I know this will be considered off topic... or even worse, an attack on our beloved Civ. But I was reading up on Galactic Civilizations by Stardock (someone told me it was pretty good). There's an interview with one of the key developers of GalCiv.

He seems to snipe Civilization. But looking passed some of the bitterness, I think there's an important point that Firaxis ought to keep in mind for Civ 4. The game doesn't become better by "wouldn't it be cool if...?" The game becomes better by identifying key problem areas, and discussing a solution to that problem that would make the game more fun.

Link here:

http://www.galciv.com/docs/qa.html

Lots of times games will come out and boast how they allow players all these paths to victory. And then you sit down and play it and it turns out that there’s really only one way to victory that’s any fun and the other ways are either virtually impossible or incredibly not fun. What we’ve done in GalCiv is work especially hard to make sure the different paths are enjoyable. In fact, the star bases, for instance, weren’t in the original design. We put those in along with the modules to upgrade them just this past Fall in order to ensure that winning through cultural and economics was as enjoyable as building fleets of ships and sending them into battle. Kind of a competitive “Simcity” type feel to it when you start building up your civilization and watching the little trade ships going back and forth by your star bases and such.

I can't help but feel like this is a dig at Civilization's "expand or die" gameplay. (Even though some people do the artifical challenge of a self imposed One-City game.) But by identifying it as a problem, they could begin to find a real solution, and expand gameplay in a variety of fun ways. I like the "competitive Simcity" analogy.

Here are their thoughts on AI:

The AI is multithreaded. What this means is that while you are taking your turn, the computer players are generating their strategies. That’s why there is no “please wait, computer players moving” screen when you hit the turn button. They’ve already calculated much of their moves. The only thing you have to wait for is the actual moving of units on the map.

The real benefit though is that it gives computer players much more time to “think” about their strategies. It means we can implement much more sophisticated strategies for them so that they play more intelligently.

None of this means that the game is “harder” to beat. But what it does mean is that we don’t have to dump tons of free money or whatever to the computer players in order for them to be competitive. They can play the same game you’re playing. We think many players gain a certain satisfaction knowing that when they’ve destroyed an Economic Starbase that it really did hurt that player. Most games I play I have to wonder whether blowing up some key building or unit really affects the AI or not. But in GalCiv, there’s no doubt because it’s playing the same game you are.

I know dozens of people who think this is a legit problem for Civ. Me personally, I don't mind if the AI cheats so long as they are realistically competitive. But there's no doubt that this kind of goal is a "holy grail" for AI design. By identifying this key problem, they look for a solution that makes the game top notch fun.

There are a lot of little tidbits in the interview. My point isn't whether Galactic Civilizations is a particularly great game. (Otherwise I would have called this thread "make Civ 4 more like galactic civs!!") I haven't played it, so I don't know. It could very well be crap. That's not the point.

But it would be nice to know that the Civ 4 developers "get it" -- that they're not just arbitrarily picking the coolest sounding feature. That's what impressed me about this interview, and why I use it as an example. I hope the Civ 4 developers are approaching the development of a new game from the same angle. They should identify the underlying gameplay problems in Civ 3 that make it less than perfect, and using those to discuss new goals for Civ 4.

Soren talked about a few things like corruption, or pollution. That gives me some optimism. But I'm curious if they're looking at the big picture about how to create a more perfect game than Civ 3?

Each incarnation of Civilization has been an improvement over the last. Granted, they haven't gotten it "perfect" yet, but I've ALWAYS had fun playing the game and winning by the different victories.

There are some things that I'd like to be changed (culture), taken out (corruption), or added back into the game (wonder movies!!!), but overall, each game has been a vast improvement over the last.

Just my thoughts.

I think that the devs have made a very strong case at improving or changing current concepts... That's why for the past year pretty much most of the things that stick to our minds is the goal of Firaxis to remove aspects which are not fun.

If this game was all about "more cool features" I think it would be the primary thing we would be talking about, but it isn't since the point is that they have been trying to improve gameplay.

This is not to say that a lot of cool aspects will not be in, because I am sure they will.

not fun aspects....pssh
i dont get what this means,,,
the whole time i have played civs, the only thing i found unfun was waiting 5 minutes on the playstation for the computer to makes its turn, but even that had its climax. since i had rectified the problem by building a super computer, there is nothing unfun about the game, even in doing what seemed like taking out the trash, i found fun....

my faith in the civ developers remains strong, i know i will be surprised and delighted when civ 4 is finally released.

I think that some features come across as a solution to a problem... like culture was their solution to the problem of people sending settlers to 'steal land' that annoyed people.

But other features, like religion, I just don't see what problem it's solving. Is it an excuse to go to war? We don't need another excuse. It won't improve the modern age, since religion largely makes its impact in the middle ages before the populist forms of government appear (communism, democracy).

Civ 3 did make an improvement on Civ 2, but in my mind, not enough, or not in the right ways. Cool features are cool features, but there are other priorities.

The interview points out two of them:

- The AI needs to cheat to win
- The "multiple paths to victory" are really only quick detours off the "expand and dominate" game

Imagine if those two things weren't true. Kind of hard to imagine, I guess, because a problem is always a negative. And adding a new gameplay mechanism is always a positive. It's hard to imagine the positive gameplay mechanism that would cancel out the negative gameplay problem -- it could be a lot of different things, really. That's why you have designers.

Makes perfect sense to me. Developers need to be able to approach their games critically, and looking for all the flaws. Of course, sometimes this leads to a disappointing end result (I'm thinking of Fable here.), but in general I think it is a good plan. I most especially hope they find a way to make the AI powerful without it cheating - I love a challenge of outwitting a good tactician. I don't like the challenge of outwitting someone who starts with the capacity to found three cities, or is twice as rich as me, or whatever.

GalCiv good, incidentally. ;) I'm picking up a full copy very soon, but the demo was highly addictive. Think SMAC + Homeworld + Civ3 + something else addictive. Cocaine, maybe. xD Also keeping a strong eye on the sequel, which looks like being even more interesting.

There's an interview with one of the key developers of GalCiv.

Mr. Wardell is not just a key developer, he's the designer. He's also company president, I believe. He has a very open, hands-on approach. I've interacted with him on the Stardock forum many times, and I like his approach.

I'm a GalCiv fan. I led a pack of Realms Beyond players over to Stardock and we had some good fun with the game. I stopped playing about a year ago, and I don't think any of our players have played in the last nine months, but our empire is still perched among the top ten:

http://www.galciv.com/metaverse/empires.asp

If you want to learn more about GalCiv, you can visit Sirian's Restaurant of Eternity (http://sirian.warpcore.org/galciv/index.html) where I reported five of my games, including some first-of-their-kind ubervariants and a grueling come-from-behind-win every bit as dicey as RBE DSG2.


None of this means that the game is “harder” to beat. But what it does mean is that we don’t have to dump tons of free money or whatever to the computer players in order for them to be competitive.

Competitive with whom? Brad may be stretching his claim there. GalCiv has some very bright spots, and among the brightest is its diplomacy model, which involves the AI. However, the GalCiv AI is incapable of using starbases for cultural victory and won't ever beat a competent player to tech victory without the huge boosts given it on the highest difficulty setting. The only thing it does well is to play the military game. Yet as you have heard me say many times now, DH, the overarching issue is diplomacy. Who lines up against whom determines the course of games.

There are holes, BIG holes, in the GalCiv AI at the top end. Diplomacy, global strategy, adaptability. I don't want to spill the beans here, because GalCiv is a fun game, and some of you may decide to try it. In the same way I wouldn't offer spoilers for an RPG to "give away the ending", I'm not going to give away the flaws in Brad's AI. You have to play quite a bit before you can find them, and then there is still more good GalCiving before you run out of strategic challenges.


Soren's Civ3 AI is stronger and sturdier, but it is designed to be merciful. You can pay it off with teensy-weensy little bits of tribute and then you're (usually) safe for a good while, until the next time they come calling. There's the occasional sneak attack, but these actually become LESS likely at the upper end because the Civ3 AI tends to attack the biggest threats first, and the higher you set the difficulty, the deeper the hole from which you start, actually reducing your odds of being attacked early. It is also VERY easy to bribe, so if you do get into trouble, help is ready at hand.

Brad's GalCiv AI is ruthless and merciless. It is specifically designed to target the weak and eradicate hangers-on. It too has a merciful grace period to let you get started, but when it runs out (and it happens early) the gloves come off and the AI will rub you out. From a no-spoilers, no-reloads perspective, I lose in GalCiv a lot more. However, with a SINGLE reload at a place of my choice, I have turned all my GalCiv losses into wins except for "snuffed in the cradle" losses where I never had -any- chance at all to win in the first place.

If Soren's AI played cutthroat, it wouldn't need Diety-level bonuses to compete, and there would be no Sid level.

I don't know that Brad is digging at Civ and its AI. His multi-threading does save time between turns, but his AI beelines mindlessly at the enemy the same way every other game AI does, including Civ3's.

I and the entire RBGC community urged the Stardock team to upgrade the AI in their expansion pack, but they focused on other stuff. I bought the xpack anyway, but without a new AI there isn't much for me to do with it. It's the same as when I had mastered the Civ1 AI: at some point, you've seen it all and there's nothing new left to experience. That took me a year with Civ1, fifteen months with Civ3, and six months with GalCiv. In fairness to GalCiv, though, its games are MUCH shorter (I don't even play with "wait at end of turn" it's such a sleek game), so the actual number of games I played is about the same as for Civ3.

The key difference between Soren's AI and Brad's AI, in my mind, is that the flaws in GalCiv are more fatal: I can still enjoy a game of Civ3 with the outcome uncertain well in to the game. With GalCiv, if it doesn't beat me with a grunt rush in the first few turns after the grace period wears off, it never will. Thus I reach a winning position much sooner and that's boring.


Oh, and if you don't think you need to expand in GalCiv, wait until you see the Drengin fleet closing in on you and your three planets :eek: and tell me how you're going to fight them off. :lol: These are both empire games, and they have more in common than they have that is different. :crazyeye:


- Sirian

This guy might be on to something if Galactic Civilizations was any good... :dubious:

Does that mean GalCiv got panned in the reviews?

fwiw, I recently bought Victoria because everyone says the government model (lots of sliders, based off the EUII model) rocks. I played it, and I reckon the government model is weak. Changes in government aren't driven by your decisions so much as in-game events, which are mostly a fixture based on your nation and the scenario. Compared to the pre-scripted stuff, your decisions seemed to me to be mostly cosmetic in influencing anything. Doesn't help that the manual did not explain the in-game effect of anything at all.

Ah well, turns out Brad's words were hollow. That's too bad. But I do have a tremendous amount of respect for him even identifying the problems. I think that was my real point.

I like the fact that Soren identified "unfun" concepts like pollution and corruption that could be replaced by something more "fun" -- like health. But I've yet to see any kind of big picture thinking on Civ 3.

Religion and civics kind of came out of nowhere, you know? Not that I'm opposed to them, but I'd like to know that they're looking at the big picture. Like "We find that players too often isolate themselves, and wars are generally one on one, if not for a temporary alliance. We hope to encourage more globalization in Civ 4." They could even say "We hope that religion will encourage more globalization in Civ 4" -- if religion is their solution.

I guess I'm holding my breath until the first Civ 4 developer interview.

Sirian, do you think the AI will be inherently flawed? I almost think so. Also, do you think it is possible to create a game where expansion DOESN'T give you easy access to every other victory types-- spaceship, culture, and domination?

GalCiv economy has two components: trade and expansion. Trade is half the economy and literally independent of expansion, so when running a One Planet Empire you are running with a half-speed economy, rather than economy that is a tiny fraction of what a large empire would have. This is an effect that must be played to be appreciated in context, but you can get some kind of feel for it by reading my two OPE reports at the Restaurant.

GalCiv also has a working Alliance Victory condition that is loads of fun. It lets you out of won games sooner. Unfortunately, once you know what you are doing, the games can also be won much sooner. So in the end, this turns out to be kind of a wash, but it is loads of good gameplay for any who are still short of complete mastery over the game.

I don't know that Brad's words are hollow. Some points are overstated, but I think he wrote that at a point before players like me got in there and exposed the framework. It took a lot of gaming to find deeply rooted design flaws. Civ has its flaws too, of course.

Brad was also speaking more to Master of Orion III than to Civ. MOO3 was GalCiv's more direct competition, and by comparison to that clunker, GC is a total masterpiece. :cool: That is one thing Soren and Brad have in common, the tenacity to avoid complexity contests in their designing. Sometimes I think a good possibility or two gets left on the cutting room floor, but there is no denying that overall, Civ3 and GalCiv are at the top of the food chain in the genre today, one for past/present and the other for futuristic.

I'm a bit concerned about GalCiv2, though. I went to the site the other day and the hints and teasers seem to indicate that they are going to follow the lead of Master of Orion II and introduce an Uber Race in to the mix. That would not be the way that I would go. I hated MOO2 with a virulence that must be seen in action to be fully understood. :lol:


Sirian, do you think the AI will be inherently flawed?

I think the AI faces very stiff challenges. The only way to write a great AI is actually to write a heckava lot of it, because no matter how clever a single algorithm may be, once players learn the shape of its performance, they get ahead of it. Unpredictability is the key difference between playing human opponents and a game AI. The first game to overcome this problem is going to reset the bar for everybody. Writing five times the AI for one game is not likely to be the top priority for most companies, though.


Also, do you think it is possible to create a game where expansion DOESN'T give you easy access to every other victory types-- spaceship, culture, and domination?

Sure, but not in this genre. Empire games are ABOUT expansion: imperialism, colonialism, brush wars and hot conflicts between major powers. I'm not sure I understand the urge to remove expansion as a determining factor. The way forward lies in requiring the player to make difficult tradeoffs between further expansion and more strength in the core, where the ideal balance shifts from game to game, requiring players to apply thinking and strategy intead of cookie cutter game plans. Better AI is a key element here, as it is from the AI that pressure must come, making it hard for player to expand rapidly and still manage to defend all of his holdings.

Of course, one can expand peacefully and play nice, and there should be ways to win that way, but if you conquer all opposition, you're going to be a in position where you can pick the ending of your choice and no one can stop you or beat you. I think this is only a problem when it comes to SCORING SYSTEMS and measuring performance. It would be tough to create a scoring system where, say, an Economic Victory will score more for Peaceful Pete in his 1/6th of the map than it will for Warmongering Wade and his 3/4ths of the map, having crushed everybody in sight.

In my mind, though, the important thing is that one can win the game without HAVING to occupy 3/4ths of the map. Setting score aside (or not even bothering with score, as in the original Master of Orion), there should be fun and interesting (and challenging) ways to win without having to roll out the military hardware and steamroll your neighbors.

That's why I found the GalCiv Alliance Victory fun. After making friends and together killing off the opposition, you could win together with your allies, instead of then having to turn on your friends and eliminate them too! :eek: I hope Civ4 has top notch diplomacy. I also hope it comes up with stronger victory conditions than Civ3's diplo and cultural options, but we'll just have to wait and see.


- Sirian

Maybe I'll take a peek at Gal Civ 2 when it finally comes out, instead of trying Gal Civ one. It seems to me like it has some merit :)

I happen to think that an AI is inevitably exploitable. After studying four years of AI, there are certain kinds of problems where there IS an ideal solution and it cannot be achieved algorithmically. Only the most tenacious of humans can achieve an ideal solution, if it exists. Not to say that they shouldn't make the AI better, but I think a little bit of cheating is acceptable. But I don't think that cheating should be a static advantage, but something the AI does on occasion only if the game needs an injection of challenge. (E.g.: the player is starting to get way ahead, so the AI should catch up).

I do find it odd that people can be holding out for that holy grail of AI when they can't yet cite a game that has achieved a challenging enough (legitimate) AI. Do we really need to have built Skynet, Hal9000, and the Matrix to have a challenging AI?

I also find it interesting that you consider Civilization to be an "Empire" game, where the genre is about expanding and conquering. I don't consider it to be in that genre, although it's definitely on that fuzzy line. I'm not sure what I'd classify it as, but it's definitely not as simple as Empire. It's got many "Sim" like qualities that I think it should embrace. I think that's why I kind of liked Brad's comment about "competitive Sim City".

There are plenty of reasons why Peaceful Pete with 1/6 of the map could beat Warmongering Wade with 1/2 of the map (although maybe not 3/4, that's a little powerful).

One is because Warmongering Wade is spending heaps of money to keep any semblance of unity in his empire. He may arguably have a "larger economy", but he's also losing a lot more money than Peaceful Pete is in his minimalist Republic. It doesn't matter to Warmongering Wade, though, because he's very close to dominating the globe, if he can hold his empire together.

Two is because Peaceful Pete's Republic isn't exactly an island. He trades with the remaining 2/6 of the world, which have shunned Wade's Warmongering ways and put sanctions on him. 1/6 of the world trades with Pete voluntarily. But another 1/6 of the world trades with Pete because he secretly sponsored a regime change that favors him. He pulled a dark-diplomacy deal where he sold weapons to Rebel Ray, helped Rebel Ray take 1/6 of the world, and now Rebel Ray siphons off huge amounts of funds to Pete. And to make matters even better, Pete doesn't have to deal with the problems that Wade does. Rebel Ray manages his own people, so Pete doesn't have to pay to solve Ray's problems. Pete gets the profit without the pain, while Wade's wealth won't win him the game anyway.

The game is as much a conflict between Wade and Pete as it is between game styles and personal challenges. Pete focuses on economy, and his biggest personal obstacle is his shrinking number of trade partners. Wade focuses on conquest, and his biggest personal obstacle are the costs coming from holding a multi-ethnic empire. And time is working against them both.

It's possible, if you stop thinking about the game as a narrow "empire" game.

OK, let me explain "empire" games. I absolutely LOATHE the term "4X game". I find the four X's to be inadequate to describing the gameplay. I prefer to call them empire games, because an empire is about expanding beyond your homeland to control a larger share of the habitable area, and not necessarily doing so by warfare. Colonialism -and- conquest together make an empire game.

There were empire games before Civ (I can think of a few, including Reach For the Stars) but Civ reinvented the genre by offering a peaceful alternative to conquering the entire world/galaxy/universe: the spaceship launch.

With the exception of OCC and other variants, Civ involves expansion. How much expansion is needed depends on the game and the player.

Sim City is also an expansion game, but I'd put it in the Tycoon genre (another one reinvented by Sid Meier). "Business empire" games.

Building empires of one kind or another is just a very appealing and fun thing to do. :)


- Sirian

I think the real complaint I have is how one-dimensional expansion is. Currently you either own land or you do not. THere is no way to gain use from territory without having your flag flying over it.

Sir Schwick is onto it. You can build an empire without necessarily occupying more land. I think it's more than colonialism and conquest... it's building relationships (with the carrot or the stick) and influence. Those require land, but they don't require but a quarter of the the land in the world. Not to mention "business empire" -- the accumulation of wealth.

Peaceful Pete DOES stand a chance against Warmongering Wade. And it's not the self imposed challenge of a One City Culture Victory. It's that Peaceful Pete and Warmongering Wade do the significant steps of expanding so as to provide enough living space and resources for their people. At the crossroads, both choose two different challenges. Wade goes for the challenge of maintaining order in a growing empire with people who do not get along with each other. Pete goes for the challenge of wealth accumulation and building trading partners, while avoiding the costs that would come from being the President of half the world.

And that's without even talking about the challenges that Pete and Wade pose to each other.

I think the real complaint I have is how one-dimensional expansion is. Currently you either own land or you do not. THere is no way to gain use from territory without having your flag flying over it.

I agree. I think the concept of a peaceful commercial empire is one that is not really well represented in any empire game, although I feel you can get a rough approximation of it in Civ3 by playing the weakling uber trader than can buy its way out of bullying but have a relatively small slice of the world pie.

That said, Sirian has a point. Empire games are about empire building. Commercial power is just one aspect of empire building and a purely commercial empire is not going to save your ass. You need military power and the economic base, both in population and territory. Peaceful empires are possible and can win in Civ3, its just harder and you're unlikely to get a high score from the game. That's probably one thing I would like to see fixed in Civ4. The mechanics are there to win peacefully in Civ3, but the scoring system doesn't adequately capture the commercial side of a player's activities.

On the issue of gaining use of territory, there is the ROP in Civ3 that lets you use territory that is not yours to travel. I'm not sure what more you want. If you mean access to tiles, resources and get production from tiles that are not your own, that doesn't quite work in reality and in an empire game. Empires have historically profited from lands it did not directly control by demanding taxes and tributes, and this model is already approximated in Civ3 with the 'client system' whereby you can lock in smaller Civs into your sphere of influence by making them your dependents, technologically and resource wise and you effectively gain control of their capitals and their tax revenues as they pay you all their free gold in exchange for your technology and resources. I am currently writing a treatise on this, which I loosely call the Machiavellian Doctrine -- the idea that players use of soft power to control and profit from your planet (in conjunction) with going to war and taking territory.

Everything considered, I support the general idea that the commercial aspect of empire building needs to be boosted abit, and Civ is the franchise to do it.

Maybe you have a smarter AI, but I find it hard to get any tribute without periodically invading something. Even then the tribute is usually in erratic forms. Basically getting tribute from the AI is so frustrating war is much easier, and more profitable then anything htey give me. Also, there is no way to reap the benefits of mercantilism. Europe made a fortune practically stealing resources from colonies and processing them and reselling the new goods back to the colonies.

Not tributes in the terms of demanding them pay you gold. But these are trades that sap gold out of their coffers into yours and you reinforce that dominance by being their chief supplier for a variety of goods.

I'll try to post an early draft of my treatise as soon as I can finish writing the important sections.

Actually, somewhat O/T, but I found very interesting what DH_Epic said about the challenge Wade has in holding together a multi-ethnic empire. The reason it was interesting is because I have just finished reading 1984 again, and the reason given for the perpetual war is that none of the three powers can EVER conquer the whole world because, to do so, they would have to integrate a massive number of people from a new ethnic group into their empire-and doing so might allow the people to realise that these 'foreigners' are not actually so different from themselves. It might be interesting if this fact could be somehow reflected in Civ4 :)!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

Orwellian political science. Next you know I will be suggesting they allow you research 'thought control' governments and implement it as a government. Oh wait, you could do that in SMAC.

It sounds kind of hyped, but you have to realize they have a smaller market and more competition for it (STARS!, VGAPLANETS, MOO, etc..). Some of their sales are in their TotalGaming package deal where you can download all of their previous software for 1 year, and GALCIV is their 'flagship' of that deal.

I think they're right on in their AI discussion. If Civ did have quicker turns, I'd actually play some of the monster Mods and like the game even more---probably even buy another CIV3 expansion
Though CIV's AI is challenging, even if it does cheat.

I still think some of the game design ideas of GALCIV (not your point here) would spruce up a new CIV. IMHO, the weakest thing about the CIV design is that it has potential to fall back on being an Empires game. And if we really got all our forum ideas, it'd be an overly complex design.

I wouldn't want it to embrace all the ideas on the forum. A lot of them are two different solutions to the same problem. Other ideas don't solve a problem with the game at all -- and that's my beef with those kinds of ideas. (Truthfully, I think the "religion" suggestion falls in that category. How does that improve the game where it's needed most, in the modern age, in giving you more ability to build and design your Civ, and so on?)

Not to mention that some things would have to be simplified. Consider it a "shift in focus", when you simplify some things in Civ 3 to make way for more interesting things in Civ 4.

I think it's achievable though.

What if Sid Meir programmed the AI to 'forsee' things. If the AI could see what x player's strategy was, it could see the pattern, and be able to counteract the player's strategy.

GAME 1: Bob likes to build his civ with no warfare at all. He just builds the whole time and does nothing else. The AI plants spies and monitors Bob's military forces for a few turns, and sees that he has very few of them. The AI builds an army roughly 2 times as powerful as Bob's, and attacks. Bob is overwhelmed and destroyed.

GAME 2: Bob decides to build more units, and attack other civs in the game. His attack strategy is: start a RoP with the AI, and attack. He does this and wins a few games.

GAME 4: Bob does the same thing, expecting to win. Instead, the computer has saved that Bob doesn't follow RoPs very well. The AI gaurds it's borders with more units and though it will still accept RoPs, it will go for a higher price. The AI builds more military units than usual. The AI monitors Bob's movements very closely, and when Bob has more than 20 units within its borders, the AI stops the RoP and tells Bob to leave. Bob, thinking he has the AI unawares and undefended, attacks. The AI overwhelms Bob and defeats him.

GAME 7: The past few games, Bob has been buying many of the AI's cities and defeating it. The AI, again, has it stored that when Bob buys lots of cities from it, it looses. The AI starts charging more for cities and starts to anonomously weaken Bob's economy. It plants spies who destroy his marketplaces. It uses spies to see what Bob is researching, and researches it first. It doesn't let Bob buy any more than x cities, and Bob is clueless. Another AI civ is defeated by Bob because it was attacked in one area, then sneak-attacked from where it moved its troops. The first AI is attacked by Bob, and it sends 50% of its troops to attack Bob, leaves 25% to defend the front line, and 25% to gaurd its cities. The AI is defeated because its attackers are defeated when they attack cities on hills.

GAME 8: The AI starts building cities on hills to increase its defenders' defense.

ect.

As you see, you could probably program into a game these things:

What didn't work vs player x
What did work vs player x
What worked in certain conditions
What player x's strategies were
What player x did in diplomacy
Kinds of deals he made in diplomacy
Patterns that the player followed (boomed in Ancient, army in Mideaval, economy in Mideaval, points in Industrial, ect.)

It would then access that info when it first met player x, and devise a counter-strategy against him. It would build around him and close off good building spots when it met him, build an army in the Mideaval Times to counteract player x, ect.

To sum it up, the computer would look for patterns in the player's strategy, and counterattack it.

Who else thinks this could be programmed into a computer.
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There's no AI in the world that can learn the player's style and figure out what they're doing. Even deep blue, the supercomputer that took decades of research and dozens of science to build, makes no model of what the player is trying to do.

As far as the chess game is concerned, the past several moves have nothing to do with the rest of the game. They're gone. They're decisions made. But a player uses this history, these past sets of moves, to help construct a mental model of their opponent, their style, and what they're trying to do. This is one of the reasons that Kasparov was so freaked out by deep blue: he couldn't make a mental model of what deep blue was trying to do. This is because deep blue didn't pay ANY attention to style -- it didn't care how Kasparov played, nor did it have a style of chess that it played.

Mathematically speaking, it chose the move that maximized the worst possible outcome in the foreseeable future.

I guess you COULD keep a running tally of how often your opponent breaks his deals, though. That's pretty quantifiable. But to keep the single player game and multiplayer game as similar as possible, I think this information should be available to your multiplayer opponents too. "Dan breaks 25% of his Right of Passage agreements!"

What if Sid Meir programmed the AI to 'forsee' things. If the AI could see what x player's strategy was, it could see the pattern, and be able to counteract the player's strategy.

I have suggested a solution to the AI's lack of foresight.

This also ties in with Sirian's belief that Diplomacy is what makes or breaks a great AI, on who lines up with whom.

My proposal is quite simple. Each AI will have its own 'intelligence' gathering system whereby it takes into account various variables, troop build-up, score, power, city count and keep track of them, so the AI will more or less know not only the nominal value but the 'RATE OF CHANGE' of each variable as well as rate of change relative to other Civs and itself. This latter ability will be a significant leap for the Civ canon AI. For the first time, the AI can see the future.

This is basically a forecasting tool whereby the AI can draw on the past to plan for the future. There are many forecasting models out there (moving average model, etc. ) that Firaxis can use. There is no silver bullet forecasting and the AI may employ several models and do various calculations with shorter term and long term historgraphical data.

What this will ultimately give the AI is what these models promise. A forecasting ability, and the ability to tease out who CAN become a threat (economically, militarilly) as well as who currently IS a threat. The Civ3 AI is very good at living for the moment. In fact, the entire AI is built to crunch data for that turn and make a decision. Anyone who is in business who ever has to make a decision will tell you using only today's data to make a long-term decision is a bad idea. The very least most businesses and corporations do is make basic forecasts to see trends.

I strongly believe if the forecasting models go in, it would go a long way of making the AI more 'real' and would not require tons and tons of rule based coding based on 'assumptions' of how a good player will be like, as the AI will have access to data that they can be taught to fairly accurately interpret on their own.

The exact formulas used could also be kept under wraps, and since there still are aspects of the Civ III AI mechanics that is not well understood, I have no doubt that short of the developers handing the community the formula (as they did with the cityflip formula) we'll never know how it works exactly and this would also go some ways into countering the human talent of getting ahead of clever AIs by understanding its mechanics.

Formula cannot be kept under wraps.

A. They seem to be planning to expose an awful lot to modders.
B. Even if they kept this hidden, players can feel out the shape of its behavior via extensive testing and data collection.

No matter how simple, or complex, the decision-making process, what really counts are the results. Observation alone can feel out the shape of any program's performance, learning what is possible to it and what is not, then pinning down the details via experimentation.

Typical players may not find out, but most who plug in to communities like this one would learn about it through community leaders, who would be sharing their findings back and forth and figuring it all out.


Prediction models could actually backfire. If players find a string they can pull to make the AI dance a certain way, to "fool" it into doing something they want or to avoid doing something (like attacking), it would be a heck of a mess.


- Sirian

If anything, I would prefer the AI have simple rules that come together for unexpected results(sort of). Only a few principles that guide their actions. A good example of simple AI doing well was X-COM:UFO DEFENSE. The Aliens used very simple AI in battlescape, but some of the basics allowed the aliens to do unexpected(although predictable) things. One of them was the fact that aliens tried to get behind cover and move around buildings(away from former location) whenever they were under fire. This meant that if you did not get the guy the first time and smoke obstructs your view, then that alien may flank you whenever you move forward.

allowed the aliens to do unexpected(although predictable) things.

Eh? Sounds like an oxymoron.

X-com AI was good because it couldn't be predicted to the nth degree. Until you had Mind Probes to learn the type of enemy (soldier, leader, etc) you could not tell at a glance which role a given target would be performing, so you could not predict what it was likely to do. (Leaders avoided combat, for instance, while Soldiers often sought it).

The leader AI differed from the Soldier, from the Engineer, from the Medic, from the Commander. Each alien race had different stats, different possible weapons/items and attack forms, different vulnerabilities, different levels of psionic ability, bravery, etc. There were also variations from Soldier to Soldier, carrying different items/weapons. Some had pistol, some rifle, some grenedes or homing-grenede launchers, some were melee-only.

These WERE simple elements, but they came in enough combination to create a rich experience.


Certainly there are lessons that Civ could draw from X-com, but also keep in mind that X-com aliens didn't really play to win. They scattered around the battlefield so you could pick them off one or two at a time, your SoD (your whole force, or at least a squad of several) combining against one or two targets at a time. If X-com aliens had ever once used even some rudimentary squad tactics, they could have mopped the floor with the player's weaker soldiers.

In fact, there was one scenario where this could happen, with the really huge saucer ships carrying multiple Leaders and armed with the homing missile launchers. The AIs would not really come out of the ship, forcing you to try to storm it through the elevator, which served as a choke point. The AI units were locked in that sardine can, and it was quite difficult to beat them at all, much less to do it without casualties and especially without reloading from any mistakes. But even this challenge, the AI units moved around at random inside the ship, instead of staking out fortified positions and setting up zones of crossfire.

Simple is better with game rules, but not (in my view) with AI. If the goal of game AI is for automated elements to play well, then Smart is more important than Simple.


- Sirian

You do bring up a good point about the X-COM Alien AI not playing a squad game. I also agree that seemed like a glaring weakness once you realized it. The main point of bringing that example, as well as Decent, was that sometimes simple can equal smart. If you added some basic guidelines to squad strategy for X-COM, then maybe it would seem even smarter. I am just asking if it would be better to start on the simple end and add as you realize you can go smarter.

Formula cannot be kept under wraps.

A. They seem to be planning to expose an awful lot to modders.
B. Even if they kept this hidden, players can feel out the shape of its behavior via extensive testing and data collection.


That's true, but feeling the shape is not the same as understanding it completely.


Typical players may not find out, but most who plug in to communities like this one would learn about it through community leaders, who would be sharing their findings back and forth and figuring it all out.


Prediction models could actually backfire. If players find a string they can pull to make the AI dance a certain way, to "fool" it into doing something they want or to avoid doing something (like attacking), it would be a heck of a mess.


- Sirian

I think what you describe here is the standard progression of all
AI to Human encounters in context of scripted behaviour. I concede that to be practical, the best solution for Civ4 AI is likely going to be rule based.

What I'm arguing for however is the quality of the information with which the AI can collect to make a rule based decision. As it stand, Civ AI so far has taken the current situation only to make a decision. I'm saying they should get better data, by taking into account both the past and predict the future. Having this ability would allow for a quantitative leap in AI performance. For one, the AI will suddenly perceive the game much closer to a human mind, by having a memory. And the data generated by such a system would allow for many more rule based behaviors that the current 'snapshot' system cannot handle. Ask the Civ III AI who has been nibbling away from its power in the last 50 turns and it wouldn't know or care. An AI which does keep track of this data, would know, and if programmed to, might care and it may decide to take a broad series of actions which can also be programmed. But before we can get to those fun parts, the AI needs the ability to recognize threats in a more realistic fashion.


The forecasting mechanism should be under the hood and it takes in so much data over several turns that cause and effect, I would argue, would not be so easy to spot. The easiest cause>effect observations come with the rule based AI behaviors of (if City is undefended beeline for it). A forecasting model just looks at the data, like the growth values of a Civ's cities, the growth of their economies, troop sizes etc. These are things any empire builders work on, and they'd be hard pressed to try and fool the AI by either stop growing (in which case the AI might attack anyways) or keep growing (which might lead the AI to attack anyways also) because the AI doesn't care too much are a 'target' nominal value "like if city =50 attack" and it doesn't care about a relative value either "like if power is >75% attack", all of which are snapshots of one point in time.

What the AI cares about is the whole package, how each civ stacks up relatively, how each has been growing their variables in the last 5, 10, 20 turns, and finally, how each Civ may place 5, 10 and 20 turns ahead, which is exactly the process human players go through when we size up potential rivals. Albiet we don't crunch the numbers, we visually asses the situation most the time. The political map on the main screen and the histograph gives us more than enough information (both past and present) to assume who will be our biggest threat (our easiest targets to pick on) in the future.

What I'm proposing is an integrated forecasting system that allows the AI to get a feel of the situation past, present and forecast what could be in the future. I don't see how else Firaxis can evolve the diplomacy model without giving the AI an ability to forecast.

This is what you noted in one of your posts here, which is basically diplomatic intelligence and the AI's ability to line up against an opponent at the right time, as opposed to the current system of chaotic nonsenscial alliances and treaties that are easily exploited by the human players.

Also another bonus. From a purely domestic management standpoint, forecasting tools would allow the AI to budget future expenditures, something they've never been able to do before, which has resulted in the bankrupt AI Civs in Civ III and how easily players can extort money out of them today.

I think a lot of people overestimate the effectiveness of "prediction" models. It's not something AI really does at all, yet. Faking it is what some AI does (like chess), but they don't predict what the player does so much as looking at all the possible outcomes in the future and steering away from the worst ones for as much control as it can have. And Sirian is right, it doesn't necessarily mean that the AI will become any less fallable.

The issue isn't predicting what the player will do, but making the AI unpredictable.

Part of that means making the game of Civ less predictable, though. Seriously, if you bring 8 riflemen to a mountain right beside a city with 2 muskateers defending it, what do you expect to happen? If you control 25% of the world by 300 AD, and the second place guy is at 15%, and everyone else is even worse off, what do you expect to happen? Not to say that the answer is randomness, but the answer is giving the player more meaningful decisions. Strategies that will work one game, but not necessarily the next game.

Don't leave the winner to chance, leave the winner to choice.

I think a lot of people overestimate the effectiveness of "prediction" models. It's not something AI really does at all, yet.

I'm assuming by 'people' you mean me.

DH, we've been through this before. You didn't warm up to it there then and I don't expect to see you support it here. That said, making unsubstantiated claims just so you can shoot down an idea is not how you go about it.

For starters, the capacity of the AI to work with prediction models is only as good as 1) the models 2) the rules given to the AI by the programmer on how work with the data. The claim that the AI has had a poor track record with prediction models ( FYI, they are called forecasting models) is an unfair attack, especially without evidence.

Forecasting models are well known and well understood. They have nothing to do with AI capacities. They are formulas that any 2nd or 3rd year statistics, sciences or business student would come accross as they are applicable in those fields (and yes, humans actually use these models as well as computer AI)

I refer all interested to read this guide to forecasting models.
http://www.marketingprofs.com/Tutorials/Forecast/index.asp

There are many many models out there, and several different sets of models geared at getting different variables and data and some models are quick and dirty while others are more refined. Firaxis has a free hand in picking and choosing which ones they want.

Yes, there are limitations. The financial world for example have moved away from pure modeling into more sophisticated forms of forecasting, including neural networks and the like, but I don't expect Civ4 to ship with an AI of that calibre and since Civ4 is just a game and unlike finance, where all the variables are still not well understood, the developers understand exactly how the game works and the use of these models would be far less risky.

As for the rules they would have to write for the AI to analyze, interpret and take action, we just have to have faith that Soren and whoever else is now the lead AI guy (maybe its no longer him since he is now lead designer) will do a good job of writing a good set of rules.

Part of that means making the game of Civ less predictable, though

Even human opponents are predictable. The problem with the AI is that we're essentially playing against a static opponent all the time and it never evolves. Some learning models might be appropriate but that will be limited to how much resources Firaxis is willing to devote to the coding. Civ3 have a learning AI with its governor function, but it wasn't very well done and was very buggy in vanilla, Soren has since fixed the most glaring problems with the governor and abandoned refining it in PTW and Conquests. It was basically a failure with Civ3 as it required too much direct human input with the need for manual governor configuration.

I'm hopeful a more advanced form of the learning AI will be re-introduced in Civ4. Having both a forecasting function and a learning function aren't mutually exclusive. The learning function may simply affect the decisions an AI take after its forecasting function gathers the data neccessary to alert it to some threat or problem.

Don't leave the winner to chance, leave the winner to choice.

I don't know what you mean by this. Giving the AI the ability to forecast is not leaving it to chance, its giving it better data to work with. Maybe we finally can have an AI who can rush build wonders and manage their gold income better as well when they can forecast ahead and see how their economy is going to be like based on growth trends. The benefits is really huge to forecasting and it applies both internally for domestic functions as well as for foreign policy 'threat assesment' functions.

Let me emphasize again. Forecasting models = give the AI access to better data. How it handles that data has nothing to do with these models. They can be predicable or unpredictable based on how well the AI is programmed to use the information. But basically, everyone is getting ahead and saying we need to do X , Y Z. If the AI gets incomplete, and poor data, no matter how clever you make it behave, its going to behave poorly. The old adage goes, garbage in, garbage out. You have to start with good data to make a good decision.

AFAIK, Soren is (at least) dual-hatted doing lead design/programming as well as the AI.

the developers understand exactly how the game works...

Judging by how many games ship with moderate to severe imbalances and design flaws, I will have to disagree with you on this point.


- Sirian

dexters, i didn't mean it as an attack on you.

I did spend 4 years of university studying Artificial Intelligence. I don't mean that to say you don't know what you're talking about, but to show that this isn't mere difference of opinion. I think you do explain forecasting models and such quite effectively. My beef is that they won't resolve all the problems. It's helpful to add heuristics to an AI like "if X > 50 shift strategies to B" that the programmers pre-define (including what X is, how it's counted, and what strategy B is). But I'm sure Civ already does aspects of this. More of the same might make it harder to exploit, but not unexploitable.

Not to say that I'm against giving the AI access to better data, or the ability to adapt. Those would help, certainly.

I'm not sure what the solution to the AI problem is. Truthfully, I've been one who's advocated cutting losses and letting the AI cheat. But not in the way it cheated in the past, where it gets a flat handicap. More that there's always a handful of civs who try to "keep up' with the player. So if the player declares war and starts conquering like a madman, a few other rivals start to conquer other weak civs to keep up. When the player finally faces off with the strong AI, however, the fight is guaranteed fair, though.

The AI isn't the big beef with the game though. Really, there DOES need to be more variety in strategy. If whoever has the bigger stack wins, whoever has more land can create bigger stacks, and so on, then there's really only one path to victory. Nobody can find a "backdoor" tactic to win. There are no risks to take based on choice -- like paper or rock versus scissors. There are only risks based on chance -- paper versus paper with dice rolls.

Open the game up to more choice, and the strategy becomes more interesting.

Judging by how many games ship with moderate to severe imbalances and design flaws, I will have to disagree with you on this point.


- Sirian

I wasn't clear when I said developers understanding how the game works. I meant in context of the variables that go into say something like economic growth. If they want to create a forecasting model for that, a developer would have a better idea of where to pull data from as opposed to say an economist or a finance guy who would rely solely on history and observation.


I'm not sure what the solution to the AI problem is. Truthfully, I've been one who's advocated cutting losses and letting the AI cheat. But not in the way it cheated in the past, where it gets a flat handicap. More that there's always a handful of civs who try to "keep up' with the player. So if the player declares war and starts conquering like a madman, a few other rivals start to conquer other weak civs to keep up.

If the AI had access to the data and are programmed to red flag a Civ that's been consistently growing and jumping the ranks the past 20, 30 and 50 turns, they wouldn't need to cheat. They'd know it because a basic trend based forecasting tool can also project and say Civ X will be at Rank 2 in variables A, B, C, E, G soon.

I do concede though how well the AI behaves is still highly dependent on how the AI is programmed to handle the models, what actions it takes, etc. It is still at the end of the day, going to be a rule based game. I don't have a lot of expectation in terms of some innovative AI design, because I think with a game as complex as Civilization, its a recipe for disaster. What we can probably all agree on is for Soren and Co. to stick to the well understood AI methods they used in Civ3, but refine it, write more code for it and as I am arguing, give it the ability to do some calculations to see things like past trends and forecast the future. With that data, you can then go in and add more rule based behaviors which can add much more depth to the game.


The AI isn't the big beef with the game though. Really, there DOES need to be more variety in strategy. If whoever has the bigger stack wins, whoever has more land can create bigger stacks, and so on, then there's really only one path to victory. Nobody can find a "backdoor" tactic to win.

This is something that we can both agree on and the proposed use of forecasting models doesn't really handle this problem.

But if the AI is well programmed and is fed the proper forecasting data, It would not be out of the realm of possibility for some very interesting diplomatic alignments in the game that could potentially allow #4 to align with #1 and mop the floor with its weaker neighbours because #4 has forecasted one of its neighbours will outgrow it and it has been programmed to find a partner and star a war to remove that threat.

At the end of the day, what I propose was never pitched as a panacea, but well understood solution to solving one of the most glaring weakness in the AI, which is its inability to formulate a coherent plan because it gathers day on a turn by turn basis. I firmly believe that if the AI can make basic past trend analysis, and forecast certain variables into the future, it can behave much more intelligently.

The nice thing about it is that you don't need a radically different type of AI for this because the tools would just give the AI programmers a new way to approach coding AI behavior by giving the AI more information to work with and behave rather than simply being limited to what they've been doing so far. My biggest fear with Civ4 AI is really back to the same old method of 'present situation analysis' where the AI takes a snapshot of the variables in the current turn and make long-term decisions. As Civ3 has proved, it has its limits and I believe we've hit it with Civ3. The AI needs to broaden its information gathering beyond just 1 turn.