Silly Prince

CB Droege said:

Would you be willing to play against a group of humans who all got their productions costs halved? poly not. It wouldn't be fun.

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Reminds me of when I played World of Warcraft. There were different classes that all had unique abilities/spells/etc. When it came to dueling (1v1 fighting) certain classes clearly had an advantage over other classes. Whenever I was dueling against another class that I had the advantage over I would handicap myself somehow, whether I didn't use a certain ability or what. Tipping the scales so they're more balanced made the duel more enjoyable for both parties. I think that analogy fits perfectly with the AI's bonuses on prince and above. The human starts out with an incredible advantage because it can think. So in order to tip the scales so they're more balanced you need to give the AI's some advantages, or the player disadvantages (one in the same thing). That makes the game more fun than if one side is clearly dominant over the other. Now it depends on player skill as to how many advantages you need to give to the AI in order to balance the scales. For some people that's prince, others it's immortal, etc. Of course if the player isn't very skilled at the game it could be the player that needs the bonuses...that would be warlord and lower difficulties. But I honestly don't understand the aversion to playing on a more balanced setting just because the AI needed some bonuses in order to balance it.

The golf analogy even works... I would much rather strive to get better and better on a normal course, then try to keep the same level of performance on a course that with moving traps...

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The traps don't move in Prince, any more than they do at Noble. They are just a little tougher.

Noble is an arbitrary level of difficulty that you may feel comfortable at. Competition against other players is the focus of GOTM, and one of the opportunities it provides is to get out of your comfort zone and improve your single player game.

There are higher levels of difficulty, and we shall, no doubt, explore them in the coming months. They weren't put there by Firaxis to ensure that players lose all the time, but to provide more challenge as players learn. That's a major factor for many players in sustaining interest in the game.

AlanH said:

The AI doesn't compete in the Games of the Month very often, so its ability to "cheat" is irrelevant. We have recently invited GOTM-AI to play some of the Civ3 Conquests games, taking the human role, and you can find his posts in the recent COTM spoilers. He failed miserably relative to the human competitors, losing all but one game. Only at Sid level did he manage to win a bronze medal, when he had the same advantages as the AI. This indicates the performance difference between the GOTM players and the AI.

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I have been unable to find where the AI has posted could someone please help me.

Is it possible for this to be done in Civ4?
If yes could each player do this?
I.E. I am sure I read it somewhere else before, but can I set all players to AI and just observe a game? Therefore the AI would have complete control but I would still end the turn, and could have 2 options of playing
1. I can only follow one AI civ
2. I can follow all civs and see the whole map.

Personally I feel that option 1 would be the most beneficial as I could without looking at lines code see how the AI 'thinks'

We may well ask GOTM-AI to play future Civ4 GOTMs. His schedule has been very busy recently, but he has already expressed an interest and played at least one practice game. It takes him no time at all to actually play the moves, of course,. The most time-consuming activity for him is to slow the game down so as to write up the spoilers. He has already contributed to one of the Civ4 GOTM debates here.

You can find posts by GOTM-AI going as far back as COTM 15 here, and here, and here.
He also played COTM 16 thru 19, and posted in the spoilers for those games. 19 was the Sid game where he won a bronze medal. As his was the only cultural 100k victory in that game, he also won fastest and lowest scoring awards for that victory condition.

Others will have to answer your questions about how a feeble human can attempt to watch GOTM-AI's inscrutable playing methods as I don't know the details.

I just looked at her (at least in Russian language, AI is she, not he) global rating. She managed to be within 100 best human players with only 4 games played. IMHO not so bad for a stupid piece of silicon . I am very curious how she will perform in 4OTM.

You are correct to comment on the gender of our honourable guest player from the dark side. In fact I think we are both wrong. GOTM-AI is a product of the IT industry, and as such is gender-free and should be referred to as IT

Personally i think GOTM-AI is not singular, but plural.. like the borg.. so you could refer to them as 'they'

I think you are correct since 'they' were refering to 'themselves' as 'we'.

I just completed CIV GOTM-2, this is my first time to play GOTM, and also my first game on Prince, and also my first game on Epic speed. I normally play Noble, Standard speed. Trust me, I know the feelings of Noble players here, but this jump in difficulty was totally worth it. On a couple of occasions I was almost giving up, but in the end it is exactly this challenge that made the game so interesting.

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In summary, if you want to gain skills, this GOTM is an excellent way to approach Prince if you are a Noble player! Maybe you won't be as lucky as me, but you will certainly gain some insights.

mate, if you can't survive past 100 AD on prince, your problems lie a lot deeper than a few superficial AI bonus'

Lanstro said:

mate, if you can't survive past 100 AD on prince, your problems lie a lot deeper than a few superficial AI bonus'

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Hey some of us have mearly played the tutorial followed by GTOM 1 and GOTM 2 due to time constraints. So we learn the hard way.