Monarch to Emperor: the Great Leap

OzJeremy said:

I hear you, DogmaDog, but I'm with Doshniel on this one. The way they program an AI in a game like this (according to Sid Meier) is program the basics, then play it and see what it does wrong. Fix those problems, play it. Repeat. If you do that for enough iterations, you'll get an AI that is more like a human player than the AI that ships with Civ3. The fact that the difficulty levels are about giving the AI unfair production advantages, not about the higher-level AIs having better tactics, is an admission of failure by the programmers.

Chess is in many ways much more complicated than Civ3 - the beauty of chess is the huge complexity from very simple rules. It's not that hard to program a reasonably realistic chess program; it's just hard to program one that can beat Gary Kasparov. It should not be too hard to program AI that can beat most humans without cheating.

Having said that, I'm a lawyer, so what do I know.

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You are right that Chess is very complicated with respect to its mostly simple rules.

Knowing a lot about programming and complexity (as in mathematically) , there is NO respect I can think of in which chess is more complicated than civ 3.
Its actually pretty easy to program a chess program that can play at master level.
A brute force program (which means just computes the tree of possibility as far as it can, and just counts the pieces) on the best computer in the world can play at master level these days...
Of course Kasparov could rip it but Im talking about a programm that can be programmed in a few hours...

Now let me tell you this, there is no team of programmer that could programm an AI for civ 3 s.t
-it would run on a top of the line standard computer
-it would compute every turn under 5 minutes
-it would not get trashed at Regent (even against the human) level 1 vs 1

if you think chess is complicated , think about it this way.
The first ply (half-move) in chess has 20 possibilities.
And for most of the game , which last mostly 100-200 turn at most, this number stays in the 1-50 range.

Now think of how many choices there are for a turn in civ.
For example there are about 25 different positions for the luxury sliders and each unit can move to say 8 spots plus a few different actoins
so just with one warrior and the slider we have something like 400 + choices
this becomes million just considering one city and 2 units ...
If you consider diplomacy, etc then its just impossible to work this way.
So a computer AI cannot really use its computationnal advantage that much and has to rely on strategy which is based on human understanding of the game in any case.

OzJeremy said:

Oh, I remember what I was going to say. I agree with Doshniel because Firaxis *could* have made the AI better, but the quality of the AI is not something that is immediately apparent when you look to buy a new game, so it's not a very good selling point. Better (from a sales perspective) to put the effort into flashier graphics or a new feature.

But if they take a longer view, better AI does make for a better game in the long run, and shoddy AI does leave a sour taste in the mouth.

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I agree that in a game like civ, the AI is the second most important thing besides the game mechanics maybe even more than the interface in my mind.

And while the AI could have been improved for sure, specially on some minor "exploits" it would have been REALLY hard, to make it much better.

(see previous point)
doesnt anybody recall how impressed people were when the game came out at how strong the AI was?
of course each player has about 3 years of study and deconstruction of the ai flaws by many very smart ppl behind him and so can take advantage of every flaw, while the ai cannot learn from one game to the other...

I am still on Monarch, I am afraid of moving up to Emperor.

=DOCTOR= said:

Very good article.
Anyway, back to my point. More often than not entering a war 1 vs 1 with another AI civ on the same continent will result in a swift pasting from an AI army which is always far superior in numbers. Instead, what to do is jump on the band-wagon of an AI vs AI war, or if you're rich enough, sign military alliances with other civs.

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This is one Q that has really had me puzzled.... How do you join in with an AI -v- AI war until you get nationalism? I've had many games that and AI would declare war against me for refusing to pay tribute and not more than 1-3 turns later 1-2 more AIs would then pile on with the other. How is this possible? I cannot beat them to the punch w/o Nationalism because I can't ally against someone until it comes up in the diplo screen.... Am I missing something?

You can't buy alliances without embassies. At Nationalism you can buy mutual protection pacts, which are different.

Gorf,

Look at your capital. If you have writing, you can double click on the star beside the capital name. This will bring up a screen where you can pay an amount of gold to establish an embassy with another known civ. You can then negotiate military alliances and rights of passage (must know mapmaking). ROPs and MAs will make neighboring civs very friendly towards you. If another civ declares on you, make some MAs. It will sometimes save you from destruction and usually slows the tech pace.

killercane said:

Gorf,

Look at your capital. If you have writing, you can double click on the star beside the capital name. This will bring up a screen where you can pay an amount of gold to establish an embassy with another known civ. You can then negotiate military alliances and rights of passage (must know mapmaking). ROPs and MAs will make neighboring civs very friendly towards you. If another civ declares on you, make some MAs. It will sometimes save you from destruction and usually slows the tech pace.

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Yeah... I was probably really tired when I posted that Q... I figured it out the next time I played.... Now I'm trashing the AIs on Emperor level and the game just keeps getting more and more fun! Of course this is in large part due to the better starting locations I get from using MapFinder! Hey, if the AI can kill my attacking calvary army with one musketman with 2 hit points I can get a good start with mapfinder and not feel the least bit ashamed

I won on emperor as America, but only because I got a lot of land unlike the other 4 AI.
Currently, I'm playing a monarch game to try and win the space race while not being a scientific civ against all scientific AI. If I can keep up here, I'll probably be set to truely move up.

EDIT: I won both times. Thanks Ision!

Thank you very much Ision! Because of your article I won on my second try in emperor.

I am actually making this transition right now!
I played on a Pangeea map(tiny) on Monarch and WON by Conquest before entering into the industrial age!
Now I'm playing a continents map(small) on Emperor and the AI is technolocically with 6-10 techs ahead of me(only one AI civ left!).HOWEVER the only things that keep me from quitting are ''we have an average military'' and the fact that I have almost as many towns as he and the histograph is PERFECTLY diveded between each other(Historically ''The Cold War'').I guess in 10-20 turns I'll have the military force to crush him (his only source of oil is on my continent-provided by a colony) but he's building the SHIP
How do I prevent him from snatching my beautiful Conquest victory and converting it in a SPACE DEFEAT? Should I atack him quick and try a Blietzkrieg or should I wait till the ICBM?(I am at the end of the Industrial age- radio+flight).
I would apreciate any help!

VICTORY!
I finally won my first game on emperor and I think i can go further.
Thanks to you guys who post all the time and especially to you Ision.All your articles are amazing.

As far as being involved in Ai vs. AI wars. Fortunately, CIV3 is not like CIV2 where any diplomacy with AIs was total waste of time `couse AIs always joined together against you. In CIV3 it`s possible to make a good ally even of an AI controlled nation. However my experience is strong AI NEVER makes alliance with me. Only small AIs were willing to live in peace with me, or form some strategic alliance against another AI, but their real military help toward my strategic goals was miserable if any at all. Most of the time after forming an alliance with me against another nation they have been destroyed by this nation and the teritory of my friendly peacefull neighbour become another front line.
Finally, even if playing on huge planet with 16 civs I only rarely manage to form an alliance of 3 nations while rival, clearly AI, alliance consists of 6 or even more nations. Attack of such a strong alliance is impossible to stand, making some countre-attack is absolutely out of question. Especially if my allied AIs are very weak (and strong AI never formes alliance with human player).
That`s my experience. It doesn`t matter how many nations are on the plannet, it`s alway Human controlled nation vs. all AI nations. Only inferior AI allies with human and mostly is nothing but a "brake and setback" of human`s expansion.

Well Psycho on smaller maps(emperor) it's always easier at the beginning where if you bring an ally the others will never join another side but on bigger maps you have to see at the beginning which is the winning side and join it.Don't hurry and you probably will win all wars but remember it's always hard when you reach Human vs. only one AI, then you have to prove your military genius...

Something is really strange here. Everyone on this forum says that Monarch is just a bit harder than Regent, while Emperor is a completely new level. I played 1 game (not finished it) on Regent, and I was close to a Conquest victory (just 1 more good defended island left). On Monarch I have GREAT problems. I managed to get the biggest land area in the world, the biggest military force, but I'm overwhelmed in culture and pop (Rome has pop 14 while any other capital has pop 25!). When I tried to play on Emperor, it didn't seem at all different from Monarch.

Mirc said:

When I tried to play on Emperor, it didn't seem at all different from Monarch.

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I've been playing mostly Monarch lately and I find it quite a bit harder than Regent. I've also tried private Emperor games (have won on an Emperor SG training game, but but had a LOT of help there ), and find Emperor much harder.

The difference between having 2 content citizens born (Monarch) and only 1 content (Emperor) makes a huge difference if you don't have any lux nearby, taking lots of MP's and constant fiddling with the lux slider. A good start and access to lux would make the early game at Emperor similar to Monarch.

Emperor is also very different due to that being where the IA's get much better at researching techs. Although I've read that it's still possible to out-research the AI at Emperor, it's not easy, and good trading becomes extremely important.

Oops! Double post.

What are the MP's?

Oh, so my newly started Emperor game where I got everything I could get except that I don't have any luxuries is not so good as I thought.

gmaharriet said:

Although I've read that it's still possible to out-research the AI at Emperor, it's not easy, and good trading becomes extremely important.

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It's perfectly possible to out-research them even in Deity and even come close in Sid level (providing you do the usual GL bag of tricks).

Whoring my own article, check my signature: How to Win on Deity Builder-style. It's all about out-researching the deity AIs and becoming affluent on the process. It even has a link to game saves over at Poly.

Mirc said:

Something is really strange here. Everyone on this forum says that Monarch is just a bit harder than Regent, while Emperor is a completely new level. I played 1 game (not finished it) on Regent, and I was close to a Conquest victory (just 1 more good defended island left). On Monarch I have GREAT problems. I managed to get the biggest land area in the world, the biggest military force, but I'm overwhelmed in culture and pop (Rome has pop 14 while any other capital has pop 25!). When I tried to play on Emperor, it didn't seem at all different from Monarch.

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Yes, but compare Rome's production to the AI's. That AI city with 25 pop will be mostly irrigated tiles... and clowns, too. Chances are, Rome is producing more than enough shields to overcome the Monarch production bonus.

Maybe, but anyway, I won that game by Domination by destroying 3 weaker civs!

Now I'm working on Emperor.