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Civ II game a decade old

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Re: Civ II game a decade old

#41

Post by zokier »

kodablah wrote: post #19
radical_cut wrote: post #12

Well that gave me goosebumps. Bleak future indeed, I immediately thought of the Doomsday Clock. I like the idea of a new subreddit spawned by this: http://www.reddit.com/r/theeternalwar . It could be interresting to see if anybody finds a way to save the world from hell. Maybe it's time to relive good old memories of times spend with old Civ games. :)

Is there a reverse-engineered Civ II api (i.e. akin to bwapi)?

I have played very little Civ2 (my Civ career began with Civ3), but doesn't FreeCiv have a ruleset that aligns with Civ2 very closely?

Re: Civ II game a decade old

#42

Post by dupe123 »

lars_francke wrote: post #25
danso wrote: post #18

I love Civ 2, but how is it that the OP can't win against two AIs? They weren't geniuses, AFAIK. And though the AI was vicious early on, it never seemed competent at the end. And even if it were, it's hard to imagine that the AI could adapt to a focused, determined attack by a human player (taking one city at a time).

If you read the linked thread you'll find out why. First of all the game was technically won thousands of years back but he kept playing. And now they are in a stalemate that no one can break. His thread is basically all about asking for help (and fresh ideas) to end this.

i think by "win" he means break the stalemate. the ai in that game sucked and only stayed competitive by cheating. he should have been able to wipe out the opposing civs after 10 years of playing. especially since the op said he was only playing at prince/king difficulty.

Re: Civ II game a decade old

#43

Post by philwelch »

TrevorJ wrote: post #34
kristianc wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

The early Romans had some good success with temporary emergency dictatorships to cut through the deadlock in times of emergency. This didn't really stop working for them till they faced the threat of Hannibal, and appointed Fabius Maximus who spent a few years studiously avoiding direct conflict with Hannibal, and the Senate got impatient and wrested back control.

There was also that one guy, Julius something, who didn't want to give back control ;)

Re: Civ II game a decade old

#44

Post by bstar77 »

waterhouse wrote: post #37
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…

> 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.

Re: Civ II game a decade old

#45

Post by jpadkins »

waterhouse wrote: post #37
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…

> 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 think it was excellent design that democracy is sub-optimal for defensive war and terrible for offensive war. You wouldn't want the choice best economy with no drawbacks. Otherwise, democracy would be the dominant strategy.

Re: Civ II game a decade old

#46

Post by philwelch »

CharlieA wrote: post #21
nathan_long wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> democracy is a less effective system because it's holding back the decision making process... seemingly very little real progress... we have... generally nothing really significant ... to complain about. This mystifies me: people sometimes talk about legislative gridlock as though it's all bad. Do you measure the quality of a development team by the number of lines of code they produce? Of course not. The developm…

I take your point, in part, and I don't necessarily disagree with you, because by and large the system does work. But (to use your analogy) when it comes to the law-making branch of government we have this massive sprawling "codebase" and it doesn't necessarily need a lot of new code (laws) putting in place, but rather, there's a lot of cruft and old legacy stuff that maybe needs to be removed or updated, and the tim…

The use of representatives isn't just because direct democracy is unfeasible, it also provides a dampening effect, and hopefully provides a foothold for experts to weigh in alongside public opinion.

Re: Civ II game a decade old

#47

Post by philwelch »

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…

Hmm.... More on the "democratic peace" (it's not so clear cut): http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/demowar.htm

Re: Civ II game a decade old

#48

Post by kristianc »

philwelch wrote: post #43
TrevorJ wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The early Romans had some good success with temporary emergency dictatorships to cut through the deadlock in times of emergency. This didn't really stop working for them till they faced the threat of Hannibal, and appointed Fabius Maximus who spent a few years studiously avoiding direct conflict with Hannibal, and the Senate got impatient and wrested back control.

There was also that one guy, Julius something, who didn't want to give back control ;)

I don't see what that has to do with the democratic peace, which is about nations propensity to declare war on each other.

Re: Civ II game a decade old

#49

Post by planetguy »

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…

can anyone point me towards a game where the devs actually spent a significant amount of time (relatively speaking) on the AI?

Chessmaster 9000?

For most games, though, AI is an unlimited time sink; every thousand hours you sink into making the AI smarter will barely enhance the player's enjoyment.

Or, often enough, will make the player's experience worse; I'm pretty sure there's no way I could possibly single-handedly kill hundreds of bad guys unless those bad guys were complete idiots who run towards me one at a time and never bother to hide, strategize, cooperate or even pick up the powerful weapons which are just sitting around on the freaking ground.

Re: Civ II game a decade old

#50

Post by onli »

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…

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?).
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