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Civ II game a decade old

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Re: Civ II game a decade old

#71

Post by Florin_Andrei »

jonnathanson wrote: post #52

Fascinating, and wonderful to see others are out there who are weird like me, and who will actually attempt to extend Civilization games over extremely long periods. I have a Civ4 game that I've been playing for about 4 straight years now, and admittedly the file has gotten so big that it periodically taxes my system resources to their limits (Unfortunately, Civ4 suffers from poor memory management and is fairly leak…

Well, there's 3 diplomacy phases: Phase 1, when everyone ignores you. Phase 2, when everyone is friendly. Phase 3, total war. You go through #1 and #2 quickly, then all that remains is #3.

Re: Civ II game a decade old

#72

Post by jonnathanson »

danielweber wrote: post #61
jonnathanson wrote: post #52

Fascinating, and wonderful to see others are out there who are weird like me, and who will actually attempt to extend Civilization games over extremely long periods. I have a Civ4 game that I've been playing for about 4 straight years now, and admittedly the file has gotten so big that it periodically taxes my system resources to their limits (Unfortunately, Civ4 suffers from poor memory management and is fairly leak…

I don't know Civ4's AI routines, but it might be such that after a certain year passes, it decides that the only way to stop the human player is total war. Before that it can be less aggressive. I have a game of Civ1 somewhere where it takes about a half-hour to get through each turn because each city demands attention. I'd love to modify the ROM to skip the animations.

"I don't know Civ4's AI routines, but it might be such that after a certain year passes, it decides that the only way to stop the human player is total war. Before that it can be less aggressive."

What seems more likely, at least in my experience, is that the AI is always trying to pursue a single goal: beating everyone else. It will select whatever means it deems possible at any point in time. It will make calculations, each turn, about the relative strength of its military versus the strength of its intended target, or else the combined strength of its allies' militaries against the strength of an opposing alliance's militaries. That's about it. It's always looking for an excuse to attack somebody. The only thing that holds it back is any sort of power imbalance sufficiently not in its favor.

There are some AI "personalities" and leader traits in the game that will favor more aggressive styles than others. But generally speaking, a more aggressive AI personality is simply an AI personality that has a lower threshold for declaring war. It will go to war with slightly riskier odds than a less aggressive personality will. But they'll all go to total war if the odds are sufficiently stacked in their favor. The "aggressive" trait is really just a sliding scale of risk tolerance.

Re: Civ II game a decade old

#73

Post by scarmig »

kristianc wrote: post #33
CharlieA wrote: post #5

The 3-way division of the world into "super-continents" and the constant war keeping the populace in a perpetual state of starvation and poverty, with the entire world in disrepair is so incredibly reminiscent of Orwell's 1984 it's scary. If you haven't read 1984, it's a startlingly bleak view of a potential future (from a historical perspective, but still applicable today, I think) particularly through technology an…

"Although I don't necessarily think it will be because of war, I can see a potential future where people/persons decide democracy is a less effective system" Its probably worth pointing out just how unlikely it is that it would be because of war. The democratic peace is probably the closest thing to a universal law of international relations that we have. So if democracy does have drawbacks in terms of speed of decis…

Eh. The democratic peace theory really just relies on a perpetual no-true-Scotsman approach. Either something's not really a democracy or not really a war.

Native American tribes? Well, they had democratic societies, but they're very different from the liberal state that has come to predominate in contemporary times. Franco-Prussian conflict? Prussia's legislatures were dominated by a rich hereditary landowning class. American Civil War? Well, civil wars don't count, and the franchise wasn't universal. World War I? Well, Germany might have had elections and might have had a wider effective franchise than many parts of the USA, but it was a bad guy, so it doesn't count. Various conflicts fostered by the Western liberal democracies (Iran, Chile, etc.)? Well, those were coups and not really wars.

What "democratic peace" really seems to mean is "countries that are under the umbrella of the United States and have highly developed economies don't go to war against each other." Give it 20 years time, and when the newly elected government of China gets into a shooting war with the government of the United States over some stupid shit (poll driven aggression in the strait?) we'll go back to arguing that China isn't a real democracy because it had only had one or two national elections, or the United States isn't a real democracy because all its state apparatus and elections are controlled by an unelected elite.

Re: Civ II game a decade old

#74

Post by locci »

Quarrelsome wrote: post #39
damon_c wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the higher levels, specifically Deity, it seems that there are some variables set in the AI's favor that go beyond normal game play manipulations... Or maybe I am just misdiagnosing my own failures :(

Yes. Civ games have never been known for their stellar AI. The way they keep the AI competitive at higher levels is to brutally cheat by getting free techs and units at the start and a beneficial modifier to their production and research. Considering how quick the AI needs to run (you don't want "end turn" taking forever) and how complex the game is I can appreciate its simplicity, it is disappointing though. I have…

Soren Johnson talks about AI cheating in "Playing to lose: AI and Civilization" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJcuQQ1eWWI&feature=playe...

Re: Civ II game a decade old

#75

Post by prax2 »

Quarrelsome wrote: post #39
damon_c wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the higher levels, specifically Deity, it seems that there are some variables set in the AI's favor that go beyond normal game play manipulations... Or maybe I am just misdiagnosing my own failures :(

Yes. Civ games have never been known for their stellar AI. The way they keep the AI competitive at higher levels is to brutally cheat by getting free techs and units at the start and a beneficial modifier to their production and research. Considering how quick the AI needs to run (you don't want "end turn" taking forever) and how complex the game is I can appreciate its simplicity, it is disappointing though. I have…

This is the most enjoyable and diverse AI I've been able to play against.

AI Wars http://www.arcengames.com/w/index.php/aiwar-features

Re: Civ II game a decade old

#76

Post by cantankerous »

bstar77 wrote: post #44
waterhouse wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> populace in a perpetual state of starvation and poverty, with the entire world in disrepair This is quite different from my experience. In most of my Civ II games, I produce hordes of engineers, which I use to terraform the hell out of the planet--getting railroads everywhere, irrigation and farmland on all plains and grassland, mining on all hills, turning mountains into hills and swamp and jungle into forest, and…

I'm not really interested in how he could have handled things to have a better outcome... What I do find extremely interesting is that he's in a particular situation that he can't get out of that's just a horrible cycle of death and destruction. And it seems to draw some eery parallels with real life.

The issue the parent points out is that the situation that the game player has worked himself in is most likely artificial. It's really, really easy to keep your land squeaky clean and productive in Civ 2. If you've played to year 4000 and haven't won yet and your land is trashed, it's because you wanted things to turn out that way.

Re: Civ II game a decade old

#77

Post by potatolicious »

onli wrote: post #50
Quarrelsome wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Civ games have never been known for their stellar AI. The way they keep the AI competitive at higher levels is to brutally cheat by getting free techs and units at the start and a beneficial modifier to their production and research. Considering how quick the AI needs to run (you don't want "end turn" taking forever) and how complex the game is I can appreciate its simplicity, it is disappointing though. I have…

Fear 1 would be an example for a game with a good AI. Also Far Cry 1. Can't remember on a strategy game with a really good AI though (maybe Heroes of Might and Magic 3?).

I don't think any of the games above had good AI - but rather, they had believable AI.

I once read this piece by one of the AI programmers on the Halo series (can't for the life of me find it now) where he goes into the difference.

A good AI will be able to beat you time and time again using ingenuity and creativity. But such AIs are rarely fun. Instead, we prefer AIs that merely give the illusion of competence (e.g., they take cover... but always behind predictable objects. They flank, but always in obvious ways. They retreat, but always under specific, easy to understand conditions.). What the AI does is utterly predictable, but still challenging.

An unpredictable AI will quickly become frustrating instead of fun, even though it would be more realistic.

Re: Civ II game a decade old

#78

Post by cynest »

Shivetya wrote: post #30
CharlieA wrote: post #5

The 3-way division of the world into "super-continents" and the constant war keeping the populace in a perpetual state of starvation and poverty, with the entire world in disrepair is so incredibly reminiscent of Orwell's 1984 it's scary. If you haven't read 1984, it's a startlingly bleak view of a potential future (from a historical perspective, but still applicable today, I think) particularly through technology an…

and yet much of science fiction that many us enjoy consistently reflects a much better possible future, as this 2011 article details http://lfs.org/newsletter/029/04/Somin.shtml If anything technology offered just as many avenues for people to escape a totalitarian world as to succumb to it. With regards to this guy's game, it probably brings reminders of all the silliness with regards to Civilization game. From melt…

> From melting icecaps to near constant nuclear war its a sign of an AI that that too easily bounces from one extreme to another.

Strategy games put the player in the role of the fascist dictator. Your goal is to further your own nation at the expense of everything else. In reality, groups of people have different incentives and act quite a bit differently.

Re: Civ II game a decade old

#79

Post by Aethaeryn »

jonnathanson wrote: post #58
drzaiusapelord wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The other problem is that the AI fights total wars by default. It will never engage in a limited conflict. This is why I don't play civ. Total war AIs are a bizarre choice in a strategy game. I dislike it when games are setup in a way where I'm the only one thinking strategy and the AI opponents are there to give me a sense of action. Total war in the real world is rare. >Or that one possibly victory condition in a…

"This is why I don't play civ. Total war AIs are a bizarre choice in a strategy game. I dislike it when games are setup in a way where I'm the only one thinking strategy and the AI opponents are there to give me a sense of action. Total war in the real world is rare." Agreed 100%. To me, it seems silly -- not to mention cynical and fatalistic -- that the sole purpose of diplomacy in Civilization games is to add a str…

  > I suspect because there just isn't a big enough market for games
  > of that nature. Maybe there is a handful of us out there. Maybe a
  > relatively small handful, but one that's willing to pay a fair
  > amount for a really great, truly strategic global power game. I
  > dunno. Maybe it's worth organizing, or Kickstarting, or what have
  > you. If any game devs out there are reading this and are
  > interested, know that there's a niche crossing its fingers for
  > you.
I'm actually working on an in-browser MMO strategy game set in space that will try to balance around long run[a] strategy and diplomacy instead of just constantly-at-war deathmatches. Of course, relying on humans rather than AI does help.

I suspect that the market is bigger than the big publishers are willing to take a risk on, especially if it was written to be run within browsers (including mobile browsers) and was fun to play.

I have considered Kickstarter, but it seems like most Kickstarter game projects fail unless they go viral first so there's definitely a major risk[b] in going public too early.

-----

[a] One way to make the games last a long time (perhaps indefinitely) is to make it a slow-playing game, such as using Civilization-style simultaneous turns that refresh by default once a day. This would also put more focus on forming alliances, socializing, and making strategies. Of course, the issue with this is that there would be a massive surge of traffic on the servers during turn refresh times.

[b] The main risk of Kickstarter is the uncertainty in receiving funds. I could underestimate costs on purpose and have a decent chance of being funded, but with an insufficient amount, or I could provide the "real" amount and have a very high chance of getting no money at all, even though a little bit would go a long way. Neither outcome seems ideal, especially when people would assume that "funded" means that the game is ready to be released given a certain amount of time.

Re: Civ II game a decade old

#80

Post by CoreDumpling »

Tichy wrote: post #2

Is it possible to run a completely automated Civ game (all players computer players)? Should be a quicker way to simulate the future. Perhaps the AI could learn "War Games" style that nuclear war is not the way to go... Or maybe it would be a depressing result if the AIs would not nuke around without a human in the mix?

I wrote a utility a while ago to manipulate human/AI control of civs in Civ III (conquests expansion pack), as a bit of a reverse engineering exercise: https://github.com/CoreDumpling/c3me

It's possible to set every player to AI and then just let the game run to observe the results. (You'll still have to dismiss pop-ups about civs getting eliminated or wonders being built, though.) I've done it on several occasions, mostly to test out mods to check if they are properly balanced. In general, I've noticed that AI's that nuke aggressively do tend to win in the long run, but if nukes are disabled or otherwise restricted, huge stalemates can result.

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