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[gregor]

Originally posted by efthimios@May 17 2006, 01:56 PM
Are you basing your argunment about AI on Command and Conquer? Hardly the best AI , even for RTS.

I am very surprised to read that you have never played a good turn based game. Is this solely on AI performance? GalCiv II can be quite good, Conflict Europe is good, and there are so many hundrends TBS games that you never liked any one? Wow.

Perhaps, if AI is the problem, you should devote the rest of your life to develop a great AI for games. :blink:

Well i am not surprised since a) dont' have much time for games (work & study) and B) have an old computer.

I played many games, but most still have the same weakness. because they need to have it.

What is so good about good AI? does he beats you everytime? does he attack with full force in the begining when you are weak?

TBS
Heroes of might and magic - stupid (divides his army) final mission good side -> enemy has one strong soldier in immediate vacinity of one of your castles - he takes one never goes after the other eventhought his army is much stronger. not to mention that the main boss never moves with his superior army.

panzer - well also not the brightest bulb in the galaxy.

civ3 - better but still... LOL

settlers 3 (RTS) - doesnt' even move untill his force is substancial. you attack with small group or one soldier on one side he send his whole army there while you take over with the real attack the other side of his base.

Alpha centauri - challenging, but only because it cheats

space empires - nice try, long battle but... he doesn't colonise enough planets on the start.


the point is that AI is made dumb intentionally. because otherwise the computer would win (without cheating)

best example of dumb computer is when you make tactical retreat. works every time in battles. he charges from superior position, you outflank him.

why should i develop something.i only want to use it? i still have a choice not to play games with dumb AI or to enjoy defeating them in their own stupidity.

and another point was that you NEVER get an attack in the beggining of a strategy game (unless it's battle type like panzer). is there any game that is really, really hard. i mean that the average gamer can't win with some time and effort? no. because games are build that way. like the poster above said - you can have bots calculate fast (reaction tiem) the recouil and make a headshot every time. that's not cheating that's just fast calculation. but who would want to play such a game? a game when you see someone you get a headshot. i've tried playing it but it's not fun at all. in fact it's frustrating. however behind soon as we gave that bot artificially made recoil and reduce his reaction time - well they almoust seem like humans. in fact i saw a couple of times when people were chatting with them on servers (yeah cause bot had built in a chat option - and they were also chatting among themselves, making jokes, giving warnings etc.)

all to make them less computer like and more human like. but to make them more human, like i said, we had to make them dumber.

[Mecron]

Hmmm when you talk about AI I think you need to distinguish between AI's for real time combat (the "Headshot" bunch) and strategic AI's. RT AI's defintely need to be dumbed down as they have total awareness of a battlefield and in a game where "making the shot" is part of gameplay, they are too perfect becuase it is all about calculation.

In a strat game it is totally different. I think once you get past tic tac toe, checkers and chess, there is no need to "dumb down" the AI. The eternal struggle is to get a Strat AI to be able to fuzzy logic its options. We all have played strat games where the AI does something well but then does it in a situation where that is totally stupid. This is the ugly edge between "routines" and "understanding". And while your routine can be very sophisticated in what parameters it takes into account, in a wide open game, it is still vulnerable to the occasional "not taking reality into account" move.

And as for pathfinding...well that is a different ball o wax again...but since hundreds of millions have gone into 2 cross country AI races over the past 2 years and only got winners this year. I think we can say that telling a computer player how and where to move a unit around a tree is trickier than most people think :help:

[gregor]

Pathfinding... yeah... we had lot's of troubles form getting the bot's through the door and off the leader in HL engine

But still... in strategic games if you are much stronger and offer them an alliance (in strategy games such as Civilisation, Alpha Centauri or Space empires) but they refuse to sign it because you already violated the alliance. mmmkey.... "please sign it i want to cooperate with you. i dont' want to be at war anymore. if we sign we will both benefit". and then they say no. i say ok suit your self - they get nuked! why is that so? why they don't want to ally with much stronger opponent? why do they not beg for mercy? why do they oppose you eventhought it is a lost cause and eventhough this time your intentions are really true.

Remember those late starts in Civ where you had single city with phalanx in year 1900 while you already had nukes and armour. and they decided to oppose you even after warning and beggin to sign for peace.

Or in Space empires where i deliberatelly (personal project) gave my self certain advantage and ebcause of that everyone wanted war with me. i said ok and destroyed their suns (not enough of them, battle still lasted on) but most races got erase evethought my intetnion was to end game with certian years of peace elapsed or with points from colonies (we all started with same colony tech and same amount of them at start). they are rather erased then surrender. no (human) logic at all.

Esepcially in CIV where you can win by launchin a space ship.

[efthimios]

gregor you should definetely play GalCiv II. This does not happen anymore.

[Mecron]

nooo...but if you do not win the "grab all the planets as early as you can" game at the start of GC2 you mght as well pack it in.

[Mecron]

demo...mid july...nuff said. :bye:

[efthimios]

That is good. I was thinking about a demo for this game last night.

BTW, not sure if someone asked this earlier or not, but, what type of copy protection will you use? I am mainly interested to know that you do not use either a certain known russian one, or something as prohibiting as steam.

[Mecron]

It wont be starforce nor will it be steam. FOr any more detail you will have to do what I do, ask the publisher of SotS, Lighthouse.

[Blood-Pigggy]

How much should we expect the final product to cost?

Oh, and it's nice to see I'll be able to use X-fire along with this

[Doubler]

Hate to be the necromancer here, but...
A shiney new SotS website is up. There's some sample gameplay there (One write-up for about the first 30 turns for each race), for those that are interested.