I'd want personalities to be in different catigories rather than just "beginner, easy, normal, hard, etc."  Like I'd want "rushing AI easy, hard, impossible" and "culture AI easy, hard, impossible"   maybe "turtle AI simple, advanced"  (easy and normal wouldn't really apply, since you could probebly still be able to rush them).  You know, something other than just 'easy, normal, hard'   or 'noble, warlord, king' or whatever set you can imagine.  Something that better describes how the AI acts.    Naturally a turtling AI would be easier than a balanced AI.  Some players might be able to deal with both of those, but not the rushing AI who always just presses the offensive and never lets up.

Excatly right denry

There is a big difference between a "hard" personality that follows a certain lines of code or honor but is very smart, and a guy who randomly says "Man, my nose itches, I think I should take it out on you" and declares war.  The latter is how I felt the difficulty in most TBS games is created. 

(I want an AI personality that says the above line)

You know what I want more than anything when it comes to AI? A truly adaptable one complete with a certain amount of unpredictability. It always irks me that after just a few interactions or a little espionage I can tell exactly what type of AI I'm up against, and thus gain an advantage over any and every AI player because I know how they will react to things and their overall strategies.

I want an AI that constantly makes contextual decisions about its grand strategy. For example, let's pretend AI Player A starts out surrounded by five other players. It decides that being too aggressive would simultaneously annoy many of its neighbors and weaken its defenses, so it chooses to dig in like a good little turtle. However, after some time two of its neighbors (B and C) go to war, and player B gains the upper hand - but not by much. Player A then strikes a deal with Player C: A will join the fight against B in exchange for an alliance and a constant tribute of iron ore (A has very little iron in its territory, and B has a small surplus). A increases its military production and draws from its defenses to make good on the deal. This turns the tides on player B - the combined strengthens of A and C overwhelm B, who is defeated in short order.

The results of this for Player A? It gains about half of B's territory, an alliance, a steady supply of a resource it was short on, and one less neighbor (at least for now). Now, with B defeated and C an ally, A has only 3 potentially hostile neighbors. It now decides to use its increased territory and resources to build up a powerful military, stops turtling and goes on the offensive with its new ally. Once A and C defeat or ally with their remaining neighbors, A explores its surroundings and discovers that there are other very powerful kingdoms/alliances not too far away. A decides to revert to being more of a turtle again, building a strong economic foundation, and focuses on both magic and technological research; it also does a lot of quests for the shiny rewards. It maintains a strong defensive position so that would-be invaders would think twice before attacking.

From here, A could decide to go on the offensive again, or it could go down the diplomatic route, or it could continue to turtle, aiming for a magic victory. Or it could try to complete its Master Quest. At this point in the game, all of these strategies would be more or less equally valid.

Moral of the story: I want an AI that can play like that. I have never played a game with an AI with that level of versatility, and in my opinion such a believable AI alone could make Elemental memorable for a long time to come. I would even be happy if they do away with the standard types of AI (turtle, aggressive, tech, etc) and focus solely on making one truly versatile AI, maybe with some tweaks here and there for different factions and races.

I disagree, Luck, If you only want to play at the highest degree of difficulty WITHOUT cheats for the AI, I agree that should be an option. SO they should make it clear at what levels of difficulty the AI starts getting cheats and what those cheats are.

However, there are some players (my son for instance) that there are some games that he can beat the game even with the game getting double production bonuses and other penalties for himself. In a perfect world, a GOD AI could be created that could at optimum setting outplay almost anyone without cheats. We don't live in that world, and if they have to let the AI cheat in order to be "nearly impossible" to beat, then I think it should be included. Again, they should make it very clear at what difficulty level cheats are introduced.

Well I guess it depends on the discipline of the developers. I think everyone, and particularly Stardock, is VERY committed to making the best AI possible that can win "fair and square". And with RTS that is even fairly doable just due to the AI to be doing a thousand things at once but still play within the rules.

In a turn based strategy game, it is incredibly tough to make a non-cheating AI that can beat top human players. It's ability to do a thousand things at once is to some degree mitigated if not eliminated. Think of how difficult it is for a chess program to be able to beat top human players. Now take a game like Elemental where the "ruleset" is much more complex than a chess game and with multiple ways to win. Coding an AI to even give a solid player a good game "within the rules" is a tough prospect. One that can beat a strong player is doable, but HUGE amounts of resources would be required to do so <IMHO>. I would love to be proven wrong

And making the entire game optional is a can of worms I really should get around to create a thread about. Both things - "optionals" and the AI cheating are unnecessary crutches and excuses to avoid taking responsability. The "I SAID OPTIONAL!" claim is not a valid defense.

You know all the pieces at once, you know the positions, what's in play is finite. In a TBS, you can't think 8 turns ahead of time in the same manner (nor do you always have to).

I would say this argument proves why a good AI (for a TBS)  is MORE difficult to program. In chess, as you say, there are a limited number of moves, it is not that hard for the AI to look ahead at all possible moves for the next x number of turns and determine what is the optimal course. For the very reasons you give, it makes it difficult to make a good AI for TBS games strictly because of the nearly infinite possibilities that the program would need to examine and evaluate.

Now I completely agree with you as far as the AI being able to cheat and see into the fog of war. But giving the AI productivity/research bonuses I think is fair play as long as it is explicit for the difficulty level what is happening.

You call it a copout, I call it a valid option. SD has already bragged about the AI and how it is going to feel like playing another human. So I don't see them taking the easy path and jsut putting out a crap AI with cheats to make it competent. I expect and hope that they put out a competent AI that can be made ruthless with (cheats, advantages, whatever suits you)

>.<  I don't want to neuter myself for any reason.    ....   well, actually, I wonder if that would stop me from being distracted by every nice pair of boobies that walk by.  I'd probebly be a lot more productive now that I think about it.   I really don't need the aggression and other testosterone related emotions...

But stardock HAS boosted that the AI of this game is going to be very good, and they seem to be aiming to make it seem very human.  So I expect it to be as such, with hopefully minimal cheating.   *cheers* here is to fun AI

For the sake of argument, it's important that you realize the internal conflict of interest. One one hand, you want to play against "the hardest possible", but on the other hand you don't want to play against a cheating AI - you want a level playing field against the AI, just like you want a level playing field when comparing your relative "worth" to that of your peers, opponents, rivals, enemies or whatever.

The resulting annoyance of being "forced" is detrimental to the enjoyment of the situation - i.e. the game.

"I think we should have a civilization of dragons, optional!"; "But.. Dragons are supposed to be incredibly powerful, capable of steamrolling nearly entire nations. That wouldn't make sense, contextually or lore-wise!"; "I SAID OPTIONAL!".

I'd argue that difficulty levels are options, but not optional.

they need to do a few things to make the game difficult.

1) they need to automatically take cities when they are in position to do that. No matter how good the relationship with the player is.(humans do not care, so the AI should not care.)

2) If they get all the tributes they need from a weaker opponent, then they must immidiately kill that player off.

3) they need to make the AI focus on military, and overall make them more agressive.

4) You need to make the AI sometimes stop makeing new cities, research, building infrastructure during war. only units and some military buildings during the war phase. so that the war is over quickly and a large army can overwhealm the other player.

5) the AI needs to take into account where you have your army, and cities and how well the predicted reinforements are.

6) The AI needs to learn how to backstab an ally, when it increases there chance of winning. That also means declearing war when it is atvantageous even if there tributes are met!

7) the AI needs to prepare for a massive quick war just before they decleare war. Massing units in the prewar phase.

8) The AI needs to focus on infrastructure when they are far from an opponents cities and armies.

9) the AI needs to learn how to raid with fast units, with no other goals then to prepare for an invasion. To destroy roads, mines and lightly defended cities.

No, no, you quite plainly missunderstood me.

I also find it interesting that I can't actually argue with you anymore, since you're not raising any points except "therapy". I -could- play at a lower difficulty setting, of course I can. I just don't feel that I should have to somehow neuter myself. Like the argument I raised before, it's the same basic argument that other retards raise in other mods or games;

"The flying sasquatch unit is way overpowered to the point where I'm not having much fun playing the Sargasso Pirates civilization. We really need something done about this"; "So don't play the Sargasso Pirates, or don't use the flying sasquatch unit. Duh!"

And yes, singleplayer games are competitions of the self. You get better and better as you play, for any variety of reasons. The only one you have to beat is either yourself, or scoreboards compared against other people. Wheter that's your piece of cake or not is another thing entirely, but not getting a comparable difficulty level to that of others is a problem, yes.

If for nothing else than for reference points between games and players.

(This was originally supposed to be posted right after Pigeon's last response, before KnutAreMykland posted, hence making a lot more sense without direct quotings)

I want to live under the constant threat of being steamrolled because I don't know how strong my enemy is or where he is hiding his armies. That's not to say that I want to become a nervous paranoid wreck because the enemy is a complete sociopath.

I'm an ambivalent latecomer to the GC2 Metaverse, and I don't think I'll be disappointed if there simply are no scores for Elemental. But if there are, regardless of whether Stardock maintains ranking ladders via something like the MV or fans do it independently somewhat like the AltMeta, I believe that a diverse set of ladders is the single best response to the otherwise-endless arguments that arise about just what sort of playstyle deserves top points.

Games as complex as even the original Civ, MoM, GalCiv, and MoO can be played and enjoyed very differently. Folks who want to compete are a subset of the total game audience, and folks who want to have their scores compared to *all* other players are a subset of the competitive folks. Sorting scores by difficulty level is just a good start, IMO. A good ladder set for Elemental would also sort for major playstyle traits such as map size and vicory type. I'd even enjoy seeing a dimension in a laddering schema that tracked games by your choice of faction and possibly other game setup choices.

Well, the whole therapy thing was largely tongue in cheek, but not entirely... The fact that you consider playing on the highest difficulty level at which the AI doesn't cheat neutering yourself is absolutely ridiculous. Elemental is (or will be, anyway) a game. It's purpose is to be used by people as a method of entertainment - to have fun. Different people obviously have fun in different ways, and maybe in your case you have fun by playing every game trying to do better than you did the last time; always trying to improve. That's fine. The mere presence of cheating difficulties should affect that, though. You can still always try to improve on the non-cheating difficulty. But if somehow their presence is stressful to you, and makes you all of a sudden feel like you're being presented with two bad choices (even though one of those choices is exactly what you want), then you have a problem...

And I realize this is not your only argument, but it is clearly part of it. Otherwise you shouldn't have written:

"Cheating AI will result in me -having- to play against it at one point or another, to get a comparable relative difficulty level to my peers. It becomes a pissing match who's playing against the most unfair odds, rather than who's actually the better player."

"For the sake of argument, it's important that you realize the internal conflict of interest. One one hand, you want to play against "the hardest possible", but on the other hand you don't want to play against a cheating AI - you want a level playing field against the AI, just like you want a level playing field when comparing your relative "worth" to that of your peers, opponents, rivals, enemies or whatever."

And with regards to the whole thing about in order to really compete with other players you'd have to play on the cheating difficulties, there's this: if people get to the point where they can consistently beat cheating AIs, then chances are if said AIs weren't even there, most/all of the top players' scores would pretty much be maxed out. They would utterly destroy all opposition every game. What's the point in competing at something that isn't even a challenge?

There are plenty of people who enjoy strategy games because of the challenge. Unfortunately, after a fairly short period of time, many of those people get so good that non-cheating AIs don't pose any challenge for them anymore. If there's no way for them to make the game harder, they'll lose interest and move on to something else. If letting them up the difficulty by giving the AI all sorts of advantages will keep the interested and a part of the community, then I think it's more than worthwhile.

Pretty much all your arguments have to do with competition and ladders and the like. The regular singleplayer experience should never be limited based on ladders or multiplayer considerations, especially in a game like Elemental, where, let's face it, 92.35% of all games will be played outside of any ladder or competition.