05-04-2001 16:01									#32
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Hmm, my usual IMOs;

1) Civ2 doesn't have an AI, it has a pseudo-random number generator. Virtually everything it does is chosen at random. The Smac AI just about qualifies as a 'player', though, so there's been some improvement (not much!)

2) Comparisons with chess AIs are really misleading. Believe me, I've written one. You should be able write an AI which would frequently win on Deity level vs the normal AI without cheats, though the best human players would still kick it's arse pretty much whatever you did; that's the benefit of creativity.

3) Writing an AI which learns from it's experiences is very hard in a game like Civ. It could learn a number of cities to build and which units work better, but that's about it, and it could be set more easily and effectively by a human editing a user-accesible script (hint-hint.) Writing a Civ AI which learns effectively from human players is pretty much AI-complete. Firaxis probably isn't planning to develop a human-level AI, so I'd forget about that one.

4) Because of 2 and 3, there need to be cheats. Otherwise, some people (even only 100 or so) are going to be severely bored of the single-player game after a week.

I'll leave you with some words from the Civ2 manual....

"[In Civ 1], we predicted that Emperor level could be beaten, but not consistently."

Hahahahah.....

	06-04-2001 03:38									#33
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I think that AI cheets should be an option.
Have the regular Levals Prince, King etc. But then have the ability to put it on AI cheeting with these levals if they want an extra chlange in King or Emporer or whatever. A bad AI was my main dislike of CTP. They should concentrait on a good AI.

	08-04-2001 17:52									#38
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Seriously, how hard can it be to code a decent AI? It's all numbers run through various algorithms in the end. Each number has a certain response. It's a simple matter of IF....THEN...IF ELSE...IF ELSE.....ELSE......

	09-04-2001 07:49									#39
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If I cheats cannot be avoided, then I pray that they do no tmake them as BLATANT as they were in CIV 2.

Maybe it's ok to have a few cheats. Certaintly that would make things a little bit more harder for the human player.

But this should never ever happen if the price is to have to endure blatand in-your-face cheats like in civ2. For example the blatant cheat of every AI democracy acting like a dictator not respecting the things that a human player must respect in order to keep his democracy standing. (i.e. democracies ALWAYS refusing peace treaties because they are not in the mood)

	09-04-2001 12:08									#40
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Lets see... Cheating by the AI

You sned 40 vet spies at a city to reduce some improvements, all are captured without completing their mission.

12 AI dips come into one of your cities, stealing tech. Suddenly they have all your techs, including nuclear power, which you just discovered. They build Smokey da nuke project the same turn (sorry, Manhattan). you get nuked the next turn.

that phalanx sunk your battleship!

	09-04-2001 12:20									#41
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Following that post by Father Beast, does everybody now see the problem with the AI being given unfair multiplyer values over the human player?

	10-04-2001 06:08									#42
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I know I do.

But I am not irritated by the cheats Father Beast mentioned At least these are things you can control.

Invincible AI dips? Sink everything that comes towards your shores, double stack or go demo, create choke points with forests and the problem is solved 'cause the dips won't even see the outskirts of any of your cities. And from my experience, one of your 40 or so dips will eventually succeed even though you have become USA or Russia creating spies

I suspect Father beast knows about these things too.

What really buggs me is when I am obliged to follow specific rules and the AI isn't AND I CAN CREARLY WITNESS THE WHOLE THING HAPPENING.

The despotic democracy, declaring war every 2 turns without collapsing and refusing all GANDI like approaches from you, is one of the things that irriatate me in Civ 2.

It's ok with cheats really. But the AI should cheat us in a way that does not become too obvious and thus pisses us off. (which is always a bad thing for the AI, and primarly for civ itself).

Long ago, I actually took the liberty of sending an e mail to Firaxis pleading for just that in civ 3. (It's propably one of the 100000 emails they got but still)

	10-04-2001 14:15									#44
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It's a pity though, that they won't be able to build the AI we want...

	11-04-2001 09:53									#47
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Here's an idea, at the beginning of the game, the AI gets all techs, and wonders, and then the game would be you clicking on a text bubble that says you lost and the AI won?

Obviously we all have different skill levels, yeah it pisses me off when the computer cheats, but it also dissapointed me when I beat the deity-equivalent level in SMAC (the AI doesn't cheat in SMAC, actually it does, but only in one trivial way) I think, clearly the best way to make the game appeal to everyone is to make it have a range of difficulty levels without a cheating AI, and then higher difficulty levels in which the AI plays its best strategically and gets increasingly unfair advantages.