Best AI I have ever seen hands down!

[dexters]

Hey Soren!

Soren, I hope you're still reading this. But a quick question for you.

The AI stories here are quite awesome and I have several good stories myself. I'm wondering however, given the diversity, and disparity of processors running this game does the AI's ability vary with it?

ie: Will a guy running on a P4 1 Ghz get a smarter AI than a guy running on a PIII 450Mhz?

[Coracle]

Originally posted by Mark_Everson


Other than than, Mrs. Lincoln, what did you think of the play?

Flipping does seem like a real boneheaded idea, one of the reasons I never got Civ 3 although I'm a true civ addict Maybe now a slightly-reformed civ addict...

If Soren got rid of his dopey Culture Flipping nonsense, ended Settler Diarrhea, and tweaked the AI to stop being some dumb and predictable in war, he'd improve the game a GREAT deal.

Don't hold your breath.

[Cyclotron]

What is wrong with "settler diarrhea"? Now, instead of leaving whole continents ripe for the taking of the human player (Civ2) the AI actually forces the human to take expansion seriously. If anything, this is a huge improvement and a valuable tactic. Or do you just want to play a dumb AI?

[V.O.C.'02]

yeah, stop that, I like diarrhea!!!

[Solver]

CPU doesn't affect AI performance, AFAIK. It just makes it do all the stuff faster or slower.

[Angikaos]

CPU affects AI performance at the development level: if the AI puts too much drain on what the developers feel is the 'average machine' of their target audience, it gets pared down. And if you have unrealistic ideas of what the average machine is, you lose most of your target audience.

The AI Coracle wants *may* be feasible on a top-of-the-line server quality machine, but would likely result in a game that's virtually unplayable on anything else.

[Timely Chicken]

I have been playing this game since it came out. The one thing I notice about the AI is that in CIV1 and 2 I got to where I could pretty much beat the computer all the time.

With Civ3, I feel like I am playing a game of solitaire with strict rules. I rarely come out on top. I play regent now days. My slow progress through the lower ranks has taught me well. Just to actually win once, i went back to warlord and trounced the computer with what I learned moving through to regent.

One thing I would like is for there to be something other than complete winner or loser. By that I mean, I'd like to be acknowledged as coming in second or third. As it is, if I'm not on top, I'm given the complete loser screen even though I was a close second. (even the civs who were killed crack jokes)

[star mouse]

Originally posted by AIL
I wanted to know if the AI still does that horrible mistake of not Industrializing... They still don't! The only explanation I can think of is that Soren wanted to lower AI-caused pollution since the player had no influence on it.

Please, please fix that Soren!

You can fix it yourself:

1. Go to the Editor, and edit the CIV3MOD.BIC file.
2. Edit the rules for "Civilizations".
3. For each civ, there's a list of check boxes next to each of the different things it can build. I think there's a Production check box there. Tick it for each civ.

[Nomad_oWn]

I found that the gang up principal in civ2 is still in effect in civ3. I played a game the other day and I scouted well and found quite a few techs and expanded competitively so that I was getting a pretty commanding lead on the other civs. At this point, every discussion became irritated or furious. The AI made 2 military alliances against me and 2 others declared war. 1 of my border towns literally had 4 different opponents attacking it simultaneously. This was all in BC still!

To be honest, this is a cop out... not good AI. I just quit the game in frustration.

Don't get me wrong, there are alot of good things about civ3 and the AI is improved in a number of areas. Unless I can find a way that I can do well and not have my game immediately ended I probably wont continue to play this game single player. Given I'm a complete civ3 newbie so I'm still hoping that their are ways to work around this.

[BigRed515]

Originally posted by Nomad_oWn
I found that the gang up principal in civ2 is still in effect in civ3. I played a game the other day and I scouted well and found quite a few techs and expanded competitively so that I was getting a pretty commanding lead on the other civs. At this point, every discussion became irritated or furious. The AI made 2 military alliances against me and 2 others declared war. 1 of my border towns literally had 4 different opponents attacking it simultaneously. This was all in BC still!

To be honest, this is a cop out... not good AI.

...or, a freighteningly real expoisition of the Realist school of international relations.

I can't understand why people complain that it's always "gang-up on the human" yet also expect to win 100% of the time. If you were playing MP and one guy always seemed to win, you'd probably gang up on him too.

[Nomad_oWn]

Originally posted by BigRed515


...or, a freighteningly real expoisition of the Realist school of international relations.

I can't understand why people complain that it's always "gang-up on the human" yet also expect to win 100% of the time. If you were playing MP and one guy always seemed to win, you'd probably gang up on him too.

Yes I'm quite sure that your an expert on international relations in between your brain surgery appointments.

To say that in history the weak team up to defeat the powerful is truly ignorant of the majority of history.

Also, I too am baffled as to why you would forget that in fact this is ultimately a game which means that having fun is a far more important qualifier than the degree of difficulty. I can only assume that your goal was to simply refute my statement with no actual concern for thought or depth of opinion.

My original point is that the degree of difficulty is not necessarily the best gauge for AI. Games with the best AI typically have units and leaders that provide moves that are very difficult to anticipate and attempt to mimic humans in their unique behavior and aggressiveness. So far that is not the case with CIV3. Just because they are difficult to counter does not mean that they are a good execution of AI.

[Ethelred]

Nomad, you seem to be laboring under the peculiar impression that Civ games (any of them) are war games. They are CIVILIZATION games. If you want a war game buy one. The idea in Civ 3 is to build a civilization. The game is not called Run Rampant after all.

Ganging up on you has two causes in Civ 3. One is that REAL people do that in war games and in Civilization the board game. This game partially emulates the way real human players would gang up on you if you were ahead or about to be wiped out. Unless of course the people you play war games with are incompetent.

The other is that you just don't know how to play the game well. I can and have got the AI on my side in wars against my enemies. If you don't do that too that is your failure and not the game's. There is simply no reason to complain that the AI always gangs up you since that only happens to people that don't understand the use of diplomacy.

Start talking to the other civs. If you don't you are considered a waste of territory and they will pick your land for expansion. The AI doesn't even know who the human player is. They just know who they want to pick on and it if you play smart it won't be you unless of course you have a large lead. They will do the same for an AI civ with a lead.

If you want help ask for it. If you just want to complain the good players are going to know you for a someone that blames the game instead of trying to learn. People have even won the game while deliberately not ever having more than one city. On Emperor level even. I don't know if anyone has pulled that off on Deity. If the AI was picking on the human that would not be possible.

[DeepO]

Nomad, as Ethelred already said, it is not bad AI that causes the gang-up, but your (not yet perfect) understanding of how diplomacy works in this game. One of the key points of winning on the higher difficulty levels is to get some AIs to gang up with you on others. If you do it right, you can make sure that at each point in the game you are facing one enemy, who in itself has multiple enemies to worry about.

Just don't give the initiative for diplomatic relations to the AIs, or they will most likely form alliances to have the most advantagous war, either to protect their own territory, or gain some more. Which is basically what you do as well, so the AI will mimick the humans quite good in this respect (albeit on a less complex level, of course)

DeepO

[Nomad_oWn]

"Unless I can find a way that I can do well and not have my game immediately ended I probably wont continue to play this game single player. Given I'm a complete civ3 newbie so I'm still hoping that their are ways to work around this."

This was what I said initially, which very much states that I have alot to learn and my opinions are a very preliminary evaluation.

I did however play Civ1 and Civ2 extensivelly.. anyone remember "civ1 and civ2 have signed the anit-civ3 pact and formed a secret alliance against you". This always occured whenever you started to pull away from AI. Projecting this AI response from civ2 on the conditions I saw in a few of my games may be hasty but I pretty much stated that I was being hasty in my post.

Its not so much the "ganging up" as the predictability of ganging up. Now if what you say is true and the "ganging up" is more a matter of my consistently poor diplomacy then I will look forward to seeing civs with a variety of responses.

However, my initial contention which I stand by is that this is not the greatest AI I have seen so far. To me the more unpredictable or difficult it is to anticipate the pc's actions the better the AI. Even you guys are alluding to the predictability and ability to manipulate the AI.

Thanks for your more constructive response Deepo.

I don't normally get personal.. but I really dislike people that flame without any constructive purpose and particularly that target newbies. Thats a great way to kill off new blood to a forum.

[BigRed515]

Originally posted by Nomad_oWn


Yes I'm quite sure that your an expert on international relations in between your brain surgery appointments.

To say that in history the weak team up to defeat the powerful is truly ignorant of the majority of history.

Also, I too am baffled as to why you would forget that in fact this is ultimately a game which means that having fun is a far more important qualifier than the degree of difficulty. I can only assume that your goal was to simply refute my statement with no actual concern for thought or depth of opinion.

My original point is that the degree of difficulty is not necessarily the best gauge for AI. Games with the best AI typically have units and leaders that provide moves that are very difficult to anticipate and attempt to mimic humans in their unique behavior and aggressiveness. So far that is not the case with CIV3. Just because they are difficult to counter does not mean that they are a good execution of AI.

Well, my degree from the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University doesn't read brain surgery, but it does read "International Relations." So, I would consider myself significantly more educated on the subject than the average man.

Further, the weak teaming up to defeat the powerful is one of the more constant themes of the history of IR. For example,

Greek City States vs The Persians of Xerxes

Sparta and Corinth vs The Athenian Empire in the Peloponessian War

Rome and the Numidians vs Carthage

Seljuk Turks and Muslim Arabs vs The Byzantine Empire

Castile, Aragon and Navarre vs The Iberian Moors

--jumping ahead a bit becasue I don't have my thesis on my lap--

The Austrian Empire and Hungary vs The Ottoman Empire

Gustavus Adolpus's Sweden and the Protestant Germans vs the Habsburg Empire

The Dutch, Austians, and English vs Louis XIV's France

The American colonies, French, Spanish, and Dutch against the British Empire duirng the American Revolutionary War

The English, Prussians, and Russians vs Napoleon's France

The Prussians and South German States vs the Austrian Empire

The English, French, and Russians vs the German Empire (anyone who thinks Austria-Hungary or the Ottomans were more than cannon fodder should read a military history of WWI)

If you really want, I can dig out my thesis and give you an 80-page refutation of what you just said.

All that aside,

Some of us enjoy challenge, and think that accomplishing something that takes more effort than waking up in the morning is more "fun" than a pushover AI. So what if the AI beats you using what you think are cheap or uninventive, if you can't figure out how to beat these simple strategies, why should the AI (or any human player you come up against) ever do differently? It's the same reasoning behind why you can beat 80% of the people on battle.net with a marine rush, but you try that in the tournaments and you're out in the first round.

DeepO and Ethrelred have given some great adivce, porbably better than I'm going to give. My advice is a simpler version of theirs, don't ignore your neighbors and if ever there is a "beat down on [odd-guy-out]" in AI land, then join in.