Online petition for an updated Civ III editor

[Ozymandias]

I'm doing it. But not a clone. I want to make a good game

Hi Steph,

A brief OT -- How difficult are you finding it to devise algorithms for the AI to behave "intelligently"?

Best,

Oz

 

[Bjornlo]

Hi Steph,

A brief OT -- How difficult are you finding it to devise algorithms for the AI to behave "intelligently"?

Best,

Oz

More difficult is fuzzy logic AI. Where the AI can behave more or less intelligently.. but even when it is being "smart" it still follows a somewhat random pattern. The programmer must determine not just what is the best course of action, but a weighted list of best to worst actions based on a long list of interacting variables and have some sort of weighted random number generator (hopefully something along the lines of a mersenne twist with a millisecond real-time clock seed instead of the simpler list based one that Civ3 seems to employ). The range of decisions to be made will be bell curved towards the top, bottom, etc based on the "iq" of the AI being modeled.
It can be a little tedious to determine the complete list of possible actions (and kinda slow too)... it is tricky to weight and rank the list. So, most programmers go with a series of conditionals... if X than Y, with a prioritized ranking.

 

[WildWeazel]

I'm doing it. But not a clone. I want to make a good game

But SSS, while better than Civ3 in many respects, will be a whole new game. Many of us want to play Civ3 without limits (not to say we don't want to play SSS too! ) I don't really see a community-made civ clone in our future, just saying it's probably more likely than getting the code, or any major updates.

 

[Steph]

Hi Steph,
A brief OT -- How difficult are you finding it to devise algorithms for the AI to behave "intelligently"?
Oz

There is no AI so far, we are still working on the porting of the graphical engine to DirectX.
We'll start working on AI only when the game mechanism works well in human against human games

 

[DJ Bonebraker]

Thanks - that's pretty much like I figured. BTW, in Civ3, I also give them the paradrop capability so they can at least cross small bodies of water ... but of course IIRC there's no paradrop capability in Civ4 .

Best,

Oz

That's BRILIANT!! I already have tha airships in the FF mod set up similar to how you do the helicopters (except w/o the amphibious option since they're WAY too big to fit on any transport), but was kind of puzzling on how I could get them accross a small body of water without having either a city or airfield on the other side.... Giving them Paradrop (they already use the Recon and re-base air unit commands, so they already have an appropriate range set, all I have to do is enable the paradrop command, and put something in the build slot in the unit's INI file).

I wish I'd have thought of that before! Thanks, Oz

 

[Ozymandias]

That's BRILIANT!! I already have tha airships in the FF mod set up similar to how you do the helicopters (except w/o the amphibious option since they're WAY too big to fit on any transport), but was kind of puzzling on how I could get them accross a small body of water without having either a city or airfield on the other side.... Giving them Paradrop (they already use the Recon and re-base air unit commands, so they already have an appropriate range set, all I have to do is enable the paradrop command, and put something in the build slot in the unit's INI file).

I wish I'd have thought of that before! Thanks, Oz

You're very welcome - even though it's been so long that I can't recall if this was my idea or another's.

One thing though - AFAIK this approach only works if the unit(s) in question are land units. Unless I missed a thread somewhere and Recon and Re-base work for land units ...

All The Best,

Oz

 

[DJ Bonebraker]

Yes, the FF mod Airships ARE Land units (since Civ III air units are far too wimpy to represent the awesomeness that the FF series airships are), and yes, Recon and Rebase DOES work for Land units, but I'm not sure if the AI uses it or not.... I do seem to remember a horde of airships pouring out of some 2-bit AI colony on my continent during a war, but I'm not entirely sure whether they re-based them there or not.

 

[Gojira54]

I would gladly pay $100 American just to have the following mostly modding capabilities:

- Resource overflow bug fixed
- Resource placement fixed for many resources
- No limit on resources, improvements, techs, or units
- The ability to add new terrain
- The ability to have multiple tech requirements on an improvement
- The ability for some prereq resources to be in radius while others just connected for an improvement
- Improved AI that would make use of land transports, spies, offensive bombardment, sacrifice, etc.

 

[embryodead]

Everything has been said already so I'll just /sign. I even promise to buy Civ4 if new Civ3 editor is released, just to be nice

 

[Gojira54]

Everything has been said already so I'll just /sign. I even promise to buy Civ4 if new Civ3 editor is released, just to be nice

Don't bother, its got great ideas with poor execution...

 

[embryodead]

Don't bother, its got great ideas with poor execution...

That's why I said 'just to be nice', I never said I'd play it over Civ3

 

[Ozymandias]

I even promise to buy Civ4 if new Civ3 editor is released, just to be nice

 

[GoodGame]

Personally, I think they should release the editor, and portions of the CIV3 game (just enough to provide 'hooks' for seriously modding the game) to public domain. That would probably get more success than another $20-$40 addon pack for CIV3.

Realistically, I doubt they will since they already have the next gen product on the market and it doesn't make sense to compete with yourself that way.

A CIV4 patch that customizes it to play with retro-CIV3 flavor is probably the best compromise.
It seems to me they ignored a lot of grab-bag ideas from the CIV3 fanbase during the CIV4 design, with the idea that deconstructively redesigning the game would be more productive---and it looks like they may have been right from sales figures, but still we'd all like to see CIV 3.5+ that we were begging for in the CIV4 design forums the past few years.

 

[Stormrage]

Oi! WTH? Civ4 patch? Whats wrong with you?!? Go talk about that in the Civ4 forums! Thats it! I`m seriously pissed off again!

 

[Virote_Considon]

Oi! is a subgenre of Punk!



Also, I don't care how they go about making a better editor. I'm just extremely hopeful that they do.

 

[fe3333au]

I agree with most of the comments ... especially expanding Barbarian options.

 

[Scytale]

I subscribe to the ideeas in this threa too (especially to Rob's and Bjorn's ideeas). I think that at least a new diplomacy mode could be successfully implemented without too much effort. I'd like to see a Civ3 where AI's keep their deals and don't declare war on everyone like crazy.

 

[Lord Malbeth]

Here's my ideas:

- No limit on resources, improvements, techs, or units
- Fix Teleport and Charm stuff
- The ability to have multiple tech requirements on an improvement
- Ability to have more than 31 civs
- More Locked Alliance abilities
- Fix minor bugs in the Editor (NONE on the government page, etc...)

 

[KrugerPritz]

I agree this petition in all points. I AGREE TO PAY FOR IT AS A NORMAL GAME. I'd like to have also the possibility to capture the king unit (and gain points) and let the won civ with an other leader (maybe he could be a vassal or rebel) or the captured leader as a vassal. (I'D LIKE TO CAPTURE CLEOPATRA!)

Barbarians could settle and establish an extra 31 civ (in the archives) when a beginned civ is defeated and destroyed.

I've bought the new Civ4 but my pc has not the right speed and i'm not able to modify the game as i've learned to do in civ3. So for the moment I like civ3 more than civ4

Krugerpritz

 

[KrugerPritz]

I tryed to eliminate this quote by editing the previous one! sorry
Krugerpritz