just have such a glorious history. It does not threaten it in any way. It won't make its economy crash, won't kill its population, won't overthrow its leader. It will just ensure that future people will consider that my civilization was "the best". It will only be about prestige. Something that anyone will look for (remember all the "fighting" between USSR and USA to be the first one in space ?) but not something that will justify war or agression or anything this like.

Of course, if you just attack everybody and/or break treaty, constantly, THEN it's a good reason enough to be hostile, but THAT is not what I'm complaining about

Thanks to Vondrack, here is the best sum up of what I think :

When Akka and me say we enjoy "role-playing" Civ, we mean that we enjoy playing it as if it was a real world (with its own set of rules, some of them quite unrealistic, I admit).We just prefer following certain self-imposed restrictions that basically say: do nothing that would be a nonsense in this "real" world (even if it did make sense considering the win-lose game conditions).

[tinyp3nis]

I did not bashed people that play for military victory, what I complained about was the mechanical behavior of AI's.

Really? I was completely wrong then? Me need challenge.

When Akka and me say we enjoy "role-playing" Civ, we mean that we enjoy playing it as if it was a real world (with its own set of rules, some of them quite unrealistic, I admit).We just prefer following certain self-imposed restrictions that basically say: do nothing that would be a nonsense in this "real" world (even if it did make sense considering the win-lose game conditions).

Keep on trucking.

[Akka]

Originally posted by tinyp3nis

Really? I was completely wrong then? Me need challenge.

? I don't see the link.
I was annoyed to see how some people are ready to accept any stupid behavior from the AI just to keep the "challenge" up.
It was not about the "military" part. I myself enjoy a good war from time to time
It was about the "I want challenge, even if to do so the AI have to act stupid, destroying any sense of immersion and any possibility of roleplay".

Keep on trucking.

Which means ?
(english is not my native language, so I sometimes miss the meaning of some expressions)

[tinyp3nis]

I was annoyed to see how some people are ready to accept any stupid behavior from the AI just to keep the "challenge" up. It was not about the "military" part. I myself enjoy a good war from time to time
It was about the "I want challenge, even if to do so the AI have to act stupid, destroying any sense of immersion and any possibility of roleplay".

Well this i.e. is exactly the attitude what I was referring to, but I don't care let's just drop this.

Which means ?

Basically it means you can play as you wish.