Does the difficulty of Civilization 3 rely on the type of computer you have?

[damunzy]

I have seen a lot of complaint threads in Civ3 and in those threads are people that have had completely opposite experiences (one side is convinced that all their games are unfair and the other is sure that the game is completely fair and nothing, or hardly anything happens other than how it is supposed to). It got me thinking that since the game depends on random numbers maybe the type of game you have (and keep having) depends on your computer? How does the random number seed or whatever it is called come to life? Does it get information from your computer hardware like Windows XP activation does to generate the number....does it check a piece of information that is given out by your operating system that is unique to that particular OS? If any of these are true then it would explain why some people have such bad experiences and other people have much different ones (like me, I consistantly get certain civs that are extremely aggresive while other people day that those civs are friendly to them.....this problem may have more to do with what civ you play).

Of course it could all be in the perception of the players and that is the explaination that I am leaning towards but the mighty spearman, may he defend that mountain fortress forever, leaves a nagging doubt in my mind.


Disclaimer: I have never seen the mighty super spearman myself but have ran into other completely weird battle results that could not be explained by math -- well maybe the chaos theory.

 

[Tassadar]

Another factor which modified a.i. attitude is What kind of gouvernement you choose after despotism, if you choose republic you ll be perceive as a civilise nation ( with a good army you wont be attack for nothing). But if you choose monarchy, you ll be perceive as a warmonger and a.i. will do mpp, alliance, and any thing to annoy you.

 

[Dinorius R.]

It's a good question Palehorse, but how can we mere mortals help you find the answer? Is there some line of code in a file we can all look up or what?

 

[Bamspeedy]

How certain civs react to you depends on your government, diplomacy, your culture group, and how reputable your army is. If you have a small army, you will be picked on. In the editor, it shows what each civs 'preferred' government is, the civ will show preferences to civs that have that particular government. So one civ might be nicer to you when you are in a republic than in monarchy because they prefer republics. If you trade on a regular basis with civs they will be nicer to you. If you have a substantial lead in score, or have luxuries/resources they want, they will wage war. Civs in the same culture group (americans, iroquis, aztecs are in the american culture group, for example), will have preferences with each other, more than a civ in a european or asian culture group. None of these are the sole factors of their like/dislike for you, but a combination of all these factors, with diplomacy and military strength probably being the most important.

The spearman/tank thing could be battle tactics. The players that always uses catapults/cannons, makes sure whenever posstible to avoid trying to attack a spearman that is in difficult terrain (fortified in a metropolis, built on a hill, for example), probably experiences less of these situations. Players that are scientifically equal to the other civs probably never even see a spearman/tank battle because the AI has rifleman/infantry instead of spearman.

Disclaimer: I know I will hear alot of people crying, saying "but I lost an elite tank to a regular spearman on desert! I'm just saying the people who have less experiences of a spearman/tank battle, obviously have fewer bad results, if any, so they don't view it as a problem, while those that have had 100's of spearman/tank battles will obviously have had more losses, so they think it's a major problem.

 

[Zouave]

A fascinating question I can't answer.

Suffice it to say, mush about the game is unfair to the human player.

But even at times when I would not scream about lack of fairness in that particular game, it remains filled with flaws, irritations, and simplicities. And I doubt if that depends on the computer or CPU we have.

I'm sure such nonsense as Culture Borders flipping over a city's road, mine, and garrisoned fortress resulting in the rival leader calling me a warmonger, occurs with any computer. I'm sure such profoundly annoying stuff as Settler Diarrhea and Wandering Enemy Workers occurs with any CPU.

 

[damunzy]

Originally posted by Zouave
Settler Diarrhea

I love it when you say that...even though it gives me the heebiegeebies

 

[ainwood]

Most random number generators are based on mathematical formulae. The forumla used is one that spits out a number based on the number fed to it, which is called a "seed". The seed number may be a piece of information passed from the windows OS (eg. serial number etc), but almost ALL random number generators use this as the first number, then use the resultant random number as the next seed and so-on. Many actually use something like the number of seconds since midnight as the seed number.

I don't actually think that Firaxis would have gone to the trouble of writing their own random number generator; they probably just used a randomise function built in to whatever code library that the Civ code is written in - it will therefore have been tried and tested many times over.

In summary - in the long run it should be independent of the OS.

 

[etj4Eagle]

The idea of the AI difficulty depending on the computer you have is a reasonable one. Basically you make scalable AI routines so that with a faster processor the game dedicates more CPU cycles to finding the best strategies. However this will not so much result in a more "difficult" game, but a more devious AI on more powerful computers.

 

[Beam]

Well, how about a test to see if the AI gets more cycle time on a more powerfull computer (including memory and graphics card for example). If palehorse is right then the average AI time between turns should not decrease to much for a slower CPU.

If some volunteers want to participate I can check if I have a sav available in modern age during wartime, the in between turns usually take the longest.

We could then compare duration of the AI turns and check the relation to computer power.

How about it?

 

[Strider]

(one side is convinced that all their games are unfair and the other is sure that the game is completely fair and nothing, or hardly anything happens other than how it is supposed to)

I haven't read all the posts yet in this thread, but their will always be people like that with every game. Without are differances these forums wouldn't be fun. What's the point of trying to tell someone that the game is Awesome/sucks when the person your talking to thinks the same thing as you?

 

[Lt. 'Killer' M.]

In my experience the big differences go back to

- vastly different player styels
- mods (especially HP)
- luck, which often hold for quite a few games. So if you play amny games (I average 5 per week) you come to a different opinion from what you find when you play 5 all in all. If these suck or are a breez, well.....