AI Personality?

[MeteorPunch]

I think it will definitely make the AI's more predictable, but I don't think that's a bad thing in terms of *enjoying* the game. "There goes crazy Khan, always trying to kill me." or "Ghandi is such a sucker for gpt deals, lol."

Even if it does make things easier/predictable, there are other factors which can compensate. None of the Civ games (1-3) have ever dissappointed in terms of difficulty, and I don't think 4 will be any different.

 

[dh_epic]

I think a healthy way around it is a "randomize personality" button. So in one game, Ghandi could have the personality of an aggressive expansionist, and Khan could have the personality of a religious builder, and the Incas could be #1 in the tech tree.

Still, it comes back to the fact that those personalities have to be profitable. Being a religious builder would have to be as viable a strategy as being an aggressive expansionist.

 

[covenant]

If there are personalities, they all need to be competitive in their own ways... In other words, they'd need to overhaul the game so having a personality is profitable.

In Civ 3, the following personality wins every time:

- trust no one
- disregard culture
- expand as fast as possible
- conquer one at a time
- disregard reputation
- pick on the weak and isolated

In other words, if someone's personality is "get really upset about reputation", or "I like culture", or "i'm a very trusting guy who just wants to be friends", they will LOSE. So I hope they've changed those aspects of the game so these personalities can win.

Also, there ought to be a way to randomize the personalities, so you can't just look over and say "India... nothing to worry about. I'll spend more time worrying about the Iroquois."

here here and well said... if they dont fix the core flaw, this is a band aid that will only make things worse.

 

[covenant]

yeah one thing that kinda got to me in the old civ games were that the other "leaders" were somewhat flat - for example, japan was only aggressive and expansionist in the past century, but before then, they were rather isolationist. same with the us, who only broke out of its relatively isolationist stance (at least compared to now) since wwii.

as time and leaders change, countries change in policy - that wud be interesting to have represented somehow - where, maybe dependent on the governmental shift, a country might start changing its characteristics - so let's say a civ went from a fairly free, democratic state into a revolution, where it became totalitarian. suddenly it starts turning on its allies. i dunno, makes u pay much more attention to world events, as opposed to ignoring those announcements about revolutions in other civs.

This would be a filler feature for me, that if for sure. Having to pay attention to these types of things would be great addition to the level of immersion.

 

[Naokaukodem]

I think the ideal answer is both.

You don't want him to have a personality to the point that he loses because of personality flaws that make him lose the game.

The answer still comes back to the fact that you need to make the game competitive for different personalities. Builders, peaceniks, warmongers, opportunists, and diplomats should all be able to win the game.

I agree with this! And i think it will be the case in civ4... I don't think that the difficulty of the game have much to do with this... because it is the nature of civ to reduce the number of possible victories in difficult levels: civ is in a great part about advancement over other civs, for example tech leading. It will be obvious that you will not be tech advantaged in higher difficulty levels. Instead of playing an average tech advanced civ or a high tech advanced civ, you will play this poor backwarded civ that few cares about because it is weak in its corner of the map. You will play this hard scenario for being a great civ. So it it is obvious that your possibilities will be reduced. In reality, war have been many time the only way for a small country to rise, like so many unifications and other empires creation like the Roman empire. You can't become a great civ, the greatest civ of the earth, just by existing in your corner, you have to shine in some way, you have to do something. When Civ is about advancement, mostly tech-sided as high techs allows higher advancement, it is logical than in higher difficulty levels you will need to do something in order to act against your lower tech advancement. So war is quite a legitimate way to do this. I would say also that you don't have to play at higher difficulty levels at anytime, they don't mean only that you are good, they mean also that you want a kind of RARE challenge which is at the limits of the actual game way of playing, a little like a mod could be. Also, don't forget that it is about becoming the GREATEST civ of all time. You can always play the game and take pleasure to it even if you don't win. In fact, they should imagine a fun way to lose... maybe they could lower the victory conditions like doing it a 'Survival', and adjust the score according to your position within the civ community: Ultimate Winner, Head Group, Challengers, Survivals? Finally, as it is about advancement, there could have other ways to be an advanced civ than techs, for example culture. But culture is far too much dependent again from techs in Civ3. But what is culture? I mean, Cultural Victory is a little winning just by being oneself... it is already a kind of survival victory... that's why culture should be less dependant of techs in the first place. In the second place, there should be a reward in culture for have kept one civilization in one culture block throughout history, as civilizations rarely made it from the ancient age to the modern age in reality. Or maybe they could just give some cultural bonuses for some actions, like being the first to switch to Republic (little tech-dependant though), the ones who write the universal declaration of the human rights, etc... That would make a challenge for weak civs to survive in harder difficulty modes.

 

[NP300]

I am ok with personalities but they should add a random factor. For instance, on average Gandhi will tend to be peaceful. But there will still be a small chance he will engage in aggressive behavior. This way the AI will still not be totally predictable, in spite of the personalities.

They migth even make it partly random for a whole game. There may be a 1 to 10 scale of aggressiveness where 10 is aggressive and 1 peaceful. Gandhi may have a 50% chance of getting a 1, a 25% chance of getting a 2, a 20% chance of getting a 3 and so forth. With Kahn it may be the opposite. This way the AI isn't so predictable and can always catch you off-guard.

This random factor should also be added to all AI decisions. For instance, in the present game the AI always sends its troops to your weakest spot. This is fine but when the AI always does this it becomes predictable. Instead the programmers could bias the AI in favor of attacking the weakest spot but still give it a probabilistic chance to attack a stronger spot, even a very strong one, to keep the human player off guard.

 

[dc82]

i was at b&n and read up on the computer games article - so apparently they r fixed personalities, the magazine talked about how genghis khan will be more aggressive and not really use much diplomacy, while gandhi would be more peaceful. some interesting points were that the ai would supposedly not only not cheat, but that in theory they're suposed to treat all players, human or computer the same - so that u won't have a game end up to be an all-computer alliance against u as it was in the past civs. so there u go...

 

[CurtSibling]

I hope the AI personalities will evolve and mutate as you interact or betray them.

I imagine even Ghandi getting steamed with you, after breaking a peace deal 10 times!

Having to appease Khan or Stalin into an alliance by being evil like them would be an interesting game apsect too...

.

 

[Darwin420]

I agree with CurtSibling. AI that evolves each game depending on what happens would be great! Each game, the AI starts with the personality of their leader, but depending on what they deal with, the personality could change.

So, in Game 1, you are neighbors with Ghandi, and you both benefit from mutual trade agreements, and go on in peace to conquer the world for, uh, Human Rights...

In Game 2, Ghandi is neighbors with good 'ol Khan... when you meet India in this game, Ghandi has become a bitter soul, nervous and twitchy around other world leaders, always distrustful, because he's tired of getting attacked by Khan every century or so, and getting the shaft end of the deal.

Would definitely make things awesome. This way, there would be some predictability in the very early game, but by the middle-early game, personalities are already changing. Maybe make is so ever 50 turns (maybe less) the game reevaluates the personality.

Either way, I'm looking forward to what is really going to happen.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

As dh_epic said the main disadvantage is that "personalities" are actually a type of strategy and for it to work well,
1) multiple strategies need to be potential best paths to scoring (even if not winning)

2) The strategy needs to be changeable to fit the circumstances

I seriously doubt the gameplay is up to 1) and I also seriously doubt that the AI is going to do 2)

which means that changing the personality of the AIs so they are more the same (ie closer to the generic winning strategy) will probably happen on higher difficulty levels, meaning that all these unique personalities are only for lower level play. (or there is immense cheating on the AIs part to compensate it for its bad play)

 

[Justy]

I like the idea of having personalities for the AIs outside of simple algorythm where everybody essentially acts the same. Give the AIs distinct personalities. These personalities should follow unique logic paths determined by past interactions with other civs and various wildcard events. This can be further modified by the gov type and current events in the country.