AI incompetence deliberate?

[TheMeInTeam]

Tactical level incompetence does not appear to be WAD.

Strategic level game-throwing does appear to be WAD.

 

[burleigh]

After trying CiVI for a bit and being put off by the shocking AI (won't be buying the expansion until Fanatics tell me it's good!), I've reverted to CiV and the Community Patch Project.

AI is a lot better, and turn times are acceptable- I think the brainiacs behind CPP unearthed a lot of inefficient code and reworked it (but may be wrong!).

With the low resourcing given to AI when CiVI was developed, I suspect similar code inefficiencies exist there.

Even with that, it really isn't difficult to write code that says settlers shouldn't move outside home lands without at least one escort, and if it still hasn't been sorted over a year from launch that doesn't really bode well for the future

 

[Rosty K]

Even with that, it really isn't difficult to write code that says settlers shouldn't move outside home lands without at least one escort, and if it still hasn't been sorted over a year from launch that doesn't really bode well for the future

It depends really. This is a heavily player-centric view of sorts. I, for sure, am and will be walking my settlers to positions I know to be safe without an escort, so making the AI always escort them puts it at some disadvantage (always need military units with civilians). However, less drastic rules (e.g. 1) escort when sending a settler into FoW; 2) ALWAYS!!!111 escort when going in the direction of a human player, because those organic softies are treacherous bastards ).

Though I'd suggest a different workaround - just give them the ability to fight back, at least at the level of a scout... Let them be captured upon defeat instead of being destroyed, all right. Though this could be incompatible with layer system now...

 

[Archon_Wing]

Tactical level incompetence does not appear to be WAD.

Strategic level game-throwing does appear to be WAD.

Exactly. Which is why I found all that nonsense about programing tossed around earlier to be the red herring of red herrings. While I agree with the sentiment that not everything such as unit management can be magically fixed, the "gamethrowing" is deliberately put in there and is not bound by AI restrictions, as pointed out by the Civ IV examples shown anywhere. The Civ 6 ones in the poorly designed agendas should be fairly evident. Certainly, I'm not a programmer, but garbage in garbage out?

Being the ai scripter of a defunct Starcraft mod (screw you Blizzard and your lack of mod support) that still gets put up on random Chinese and Korean sites from time to time, I think many users don't mind dealing with technical limitations as much as long as the design is clear. My AI had to cheat in terms of map knowledge due to the very limited engine of the game but unlike many other mods that simply just spammed units because they had unlimited resources, I kept the bonuses in check by making sure the AI never seemed to produce "impossible" armies, or at least not by much, and then having random dice rolls at a lot of different points to make sure it never did the same thing.

But by doing that, a seasoned player would never lose to it, so eventually I added resource cheats for the first part of the game, but it would actually be able to run out of resources whereas most other ones never would run out of resources. In the end though, the ones without the resource hack ended up being more popular anyways though, despite it being "easier" and funny enough we already have APIs that can play the game to a very high level already (granted this was all before that)

Now, due to hardcoded limitations, I couldn't affect the unit behavior part, so the exploits remained. As it turns out, not everyone is going to exploit a crappy AI as long as it isn't that blatant.

The tl;dr is that I more or less succeeded to a degree on the strategical front. And while I couldn't make an AI that truly played with the same rules as the player, this at least maintains the illusion. And while this is obvious a different genre of game, I think the same logic to play, that is I think players would respect the computer player more for making sound large scale decisions and that can almost be hardcoded in, as opposed to it being a tactical genius, the part everyone fixates on deemed to be impossible.

Oh and Civ 6's AI actually bombards better than its Civ 5 counterpart..... lol. I guess that's not saying much.

 

[burleigh]

It depends really. This is a heavily player-centric view of sorts. I, for sure, am and will be walking my settlers to positions I know to be safe without an escort, so making the AI always escort them puts it at some disadvantage (always need military units with civilians). However, less drastic rules (e.g. 1) escort when sending a settler into FoW; 2) ALWAYS!!!111 escort when going in the direction of a human player, because those organic softies are treacherous bastards ).

Though I'd suggest a different workaround - just give them the ability to fight back, at least at the level of a scout... Let them be captured upon defeat instead of being destroyed, all right. Though this could be incompatible with layer system now...

Agreed! I was trying to think of a solution that wouldn't involve too many conditions, one that the poor sap writing the AI might be able to cope with. The fightback ability you suggested would help.

Just thought of another option.... Increase the settler cost by that of the latest melee unit available. When it's produced, it'll be a combi unit (no overlay issues). When the city is born, the melee unit is released. AI is on the same playing field as the player

Good thoughts these.... Chances of them being put into action are roughly zero