AI Cheats vz improvements suggestion

from GalCiv3 Forums

I am not slamming the AI for cheats on harder difficulties.  Virtually all games to this and its accepted and I don’t want to start another flame post as to whether or not it should.

 

However the one that bugs me is the no FOW. (The $ too but to a lesser extent).

So to Frogboy and all you gamer pros : Would it not be better to give the AI buffs like tougher ships, pre researched techs, an extra starting home planet, higher starting population .. etc?   Harder difficulty would = more advance tougher AI but in a way that’s giving it early access to things the player can eventually get also.   Letting the AI see the world and roll in $ so it can just buy & colonize everything a turn 1 does not feel like the best choice here.  

 

Of course AI should still (and does) get smarter at harder difficulties

17,729 views 10 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

BUMP

QUESES  IT WAS A BAD IDEA? :S

Reply #2 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I want to play at harder difficulties to make the AI more competitive but this is the one thing that drives me nuts. Give him bonuses to production, research, whatever; but at least make him build sensor boats like me and explore. I want it to deserve that planet in my home territory, or that starbase resource.

Galactic Civilizations III
Reply #3 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I explore with my colony ships.  

Reply #4 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting Christian_Akacro, reply 2

I want to play at harder difficulties to make the AI more competitive but this is the one thing that drives me nuts. Give him bonuses to production, research, whatever; but at least make him build sensor boats like me and explore. I want it to deserve that planet in my home territory, or that starbase resource.

 

That is exactly my feelings :grin:

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Reply #5 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I want to add that "No FoW" AI behavior seriously hinders player abilities to play on certain galaxy settings. F.e. my "ideal" galaxy (that sadly would require some modding)  would be full of star systems and dead planets but will have some star systems with more than one habitable planet. So it would look like fighting for such star system with "chains" of starbases to reach them. But if AI would have no FoW AND other bonuses at the same time, playing against him would be impossible.

Reply #6 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Brad has stated that he wants to add another difficulty above normal where the AI has FOW, but will remember ships it has seen.

Quoting Frogboy, reply 4

I want to have 2 more difficulty levels. One just sub-normal and 1 between normal and gifted.

I don't feel like "normal" is very fair to the AI since it can't load and save games.  What I'd like to have at a slightly above normal AI is where it has FOW but once it knows about your ship it knows about it.  This makes it dealing with pirates a lot easier without using tons of memory.

And here's another post about the AI from the Steam forums:

It pains me when people use the word "cheat" so loosely. In game AI circles, we would not actually count the AI as "cheating" except for the higher levels being able to see the map.

The AI would have been a lot easier to write if I could have just had it spawn units and prebuild a perfectly optimized planet (as in, just generate the planet with the perfect buildings there but disabled until the right time based on difficulty).

What the AI does get are amplifiers to its stats. This is an important distinction because it means when you destroy a shipyard or take a planet, you are really hurting it. It can't just spawn a unit in the FOW or something. If you've played a 4X in recent years, you've probably played one that actually does cheat.

Now, regarding being able to see the map. This is less about making the AI smarter and actually more about memory. It's actually not super awesome for the AI to see stuff because it ends up making a lot of dumb decisions. In fact, a lot of its strategic mistakes are tied to this issue.

During the beta, every AI stored their own FOW. The problem was that this consumered a lot of memory (as some beta testers can tell you, the betas used a lot more RAM). So we found ways to trim it. One of those things was to have a bit more binary FOW system. On normal and below, it has to "Scan" every turn to see what it knows or doesn't know. It's actually at a slight disadvantage to the human.

On higher levels, we try to simulate what it knows and doesn't know with us being increasingly generous to it.

Now, in 1.1 (June) we have an improved system so the AI won't know where everything is, even on the highest level because, like I said, knowing where everything is results in bad strategic choices (sending a fleet across a gigantic galaxy is not a good idea for instance).

Like all 4X AI, it all has to be refined over time.

One thing you guys can do is send me saved games with "stupid AI tricks". They're literally a gold mine. A lot of the reason the AI is as good as it is is because of those saved games players have sent.

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Reply #7 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I agree. I think we need a new difficulty level between 'normal' and 'challenging'.

In this new difficulty, the AI has FOW where it needs to explore to gather where are all the habitable planets, resources and relics.

At the same time, in this new difficulty level, the AI has the ability to research faster, build faster, high gross income, etc.

Imagine in the real world now if we do meet with an advance alien civilization. I would expert the alien to be really smarter than us. Where "it" is more technologically advance, has the ability to develop new inventions (research) faster and better, has the ability to construct faster (manufacturing), does not use money to drive its economy. But at the same time, this advanced alien civilization does not know the whole universe. It needs to get out into its space ship and explore the universe to find out what's out there.

Reply #8 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Aren't it better to simply be able to adjust AI manually like with Galaxy Creation? To give AI different kind of bonuses separately? 

Reply #9 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

With regards to the OP, the AI actually gets all of those bonuses already, save for flat out free buildings and ships. Of course it also gets that FoW bonus. It's a shame the Stellar Cartography tech from beta wasn't actually finished, or maybe it was used in the AI's coding, as that would've evened the playing field so to speak, as it would have shown the player the location of every single habitable planet.

Reply #10 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

At highest levels does the AI get the ability to manufacture multiple ships in one turn? It certainly seems to do that.