Naokaukodem
Millenary King
- Joined
- Aug 8, 2003
- Messages
- 4,000
Thats a very strange argument. This is a game, so AIs should play in a way that is most fun for the human, who is actually playing the game. The AIs aren't people playing the game, they're there to enhance *my* enjoyment, not there own.
Many people (myself included) feel a total break in history immersion if AIs do things that make them feel like gameplayers, rather than real countries.
For example, if the US and UK had annexed France rather than liberating it after WW2 (play to win!), or if the US troops in Britain before D-day had suddenly marched on London and conquered it (play to win!) or if the US suddenly invaded Canada during the 20th century (play to win!) then that would feel totally wrong.
Your examples fit perfectly the realism bit of my sentence. "if the game mechanics are not aimed towards realism, then nevermind the realism". It means that if the game does not "force" you to give back cities, or does not force you not to invade a weak neighbour, then you shouldn't go for them, no more than the AI.
Although, in Civ4 and other Civs anyway, we are far to see this kind of things you describe. The fact is, that in previous Civs, Ais plays all against the player. This is the result of a "friendly" AI. Contradictory? No. If the AI is there only for flavor, and not winning, then the programming of it is not rational, hence those gangs up against the human player.
Ultimately, AI playing to win would be more fun to me. AIs would be rooted to the mechanics of the game and the geopolitics of the map. Would trigger much more enjoyable games, like those games we can see in multiplayer, that are far more interesting than actual Civs single player, for the diplomacy part at least. As to multiplayer, that isn't that much fun, not because of diplomacy, but because of players quitting. Last game, there was a big war dude with many horse archers that began to invade other players. Instead of resisting, those players quited, and what? The big dude made peace with AIs! And what? He started a war with another player! And what? He quited at his turn! At the end i was the only human player left with the big dude, he had the same army as mine, but he had a score much more high, because he had some cities from various civs. That (and many other things, among them the time lenght of the games, but it's not the topic here), is making the multiplayer broken, not the fact to play to win.