PolyCast Episode 256: "All Aboard the Hype Train"

Cho-cho. The two-hundred-and-fifty-sixth episode of PolyCast, "All Aboard the Hype Train", features regular co-hosts Daniel "DanQ" Quick, Stephanie "Makahlua", Philip "TheMeInTeam" Bellew and "MadDjinn" with returning guest co-host Scott "AlphaShard" Dirk. It carries a runtime of 59m59s.

The summary of topics is as follows:

- 04m16s | Open Mic
Talking about the talking about of Episode 255 from community forums and on social media.
- 11m04s | News
Grazing at the buffet that is additional Civilization VI information: Resources, Agendas (00m51s), Diplomacy (16m48s), Natural Wonders (18m00s), Justified War (20m07s), War Weariness (26m52s), Great People (31m08s), Builders (35m06s), Governments (37m49s), Unit Movement (43m45s), City States (45m19s).

- Intro/Outro | Miscellaneous
Moving mobile meaning, iteration number implications, likeness and wrong sounding.

PolyCast is a bi-weekly audio production recording live every other Saturday throughout the year, in an ongoing effort to give the Civilization community an interactive voice; sibling show ModCast focuses on Civ modding, TurnCast on Civ multiplay.

Great episode.

Made me think about trend of giving up on idea of humanlike AI. In original Civ5 AI tried to pretend it's human and only had a few special abilities like calling you his favourite city-state. Expansions added intrigue and art exchange that doesn't work on humans. Civ6 goes even farther with core features like trade giving you insight into AI thoughts. Will trade be as important in multiplayer where it doesn't give this advantage?

Not that it's simplification necessary a bad thing. Most people remember caricature one trick characters from Civ like Shaka, Monty or Ghandi. I do not remember anything specific about others except maybe trade agreements with England. Agenda system may make everyone feel unique. It sounds very similar to Alpha Centauri.

Ilitarist said:

Great episode.
Made me think about trend of giving up on idea of humanlike AI. In original Civ5 AI tried to pretend it's human and only had a few special abilities like calling you his favourite city-state. Expansions added intrigue and art exchange that doesn't work on humans. Civ6 goes even farther with core features like trade giving you insight into AI thoughts. Will trade be as important in multiplayer where it doesn't give this advantage?

Click to expand...

Short of making another human player write down what their plans are, and then holding them to those plans, there's no real way for a Civ V-like intrigue system to work with human players. At least not with regard to long-term strategy or "agendas". The best you can do is provide visibility to their cities, units, and maybe certain interactions in the game space.

You could try to model something similar to Civ V's intrigue by giving notifications that a human player has conversed with another A.I. or player, or to leak the details of what that human player tries to do diplomatically. For example, if you and I are playing an MP game, and I open up the diplo screen with Gandhi, an intrigue system could print a little notification to your screen saying "MegaBearsFan is in diplomatic negotiations with Gandhi". You'd know I'm talking to Gandhi, but wouldn't know what I'm talking about. This would apply whether Gandhi is another human player or an A.I..

The game could go one step further by having a weighted chance of "leaking" certain details about diplomatic interactions. For example, if I try to trade a luxury to Gandhi in exchange for gold per turn, but Gandhi refused, there could be a chance of the intrigue system notifying you that "Gandhi has refused a trade deal with MegaBearsFan". Similarly, if I try to bribe Gandhi to declare war on you (assuming that's still something that Civ VI's diplomacy will allow players to do), and Gandhi refuses, then the game's intrigue system could have a chance of sending you a notification along the lines of "Our spies in Delhi have informed us that MegaBearsFan may be plotting against us."

But that's probably the extent to which that sort of intrigue system could work on other human players. At least, until we're plugging electrodes directly into our brains...