Expanding AIs

[doronron]

To me, there are two areas the expansion AI of Civ 3 seems to fail.

1) The AI (the game engine itself, really) doesn't seem to take into account what's on the land it's expanding into. As a result, the larger country with lots of Tundra cities still seems to be doing better than the smaller country that has access to lots of luxuries, resources, and food. In addition, the AI doesn't try to focus on grabbing the "better" territory since it doesn't recognize it as such.

2) The AI had no concept of building political unity. Usually, you'd find cities from different nations all over the map, dotting the landscape with no attempt to try and consolidate the territories. It creates a weird scenario in which you have these loosely affiliated, balkanized city-states that provide no clear logistical method of how they maintain their resources or provide those resources to the capital (ie gold and science). Even more strange is the marked lack of political pressure by the nation that surrounds these self-sustaining city-states.

I'm hoping Civ IV will show the AI looking for good land, show that bad land is actually a hindrance, and have the AI build realistic nations with solid borders.

 

[apatheist]

Expansion should be one way to dominate, but it shouldn't be the only way. You should have to choose between many small, mediocre cities, or fewer, excellent ones. Having both should be hard to manage. If you can consistently have many excellent ones, you should move up a difficulty level ;-).

 

[warpstorm]

If you can consistently have many excellent ones, you should move up a difficulty level ;-).

Why shouldn't the AI try to play this way though?

 

[Superkrest]

i think the general idea is to give all civs a chance at being at least competitive. no matter on there start location or proximity to huge neighbors. as im sure you know. not always will a civ expand very much untill its too late.

 

[apatheist]

Why shouldn't the AI try to play this way though?

The AI should play whatever way is most effective for winning. The AI isn't the problem; the game mechanics are. The game rewards quantity over quality; players who use ICS or REX are just adopting strategies that work in the game-defined context, as are the AIs. The game should be more flexible so that, all else being equal, quality will beat quantity some of the time. Of course, all else won't be equal. Some combinations of map parameters, starting locations, competing civs, etc. should favor one strategy over the other, or perhaps a middle-of-the-road strategy, or something that exists on a different axis entirely. There shouldn't be just one, though; you shouldn't be able to apply the same strategy to every game and be successful.

 

[The_Architect]

Agree with Auusie Lurker's point. Expansion is not very easy in the real world. It shuld be made more difficult while direct dependence of wealth on teritorry should be discouraged.

 

[Legionary37]

I totally agree. We need something that will stop the "expand early, rule for the rest of time" rule that dominates the other civs.

The Roman Empire is a good example. They possessed massive terrirory and arguably a vast majority of the wealth in that area of the world.

Are they still ruling Europe? No.

We need a Civil War system, defneitely. Perhaps a decay system would be useful?

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

I think that if we have a good Civil War system, decent Minor Nations whom you can relate with diplomatically and an economic system which allows well run small nations to have a chance to keep pace with their larger bretheran, then I think we will have a game where the player retains the option of expanding to the ends of the Earth, but where it is both not completely neccesary, and where you will have the chance to do it in a way which doesn't simply involve settlers.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[Robi D]

A civil war system would be a good way to halt continous and unihibited expansion, but shouldn't be applied generally. Big countries that are fairly homogenous in their ethnic and national make up don't suffer from the problem of civil wars, so you shouldn't be penalised for settling a large area, however conquering other civs should be harder. Currently the penalty for this is very small, a few turns of resistance, build a temple or two and that's it, you can carry on in your conquests. If you happen to completely wipe out a civ, then you never ever have to worry about it flipping back to the original because it doesn't exist. In real life this isn't true, take the ottoman empire for example, they conquered greece, serbia, bulgaria ect. controlling the entire balkans. These people didn't just go, oh well were beaten now so we'll just go on happily living as ottomans. They had constant rebellions trying to re establish there own countries, and after 500 years finally succeeded in driving the ottomans back out of the balkans, in all that time they didn't lose their national identity or their desire to have their countries back, and this is where civ fails. Having said this, i'm not saying that it should be impossible to go for a conquest victory, just harder. I mean if the ottomans had treated the balkan peoples better, given them freedoms, equility and a better chance of ecomonic success, we might still have an ottoman empire in existance today. If in civ they made conquering other civs a continual problem instead of just an inital one, it would a step to stop the current situation of expand, expand, expand as the way to win the game.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Hey Robi D. Check out the Civil War model that Meleager and I nutted out together Here . It basically allows for ethnic homogenicity, distance from the capital, cultural and happiness factors. I would like to know what you think !

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[Nyvin]

My problem isn't that quantity can equal quality, its just that in Civ quantity almost always equals quality. Not only does this allow a sloppy player to succeed merely by dint of having the most land (a crime I confess to being guilty of ) but it also prevents smaller nations from ever getting ahead. My point is that having fewer high quality, well managed cities ought to allow you to keep pace with a civ that has lots of piddling little cities. For me its about BALANCE , not about keeping larger civs from winning. Other issues which prevent the 'Small is Beautiful' strategy is the non-binary resource system-IMO-the lack of Civil Wars, and the absence of any genuine limitations to early game expansion (unless you are unlucky enough to start on an island).
There are good gameplay reasons for allowing such a balancing mechanism, but it is also good from a realism perspective too. Consider 10th-11th Century England-the wealthiest nation in all of Europe at the time-or even modern day Switzerland, Belgium, Luxemburg or Japan. All of them are very powerful/wealthy nations, in spite of their size, and that gameplay option should be available in civ too.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

The republic of Venice was the wealthist at that time, England was just emerging as a nation-state, and wasn't much better off then France (actually at the time France was better off as a whole, just per capita perhaps was better in England.)

And Japan is actually quite a large country, it's just the neighbors make it look small. Switzerland, Belgium, and Luxemburg aren't powerful at all, they never really were. A better example would be the Netherlands or Denmark.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Ummmm, if you notice what I said it was that those nations are incredibly wealthy . I mean, come on, Luxembourg is incredibly well known for its diamond trade, and Switzerland is incredibly well known for its banks. They are, in spite of their small size, some of the wealthiest nations in Europe-something which could never really happen in Civ3. Oh, and for your information, at the time of William of Normandy, England was the wealthiest, and best organised, nation in Europe-which is why William wanted it so badly. Really Nyvin, you should try picking up a history book every so often-you might be suprised what you may learn !

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[Nyvin]

Ummmm, if you notice what I said it was that those nations are incredibly wealthy . I mean, come on, Luxembourg is incredibly well known for its diamond trade, and Switzerland is incredibly well known for its banks. They are, in spite of their small size, some of the wealthiest nations in Europe-something which could never really happen in Civ3. Oh, and for your information, at the time of William of Normandy, England was the wealthiest, and best organised, nation in Europe-which is why William wanted it so badly. Really Nyvin, you should try picking up a history book every so often-you might be suprised what you may learn !

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

You said powerful in your quote, that's what i was refering to. Sure they had successful industries, most countries in Europe did at some point or another, otherwise they'd probably end up in some other country's borders. Bavaria today is well known for it's beer trading industry, but that alone doesn't make it significant over any other area alone.

England was not the wealthiest, The republic of Venice was. As a republic it dominated all trade east of sicily. All England had was a linen market, they had no silk production, no cloth production, no wine market, and very few valuable metals, the five major european trades at the time. It was not in any way the 'most wealthy country in Europe' like you said. It only had a population of 4 or so million!! The city of Bruges to the south (present day Belgium) was much much much more prosperous then London...if William wanted land that had money, he would've gone there.

The primary reason for Williams invasion was religion, not market value. It was beacause of the support of the pope that England didn't have any allies for the war. England wasn't the most organized either, William's success should prove that. The country itself was still under feudal lordship, which was somewhat above the rest, but nothing spectacular.

I don't have to rely on put-downs like you.

Yours,
Nyvin~

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

There are good gameplay reasons for allowing such a balancing mechanism, but it is also good from a realism perspective too. Consider 10th-11th Century England-the wealthiest nation in all of Europe at the time-or even modern day Switzerland, Belgium, Luxemburg or Japan. All of them are very powerful/wealthy nations, in spite of their size, and that gameplay option should be available in civ too.

Please could you read next time-although I did say powerful, you will note that I linked it to wealthy.
Also, 1066 wasn't about religion, that was just a good excuse for the war. All the history books clearly state what a wealthy nation-state England was at the time of Hastings. Also, just because they lost doesn't prove that they weren't organised. You forget that Harold had just driven off his brother and Harold Hadrada at the Battle of Stamford bridge a mere 3-4 days earlier-an amazing feat of wartime organisation if you ask me. Even then, Harold was winning for much of the battle, due to the excellent shield wall his army had. It wasn't until William started to play his trick of the feined retreat that Harold get beaten. Even if none of this were true, the organisation I spoke of was in relation to its Civil Service/Record keeping. It was these excellent records which allowed William to put together the Doomsday Book.
Seriously, like I said, try reading for a change. Not just my posts, but history books too, they are a treasure trove of information-stuff which stops you looking foolish when you engage in history debates.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[Robi D]

Hey Robi D. Check out the Civil War model that Meleager and I nutted out together Here . It basically allows for ethnic homogenicity, distance from the capital, cultural and happiness factors. I would like to know what you think !

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

I think that its a very good model. Its definately a big step in the right direction to my mind. I'm not going to go into much detail or rubbish it saying it has flaws, because i can't personally come up with a better one, but give me some spare time (and lots of coffee) to see how to improve on it, but all in all like i said its a good job. I will offer two suggestion to consider

1) There should be room for something in between being happy to stay and civil war. Maybe something like civil unrest where you have protests or riots breaking out in cities spontaniously ( by that i mean the city might have more happy than unhappy people, but because of simmering resentment of foreign rule it might spark a protest or riot paralysing that cities production for a couple of turns and requireing you to garrion more units in the city on a temp. basis to make sure it doesn't get out of hand and speard.)
That way it also give the player warning signs of a civil war happen and gives them a chance to prepare for it or avert it.

2) It should also take into account how the foreign nations got to be in your civ. Eg. If they decleared war on you first then end up losing, there should be less resentment then if you decleared war on them and won.


Finally i want to add one more thing in general, as i have noticed with these type of suggestions, that people inevetably say that it would be too complex or how do you get new people to buy the game ect.

I think this is a simple problem to avert, you just need to think outside of the box. At the moment the difficulty level only determins wheather you or the ai gets an advantage and how much it is, what if instead giving an advantage it set the complexity level of the game. That way at the lower level the game would play in a simlar compexity to how it does now, but as you go up to the higher levels things like civil wars ect. get added into the game play. That way its not too complex to begin with and not to simple for people who play regularly.

Actually you can take that idea even further if you with. Just as they have done away with discrete governments in civ4, why not get rid of discrete levels. Just like with the governments, 7 or 8 different areas of the games with 3 or 4 setting for each, then from your selections a difficulty percentage is calculated.

 

[frekk]

Expansion should be one way to dominate, but it shouldn't be the only way. You should have to choose between many small, mediocre cities, or fewer, excellent ones. Having both should be hard to manage. If you can consistently have many excellent ones, you should move up a difficulty level ;-).

Right, well, this is what corruption was meant to do, but people complained. Put a constraint on their expansion and they will complain that large nations are being "punished". Don't put a constraint and they will complain that it is not possible to have a small but well-developed nation because the big nations have too much of an advantage.

 

[Nyvin]

Please could you read next time-although I did say powerful, you will note that I linked it to wealthy.
Also, 1066 wasn't about religion, that was just a good excuse for the war. All the history books clearly state what a wealthy nation-state England was at the time of Hastings. Also, just because they lost doesn't prove that they weren't organised. You forget that Harold had just driven off his brother and Harold Hadrada at the Battle of Stamford bridge a mere 3-4 days earlier-an amazing feat of wartime organisation if you ask me. Even then, Harold was winning for much of the battle, due to the excellent shield wall his army had. It wasn't until William started to play his trick of the feined retreat that Harold get beaten. Even if none of this were true, the organisation I spoke of was in relation to its Civil Service/Record keeping. It was these excellent records which allowed William to put together the Doomsday Book.
Seriously, like I said, try reading for a change. Not just my posts, but history books too, they are a treasure trove of information-stuff which stops you looking foolish when you engage in history debates.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

I really don't think your 'all that' like your big talking tries to show, and your use of the word 'excellent' is a bit overrating too.

Overall France had a population of around 18-20 million, that's five times the size of England, even though it wasn't all united, it was still a collective of lordships and duchy's. Venice had a population of 600,000, that's more then ten times the size of London 'or' Hastings. Population isn't everything yeah, but still, with linen being the only product coming out of the country at the time, and the viking raids that were constantly going on, and the fact that England had relatively little contact to the outside world...how could it 'possibly' be the most wealthy nation in Europe? They had the competition from Bruges, the most productive area of northern Europe, and the mediterranean area was still the highlighted area of mercantilism in Europe.

Organization was pretty good, but it wasn't amazing, there were other countries that had a lot simular scribes, in fact most of the written language was either in latin or french at the time. English still had to evolve. The fact that they got it all from other areas shows how it wasn't really 'original' I still say if they had truly 'amazing' organiztion like your making it out to be, they would've had an easier time beating them, especially since Normandy was just a second rate duchy and England was more of a united nation to some degree.

The last thing that you actually respond to is the thing about powerful/wealthy, you said they were powerful, I said they were never powerful, end of story...when you say something like 'very powerful/wealthy nations' if you just want to say wealthy, just say wealthy, don't say powerful if you don't mean it. Unless this is just another cover up. Although you seem to be the type to overrate things.

Another thing is they only became 'wealthy' in modern times, back in medievil times they were mainly puppet states of France and other countries.

Btw, I have a couple history books sitting at my desk, I read them all the time for enjoyment. You don't need the flaunting put downs in there...comon, grow up.

 

[frekk]

England the wealthiest European nation in the 10th-11th centuries? Nonsense! England was actually a very modest nation during that time period. By far and away the wealthiest European state at that time was Byzantine, the Eastern Roman Empire. The 11th century was particularly bad for little Saxon England, primarily because of the Danes.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Seriously, Frekk, you should read your history books too. Maybe all of Europe was a little too broad, but definitely it was the wealthiest nation in Western Europe. It had abundant resources and monetary wealth and-as I said-an excellent civil service. Also, England had few problems with the Danes again after the turn of the 11th century-except for Harold Hadrada in 1066, just prior to Hastings. In fact, the rule of Edward the Confessor is known for its almost complete lack of conflict (except for a revolt by nobles in the North, which was put down by Harold Godwinson) Seriously, this is why the nation was so attractive to the Duke of Normandy. The only time the conflict between Harold and William became religious was after William called on the Pope to give it his blessing-on the basis that Harold had violated his oath of Allegiance to William.
As I also pointed out, Harold managed to fight two seperate wars in the space of only a week-hardly the sign of a weak nation. Also, had it not been for a loss of discipline towards the end of the battle, Harold probably would have won Hastings too. When all was said and done, he only lost because he lacked a horse, and so couldn't be everywhere at once-something which may have prevented the breaking of ranks which occured towards days end.
Trust me on this-I know this portion of English history like the back of my hand, as I have studied all the books, seen all the websites and watched all the TV documentaries.
Back O/T though, there is strong historical evidence to show that smaller nations can-and have-managed to become much more powerful OR wealthy than their size would suggest-often when much larger nations went the way of the Dodo. After all, where is the Holy Roman Empire these days? If it history was a game of Civ, almost the entire world would be under the influence of this Empire.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[apatheist]

Ummmm, if you notice what I said it was that those nations are incredibly wealthy . I mean, come on, Luxembourg is incredibly well known for its diamond trade, and Switzerland is incredibly well known for its banks. They are, in spite of their small size, some of the wealthiest nations in Europe-something which could never really happen in Civ3.

per capita. But they don't have many, um, capita.

Right, well, this is what corruption was meant to do, but people complained. Put a constraint on their expansion and they will complain that large nations are being "punished". Don't put a constraint and they will complain that it is not possible to have a small but well-developed nation because the big nations have too much of an advantage.

You're missing the point. The problem isn't expansion, the problem is expansion as the only viable strategy. Slapping crippling corruption onto the game changes that only slightly to "expansion up until corruption becomes crippling" as the only viable strategy. The designers need to fix the game on a deeper level so that small nations don't have such inherent liabilities that corruption is needed to balance things out (and, even then, it wasn't very good at it). Don't create a problem and then fix it; change the rules of the game so the problem never appears in the first place.