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Civilization 7 Is in Development

polygon.com

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Re: Civilization 7 Is in Development

#141

Post by atchoo »

MaxikCZ wrote: post #100
csomar wrote: post #88

After playing Europa Universalis, I don’t think Civ is doing it for me. Here are a few issues: - You can’t automate many tasks. This is especially true in Civ 6 where you have to re-select everything. I’m not certain who thought this is a good idea. - As you progress in the game, the turn time become ridiculously long. - For it to be reasonably fast, you are limited in term of map size and the number of opponents. -…

I think Paradox studio is the real underdog, and everyone loving Civ games should check them out. I love the 4x concept and tried almost all major games in this category, but left after one or two playtroughs because there was always something pushing me away. Usually its the need for mocromanaging everything on huge scales in longer games. Im hooked on Crusader Kings 3 for a year now, and want to get into Europa Uni…

Yup no turning back now after supping on CK3 wine.

I tried EU4 but graphics/text-rendering issues meant I just couldn't play it. I look forward to an EU5 with a CK3 quality make over. Sounds like we might have to wait a year or so Vic3 iron out all it's issues.

Re: Civilization 7 Is in Development

#142

Post by jszymborski »

hnarn wrote: post #132

Let’s hope they learn from their mistakes considering the Metacritic scores they’ve gotten for the past three iterations: Civ 4: 94/8.2 Civ 5: 90/8.0 Civ 6: 88/7.0

I think this might be a function of their DLC model, where they launch a barebones game and flesh it out over two expansions.

Civ V and VI vanilla are so much more boring and incomplete without their expansions

Re: Civilization 7 Is in Development

#143

Post by mabbo »

dgant wrote: post #24
janalsncm wrote: post #6

It would be really interesting if some of the advances in AI could make their way into the game. Make the gameplay more human by incorporating recent advances in ML-based gameplay e.g. Diplomacy and Poker. Create more variety of dialogue using transformer models. Make in-game diplomacy more nuanced. There’s a lot that could be done.

The dirty secret is we think we want the AI to play more realistically, but actually don't. This is true in many games but especially Civilization, where we rely on the AI behaving predictably to feel mastery over the environment, and for diplomacy to feel "fair". If the AI were playing to win, diplomacy would mostly evaporate as a game system. It'd break the fiction of the game.

I recall years ago playing some edition of "Galactic Civilizations" on single player and I started to get ready to attack a neighbour.

The neighbour saw this and sent me a message saying "If this were a harder difficulty mode, I would think you were planning to attack me!"

Re: Civilization 7 Is in Development

#144

Post by yread »

jasonkester wrote: post #39

I bought the original when it came out and, together with Master of Orion, it ate so much of my life that it added a year to my time at university. Since then I've bought every new Civ as it came out and maybe played through two or three games before abandoning it. None of them capture the original, but rather just add more and different crap to micromanage. They're just not fun. The big exception is Alpha Centauri,…

Yeah I played some games in 6 and became nostalgic of 2 and Alpha Centauri too. Recently, I decided to just conquer everyone mid game and as i was capturing one of the last cities suddenly bam Defeat. Apparently as I was capturing their cities their religion was spreading (how does that make sense? Did Mongols become Zoroastrian? Did Islamic conquests bring Christianity to Saudi Arabia?) and they reached religious victory

Re: Civilization 7 Is in Development

#145

Post by aflag »

I hope they do a UI overhaul. I've many times thought I had one army selected, but it was another and did the wrong thing. If it would just start a new turn with the same thing you had selected in the previous it would be an improvement already. Also, I feel like selection could be more RTS like and you could select multiple units to do the same thing. To name a few things.

Re: Civilization 7 Is in Development

#146

Post by csmeyer »

janalsncm wrote: post #6

It would be really interesting if some of the advances in AI could make their way into the game. Make the gameplay more human by incorporating recent advances in ML-based gameplay e.g. Diplomacy and Poker. Create more variety of dialogue using transformer models. Make in-game diplomacy more nuanced. There’s a lot that could be done.

My cursory exploration here would suggest this is possible

https://imgur.com/a/YClX6xD

Going to try and play a few rounds with these rules

Re: Civilization 7 Is in Development

#147

Post by ethbr0 »

JeffL wrote: post #136
1123581321 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sid had achieved competent but un-fun AI early on in the series and backed off. Players hate it because of how good it is at sacking poorly defended cities, especially early on when the AI knew too much about the global map.

The main thing I'd want in a Civ AI is to be barely competant at combat. Right now, if you can get a couple archers up in time, you can beat an AI army that's 2-5x your size depending on the terrain. Yeah, it feels bad as a beginner when you haven't bothered to build any military and an AI comes and kills you, but a beginner should be playing a beginner mode. I'd love God mode AI to put up any sort of half decent fig…

Realistically, if the Civ team were to want to do this, here's how I'd go about it:

1) Break the problem down into strategic goals and tactical actions, and then group the tactical actions into areas (e.g. diplomacy, resourcing, combat, research).

2) Process recorded online games of human players into streams of relevant events / choices.

3) Continually retrain your models on the output of 2.

You should thus have an AI that approximates the meta approaches of humans, which is really what we're talking about.

New players look exactly like bad AI: making poor choices, oblivious to things "the players community" already knows are always optimal, etc.

So really the problem is "How do we build a model that already knows what most of our players do, at this stage of the game's lifecycle?"

Which is essentially what one of the recent fighting games(?) did with their AI.

Re: Civilization 7 Is in Development

#148

Post by lordnacho »

dgant wrote: post #24
janalsncm wrote: post #6

It would be really interesting if some of the advances in AI could make their way into the game. Make the gameplay more human by incorporating recent advances in ML-based gameplay e.g. Diplomacy and Poker. Create more variety of dialogue using transformer models. Make in-game diplomacy more nuanced. There’s a lot that could be done.

The dirty secret is we think we want the AI to play more realistically, but actually don't. This is true in many games but especially Civilization, where we rely on the AI behaving predictably to feel mastery over the environment, and for diplomacy to feel "fair". If the AI were playing to win, diplomacy would mostly evaporate as a game system. It'd break the fiction of the game.

I think maybe the thing to do is not so much use LLMs (which I would still use for generating variety) for the AI's decision making, but to bring to bear the many lessons from TikTok and various other attention engines that we find on the internet.

Let the AI know everything, in the way that a father knows everything when teaching chess to his kid. But instead of just nurturing an independent chess player, feed the player with dopamine experiences that keeps him playing. Early victories, the joy of discovery, interesting diplomatic situations. Once they can play better, stretch it out a bit, more intricate setups.

No idea how to code this up.

Re: Civilization 7 Is in Development

#149

Post by Sakos »

dgant wrote: post #24
janalsncm wrote: post #6

It would be really interesting if some of the advances in AI could make their way into the game. Make the gameplay more human by incorporating recent advances in ML-based gameplay e.g. Diplomacy and Poker. Create more variety of dialogue using transformer models. Make in-game diplomacy more nuanced. There’s a lot that could be done.

The dirty secret is we think we want the AI to play more realistically, but actually don't. This is true in many games but especially Civilization, where we rely on the AI behaving predictably to feel mastery over the environment, and for diplomacy to feel "fair". If the AI were playing to win, diplomacy would mostly evaporate as a game system. It'd break the fiction of the game.

Even here, comments are pointing out how bad Civ's AI is. The solution isn't more realistic AI. It's better deterministic "AI" that allows you to learn how it plays and devise different strategies for how to deal with it. Unfortunately, AI is largely an afterthought for developers and players don't really understand what they want either.

Re: Civilization 7 Is in Development

#150

Post by ethbr0 »

root_axis wrote: post #95
dgant wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The dirty secret is we think we want the AI to play more realistically, but actually don't. This is true in many games but especially Civilization, where we rely on the AI behaving predictably to feel mastery over the environment, and for diplomacy to feel "fair". If the AI were playing to win, diplomacy would mostly evaporate as a game system. It'd break the fiction of the game.

Totally disagree. Civ increases AI difficulty by gifting the AI free army units, resources and settlers. There are currently no 4x games where the AI can challenge an experienced player on even terms - the first game to do this (while also being a good game in and of itself) will be a massive success.

My impression was there was a lot of research and competent results in StarCraft AI.

And that was 10 or so years ago.

Which is more constrained than your average 4X, but not fundamentally different (resource + research + movement + combat).

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