does anyone think it will be harder to fool the computer in civ iii? i think most of the time they will be fooling us!(interview at apolyton) the ai seems extremely intelligent, and i think were gonna have to find ways to get around that, find its weaknesses, and i think thatll take a while... from what it seems, there wont be many weaknesses, because it will always react differently in the same situation. we wont always play the same way, even our own preferred strategies will need variations every time. we may need new ways to conquer cities; maybe a 2 pronged attack sometimes, a frontal assault others, and maybe even 3 or 4 pronged attacks. we may need to attack with battleships from one sea, and have a few destroyers guarding transports on another a little away, just to FOOL it. i think it will be a very different game indeed.

just think of the possibilities; we will be real generals and admirals, reacting to an almost human ai. they will have strategies that will extremely work because of our failings, and others that will bomb because, like history, blunders happen. same with us. itll be AWESOME.

tell me what all of you get out of that interview

i think ill try a poll for the first time. itll be on basic strategy ai for the comp

I've got a brain...it has a CPU. Though I admire it's ability to do complex mathematical functions at high speeds I sneer at it's long term planning abilities, and though it may provide me with great challenge (esp. with the advantages it gets at Deity/Emporer) it can't compete with a brain for strategic planning.

The biggest advantage I feel the AI will have is that there are SO many new things to keep track of (disease on floodplanes for one ;)) that I just won't be able to keep track of every minute detail while it will.

Sounds like you have Big Blue-aphobia, Hipster!;) :D

I just read an interview on the Civ3 infocenter with the guy who programed the AI. He said it has been completely rewritten, and is much more formiddable than Civ2 (not that that was a tough thing to do :rolleyes: ).

The new AI is supposed to make use of combined arms, carrier based aircraft (yes! the AI will put jets on carriers!) in support of marines and artillery on your shores. So. look out! Its not your fathers Oldsmobile anymore.;)

It will make much better decisions about city improvements and unit production, based on its enviornment . Cool concept. Some unpredictability is welcome.

dont matter how smart you make the puter, it was still programmed by a human and it has to operate within its programming. It simply dont have the ability to learn :(
Granted it'll be better and smarter than the Civ2 AI but i dont think it can school me unless it cheats.
bottom line, level playing field, human brain wins everytime.

Originally posted by RouTaran
bottom line, level playing field, human brain wins everytime.

That's what Garry Kasparov thought too. Deep Blue showed him otherwise :)

they played a total of 6 games straight (6 games per match, they played 5 or 6 matches i think, and it was 1-1 or 2-2 when they went into their last match)
deep blue won the last game and score was 1-0 Deep Blue
the only reason it won was because a human being cannot concentrate for 10 hours straight, something called fatuige.
From IBM's Coverage of the games:
Kasparov, who afterward admitted he was in a poor frame of mind entering Game 6, fell into a well-known trap that has been established as a bad line to follow. According to commentators covering the match, it was almost inconceivable that someone of Kasparov's ability could allow this to happen.
It appeared that the pressure of the past five games had taken its toll on Kasparov. His disastrous mistake early in the game was certainly uncharacteristic of a man generally considered to be the greatest player in the history, and Kasparov's early resignation was a sign that he'd lost his will to fight.
chessmaster cant beat me the hardest difficulty(it's always draw or me win, usually draw), but if i play 7 games straight, i have absolutely no doubt i will lose because i simply cant maintain 100% chess mode for a prolonged period.

The AI won't be even close to human.

One major difference is that the AI basically doesn't care. The AI plays the game just like someone with 50 Million$ would work: without heart.

It continues to play even though it's reduced to one size 1 city and surrounded by 50 of your units.
When I start a game on monday and use the time after work to play the game till I reach the modern area on wednesday or Thursday I won't be running around like the AI did in Civ2 and demand tech that I won't get and causwe a war that way that might ruin what I built in 3 days :o

we may need to attack with battleships from one sea, and have a few destroyers guarding transports on another a little away, just to FOOL it.


I really, really hope that this is possible. It would mean that the AI realized the significance of a large number of a certain type of ship just off its coast. In Civ2, the AI only really regarded units individually, ie. didn't see what a fleet and transports meant.

One thing I'm hoping the Firaxis team has managed to do is keep information away from the AI. In countless games I have played, the AI would always know that those transports were empty, or that your other attack force was hiding in your cities, EVEN if there was no way it should be able to according to the rules. I don't think I've ever had the Civ2 AI peek inside one of my cities legally... it didn't need to.


Anyways, I agree that the CIV III AI is going to require some thinking to defeat. Any military campaign will have to be carefully prepped and thought out - no more half-assing it. We are going to have to rethink defense too. In Civ2, I defended my borders, and left everything else with 2 defending units. The Civ3 AI is quite possibly able to orchestrate breaking through the outer defense, capturing some cities, and moving into your heartland, much as I have done to its predecessors.

I enjoyed the Deep Blue discussion! I don't know enough about the technical specs of that supercomputer compared to a modern 1.7GHz P4, but I do know this...

Chess is a terrific exercise of logic, memory, and to some extent creativity. But it's a simple game! I'm no Kasparov ;) but I can still look at a chessboard and immediately see how the game is going. The number of permutations are many orders of magnitude less than you need to try to keep abreast of in Civ.

Imagine a game of Civ SP vs a single AI, played on an 8x8 all-grassland map, with the two sides being identical, and a maximum of 16 units (6 different types) per side. Pretty weak, eh?! :lol: Actually that could make an entertaining little scenario! (And the new AI might be able to play it well.)

Even Kasparov could not hope to play a "perfect" game of Civ. There are just too many variables to consider, too many ways to approach a complicated problem like a landgrab vs enemy defenses.

little info on deep blue
In its final configuration, the IBM RS6000/SP computer used 256 processors working in tandem, with an ability to evaluate 200 million chess positions per second, as opposed to the three positions per second that Kasparov can evaluate.

when i find the exact specs on it (like total speed in MHz/GHz if possible, i'll post it)

Originally posted by Mikeweather


That's what Garry Kasparov thought too. Deep Blue showed him otherwise :)

IBM was allowed to reprogram Deep Blue between games. a.k.a. they cheated. At least in my mind. The other 20 chess masters that programmed him judged Kasparov and reprogrammed Deep Blue to counter. It was more like 20 vs. 1. Kasparov also beat Deep Blue 2 years earlier in a similar match where IBM couldn't reprogram it. But that match isn't as well known.

On the question......I voted for the second option. It's STILL just a computer, although the patterns are more complicated than before, they are still there...and once we figure them out, the AI will look just like Civ 2's AI. Very predicatable. But with the excellent work done by the developers, it should be a long time before that happens!!

well, 3 out of about 35 think like me:) i really do think itll be pretty tough. even though i really only played at king at the highest, im not bad. i never tried emporer or diety, so i dont know how hard it is. i just play for fun, and if the game keeps you on your toes, thats all i can hope for

I think the AI may have certain tactical axioms to use by the programmers, I don't expect pure evil though.

BUT remember, even though CIV2's AI was very dumb,
It was still very evil at times!
No tactics seem to count when the AI has it's artificial mind on
a mass armour rush!!!

With on ZOC things might get messy!

In the article it says that the AI is not necessarily the perfect AI but an AI resembling roughly a recognizable person/region/culture in history. That's why I've started another thread here http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=7107, discussing a AI competition to improve the available AI's.

However, I think we will have enough problems beating the AI as it is. And it is very likely that the AI will mess up sometimes, as long as it doesn't in a predictable way, nothing is lost.

I'd love for the AI to surprise me and keep coming up with cunning new strategies and the like - but im not holding my breath

I am going to hope they are smart, I get tired of stupid AI oppents. In Civ2 they were too easy once you cought onto their tricks, they don't know how to think on that one.

But I am going to be optomisic:egypt: and say they will be much smarter and be able to think

i think they will be smarter, like humans, but never come close to thinking exactly like a human.

Originally posted by DaEezT


One major difference is that the AI basically doesn't care. The AI plays the game just like someone with 50 Million$ would work: without heart.

Who cares about heart?

Heart matters. The AI won't stay up til 3am to build the needed units to launch the d-day invasion while at the same time research and build a spaceship to land on AC. Humans don't like to lose, so we will rethink our tactics to make sure we kick some micro chip butt the next go around. It is just a sub routine to the AI.
However, well progammed the computer ALWAYS cheats, even on the lowest level. I don't care what the reports say. I bet you the AI civs will still trade tech that a human wouldn't dare too. ie gunpowder, mobile warfare, advanced flight..... It is much harder to fight 3 civs with rifles than 1.

What we call AI nowadays is no more than a lot of codes. Someday, it'll be more powerful than humans. For now, it's dumber than a tree.
It can't even take advantage of the terrain during combat... gimme a break. Deity level is hard not bc the AI is better then - it's bc it gets 60% of bonus in production and science and many more hidden cheats.
They allow me to build up a stack of transports full of armor right close to their shores. Sigh.

The AI definitely knows things it should not. I knew once I was mounting an invasion fleet off its coast... outside of is visible range. Maybe it steals warplays automatically... buat I never had a hint of espionage going on.
Last night I started a change in strategy with China, and gave her rite of passage. She has several sections separated my my land, and was continually trying to cross. I am twice her size and strength, and do not considere her a threat, and have no available land to colonze. Two turns later I saw two stacks marching.. 16 units of ombined armor each. then 2 more next turn.... She was at war with germany, and was heading to where Germany was launching an invasion--in an area wher China had no units or cities, and should have had no clue
Other wise, AI does mount new strategies from time to time, and that does make it more of a challenge.
Now, if I could just figure out how to launch Ironclads in one turn, with pop 6 cities....

AI is just a determination by a programmer(s) to value the potential outcomes so the AI can choose the path of the greatest relative benefit. Chess is dramatically easier to express in logical comparisons (not that I'm saying it's easier to play, as there's a reason Kasparov and other masters are highly respected) -- there are only 6 types of pieces, and 64 locations on the board.

The "Chess AI" places a value on every piece, and another value depending on the placement upon the board. For example, a Queen is valued at 9, and a Queen in the center has a higher value than a Queen on the side. There is no random outcome to any move. These numerical comparisons have been around before AI, and are used in chess strategy books. The "AI" just took advantage of these existing easily-expressed mathematical comparisons, and allowed the ability to pursue any number of moves with likely counter-moves to the Nth degree. The use of existing "Chess Masters" helped refine the numerical values on certain pieces and their placement, in response to the evolving match. What Big Blue accomplished was allowing a team of programmers and masters to decide in advance how to react to certain board configurations.

Extrapolate to Civ3. Infinitely larger board (hundreds by hundreds), many units with varying functions, randomized outcomes, different government types, resource allocation, trading, diplomacy ... It should go without saying that effectively determining in advance the value of every potential situation is not going to be possible for the programmers. And in this way any human will learn what traps the AI will be lured into, again and again, so the human can always take advantage of the AI's Achilles' Heel.

Originally posted by Mikeweather
That's what Garry Kasparov thought too. Deep Blue showed him otherwise

As many said its only a matter of time, chess is a relatively simple problem, the rules and possible layouts are finite. Huge compared to tic-tac-toe but on the same order, Civ adds much more complexity to the simulation of war (thats all chess is), more land, terrain, larger variety of units.

However, I don't think Civ is less tractable than chess. Overall there is more variablity in Civ, but locally there isn't, since most units only move 1 space a turn, you can very easily predict when those enemy troops will threaten your city. So you can in turn look at each city and determine what to do there based on local conditions. The AI just does not threaten your kingdom as a whole (unless its really small), if sea is involved anywhere its even worse, you can expect the AI to drop 1 unit on your separate landmass every 100 years or so.

Now compare chess where a queen in the center can threathen anything on the board in 1 turn.

The biggest problem in Civ AI is the crutch of cheating, I think if they set down at the beginning determined not to cheat it may motivate them to produce a better AI. I know it has for me on the occasions I have done so.

Cheating also creates an artifical opponent that is completely different from a human opponent. You can't send dummy transports, cause the AI knows they are empty. You can't move defense from one city to another, because the AI then attacks the weaker defended city. Those strategies can work against humans. And you see the same general strategies in chess also, without the fog of war.

Any kind of comparison to human intelligence will always be false until the cheating is removed. As soon as the AI does something based on information it can't possibly know it instantly becomes just another programmed routine. With the loss of immersion that causes.

Another unfortunate side-effect of this is once/if-ever multiplayer is released most of us will have to relearn how to play the game.

The AI programming for the game has nothing to do with machine intelligence. It's just a deeply embedded series of conditional statements which encode certain decision procedures. How a good AI has nothing to do with a smart machine, but rather a programmer who is also a good player. It's sad, though in my opinion true, that serious game players (like the people who post to this forum) would probably be able to do more to improve the AI than the authors of the game. It's because we have mastered strategies. Strategies are nothing more than routines, plus some conditons about when the routines should and shouldn't be carried out. Once you break it down like this, it's not even that hard to program (although I'm not sure of the architecture of the Civ AI).

For example, for any given city, there is a reasonably simple strategy for what to do to maximize shield production. (Funny that the actual AI is absolutely terrible at this!) Of course, your stategies must differ if in the "big picture", your civ needs a bunch of workers and settlers. But these are just extra conditionals. A if a great player can clearly articulate his/her strategy, that strategy can be written as AI. Of course, at some point all the conditions become too messy and it's time to release the game.

Honestly, sometimes I see hints of meticulous work when I watch the AI. Other times I'm very disappointed (in retrospect; when I'm playing, I'm thankful that my enemies are being dumb). I'm sure there are a lot dumb things you've caught the AI doing.

It would also make a fun survey, or maybe later a poll: "what are the dumbest habbits of AI states?"

I'm not sure what my own answer would be, but I know of several great candidates.

The dumbest things are:
-landgrabbing, a human 'd rarely do that. I don't mean the normal expansion, but rather building cities deep inside enemy turf. Cities in the mid of the tundra or desert, lol. Ok, I make outposts, but I make it act and look like an outpost. No cathedral inside it, of course.
-building queue, as the few times I could see what was going on inside their cities, I only spotted dumb things. Size 12 cities without temples. Heh. Half of the pop was entertainers.
-the AI also never gets the picture unless you're INSIDE its borders. You can stack troops at ease near it, as it never swaps to war counter measures.
-no mass attacks unless they're much bigger than you. What's the point of sending a pair of units at a time? Well, maybe they never do that against me as I strike first. :lol:
-wonders are placed randomly, and they build it even when beaten down to 2-3 cities. And after they lose their capital, it seems to be moved randomly too.
-city placement. I like to raze cities not only bc they are far, but even the close ones are ill placed. Cmon, 1 tile to the left and you can have 3 resources at the same time. The worst thing I saw was when they founded a new city that could NOT get iron and coal inside its radius, despite it was possible. Tsc.

And the list can go on and on...