CIV 4 - AI Requests

[Sirian]

I disagree. Were slave owners 'unable' to free their slaves? Of course not!

You underestimate the vitriol, cruelty and determination of ruthless men who have their hands on the reigns of power. Terrorism did not begin in Israel or Algeria in the middle part of the 20th century. It has been part and parcel of human history since day one.

Challenging the established order has always been dangerous. If your society keeps slaves and you choose not to conform, you put yourself at risk. The nonconformist has a tendency to end up dead, as all those who are ruthless will identify them as threats and seek to kill them. This kind of terror goes on to this day: in organized crime, in countries that are ruled by despots instead of by laws, in street gangs, in fringe groups, and more. Murder is a powerful tool. Terror is even stronger.

If you think at any point in history, slave owners could simply have freed their slaves en masse and lived to tell about it, you've got a lot more thinking to do. Your remarks have built-in assumptions that would not hold up outside the modern-day set and setting. You take the rule of law for granted. You cannot do that in evaluating history. Effective rule of law bringing security (in general) to the common citizenry is a VERY recent development. So is freedom of speech. (True freedom occurs only in the absence of terror. Ask the African American of the late nineteenth century, after his or her "rights" were encoded into the law. Fat lot of good that did the ones who got strung up from trees. Terror is VICIOUS, and so are societies with entrenched traditions of slavery. Overcoming that kind of history is full of hard work, mountains of courage, and way more pain and sacrfice than you or I can appreciate from the current perspective.)

Jesus Christ Sirian, don't you have something else you could be doing?

I thought you said (somewhere, IIRC) that you don't like to waste electrons on empty sentences.

Of course I could be doing something else. Like I was for, oh, the last eighteen months, having stopped playing Civ3 shortly after PTW came out, and having stopped talking much about it except at Realms Beyond. So I'm back now, for a bit, and tossing in my two cents, as I am interested in what will happen with Civ4. I can say a lot in a short amount of time. Don't worry. I'll be gone again before you know it.

I do want some to be treacherous backstabbers, but not all of them all the time. Just often enough to spice up the game and get rid of a feeling of sameness.

That sums up my sentiments nicely.


- Sirian

 

[Sirian]

There are too many examples in history... Do you think a lot of romans were horrified when, after the 3rd punic war, romans legion levelled carthage and killed every human and animal in sight?

When you face a determined enemy, the choice may come down to "us or them". Why let an enemy go? So they can come back to fight another day? If your history with a particular enemy leads you to believe no real peace can ever be possible, genocide starts looking a lot more attractive. Would that enemy do the same to your people if they could? Sometimes the answer was yes. That changes the context.

You missed my point. LACKING A WAY TO DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT, people simply accept it as inevitable. They may even have approved, because of their view of the enemy, or partaken via mob mentality in a lawless situation, but absolute barbarism is not as simple as you make it out to be.

Genghis Khan butchered entire cities, yet he respected emissaries of his foes and rivals, as he valued communication. He had his own code of laws, his own boundaries, whereby cruelty was not employed on a whim, but as a means to an end, the tribute by which his people survived. The Mongols/Tatars were a parasitic people, making war and taking from others rather than working to build things themselves. That was an evil way of life, by today's standard, but those who paid the tribute were not then massacred anyway (as we often see in caracatures of evil, in movies and books).

The only way to oppose evil is to bring a bigger army to the fight. Good people tend not to love war, thus are at a disadvantage compared to criminals who will readily resort to violence or threats to steal from others.

History is the story of the struggle of good vs evil, of creation vs destruction, of rule of law vs rule of murder, of cooperation vs competition. It is no accident that human rights, science, and technology have begun to thrive only the wake of the rise of democracy, free speech, and self-rule. I don't guess you see it that way, but that's fine.

This is where TV gets an important goal. It can reach so many people and give them a continuous message that war is nessacery, inevitable and for a greater good. The TV deliveres the propaganda.

Yeah, that cuts both ways. Or are you immune to this, and only everybody else is falling prey to lies?

I live in America. I know what life is like here. I know what people are like here. And I know that a lot of things that are told about us around the world today are not true. ::shrug:: I can see where you lean on this score. Your remarks so far make it painfully clear. Not much use in trying to persuade you that some of your beliefs are based on falsehood, though. That is something for you to sort out, if you even care.

The press is either free or it's run by the government. If free, then multiple sourcing, honest reporters, and lack of censorship will allow the truth to emerge, most of the time, to some extent. This assuming the consumers demand objective reporting, and do not give a pass to biased reporting so long as the bias leans the way they themselves think. Starts to get messy from there, I'm afraid. We all have our biases.

The press in America happens to be free. I try to tune in to a variety of sources and cross reference them to sort through the biases inherent to different media here. Of course, I actually BELIEVE IN democracy and self-rule. Most Americans do. I'm starting to wonder about some other peoples, though. Remarks like yours lean the other way.

Propaganda... people dont make choises based on logic but emotion.

I disagree. Each person makes choices differently. Some this way, some that way. Some are better informed than others. Many choose only what they deem to be in their own self-interest. Some are willing to sacrifice small or large for something greater than themselves.

I pity you. You do not believe in self-rule. You do not believe in democracy. You do not believe people are competent to decide for themselves. What does that leave? Some well-meaning despot deciding for them? "Benevolent Monarchy"? No thanks. You can try that in your country if you like. I'll stick with my country's current constitution and set of laws. It's full of leaks, often messy, and always slow to react. Takes 9-11-01 type "wake-up calls" to get us up off our butts to do anything important. But by golly, when that call comes in, we do eventually decide to take action. Nothing more fearsome than a full-fledged democracy in which the people agree en masse that something needs doing. That many free thinkers working together on one mission... things get DONE. They get done fast and thorough, too.

Easy to make the cheap shot and call us all emotional and brainless, to follow the propaganda wherever it may lead. ::shrug:: You underestimate us. But that is your prerogative. And unlike EVERY SINGLE superpower that has ever risen before us, we're not actually going to come burn down your house for speaking against us. We don't care what you say. Freedom of Speech is not a hypocrisy over here. We actually believe in it and live by it.

For a year long before the war was announced, we were stuffed by goodie goodie emotions of a greater good that needed the iraqi oil.. ahum.. i mean the removal of dangerous amounts of weapons of mass desctruction that were allways on 1-minute readyness.

Cute, but false. President George W. Bush specifically said that the threat was NOT imminent from Iraq, but that it was building and he believed we could not afford to wait for it to BECOME imminent, in the post-9/11 world.

9-11 changed America. We're not going to let another threat like that build and ignore it, waiting to be hit before we react. We can't afford to do that. That you disapprove... Well, that's unfortunate. We'd much rather have your support in cooperating to see that those kinds of threats are eliminated. All peaceful and free peoples will benefit. However, that you disapprove does not mean we're going to sit back and not defend ourselves.

You either believe that Al Qaeda or other enemy of the USA perpetrated 9-11, or you believe we staged it, killing 3000+ of our own just to formulate an excuse. 9-11 was either a real terrorist attack, or the biggest and most vile bit of propaganda ever staged. Now which is it?

Seeing as how Usama Bin Laden himself is on tape bragging about the attack in detail, you either think that's genuine, or you think Hollywood faked it. How much else would have to have been faked? TONS. Shall I make a list?

Unless 9-11 is fake, President Bush has a powerful case to make. With 9-11 style attacks now proven feasible, and a fanatical enemy out there who wants to destroy my country and kill as many of my fellow Americans as they possible can, we CANNOT wait to be hit again before we respond.

I'd say I'm sorry that offends your sensibilities, but frankly, I'm not. I find your notion of the weakness and unworthiness of human beings in general to be false. We do not always make brainwashed, mindless decisions, based on how propaganda pushes our buttons. In this country, we debate everything, thoroughly, and quite a few of us actually make informed decisions. Most of those who are entirely uninformed don't bother to vote.


That is the one thing missing from the Civ3 AI. It reflects the whims of madmen fairly reasonably, but it doesn't begin to emulate the behavior of a real democracy. Here's hoping for better from Civ4.


- Sirian

 

[MMAfan]

Sirian...

Relax...

I am not judging anything, just talking with a bit of sarcasm. Hey I usually argue with those opposed to the war in iraq with the following logic: Since Saddam killed about a milion people in 10 year, the average cost of lives because of saddam is about 300 a day (just a head calc). So the war in iraq is actually saving lifes and the few people dying with it is less then what saddam executes

I pity you. You do not believe in self-rule. You do not believe in democracy. You do not believe people are competent to decide for themselves. What does that leave? Some well-meaning despot deciding for them? "Benevolent Monarchy"? No thanks. You can try that in your country if you like. I'll stick with my country's current constitution and set of laws. It's full of leaks, often messy, and always slow to react. Takes 9-11-01 type "wake-up calls" to get us up off our butts to do anything important. But by golly, when that call comes in, we do eventually decide to take action. Nothing more fearsome than a full-fledged democracy in which the people agree en masse that something needs doing. That many free thinkers working together on one mission... things get DONE. They get done fast and thorough, too.

Hmm well first off: Relax man!

second, you dont seem to get my point: it is propaganda! not al propaganda is evil. In WW2 the press was tightly controlled and used to keep american spirits high while waging war against japan and germany. It was nessacery to make sure no one got war waery. To make no one think "aw to hell with those europeans, let them sort it out themselves." To make everyone willing to take the pacific war to japan and bring it to its knees, without anyone thinking halfway: "well we showed them, freed most of the countries under their control, lets go home for christmas".

Press is america is not state controlled. It has however, same as in WW2, an 'understanding' in times of war. In WW2 the owners of the press companies allowed and disallowed certain news items through a gentlemans agreement with the goverment.

Take the average american / european tv and compare it with al jazeera. Why do American / european tv emphasize the succes of the iraqi war while jazeera gives more bloody images and emphasizes the cost of the war?

Unless 9-11 is fake, President Bush has a powerful case to make. With 9-11 style attacks now proven feasible, and a fanatical enemy out there who wants to destroy my country and kill as many of my fellow Americans as they possible can, we CANNOT wait to be hit again before we respond.

Wether it is real or faked has nothing to do with the discussion. I havent seen moore's movie nor care to watch it.

Has anybody ever seen the old educational videos about atomic warfare from the early years of the cold war??? They are just mind blowing!.. women and children singing stuff lie "duck, and cover" to educate people about how to survive a nuclear war. If you ever see them, watch them good and then try to say with a straight face that they are not military propaganda!

I think that propaganda could be an interesting aspect in CIV 4. It has allways been used for important event in history. People in the dark ages just didnt say to eachother: "hey dude, the promised land has been occupied by arabian forces, lets go free it!". They were inspired by (propaganda) a call from the vatican, which was preached thoughout every church in Europe.

</daylight>

 

[eg577]

Bah...it's so hackneyed to make fun of the duck and cover movies. There is a guy alive today who was standing at his window when the hiroshima bomb dropped and he now has half his face and body burned. How much do you wanna bet that he wishes he had a little more cover?

 

[MMAfan]

Bah...it's so hackneyed to make fun of the duck and cover movies. There is a guy alive today who was standing at his window when the hiroshima bomb dropped and he now has half his face and body burned. How much do you wanna bet that he wishes he had a little more cover?

Great!! safe one guy... destroy the rest of the city!! What kind of advise should have been given to all the people turned into charcoal? Or those getting killed by cancer later on?? "enjoy live now, because it could end quickly..." Or: "you should allways wear a 2 inch thick armor of lead when you go to work... it will protect you in the case of nuclear war!"

I can see the reports allready from proud members of the goverment: "yes mister president. 150 million American citizens have died in the last 24 hour and about a 150 million more will die in 5 years. We all have to go and live with the mexicans or the canucks because our american soil will be uninhabitable for the next 5000 years. But sir, thanks to our tv education there have been about a 1000 less skin burns and 2000 less deaths!"

Anyway... I am stopping this conversation. -> back to AI now.

 

[bob rulz]

Yeah, duck and cover is going to serve you real well in a nuclear war. "Hey, let's duck and cover like this is an earthquake drill, because a fifty megaton blast is about to land five feet from our house and protecting our head is going to save us from certain death!" Uh-huh.

 

[dh_epic]

Wow, looks like I spun something off Glad there's an interesting discussion here -- like I said, the problem of having a strong AI in Civ is a philosophical one as much as it is a technical one. What does a good AI look like?

First off, there IS a gameplay problem that needs to be resolved to make the AI great. The game needs to permit bigger comebacks. It also needs to reward alternative behaviors (playing as a 3 city economic powerhouse). This will keep the game competitive right up until the final century of the game. I'd like to assume these as a given and focus on, what I think, would be the solution to the AI.

1: Different kinds of AI

If you've heard me talk about this before, bare with me. This is a lot like what warpstorm has been talking about too. It could be very transparent -- the player designates 4 "strong AI" players, and the remaining civilizations are there for flavor. Or part of the AI could be playing in a generic way through the ancient age, then picking the four AI civs with the best chances to play with a strong strategy (a kind of ruthless AI).

2: "Flavor AI" will play to keep the evolving history of the game coherent.

a- it holds real grudges
b- it has real allies, sometimes including the player
c- it is generally peaceful
d- it will sometimes make peace even if it has its opponents on the run
e- it will be more likely to play for alternative victory types (tech, economic, culture)
f- it uses reputation as a strong guide for international relations
g- it is short-sightedly greedy in trades (money? sounds great!)
h- they are easily bought, easily pleased, easily satisfied
i- if they fall behind, they accept it gracefully and do their best
j- generally promotes a sense of history, a real breathing world with personalities

3: "Strong AI" will play to simulate ruthless competition from players

a- there is no grudge that outlasts necessity
b- no friendship that outlasts greed, especially with the player or other strong AIs
c- it is generally a warmonger
d- if it has its opponents on the run, it ruthlessly moves in for the kill
e- domination will be its primary victory, but they certainly don't ignore other aspects
f- it can ignore reputation and attack a good civ, or conveniently ally with a tyrant
g- a shrewd trader, with foresight (I'll monopolize this tech no matter what offer I get)
h- they are hard to buy, strong resistors, and will isolate themselves if it is profitable
i- if they fall behind, they are very sneaky***
j- generally promotes a sense of competition, plays like a psychopath with no mercy


Now imagine the interactions between strong AIs and players, strong AIs and flavor AIs, flavor AIs and players. There is a potential for cooperation AND competition, reflecting the true flow of history while even opening up new strategy. (You can have a real AI friend for the first time, while still having those AIs who you know will throw you to the curb first chance they get.)

The only question I personally have is in "3i" -- what the strong AI does if it falls behind. It could either play like Civ 2 and leverage a huge war against the leader. OR, it could actually CHEAT -- use temporary handicaps to get back in the game, with bigger cheats at higher difficulties. Personally, I'd love to see it do both. This is a time when cheating would be appreciated, not to steal the game, but to recover from falling behind.

 

[bob rulz]

I think there should be more than just flavor and strong AI's. For example, both of the AI types that you use are greedy. There could also be, say, Diplomatic AI's (like Gandhi).

 

[dh_epic]

I dunno, the flavor AI sounded pretty gracious. Its only greed was in trades, and isn't that what trade is about anyway? In which case, replace "greedy" with "willing". I really did mean for the first kind of AI to be the kind that tries for diplomatic victories and other such victory types.

Whatever word you wanna use, I agree with you.

 

[Volstag]

the #1 rated strategy game now..Rome Total War...

RTW is the #1 rated strategy game? How is this possible, considering it hasn't be released yet?

-V

 

[yoshi]

Part of the way the AI can be made to function in a manner that players can appreciate it is by providing game mechanics that keep all players within certain bounds. The best way to do this is by mimicing--within reason--the elements of economic, social and military reality. For instance: range limitation prevents a player--human or AI--from sending units across the globe to wage war on a distant civ. In Civ3 (and certainly Civ2), the AI's tendency to gang up on the human player could be dubbed down without touching the AI by simply preventing the units from distant civs from getting to the human's territory; how many times have you played on a large world map with historical starting locations and had the Chinese ally with a European civ against the French and cross the map to attack you? Sometimes making the game slightly realistic will inevitably result in (what looks like) realistic AI.

As for flavor:

How many players have had their carefully-built alliances dashed to pieces by some random AI decision (i.e. without reason)? A loyal AI would make a lot of people happy. If the AI is going to do any 'backstabbing' it has to be for a reason (i.e. some gain that outweighs the consequences of breaking a treaty, the ally having an unreliable record, etc.; something substantial and not just because the AI is set to view an ally as weak enough to declare war on since it has lost x number of units thus putting it in the catagory of 'weak').

More cultural flavor would be nice too but I would like to see it based in part on environment. A civ should be aggressive because it is in a hostile environment (e.g. lots of barbarian activity, infertile terrain) and likewise its neighbors will also be somewhat more aggressive as a result of dealing with that civ. Likewise, a peaceful civ should be so because it has everything (i.e. fertile land, few barbarians). That civ wouldn't be prone to expansion or scientific advancment (at least not military) because it would have no need for it. It's only an example and its still not implying the need for 'real' AI but rather just more diverse set of parameters that dictate AI actions (i.e. parameters that vary with the map).

 

[Captain]

Some great suggestions have been made here and I hope that the designers take them into consideration.

I have a few points about the AI in regards to improvement that I feel would make for a better game experience. Please forgive me if these thoughts have already been mentioned.

#1) The AI should have more consideration and respect for a countries national waters. (i.e. They should stay out unless they are mobilizing for an attack).

#2) The AI should come back to pick up units that it originally dropped off in a ship. (ex. Units deployed onto an island during battle or to settle and are simply left there.)

#3) The AI should make more logical trade proposals. (i.e. Not World Map for World Map+luxuries or pots of gold and only settle for that)

#4) The AI should be a little more easy going about it's borders. Ex. a unit is fortified (or has used up it's last move and is now) outside of a cities border. The next turn, the cities border expands making the square that the unit is in part of the AI's territory and the AI tells you to leave right after this.

The AI should come to you saying not the usual line of get out of our terrirtoy but "It would seem as though or borders have expanded thus rendering one of your units in our territory. We must ask that you leave now..." or something to that nature. The AI should just be more attune to situations such as this one.

 

[Captain]

In addition, I would like to see as part of advanced negotiations, the ability for nations to agree on the destruction of their nuclear weapons for instance.

 

[drwsince1987]

How about being smart and not moving their ships and men around for no reason at all, that consumes time and is really annoying.

 

[Captain]

Amen to that.

 

[Captain]

In addition to my nuclear weapon statement, I aslo feel that the AI needs to understand the magnitude of the situation before using them and not just like another expendible unit. The topic should be of much debate before any AI country actually decides to use these weapons.

 

[Gunner]

I would advise firaxis to take a long hard look at the AI in Galactic Civilizations, a space strategy game by Stardock Systems.

The AI in civ 3 isn't even comparable to the AI in Galciv. Galciv is made into a great game pretty much exclusively because of its astounding AI.

 

[warpstorm]

I would advise Firaxis to take a long hard look at the AI in Galactic Civilizations and not make the same mistakes.

GalCiv's AI isn't the be all and end all of game AI. It is competent, but the AI there mainly understands expansion and war. It doesn't really even attempt to play the other parts of the game. It won't try for the other victory conditions (leaving itself open to the human if they do). Having said that, it understands how to handle the warfare system in that game fairly well.

To give credit where it was due (Sirian), I didn't realize this till it was pointed out to me. I just thought I was being shrewd by not playing the war game with them and winning regularly.

 

[dh_epic]

For what it's worth, though, I bet the Galactic Civ AI (not that I've seen it in action) would probably outwit most of the Civ 3 AI because of that fact. You really don't need to focus on the other aspects to win. Especially when you consider that expanding does many of the things you need it to do incidentally -- generates more culture and grows your economy.

Show me someone who shoots for victory without expansion, and I'll show you someone who could achieve the same victory faster -- speaking specifically about cultural victory, and to a lesser extent the space race.

 

[Jon Shafer]

Dh_epic has an important point.

If conquest and expansion are so much easier to achieve than the other victory types, then why bother with the others?

The point is that all victory types should be equally attractive and equally interesting. These are civilization-building games, not wargames...