I keep checking back every few months to see if they released an AI patch

......
 
The Civ AI engine has been used, basically unchanged, for ten years.
 
Originally posted by YNCS
The Civ AI engine has been used, basically unchanged, for ten years.

Are you sure? The leap in AI from Civ2 to Civ3 is quite big don't you think?
 
Weirdly, I keep checking General Discussions every now and again to see if people have stopped complaining. :crazyeye:
 
Originally posted by YNCS
The Civ AI engine has been used, basically unchanged, for ten years.

No, that's an overstatement- it has to have been changed... The AI is a step above the AI in CivII.
 
Well, they CAN patch the AI, I think. But it won't make a big difference.

At most you'd see patches designed to avoid very specific anomalies, i.e something that triggers the AI to do something very stupid would be fixed.

But I really don't think they'd ever even attempt to "patch" the whole AI code, obviously.
 
Originally posted by typical skeleto
Well, they CAN patch the AI, I think. But it won't make a big difference.

At most you'd see patches designed to avoid very specific anomalies, i.e something that triggers the AI to do something very stupid would be fixed.

But I really don't think they'd ever even attempt to "patch" the whole AI code, obviously.

Maybe some nice, talented person from the heavens or above will start recoding the AI...
Oh my god, I just realized how unlikely that is.
 
You act as if the AI code is far, far more complex than any other code in the game.

No one said "recode" the AI, that's entirely different. A patch refers to a code patch, i.e changes or additions to fix a certain problem, etc. It doesn't neccesarily involve "recoding", but just changes to certain routines.

It's not impossible to patch the AI (other games have done it), it's probably just more time consuming than they deem neccesary.
 
It would be a bit hard to recode the AI without Firaxis releasing the source code. (Read this as waaaaay to much work). Someone who could do that could write their own game (and probably should).
 
Originally posted by typical skeleto
You act as if the AI code is far, far more complex than any other code in the game.

No one said "recode" the AI, that's entirely different. A patch refers to a code patch, i.e changes or additions to fix a certain problem, etc. It doesn't neccesarily involve "recoding", but just changes to certain routines.

It's not impossible to patch the AI (other games have done it), it's probably just more time consuming than they deem neccesary.

When you say "patch", you try to fix a specific problem or bug. What specific problems you are having with the AI? List them out and tell us how you would like the behavior to be changed. "I just want the AI to be better" is NOT specific.

The AI needs improvement, but I don't see anything specific that could be addressed in a patch.
 
Firaxis has improved the AI in patches and expansions. They've changed how the AI values things in trade: you used to be able to buy and sell cities, and worker used to be very cheap. Exploits involving those were fixed, and now in Conquests, buying tech or military alliances is much more expensive. Those changes closed down the easierst ways to win on high difficulties. Also, barbarian AI was reworked. They used to just thow themselves at heavy fortifications, now they wander around looking for easier targets. Now you need to hunt them down to get them off your propertiy. There's probably some changes I didn't notice.
 
I personally have no input on the AI issue, I didn't start the thread.

Just stating that the AI can be "patched" to an extent and it's not neccesarily a major overhaul that simply can't be done, as others seem to think.
 
Another problem with the "fixing" the AI is how much processor power will it eat up. Any extra code will simply take longer to run and you would have to multiple that by the number of players in the game. If they knew that everyone running the game had a 3 ghz machine they could probably update a few things.
 
Yep - people from Firaxis have stated on multiple occasions that the main limiting factor to the AI is computation time. :(
 
I think it is not that easy to program a good Civ AI. Look at chess, computers needed 40 years and lots of money and human work to compete with Grandmasters! - but for a computer it should be an easy game! the board has only 64 "tiles" and the number of possible moves is limited to 30-40 per turn. Of course chess is different, but in civ the comp must be able to cope with all types of different settings, it would be pretty hard to make an AI that will develop plans for any given situation.
 
Back
Top Bottom