.a.i.

iron_man · October 3, 2000, 17:31

Let me just say this first. I bought Call to Power the first week it came out. Way to early. Before I even opened it the negative reviews started popping up. After finding out I probably couldn't even play it good on my computer and that the game actually sucked in more ways than one I returned it. Without even opening it. One of the biggest problems I heard repeated continously was the fact that the .A.I. sucked. Now I know their will be people out there who will say it doesn't suck but I'm talking about the .A.I. in comparison to Civ2 and the opinions of some hardcore gamers. Now having a nice interface is good but if the core of the game's playability ,the .A.I., doesn't even present a challenge to those who would play it night and day for weeks (and you know you will)then somethings wrong(run on sentence anyone?). Is this being fixed in any ways? If so how? Thanks

Atahualpa · October 3, 2000, 20:28

Well the AI in Civ2 "cheats" a lot! Thats the only reason why it is challenging. Cause it has lots more advantages!

I dont know about the AI in CtP2 but I hope it can plan invasions and raids and such.
The only thing I know is that the AI has been rewritten.

Ata

hexagonian · October 3, 2000, 21:43

Load Wes' Medieval/Modern Mod 4 for a challenge to the CTP world. I am hoping CTP2 takes some hints from Wes and the others who put a lot of work into their mod, because they managed to upgrade a majority of the AI weaknesses.

If CTP2 manages to fix the naval aspect of the game and manages to make the AI sneaky, I will be one happy camper.

I will say this much - I'm playing some SMAC now and the AI isn't too bright there either. And judging from the posts in the SMAC forums, I'm not the only one who feels that way. Still its a good game

WesW · October 4, 2000, 01:49

Look inside the ai cities in any of the Sid games, and you will notice that there is no coordination between the squares the settlers have improved and the squares the cities are using. In Ctp, the cities will use the most beneficial squares. This is a big deal, imo.

Look at the unit distribution. In the Sid games, it's simply 'the bigger the city, the more defensive units it has inside it'. There is no recognition of the strategic situation. After the quota for these units has been met, cities start building additional units to actually move around as the situation warrants. Ctp generally does a much better job with unit allocation.
And I won't even get in to which combat system is more realistic (stacks vs one-on-one), and the fact that Ctp2's is an improvement over Ctp1's.

Even diplomacy, which was rightly criticized in Ctp1. In the Sid games, the ai's attitude toward you was determined more by the game turn than by the game situation. I could always tell within a few turns at which point diplomacy would become useless in the Sid games before I even started them.

Many people don't fully realize the short-comings of the Sid games because those games are all they have ever known. It was my realization of just how poor the ai was in the Sid games that got me into mod-making for CtP. At least with Ctp's more open code you had a chance of improving most of its short-comings, something you didn't have in the Sid games.

October 4, 2000, 03:43

if you think the CTP AI sucks, get med mod 4 and play on deity....

then come back and tell me about it...

iron_man · October 4, 2000, 14:20

From what I've heard so far the .A.I. in CTP2 will not be open to editing. So you better hope they give us something good the first time or we're screwed.

October 4, 2000, 14:32

quote:

Originally posted by iron_man on 10-04-2000 02:20 PM
From what I've heard so far the .A.I. in CTP2 will not be open to editing

where did you hear that????

iron_man · October 4, 2000, 20:34

Go to this link second to last paragraph at the bottom of the page http://apolyton.net/forums/Forum35/H...tml?date=20:11 . I'm not sure how this effects it maybe you could elaborate Mark. Thanks
[This message has been edited by iron_man (edited October 04, 2000).]

Big Dave · October 4, 2000, 23:51

I thought I had read that Activision had "conscripted" someone from Apolyton to help with the mods? And I believe that this help also included the AI, but that was a couple of months ago.

BTW, what happend to St Swithin? I thought she was the lead designer on the CTP2 team.....

------------------
Big Dave

My karma ran over my dogma.

Daniel Frappier · October 5, 2000, 00:52

What you are refering to is the announcement made by Activision about 1 1/2 month ago if my memory is corect that they will not be releasing the headers for the AI .dll

IMHO it is no big deal since nobody as use them in a mod for CTP I anyway. Maybe because even if they were officially released nobody on this site as seen them.

On the other hand all of the .TXT files will probably still be modifiable including the fuzzy logic scripts that WesW and other mod makers have modified.

October 5, 2000, 03:38

ah, yes, the dll's wont be open to public
as we have with CTP1 though, there are plenty stuff to be done through the .aip files
again, look at the Med mod and compare the AI behaviour "before and after"...

St Swithin · October 11, 2000, 16:10

Nope, I'm not the lead designer, I'm a designer. The lead designer is Dave White, who also posts on Apolyton. The lead programmer is Joe Rumsey, aka MrOgre.

And the AI is totally tweakable via text files. I know this because I am doing it now. And I should also mention that the AI text files are about 10 orders of magnitude easier to use than in CTP1.

Aw rats, I have bugs. Gotta go.

St Swithin · October 11, 2000, 16:12

oh yeah, one more thing: FLI rules are gone. No more scary, ambiguous, non-debuggable text files.

Atahualpa · October 11, 2000, 16:46

Thats good news!

Ata

meriadoc · October 11, 2000, 17:58

Indeed....

------------------
The Electronic Hobbit

Peter Triggs · October 11, 2000, 20:48

Wow!!! Cryptic, as usual; but *very* interesting. This could be the game I've dreamt of since I was a kid.

WesW · October 13, 2000, 02:17

The elimination of the flis is certainly music to my ears. I am interested to know what type of system, in layman's terms, you have replaced it with.

St Swithin · October 18, 2000, 13:45

VERY user-friendly text files, outlining the order of items AI cities build, types of units, and strategies. It's all un-fuzzy (i.e. Boolean) now, which makes it much easier to see what's going on. However, don't mistake "easier" for "less complex" - the number of rules doesn't determine the complexity, it's how they interact.

Slax · October 18, 2000, 15:56

So we can alter and add strategies for AI civs? I guess we are given access to every stat that the AI civ has knowledge of. Wow! This I gotta see.