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Civilization 7 Is in Development

polygon.com

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Re: Civilization 7 Is in Development

#171

Post by theRealMe »

mnd999 wrote: post #104
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,…

They’ve all been a bit crashy as well. Nothing worse than a 2 hour session ending in a crash and losing everything.

I could be wrong but doesn’t it auto save every turn?

Re: Civilization 7 Is in Development

#172

Post by istinetz »

Semaphor wrote: post #85

I played Civ II, Civ V, and VI. After the disappointment that was VI, I'll either wait for a <$10 GOTY sale, or for them to announce that they'll release a proper SDK again that allows modding as it did for 5. Otherwise, I'll just keep playing Civ V with Vox Populi fka community balance patch.

Vox Populi is my jam. It's ridiculous that a handful of dedicated fans can improve an AAA game so much.

Re: Civilization 7 Is in Development

#173

Post by simonh »

charcircuit wrote: post #117
simonh wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In general with strategy game AIs it’s not feasible to make it play at decent human level, so the way they make it challenging to play is by cheating in various ways. Resource boosts, global vision, etc. In particular, humans are very good at reasoning based on limited information. We can form hypotheses about where resources or objectives might be, or if an enemy unit goes out if the visible map, estimating where it…

>That sort of thing is extremely hard to program Which is why the parent of the entire chain mentioned the advances in AI.

I suppose what I mean is, in the context of a computer game where you’re playing a computer, I don’t think it makes sense to talk about cheating. The way the game works is the rules. There may be different rules for the human and AI players, but the expectation that they are the same is an assumption ported over from board games. It’s not really a thing in native computer games. For example nobody expects the computer opponents in a FPS to obey the same rules as the human player. So I don’t think cheating is really an applicable term.

Re: Civilization 7 Is in Development

#174

Post by atchoo »

lores wrote: post #163
atchoo wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similar for me but with Crusader Kings 3. I can't imagine playing Civ now without murder, marriages, a dynasty to care for etc. Crusader Kings has prompted me to read dozens on history books due to how engages you with real historical events in a way that no Civ ever has beyond checking a wiki page on a world wonder or some such. My perfect game would be Crusader Kings with a bit of Civ flavour: add the tech tree, wo…

Have you played Old World? Created by the Civ 4 designer, and more of a Civ-with- CK elements than the reverse, but I've stopped playing Civ since it came out.

I haven't heard of it, I will take a look, thanks.

I remember being very disappointed in Civ 5 compared to Civ 4 but I can't now remember much about it. I think I liked the slime-mould like spread of culture/religion compared to the simplification in 5. Was there also unit stacking?

Re: Civilization 7 Is in Development

#175

Post by MagicMoonlight »

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.

Cope.

If AI was playing rationally then you would actually be able to understand it’s decisions and it wouldn’t do random shit or block deals because of RNG

Re: Civilization 7 Is in Development

#176

Post by MagicMoonlight »

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. -…

You can’t say civ is shallow and then push paradox games.

They don’t have any AI or any mechanics. It’s all just shallow and designed for maximum DLC.

Combat is literally whoever has the biggest number under the guise of “strategy”

Re: Civilization 7 Is in Development

#177

Post by beebeepka »

db48x wrote: post #107
beebeepka wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I keep buying them but I only ever liked civ IV. Stealing cities with culture was so much fun. They also had Spock do the voice acting. What a phenomenal game. Literally the only turn based strategy I like

You should give Sid Meyer’s Alpha Centauri a go, if you haven’t already. The voice acting is really quite good, even if it’s not Spock.

Thanks for reminding me. Gotta check my steam library

Re: Civilization 7 Is in Development

#178

Post by alright_scowl »

istinetz wrote: post #159
simonh wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comes up often in discussions about Axis & Allies Online. It has an AI, but it’s pretty basic and really only there as an aid to learn the rules before playing humans. The main way the game is played is ranked play on the built in ladder against humans, or custom games. There’s a discord that runs regular tournaments as well. The problem is AI for complex games like that is absurdly hard to develop. The combinat…

You can definitely give AI agents 'personality' - preference towards certain tactics, different play style, built in weaknesses. In the context of Civ, you could have each civ leader have unique personality, and that would add a lot of color to the game.

But that has been a part of the game ever since the first entries.

"Nuclear Gandhi" being the prime example.

Re: Civilization 7 Is in Development

#179

Post by janalsncm »

simonh wrote: post #105
int_19h wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A good AI shouldn't need to know any more about the global map than a human player would in the same situation. If they made it see the whole map, it's basically cheating.

In general with strategy game AIs it’s not feasible to make it play at decent human level, so the way they make it challenging to play is by cheating in various ways. Resource boosts, global vision, etc. In particular, humans are very good at reasoning based on limited information. We can form hypotheses about where resources or objectives might be, or if an enemy unit goes out if the visible map, estimating where it…

Yes, recent advances in Poker and Diplomacy show that this is possible.

Re: Civilization 7 Is in Development

#180

Post by setr »

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.

You want it to behave predictably. That doesn’t mean it needs to be predictably incompetent, and it doesn’t mean predictably optimal. Predictability is orthogonal to competency.

If the diplomacy mechanic cannot survive with players playing to win, then it’s clearly the diplomacy mechanic that’s wrong — diplomacy in reality is an inevitable result of multiple players playing to win; you don’t do diplomacy for fun, but to shift the world-state slightly in your favor by unifying against common threats.

Something must be fundamentally wrong with the model if it cannot encourage the most basic action within that model, without a player acting completely against his own interest

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