Tormy-

Join Date 02/2006

+58

Gameplay features, balance & the AI

I was just reading the interview with Frogboy [Shacknews], and I've found this part very interesting:

"The marriage thing I was talking about. Let's say throughout the game I've maintained a relatively modest empire. I don't seem very powerful at the base of it. But throughout the game I've been breeding my daughters, for lack of a better word, that have high beauty, which makes them very desirable to various players. So I have slowly become a major part of everyone else's family, so that player X, he thinks he's just more powerful than everyone else. But then these guys just start surrendering, but they're all surrounding to me. So now I've inherited 20 kingdoms, and I'm huge. This guy thought he was going to win, but now actually I'm going to win.

Here's another example: again, I don't seem to be that very powerful. Someone else has a huge army. But I'm actually busy sending my heroes on quests to recover bits of this ancient artifact. And just as he thinks he's going to win, I put this artifact together, and I can now make my relatively small army 100 times more powerful than it normally would be. Or maybe I've been spending my time researching these spells. Like you saw in the demo I give, my one guy approaching this city with this huge army, and I cast a spell and he's gone."

This sounds awesome, but it also made me think....what about balance in the vanilla game? I think that the players will have lot of tools to "exploit" the AI players, if the AI won't be super duper cool. Also...will the AI try to use dirty tricks to beat the player? Will it also "exploit" the marriage system just like the players will? Will it try to destroy the strategically most important cities with powerful spells, like that raise volcano spell, what we've seen in the in-game movie? Will it try to create artifacts and use it properly? Let's hope so...that would make this game epic.

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Well, we all certainly hope that the AI will be brilliant and able to utilize all those options just as well as a human can - and I have faith in Stardock, they just might pull that off. But lacking that, I think there are ways to balance it so the AI is still challenging.

For example, a human might research some awesome volcano-summoning army-destroying spell, but doing so might cost so much in terms of research/production that the AI, applying those same resources to building/upgrading its army, winds up with 4x the military power of your channeler-focused civ. Your volcano may wipe out a lot of those units at once, but can it alone balance things out? Just pointing out, fun as those kind of things may be, they might not be quite so "overpowered" as they seem at first glance - it all depends on the opportunity cost.

Or look at the political marriage minigame - sure, having beautiful daughters and marrying them off may let you, eventually, inherit control of 20 other kingdoms and become massively powerful. But that seems risky, those 20 kingdoms may not surrender every game - and instead having 20 sons who grow up to be ass-kicking champion/hero units may enable you to conquer 10 kingdom's worth of land more reliably. Again, it all depends on the opportunity cost; if all these brilliant strategies have the appropriate cost/risk associated with them, the AI can keep up without needing to use them.

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Games like this always come with the "Mundane AI" risk, and while I would LOOOOVVVEE to see an AI doing a marriage rush or a spell rush, its more realistic that there will be a few AI "sets" that all try to be balanced with maybe a slight leaning in one direction or another.

Try to remember, a super amazing AI will quickly look to the player like its cheating. If 1 AI empire inherited half the map in a span of six turns after you spent the game building up and planning, would you like it? Alot of people say yes, until it actually happens though you can't grasp the frustration. (Some modded civ4 AI's are like this in that theres no way to play the game casually and keep up. You have to run a strat)

I am really excited for victories involving thought and not just critical mass though. If occaisonally an AI utilized a solid strat like that, I think it would spice up the game.

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Alstein

Join Date 07/2004

+55

I don't care if the AI looks like it's cheating, as long as it isn't doing anything I can't do, provided I can turn down the difficulty if required.

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Quoting arstal,

reply 3

I don't care if the AI looks like it's cheating, as long as it isn't doing anything I can't do, provided I can turn down the difficulty if required.

Indeed. I won't mind if my butt will be kicked at high diff. levels. Because LOOSING.IS.FUN! Oh boy....this Dwarf Fortress quote is legendary already?

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"volcano spell, what we've seen in the in-game movie?"

Where? I haven't seen that yet.

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Quoting Raven X,

reply 5

"volcano spell, what we've seen in the in-game movie?"

Where? I haven't seen that yet.

That "scene" can be found in more movies now, here is one for example:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88ywMaW8_dE

You can see the volcano spell in action from 2:26->

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Quoting Tormy-,

reply 6

That "scene" can be found in more movies now, here is one for example:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88ywMaW8_dE

You can see the volcano spell in action from 2:26->

Damn that was Awesome! Just watched it. Good lookin out on the linkage there, Tormy-, thanks.

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Awesome! Watching the video made the game come alive like never before in my mind. I can't wait to play the game!

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