Simultaneous turns?

[AlphaShard]

I dislike chess.



Instant reaction time? I think you're confused. There's no reaction time required, you just decide where your units will go, end turn, sit back, watch every player's moves play out simultaneously, and then start the next turn.

Anyway, to deal with the problem of running blindly into enemy units, I would have spies play a more active military role. They can't fight enemy units, but they can go on ahead of your attack force and scout out the opposition.

That doesn't sound like fun at all, that sounds like a nightmare. It can be annoying in MP for instance when you and another player are conquering a City and it's basically roll of the dice which of you gets the last unit in.

 

[Bluetooth]

Years ago I played a turn based game in fantasy setting called Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic. If I remember it right you could choose to play it in traditional turn based mode or simultaneous mode. I remember I played more and more in simultaneous mode. I’m not sure I want it in Civilization but if they decide to implement it I hope we can choose between two different settings.

 

[r_rolo1]

I don't get what point you are trying to make. Do you mean that AI players have to react for every change human player makes during his planning phase? Why? That's inefficient, useless and makes the AI cheater. If AI would do that to other AI player aswell, wouldn't that end up in infinite loop?

You understand how the simultaneous turns concept work? Your units don't move at all on the planning phase, they move on the execution (end turn) phase.

First I undertand exactly how the simultaneous turns system work. And you are right in saying that it would be ineficient and useless to make the AI think in all the possible moves of the other players ( hey, that was my point after all .... about making the AI a cheater: it would not make the AI more of a cheater than the human... or you don't think while the AI moves in Civ games? ). But i guess you didn't understood my point, so I'll try to simplify it:

-For the AI to make a decent plan without seeing the board it will have to play in, it needs a good idea of how things will act in the next interaction the are part of . This works the same regardless of using the current Civ model of each player plays one turn by a certain order of if all plan at the same time and then throw everything in a execution phase

- For having a plan decently weaved the AI needs one of the below two:

• A clear idea of what can happen in the game by the actions of the other players
• A pre packed plan of action more or less regardless of the actions of the other players

The first one, as I pointed, can and will explode hard in processing time, especially with a lot of players, if the map is big enough and there are enough units. This again regardless of pure turn based or planning + execution, barring doing like in chess, where you have a nice century-wide database on the possible moves and counter moves ( a thing hard to do in a game with a variable number of players, with a variable map .... ) . The second will definitely throw the AI sometimes ( if not a lot of times ) in actions completely unrelated with the current board sitaution, a not so smart idea ( the RPG sysndrom: 100 times you play the game, 100 times you will meet the same guy in the same alley )

 

[spammikone]

And you are right in saying that it would be ineficient and useless to make the AI think in all the possible moves of the other players ( hey, that was my point after all .... about making the AI a cheater: it would not make the AI more of a cheater than the human... or you don't think while the AI moves in Civ games? ).

I didn't say anything remotely close to that. I was under the impression you meant on the run - as in if human player decides to move spearman to mountain hex, the AI player adjust its plans based on that action. But then human player changes his mind, cancels the movement order and moves the spearman to hill hex instead, and AI responds to this by cancelling its previous orders and adjusting this to its new strategy.

Which would make it some kind of pseudo turn based system where AI reacts real time, simultaneous is only a placebo effect because AI finalizes its actions after human player is ready and based on the actions of the human player.
Which is ******** and against the idea of independent decision making. So I misunderstood I guess, but then I have even less idea on the relevance of your writings.


For the rest of your post: WTH?

Firstly: You could just copy-paste that to some manifest against/for IGOUGO or real time or any method. You are writing about AI design.

Secondly: You are giving the AI and the mechanics of Civilization some godlike abilities never ever seen in software designing and by your reasoning there wouldn't been WEGO games ever done because processors can't handle multiple AI players doing calculations at the same time.

For that matter, I would ing love to the see the day they develop that good and versatile AI that it will explode your PC from pure awesomeness when it starts to think its moves.

 

[r_rolo1]

Yes , i am writing about AI design ... for this game Unlike most ( not all ) of the real time games, Civ games have a far more complex situation to handle everytime. Second Civilization is pretty much a SP game that can be extended to MP, so making a game with a AI that mishandles the situation some of the times just to get a pseudo real time feel is basically make the game less good ( because the oponents are less smart ) and probably less sell-able.

To your second point: it is exactly because the AI has not that degree of awesomeness you are ranting out that i'm arguing Most of the games you are thinking on as model have far less variables to deal with than civ games , so the AI can go by the script with some randomization and still look decent. A AI aproach like that in any complex enviroment is bound to make stupid moves and to be dull and predictable ( exploit-material at large also )