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Demerzel
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It always amazes me that people can take a game so seriously that they'll accuse others of being lame or cheating for not playing it "fair". For instance, I saw someone accuse another of cheating because they restarted the game for having a bad starting position.
Surely, if individual A has bought the game then that individual has every right to do what they want with the game as long as no-one else if affected? For multi-player, a fair playing field must be maintained I agree but why does individual B feel (s/)he has the right to criticise another for playing/altering the game they want to ensure they have the most fun possible?
I've had this same discussion with people over other games, for instance Half-Life - peeps have had the audacity to accuse me of cheating for using the quick-save functionality to avoid playing through the entire level again when I die.
Just wanted to see if others agree or if not, why?
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Egyptian
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California - The Promised Land
Feb 2002
time: 05:21
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I used to restart all the time to get a better starting position. Lately, I stopped doing that. I am playing random civs and always keep my original staring location. It makes the game much more chalenging, thus much more fun.
If people want to restart, no big deal. The cheating that bothers me is the AI on Emporer and Diety. I have won on Emperor, but I hate the cheating. I once started a game on Emporer, and had just finished building my second warrior, when a small stack of 4 Roman spearmen and three warriors marches by looking for Barbarians. THe AI advantage just sucks at that level, so I basically play Monarch only.
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frostycreep
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Devon, England
May 2002
time: 05:21
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I think the AI needs to cheat in order to make harder levels a challenge. I dont think its possible to make the AI so intelligent that it thinks like a human, therefore on harder levels it needs to cheat. I see nothing wrong with this as im satisfied with the challenge im faced with on harder levels.
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Coracle
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First of all, the AI does DUMB things, and we've posted them many times. There is no excuse for an AI so DUMB it sends over and over a settler/foot soldier team heading towards an open tile (resulting from razing) DURING war. I destroyed three of these braindead pairs in a row. And of course the AI was getting freebie settlers.
Why does the AI when on the defensive just build defensive units?? I once attacked China with tanks. They should have had enough cavalry and marines, and some tanks, to offer a nasty counterattack. But there was no counterattack as the stupid AI JUST BUILT DEFENSIVE units. All this proves is Soren knows nothing about strategy and planning.
Must the AI be allowed to magically TELEPORT settlers across my civ in one tuirn to open tiles it should not even know exist? That kind of cheating is intensely irritating.
Take away stupid, sloppy programming, you will, ipso facto, have a "smarter" AI.
At higher levels, let the AI cheat a little, but at least tell us what these cheats are. In Civ 2 at higher levels the odds during combat simply changed. I prefered that to the insidious sneaky cheating the Civ 3 AI does.
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frostycreep
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Devon, England
May 2002
time: 05:21
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Then play civ 2.
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Grumbold
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London, UK
Mar 2000
time: 05:21
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Whoa, we seem to have gone from talking about the player "cheating" to the AI shortcuts. There's already a live thread on that issue 
I'm tending to restart games a lot at the moment just to test out certain theories. For instance, its my current belief that certain player nations not only get situated near their historical neighbours, they also seem to get similar terrain from game to game (assuming you don't go mad wiht the world settings). For instance the Persians have an extremely high tendency to end up next to a mass of jungle. Having just played a game of early jungle clearing I might well restart until I get a truly different starting area. I do not consider that wrong, nor is it violating any rules. There's no law about having to finish any game before starting a new one. I rarely play any Civ game to the final victory since its the striving for dominance I enjoy, not mopping up the last remnants to get recorded on the score sheet.
Using a code to reveal the map and then continuing to play that map with foreknowledge of the location of good city sites and huts is something else, but I still don't have any problem with players who do that if it maximises their enjoyment of the product. After all, in the single player version they could rightly argue that they are only levelling the playing field a little with the AI, who already knows the terrain and additionally knows where all the resources will be.
In the long run, exploiting loopholes in the SP game, whether they be codes, reloads or AI weaknesses is all irrelevant when compared to multiplayer. In fact it makes those players who rely on such exploits easy opponents for those who have learned to play the game clean.
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DeepO
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supporting Candle'Bre
Jan 2002
time: 06:21
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quote:
Originally posted by Qilue
This is a response to all those who have stated how they are 'professional programmers'.
Considering the bug-riddled state of software these days, I would think anyone would be too ashamed to actually admit to being a 'professional programmer'. |
Hehe, I used to be an AI programmer (well, technically software engineer), I moved on. But I have yet to hear of any bugs in my products... and I can call them mine because I did more then half of the code on them. The reason why you're seeing bugs is that applications get so big, they become incontrollable. And the rush to market is also quite strong... Plus, there are millions of professional programmers at work, surely you don't imply that I have to feel responsible for some of the mess others are making? I'm still proud of what I did, and until someone tells me that I was wrong somewhere (and proofs it with bugreports an inch thick) I won't change my mind 
Thramn05, chess AIs are indeed well done, but you can't compare these to the Civ III AI. (I'm repeating here, but what the heck). Big Blue was an engineering feat, and a big accomplishment in parrallel computing. The algorithms used for decision making, however, were very slim. It simply computed far more possibilities than Kasparov could, without taking any shortcuts or pattern recoginition that most of the times defines the I in AI. On a purely game level, it was worse then some of the available commercial packages (ChessMaster x000, for instance), as these are indeed relatively intelligent.
But even then, you can't compare ChessMaster to Civ. It is a series, which is centered around the AI, not around graphics. As such, it has a long standing evolution of its code (over 10 years), which progressively got improved. Civ III doesn't have this, the programming is far less focused on the AI, and it is a completely new system from both Civ II and SMAC.
Further, the level of complexity in Civ is far greater then a 'simple' chess board with limited moves. Chess is made for humans: the best (Kasparov) can foresee about 17 turns deep what is going to happen, and plan according to that. DeepBlue, through shear CPU power could see 23 turns... in Civ, I can plan ahead some 50-100 turns (inaccurately, of course), while my computer has trouble with 3 of them. So other algorithms are needed, as it is not a simple matter of doing all the possible moves, and judging what the results are. That's whay we need such 'stupid' algorithms that aim for some goal when certain conditions are met. Aiming for empty cities is obvious, but as the humans quickly see through these 'tactics', it becomes an exploit. If you want better strategies and tactics on the AI part, you either need cheats, or a development time of lets say 20 years... which in turn means you don't pay $50 for CivIII, but more like $500.
As to using cheats: everybody does as he pleases. But I object of alotting development time to including cheats, when that will only distract from having a better game in other areas. If I have to give away some of the AI functionalities because someone else has more fun when he can cheat, I think I have the right to give my opinion. So exploiting AI or game mechanic weaknesses: sure, do what you want. A Cheat mode in Civ III: no way!
DeepO
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Moonsinger
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quote:
Originally posted by Qilue
This is a response to all those who have stated how they are 'professional programmers'.
Considering the bug-riddled state of software these days, I would think anyone would be too ashamed to actually admit to being a 'professional programmer'. |
There is nothing to be ashamed of. Unless you are writting a tick-tack-toe program or something, there shall always be bugs! It's as simple as that. In most of my projects, there are millions line of codes to consider. Moreover, not all of those codes are written by me. If the program runs fine for 99.9999999% of the time, that's a big success.
Btw, even a simple (less than 100 lines of code) tick-tack-toe program may not be not free of bug. Does it display? Does it play music? Does it animate? If so, you are probably calling certain Windows API or DirectX functions. Are you sure that those APIs/drivers are bug free? If a bug happens to crash your simple tick-tack- toe program, is it your false? Should you be ashamed of that? I see nothing to be ashamed of; you did your best! Since you can't possibly test your program in all computer systems out there, when bug occurs, you just have to correct it and move on. There are bigger fishes out there to catch, why worry about the little one like that.
IMO, complainers/whiners often miss the big piture. Take civ3 for example, it gives many people countless of enjoyable hours, what is a big deal if it crashes once in a blue moon?
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20-08-2002 22:52
Please to meet you.
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