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Azeem
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quote:
Though if the trebuchet is a UU, methinks maybe Charlemagne and the Franks? |
The French (Franks) are already in CivIII. It could be a Byzantine UU. Or maybe an upgrade from the catapult.
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wervdon
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quote:
Originally posted by Randolph
Troytheface: do you think you could beat Deep Blue in chess? AI can be made better. |
Sorry the drudge this up from way back, but I think its worth pointing out that there are two fundamental differences in chess and civ3.
1) Complexity: most chess programs work by literally thinking ahead and analyzing every possible move they and the components can make many moves ahead and picking the one with the best outcome for the ai player. (there are tricks of course, mostly dealing with pruning obviously bad choices from the search tree) This can't be done in civ3, because there are more possible moves to make on any given turn, and the further into the future the ai tries to think the more choices it has to analyze. Ie) in chess you never have more than 16 pieces which can be moved, and there are only 64 squares on the board. In civ3 you could potentially have hundreds of pieces to move to thousands of squares, and that isn't even taking into account city production, etc.
2) Uncertainty. In chess the ai knows what the result of a move will be. A captured unit is always captured if you move onto it, etc. In civ3 you don't know because the results are random. Which adds even more to the complexity, now the ai not only has to consider one result for a move, but it has to consider all results and weight them according to the liklihood of occurence.
In short, you are comparing apples and oranges. Civ's ai does not and *cannot* function in the same way as champion chess playing programs.
Not to say there can't be improvement in the ai of course, its just not fair to point at a relatively simple game and say civ3's ai is not as good in comparison. It'd be like saying your dodge can haul a u-haul, so by the same logic it's the manufacturer's fault if it can't haul a 50 ton trailer.
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Azeem
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For the Mayans, based on the graphics released, it is most likely that the UU would be a javelin thrower because Mayans did not have very good archers. It was very strange that the Mayans had a plumed archer as their UU in Age of Empires. Their javelineers and atl-atl slings were much more superior.
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Dom Pedro II
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The College of New Jersey
Nov 1999
time: 05:28
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This new expansion bugs me to some degree...
Personally, I think Firaxis has shown that it doesn't have the right stuff. Of course, it's not as bad as Activision and their little disaster, Call to Power, but it's still bad.
I like Civ 3. Don't get me wrong. I would rather play it than Civ 2, but I think it was far from what we hoped it would be. I remember a year before Civilization came out, suggestions were streaming in every day here at the forums. The game designers were talking one-on-one with the fans, and it seemed like they were really listening to us.
Now, some people had some far out ideas, but for the most part, the people generally wanted to see the same things.
* Improved scenario-editing ability, events scripting.
* More complex diplomacy (meaning like the diplomacy screen)
* Improved graphics
* Better economy (resources and such)
And there were certain things, like Multiplayer, that Civ 2 featured that it was assumed would be included.
And they did make some progress.... the Civ III editor opened up a lot of stuff to the people that in Civ 2 was untouchable with regards to buildings and units.
The graphics were definitely better.
And the diplomacy options were better. We got to declare war when we wanted to. Cities could be traded. There was a lot more flexibility with regards to diplomacy and trading...
and there was resources.
But it didn't go nearly far enough. The game, for the most part, seemed almost left incomplete. Hell, there are graphics in Civ 3 for units that aren't even there. There was ruins graphics before the ruins in PtW were even available. It looked more like a beta test than the real game.
Perhaps the two biggest hits: no scenario-editing abilities, and no multiplayer! How could they not have included these things? They knew we wanted to see them in the game!
Why were they left out? I've heard people argue "Well, they shouldn't listen to the demands of the consumers. They were making the game they wanted."
We're not talking about dramatic differences... they could still make the game the way they wanted to and give us what we wanted. Events scripting, scenario abilities, and more modding options could only expand the possibilities, not constrict them... and multiplayer is a must!
It was almost like they had gone back to the original Civ2, which didn't have any of these options, and were going through all of the same mile stones... why? It makes no sense.
Then there was Play the World, which was in many ways just tinsel. The fundamental changes that were needed were ignored so that they could focus on decoration: new civs, new units, new improvements. The scenario editor, true, was somewhat better, and the multiplayer, as many of us know, was a joke!
Again, it let it seem like they'd just stopped whatever it was they were doing and said "OK, let's sell this!" I mean, they included the new animations for Medieval Japan and World War II (some of which were nice) and they couldn't even make pedia icons for them... shameful!
I remember when the programmers would come and talk in the chats about what they were doing with the expansion pack. Most of the conversation was about what WASN'T going to be included, not what was... We were left guessing at what civs and features could be expecting. Interaction between the fans and the programmers dried up. It wasn't a dialogue anymore, they were dictating the terms of the expansion pack to us.
And now there's this new expansion pack coming out... that promises natural disasters. Fine. Natural disasters sound cool, but why are they working on such cosmetic things when they haven't even addressed the old problems? It's very troubling to me... as has been said before, they have the oppurtunity to redeem themselves, but I don't see any sign that this is going to happen. It's like they're bleeding us, stretching this out as long as they can to maximize profits... I don't know if this is the intention, but it is certainly the result. An expansion pack is supposed to be a continuation, an augmentation, but these are almost like corrections, apologies.
I'll have to think long and hard about whether I'm going to buy this expansion. If they make some effort to turn things around and it shows, then I'll buy it. If on the other hand its just a bunch of cosmetic changes that modders could do on their own, then forget it!
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28-05-2003 22:07
, ....... maybe its an UU for a civ instead of a catapult , ......
the name is , .....
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