Using chatGPT to mod Civ3

[Kyriakos]

ChatGPT is great, but (imo) is not linked to actual intelligence, sentience or similar. But it can be extremely useful. It does make small mistakes rather often, but as long as the reader is aware, they can fix those or prompt it and have it try to fix them itself.

 

[Quintillus]

The interesting part is that's not what it's doing. ChatGPT is not connected to the internet. Instead, it's been trained. In essence, it's determining, word by word (actually morpheme by morpheme), which should come next in the sequence.

That's why occaisonally it will get things wrong, sometimes terribly so. It's pretty good at summaries. On one instance I asked it for a summary of Caesar's Gallic Wars. Did a decent job of it. The problem came when I dug deeper, asking for specific dates and events that happened in, eg. 58 BC and the like. It kept insisting battles and events happened at wildly different times and in different circumstances than real life. Almost spooky, the way it was able to hallucinate the chronology and pair it will plausible-enough information to make it hard to spot.

Here's the conversation if you're curious:

That is interesting, it is impressively inconsistent with its dates. My first thought had been, "well, it doesn't have to be connected to the Internet to be trained on Wikipedia" - I have an offline copy of all the text of Wikipedia, so I know it fits on a standard hard drive - but it clearly isn't basing its answers on established sources of truth.

The Wolfram article is a bit long for me to read right now, but the "next word" concept with probabilities is interesting.

It would be nice to have the editor generate scripts and insert them into the appropriate text file automatically. Unless Quintillus' editor already does this and I missed that too. Not only would it save a lot of time, but it would reduce errors as well.

As for the AI doing the research, yeah, no thanks there little buddy I'll take that from here. Researching is the one aspect of modding that's actually fun.

It doesn't (yet), but there hadn't previously been a lot of clamoring for it, at least that I saw. I agree that it would be handy. With my current level of skills (versus 2009 level of skills), it probably wouldn't even be particularly difficult. Now if only I had as much free time and as few hobbies as in 2009...

I remember when Calculators came out in the early 1960s and they were Great but Very Expensive. I wonder how many people could perform complex math problems without them now.

One thing I fear is the evolution of too much dependency on Computers and electronics. The more we rely on things that are accomplished for us the less we will be able to accomplish on our own.

Personally, I find it alarming that Magazines are now going to digital rather than print and what will become of Books?

Bottom Line... as computers and Artificial Intelligence continue to evolve, take care that they do not become a necessity and cause a dependency.

... and when will "Skynet" become self aware?

Indeed, I am reminded of when I was in college and my friend who had a car didn't know how to get to the store without the GPS; as a passenger who didn't know how to drive I knew how to get there because I was looking at the street signs and not just following the GPS's directions of turn left, turn right, etc.

I think to large extent computers are already a dependency, and as long as they remain available, that lets us be more efficient. Could our logistics system function effectively without computer-controlled schedules? In theory perhaps it could, but if all the computers stopped working tomorrow, it probably couldn't, we'd have to re-learn the old ways of doing things. What about our payments system? Not many places carry carbon-copy paper for handling credit or debit transactions when their Internet connection is out, and a significant number of people don't carry cash (I currently have $15 in my wallet).

It would be interesting to compare these concerns to those of previous generations. We have (societally) lost skills before and largely coped with it. I don't know how to ride a horse, I'm terrible at splitting wood compared to my ancestors, I actually can cook very well but a lot of people live on microwaved frozen food and takeout. I can't really repair damaged or worn out clothes effectively either, I have to buy new ones at the store. In a societal breakdown scenario, these could all be useful skills to have, as well as being able to do complex math problems without a calculator.

 

[Quintillus]

ChatGPT is great, but (imo) is not linked to actual intelligence, sentience or similar. But it can be extremely useful. It does make small mistakes rather often, but as long as the reader is aware, they can fix those or prompt it and have it try to fix them itself.

Ah, your post was hiding on the second page!

I think that "as long as the reader is aware" is a very big "if". In this era of people falling for falsehoods spread via social media posts and fake news sites, my confidence of people being aware of factual errors in a chatbot's responses is very low.

Not that people were necessarily inherently better at spotting falsehoods 40 years ago, but with so much lower of a barrier to spreading them widely nowadays, the inability of the average person to reliably discern lies from truth is much more evident.

And if we're talking about something like the date of the Battle of Alesia, and you aren't asking for chronologies and testing the bot's knowledge, very few people indeed would spot an error in the initial response.

 

[Nathiri]

I agree this looks promising and would save experienced modders alot of time. Mass-producing unit files take a good amount of time. If there only is the occasional error, I've usually been able to spot those pretty easily. You'd still need to know how to add the unit entry manually. This just saves time and frustration.

 

[AnthonyBoscia]

It doesn't (yet), but there hadn't previously been a lot of clamoring for it, at least that I saw. I agree that it would be handy. With my current level of skills (versus 2009 level of skills), it probably wouldn't even be particularly difficult. Now if only I had as much free time and as few hobbies as in 2009...

No worries, I think we're all short of free time. First I got to work on palettes, anyway.

 

[Kyriakos]

Computer-created unit animation (using a template) would be good. No reason to think it cannot already be done with consistency; might at worst take a human to look through the frames and correct any errors.

 

[Ozymandias]

OK ... ! YIKES! -

I entered -

"write a civilopedia entry for the game civilization 3 on masonry" and it came back with:

Spoiler write a civilopedia entry for the game civilization 3 on masonry :

Masonry is a technology in Civilization III that represents the development of techniques for working with stone. With the knowledge of Masonry, civilizations can construct stone buildings and improve their city defenses by building walls.

To research Masonry, a civilization must first discover the technology of Bronze Working, which is a prerequisite. Once Masonry is discovered, a civilization can construct the Great Wall wonder, which greatly increases the defensive strength of all of its cities.

In addition to the Great Wall, the Masonry technology unlocks the construction of Stone Works, a building that provides bonus production and trade in cities that are built on stone resources. The technology also unlocks the Quarry improvement, which allows a civilization to extract additional production from stone resources.

Masonry is an important technology in the early game, as it unlocks crucial defensive options and resource improvements. It is particularly useful for civilizations that are looking to establish strong defensive positions, as the Great Wall wonder can make it much more difficult for enemy armies to capture their cities.

Overall, Masonry is an important technological milestone in the development of any civilization in Civilization III. Its benefits, particularly in terms of defense and production, make it a key focus for many early-game strategies.

 

[timerover51]

OK ... ! YIKES! -

I entered -

"write a civilopedia entry for the game civilization 3 on masonry" and it came back with:

Spoiler write a civilopedia entry for the game civilization 3 on masonry :

Masonry is a technology in Civilization III that represents the development of techniques for working with stone. With the knowledge of Masonry, civilizations can construct stone buildings and improve their city defenses by building walls.

To research Masonry, a civilization must first discover the technology of Bronze Working, which is a prerequisite. Once Masonry is discovered, a civilization can construct the Great Wall wonder, which greatly increases the defensive strength of all of its cities.

In addition to the Great Wall, the Masonry technology unlocks the construction of Stone Works, a building that provides bonus production and trade in cities that are built on stone resources. The technology also unlocks the Quarry improvement, which allows a civilization to extract additional production from stone resources.

Masonry is an important technology in the early game, as it unlocks crucial defensive options and resource improvements. It is particularly useful for civilizations that are looking to establish strong defensive positions, as the Great Wall wonder can make it much more difficult for enemy armies to capture their cities.

Overall, Masonry is an important technological milestone in the development of any civilization in Civilization III. Its benefits, particularly in terms of defense and production, make it a key focus for many early-game strategies.

Yikes is right. The first sentence is okay, but the rest is crazy. Stone Works? Quarry? Masonry allows the building of the Great Wall?

 

[Ozymandias]

Yikes is right. The first sentence is okay, but the rest is crazy. Stone Works? Quarry? Masonry allows the building of the Great Wall?

I think that it is conflating Civ 3 with all the others in the series, so:

1. An easy edit, and,
2. Ideas for new Techs, and possibilities., and,
3. Still -

 

[Meteor Man]

OK ... ! YIKES! -

I entered -

"write a civilopedia entry for the game civilization 3 on masonry" and it came back with:

Spoiler write a civilopedia entry for the game civilization 3 on masonry :

Masonry is a technology in Civilization III that represents the development of techniques for working with stone. With the knowledge of Masonry, civilizations can construct stone buildings and improve their city defenses by building walls.

To research Masonry, a civilization must first discover the technology of Bronze Working, which is a prerequisite. Once Masonry is discovered, a civilization can construct the Great Wall wonder, which greatly increases the defensive strength of all of its cities.

In addition to the Great Wall, the Masonry technology unlocks the construction of Stone Works, a building that provides bonus production and trade in cities that are built on stone resources. The technology also unlocks the Quarry improvement, which allows a civilization to extract additional production from stone resources.

Masonry is an important technology in the early game, as it unlocks crucial defensive options and resource improvements. It is particularly useful for civilizations that are looking to establish strong defensive positions, as the Great Wall wonder can make it much more difficult for enemy armies to capture their cities.

Overall, Masonry is an important technological milestone in the development of any civilization in Civilization III. Its benefits, particularly in terms of defense and production, make it a key focus for many early-game strategies.

Indeed, you have to hold its hand a bit. Just give it an example and say "write something like this." Try telling it what techs it should require, what it enables, etc.

Like this:

Hello, chatGPT. Here is an example of some code for an encyclopedia entry for a Flak Tower in a WW2 game:

#BLDG_Flak_Tower
^
^[Flak towers] ("Flaktürme") were large, above-ground, anti-aircraft gun blockhouse towers constructed by Nazi Germany. There were 8 flak tower complexes in the cities of Berlin (3), Hamburg (2), and Vienna (3) from 1940 onwards. Other cities that used flak towers included Stuttgart and Frankfurt. Smaller single-purpose flak towers were built at key outlying German strongpoints, such as at Angers in France, Helgoland in Germany.
^
^{Requires:} Available only to Germany. A city must already have built $LINK<flak=BLDG_Flak> to construct a flak tower complex.
^
^{Bonus:} Provides a city with more extensive anti-aircraft defenses.
#DESC_BLDG_Flak_Tower
^
^After the RAF's raid on Berlin in 1940, Adolf Hitler ordered the construction of three massive flak towers to defend the capital from air attack. Each tower had a radar installation with a radar dish which could be retracted behind a thick concrete and steel dome for protection. Hitler was interested in the design of the towers, and even made some sketches. They were constructed in six months. The priority of the project was such that the German national rail schedule was altered to facilitate the shipment of concrete, steel and timber to the construction sites.
^
^With concrete walls up to 3.5 m (11 ft) thick, flak towers were considered by their designers to be invulnerable to attack by the standard ordnance carried by RAF heavy bombers at the time of their construction.
^
^The towers were able to sustain a rate of fire of 8,000 rounds per minute from their multi-level guns (albeit mostly smaller-caliber shells, such as the 2cm FlaK 30), with a range of up to 14 km (8.7 mi) in a 360-degree field of fire. However, only the 128 mm (5.0 in) FlaK 40 guns had effective range to defend against the RAF and USAAF heavy bombers. The three flak towers around the outskirts of Berlin created a triangle of anti-aircraft fire that covered the centre of Berlin.
^
^The flak towers had also been designed with the idea of using the above-ground bunkers as a civilian shelter, with room for 10,000 civilians and a hospital ward inside. During the Battle of Berlin, occupants formed their own communities, with up to 30,000 Berliners taking refuge in one tower during the battle. These towers, much like the keeps of medieval castles, were some of the safest places in a fought-over city and so the flak towers were some of the last places to surrender to the Red Army, eventually being forced to capitulate as supplies dwindled. The Soviets, in their assault on Berlin, found it difficult to inflict significant damage on the flak towers, even with some of the largest Soviet guns, such as the 203 mm M1931 howitzers.

Create an entry like this for an Air Raid Shelter.

#BLDG_Air_Raid_Shelter
^
^Air Raid Shelters were structures built to protect civilians during air raids or bombings. They were constructed in many cities around the world during World War II. In London alone, over 1.5 million air raid shelters were constructed.
^
^{Requires:} Available to all cities during wartime.
^
^{Bonus:} Provides shelter and protection for civilians during air raids.
#DESC_BLDG_Air_Raid_Shelter
^
^Air Raid Shelters were typically constructed underground, although some were above-ground or semi-sunken. They were designed to protect civilians from the effects of bombings, including blast, shrapnel, and fire. The shelters were often constructed using reinforced concrete and steel, with thick walls and ceilings to provide protection.
^
^Air Raid Shelters came in different sizes and shapes, ranging from small, individual shelters to large, communal ones that could accommodate hundreds of people. Some were equipped with basic amenities such as toilets, beds, and lighting. In some cases, they were also used as temporary housing for people who had lost their homes in bombings.
^
^During air raids, civilians would seek refuge in the shelters, often carrying food, water, and other supplies with them. They would wait out the raid until the all-clear siren sounded, indicating that it was safe to leave. While the shelters provided some measure of protection, they were not completely safe from the effects of bombings. Direct hits could cause the collapse of the structure or severe damage to the shelter, resulting in casualties.
^
^After World War II, many Air Raid Shelters were converted into other uses, such as storage, underground car parks, or museums. Some were demolished, while others remain as a testament to the horrors of war and the efforts of civilians to protect themselves from its effects.

In London alone, over 1.5 million air raid shelters were constructed.

It seems this number is coming from the number of home shelters built around the UK pre-war:

1.5 million Anderson shelters were distributed in the months immediately leading up to the outbreak of war.

 

[Ozymandias]

Indeed, you have to hold its hand a bit. Just give it an example and say "write something like this." Try telling it what techs it should require, what it enables, etc.

Knowing that you had the format worked out ( ) I was just going for the content (see my other thread, for Terra Fantasia, about my using this tip of this AI which will one day rule us all )

It seems this number is coming from the number of home shelters built around the UK pre-war:

[...]

The interesting part is that's not what it's doing. ChatGPT is not connected to the internet. Instead, it's been trained. In essence, it's determining, word by word (actually morpheme by morpheme), which should come next in the sequence.

I know a tiny bit about AI, mostly in the context of pattern recognition in data sets which are too large for humans to recognize, which [1] covers far more than at first meets the frontal lobes, and [2] has already proven itself to be dangerous.

Beyond that, If chatGPT isn't connected to the internet, how can it possibly have been "trained" (presumably utilizing Bayesian logic, whether top-down or bottom-up) to know what a "Civilopedia," or "Civ 3," or the structure of a Civilopedia is, even if it is conflating the Tech Trees of more than one Civ game?

(And I'm still going to use its inventiveness for Terra Fantasia!)

 

[Quintillus]

Beyond that, If chatGPT isn't connected to the internet, how can it possibly have been "trained" (presumably utilizing Bayesian logic, whether top-down or bottom-up) to know what a "Civilopedia," or "Civ 3," or the structure of a Civilopedia is, even if it is conflating the Tech Trees of more than one Civ game?

My understanding is that big-data-scale AIs are trained on a "corpus" of works, which has to be gathered from somewhere. But even if that somewhere was initially the Internet, the data has likely been massaged and standardized. For a computer, it's much more efficient to have that data locally than to have to go Googling for answers every time; in computer time talking with another computer over the Internet is very slow, but talking with local storage and memory is comparatively fast, in part because the amount of copper wire to be traversed is much smaller.

IBM's Watson system, famous for playing Jeopardy, is a good example. It functioned completely offline, just like the human contestants. IIRC from the Wolfram article, ChatGPT's predecessor, GPT-2, can be run from a single computer.

-------------

The more I see written by ChatGPT the less I trust it. It's conversational but has no concept of factual accuracy. Maybe that's okay if you're just having hearing some new stories from a random person at a bar, but I can't see myself trusting it to write Civilopedia entries.

Though this has given me more ideas for automatic Civilopedia generation. The low-hanging fruit is enumerating all the properties (such as blitz attack, charm, etc.) that aren't added to the stats by default, so they don't have to be added manually. But for the descriptive part, the 11th edition of Encyclopedia Britannica could be a good starting point for items where it has entries, and perhaps Wikipedia summaries for other items, such as submarines. Wikimedia could be a good source for images. And these could be pulled in automatically and presented for review by a human.

Now all I need is a stormy weekend (or maybe two, the first one for doing taxes), and that might end up happening.

 

[Ozymandias]

@Quintillus - "Describe a blitzkrieg battle in 1940 with German tanks fighting superior French tanks." -

Spoiler France 1940 :

The Blitzkrieg battle that occurred in 1940 between German tanks and superior French tanks was a pivotal moment in the Second World War. The German army employed their highly effective Blitzkrieg strategy, which involved a combination of fast-moving tanks and infantry, artillery, and air support, to quickly overpower the French forces.

The battle began with a surprise attack by the German tanks, who quickly advanced into French territory. The French tanks, which were more heavily armored and had better guns, initially put up a fierce resistance. However, the German tanks, with their superior mobility and speed, were able to outmaneuver the French tanks and attack them from unexpected angles.

The German tanks were also equipped with superior communication technology, which allowed them to coordinate their attacks and move in unison. In contrast, the French tanks lacked this capability, making it difficult for them to effectively respond to the German assault.

The battle quickly turned in favor of the Germans, as they destroyed a significant number of French tanks and disabled many others. The German tanks also managed to penetrate deep into French territory, disrupting supply lines and causing chaos among the French army.

Despite the superior firepower of the French tanks, their lack of mobility and coordination ultimately proved to be their downfall. The battle ended with a decisive victory for the German army, who were able to quickly overcome the French defenses and establish a foothold in France.

The Blitzkrieg battle in 1940 between German and French tanks was a key moment in the Second World War, as it demonstrated the effectiveness of the Blitzkrieg strategy and the importance of mobility and coordination in modern warfare.

 

[Ozymandias]

My understanding is that big-data-scale AIs are trained on a "corpus" of works, which has to be gathered from somewhere. But even if that somewhere was initially the Internet, the data has likely been massaged and standardized. For a computer, it's much more efficient to have that data locally than to have to go Googling for answers every time; in computer time talking with another computer over the Internet is very slow, but talking with local storage and memory is comparatively fast, in part because the amount of copper wire to be traversed is much smaller.

Including "knowing" what a Civilopedia entry is for Civ 3? -

Which doesn't mean that I'm disagreeing with you - although, for the record (and all the usual caveats about my not being a qualified financial advisor; etc.; ad nauseam) after only a cursory look at this, I immediately decided that buying any Alphabet Inc. stocks might not be such a great idea*; this decision was also fueled by third-hand statements about chatGPT being used as an engine to take on the hallowed (no irony!) Sergey Brin's search algorithm set. Also recall that it's not unusual for a typical Google search to return well north of 5,000,000 hits.

Spoiler * :

Here are all the unusual caveats that I am not a qualified financial advisor, etc.

IBM's Watson system, famous for playing Jeopardy, is a good example. It functioned completely offline, just like the human contestants. IIRC from the Wolfram article, ChatGPT's predecessor, GPT-2, can be run from a single computer.

"Jeopardy!" is not as open-ended a database set as might be imagined, as there must be algorithms (or their human equivalent) to keep the Q&A (A&Q?) in a set of contexts "Ready for Prime Time." I also find it difficult to imagine that a data set, significantly more expansive than necessary, could not be sufficiently (I like the way you put it) "massaged and standardized." to be loaded. Also recall that "Watson runs on a cluster of ninety IBM Power 750 servers, each of which uses a 3.5 GHz POWER7 eight-core processor, with four threads per core. In total, the system has 2,880 POWER7 processor threads and 16 terabytes of RAM." (All emphases plainly added.)

The more I see written by ChatGPT the less I trust it. It's conversational but has no concept of factual accuracy. Maybe that's okay if you're just having hearing some new stories from a random person at a bar, but I can't see myself trusting it to write Civilopedia entries.

Please do have a look at my chatGPT Terra Fantasia thread.

Now all I need is a stormy weekend (or maybe two, the first one for doing taxes), and that might end up happening.

 

[Kyriakos]

Ah, your post was hiding on the second page!

I think that "as long as the reader is aware" is a very big "if". In this era of people falling for falsehoods spread via social media posts and fake news sites, my confidence of people being aware of factual errors in a chatbot's responses is very low.

Not that people were necessarily inherently better at spotting falsehoods 40 years ago, but with so much lower of a barrier to spreading them widely nowadays, the inability of the average person to reliably discern lies from truth is much more evident.

And if we're talking about something like the date of the Battle of Alesia, and you aren't asking for chronologies and testing the bot's knowledge, very few people indeed would spot an error in the initial response.

Reminded me of a short story by Asimov, "The Feeling of Power", where humans stopped doing any computation and relied fully on computers. Then someone rediscovered how multiplication and division works, by comparing his results to the computer's.
A nice phrase, showing the disbelief of the officials towards him, was: "Computation without Computers?" ^^

 

[Plotinus]

I love ChatGPT and its predecessors (I got GPT-3 to produce some very plausible Anglo-Saxon poetry). The key thing to remember with it is that it's an aid to creation, not to fact-checking. If you use it to get information you will go very wrong. If you use it as a sort of conversation partner to play with ideas and be creative it is extremely impressive and potentially very useful. So for example, if you want it to generate a pedia entry, you should give it the information you want it to include and have it rewrite it in a more appropriate style. Asking it to generate it all from scratch won't be so useful. It puzzles me a little that people keep on fixating on its unreliability in reporting facts - that's simply not what it's for.

 

[AnthonyBoscia]

Dagoth Ur recently weighed in on AI generation in Civ 3 modding. Just be aware that since he regards himself as a god with world-conquering aspirations, he's known for his blunt candor.

 

[Takhisis]

Watched that when it came out

You can clearly see it seems to working great. Any mistakes its making I can tell it to fix on its own. Try it for yourself.

Just need to pay attention to the outputted code and make sure you name the actual files and folders accordingly.

But the only way to know whether the code's any good is to first have learned the code yourself…

 

[Ozymandias]

Dagoth Ur recently weighed in on AI generation in Civ 3 modding. Just be aware that since he regards himself as a god with world-conquering aspirations, he's known for his blunt candor.

Given the high degree of regard I have for your judgement - What else has this expletive deleted fellow posted?

 

[timerover51]

Dagoth Ur recently weighed in on AI generation in Civ 3 modding. Just be aware that since he regards himself as a god with world-conquering aspirations, he's known for his blunt candor.

Actually, I do not like the individual's comments, nor do I agree with his or her view of themselves.