CA blog from Mike Simpson

[antisocialmunky]

That sounds fun :). I'm aware that the RTW AI guys have worked some miracles with formations and other things so that's pretty epic.

To be honest, I wouldn't be surprised if CA finally ups the AI for the next installment of TW whenever it takes place(WWI? with air combat engine XD') now that either they themselves or Sega feels that the second major mainstream release is getting beat on so hard for bugs and poor AI. However, the campaign AI is the only thing completely now lackluster. The BAI's problems mainly came from bugs and bad unit mission assignments(READ: Cavalry attacking cannons it cannot kill and hiding in every single house) but alot of those have been fixed.

A detailed strategic component is and always has been the biggest hole in TW.
STW - Plot out the most efficient Risk rout to kill everyone. Allies were actually useful in battle so don't kill everyone straight away.
MTW - STW except you need to figure out how to fake out the pope. You also have to worry about crusades and Jihads alienating everyone.
RTW - Make big stacks of units.... ROME SMASH!!!!
MIITW - Make big stacks of units and tech.... then everyone will eventually all in due to your ports. Murder everyone with uber Knights while they only have spearmans and peasants.
ETW - Play as Prussia or make a ridiculous amount of trade money.

A problem also as big is the context of your battles. Post-RTW is basically wading into a river of spam with battles not having any significance other than taking out the generic faceless AI. While not every battle can be the biggest and the one battle to decide the campaign, it would be nice if we decreased the frequency of battle and the importance of each battle.

It would be nice if they did it in time for NTW and added that module onto vanilla like the graphics package they talked about.

And yes: XCOM Enemy Unknown - it is awesome until you get psi-amps so I never get psi-amps. :)

[hoom]

Post-RTW is basically wading into a river of spam with battles not having any significance other than taking out the generic faceless AI.

Yes, on the Risk type map it was possible & often best to fall back in the face of superior numbers, buying time for reinforcements to arrive, a counter-attack next turn from multiple neighbouring provinces or just forcing the enemy to overstretch & leave somewhere else vulnerable

Then there was also the off chance/carefully executed plan where Province A & B are attacked, province A army withdraws to province B, while province B fights & loses leaving the province A army cut-off & annihilated/taken prisoner without a fight.
I lost a Daimyo & my main army that way once. It just about collapsed my empire & took ages to recover from, but it was awesome!

Many a drive deep into enemy territory was made possible by a great victory in one province, with the weak AI leftovers & garrison armies repeatedly falling back, combining & gaining reinforcements until suddenly I found myself facing superior numbers, with a depleted army & a long 'supply train' back to my barracks provinces.
Result: An ignominous retreat to more manageable borders or several tense turns/tight battles to secure the new borders.

That is all pretty much impossible with the RTW & later campaign simply because you can't effectively retreat out of harms' way.
In RTW & later its always better to fight to the last man from whatever strong point you can find on the battle map than to withdraw.
If you withdraw you'll only find yourself with the non-option:
-Lose your army without inflicting any losses on the enemy
-Fight the same guys you already decided to run away from but probably on worse ground

I'd really really like to see a return to the Risk type of Campaign Map, aside from the above simply because it would be vastly easier to write a competent Campaign AI for.

[Peasant Phill]

Making the possible for the AI to retreat AND knowing when to retreat, would go a long way towards what you want without resorting back to a risk-style map.
Would that be so hard to code? CA has done that already.

[Slaists]

Making the possible for the AI to retreat AND knowing when to retreat, would go a long way towards what you want without resorting back to a risk-style map.
Would that be so hard to code? CA has done that already.

Yup, I agree. And I wonder why did they pull retreating out of the ETW equation. Their pre-release announcements boasted about the AI being intelligent about when to retreat. However, in the game, the AI NEVER retreats, no matter what the odds are.

[Fisherking]

Yup, I agree. And I wonder why did they pull retreating out of the ETW equation. Their pre-release announcements boasted about the AI being intelligent about when to retreat... However, in the game, it NEVER retreats, no matter what the odds are.

How true! That seems the thing they keep putting off until later!

Though they will give up cities now without a fight...though they are still all trashed...what is with that part anyway?

[TinCow]

Really this game is begging to be taken by 2k games and have the battle engine merged with the Civ4 campaign engine - Oh my GOD I think I just made a mess in my pants

Make it Paradox and EU3 instead. That's pretty much my dream game right there.

[antisocialmunky]

Yup, I agree. And I wonder why did they pull retreating out of the ETW equation. Their pre-release announcements boasted about the AI being intelligent about when to retreat. However, in the game, the AI NEVER retreats, no matter what the odds are.

You mean those videos where Jack Lusted and the other AI guys 'played' a battle and commented on the intelligence of the AI and went 'YES! I won' at the end? Yeah, those ones that hyped the battle AI but only showed sporadic in game video and the narration about the AI acting intelligent. Yeah those, right?

Yes, Jack and his sexy facial hair... Those...

[Owen Glyndwr]

You mean those videos where Jack Lusted and the other AI guys 'played' a battle and commented on the intelligence of the AI and went 'YES! I won' at the end? Yeah, those ones that hyped the battle AI but only showed sporadic in game video and the narration about the AI acting intelligent. Yeah those, right?

Yes, Jack and his sexy facial hair... Those...

Don't forget about the Dev. Diary recounting his jaunt as Prussia and just how close he came to losing the game. And that it was fun, and wars meant something and every decision had political repercussions. Yeah, I remember that game.

In fact, I'm downright surprised I never actually bought the game. Thank god I was broke on release day...

Oh, and The political arena of EU/HoI+the battle system of TW would be great!!!

[hoom]

Making the possible for the AI to retreat AND knowing when to retreat, would go a long way towards what you want without resorting back to a risk-style map.

No.

The problem is fundamentally the 'one turn after the other' format.
This makes it impossible to retreat effectively.
It also completely removes Allies from the battlespace except in very rare circumstances.

In STW/MTW when you drag an army into another province, you're not actually moving that army, just indicating where it should go when you click 'end turn'.

When you click end turn, the AI take their turns to indicate their moves, then the units actually move and finally anywhere that armies from different factions are on the same province = Battle or withdraw.

The STW/MTW AI did actually have the advantage/slight cheat of seeing what you did & being able to respond but in nearly all cases this was positive for the game play as they did things like send reinforcements to attacked provinces, counter-attacks into lightly defended provinces or Allies could send in their guys to help.

Thats why we need to go back to the Risk style provinces.

-------------

Additionally, I'd like to see a 3rd separate layer to the game so that when two armies meet in a province (ie neither choose to withdraw at STW/MTW style 'armies meet' interface), instead of jumping straight to battle, you go to a third 'Theatre Level'.
RTW style campaign was an attempt to add this 3rd level but it fails at it, while simultaneously it broke the Campaign level AI & gameplay.

My way the Theatre level would play similar to the RTW style but would just be one, zoomed in province at a time.
You would have a few turns (eg if Campaign level turn is 1yr, you'd have say 4 * 3mth turns) of army level maneuvring before going back to the Campaign level.

For example you could:

• Position on strong ground or maneuvre to deny it to your enemy
• Bypass the enemy forces, pushing through to another province
• Escape superior forces
• Intercept an invader
• Withdraw to safety
• Split the army to attack/defend multiple targets (eg minor towns) or perform Theatre level flanking moves (eg Telamon)
• Avoid battle but attack the enemies' supply lines
• Sit & wait for your enemy to make a move
• Close to Battle!

I think that would give the best of both worlds & be relatively easier to code AI for.

[Kantalla]

That's actually a pretty decent idea there Hoom. Depending on how it was done you might end up with some of the same issues, just on a micro scale though.

Personally, I like the potential of the 2D campaign map, particularly with the importance of a number of the town nodes. I'd actually resolve the retreat issue with giving both sides a range of options when the defender elects to retreat, essentially the defender would make a short withdrawl, and then each side would be presented with new options. For example the defender could choose outright flight, retreat to a reinforcing army within range, retreat to defensible position etc. The attacker could chose to allow the defender to withdraw, pursue to border, or pursue to engage. I'd also like to see the potential for casualties if you attempt to flee rather than engage.

[caravel]

Additionally, I'd like to see a 3rd separate layer to the game so that when two armies meet in a province (ie neither choose to withdraw at STW/MTW style 'armies meet' interface), instead of jumping straight to battle, you go to a third 'Theatre Level'.
RTW style campaign was an attempt to add this 3rd level but it fails at it, while simultaneously it broke the Campaign level AI & gameplay.

My way the Theatre level would play similar to the RTW style but would just be one, zoomed in province at a time.
You would have a few turns (eg if Campaign level turn is 1yr, you'd have say 4 * 3mth turns) of army level maneuvring before going back to the Campaign level.

This is precisely the idea I proposed over at the .com back in '05 before M2TW was released. Most of the .commies at the time thought I was slightly unhinged for suggesting it, so good to see someone thinks along the same lines. IMHO it's the ideal way to make use of the RTW style campaign map.

[Dead Guy]

I'd absolutely love it if that was implemented. Move your armies to the general area and then get tactical locally. Then you could make use of the terrain better than on the risk map without retarding the AI too much. Awesome idea.

[Slaists]

No.

The problem is fundamentally the 'one turn after the other' format.
This makes it impossible to retreat effectively.
It also completely removes Allies from the battlespace except in very rare circumstances.

In STW/MTW when you drag an army into another province, you're not actually moving that army, just indicating where it should go when you click 'end turn'.

When you click end turn, the AI take their turns to indicate their moves, then the units actually move and finally anywhere that armies from different factions are on the same province = Battle or withdraw.

The STW/MTW AI did actually have the advantage/slight cheat of seeing what you did & being able to respond but in nearly all cases this was positive for the game play as they did things like send reinforcements to attacked provinces, counter-attacks into lightly defended provinces or Allies could send in their guys to help.

Thats why we need to go back to the Risk style provinces.

-------------

Additionally, I'd like to see a 3rd separate layer to the game so that when two armies meet in a province (ie neither choose to withdraw at STW/MTW style 'armies meet' interface), instead of jumping straight to battle, you go to a third 'Theatre Level'.
RTW style campaign was an attempt to add this 3rd level but it fails at it, while simultaneously it broke the Campaign level AI & gameplay.

My way the Theatre level would play similar to the RTW style but would just be one, zoomed in province at a time.
You would have a few turns (eg if Campaign level turn is 1yr, you'd have say 4 * 3mth turns) of army level maneuvring before going back to the Campaign level.

For example you could:

• Position on strong ground or maneuvre to deny it to your enemy
• Bypass the enemy forces, pushing through to another province
• Escape superior forces
• Intercept an invader
• Withdraw to safety
• Split the army to attack/defend multiple targets (eg minor towns) or perform Theatre level flanking moves (eg Telamon)
• Avoid battle but attack the enemies' supply lines
• Sit & wait for your enemy to make a move
• Close to Battle!

I think that would give the best of both worlds & be relatively easier to code AI for.

Sounds like a great idea to me...

[hoom]

Depending on how it was done you might end up with some of the same issues, just on a micro scale though.

Yes, this is true, I'm particularly anxious that Allied forces need the opportunity to get into any battles.

I'm actually suspicious that this Theatre level would work well in realtime or semi-realtime, which would enable simultaneous movement, Allies to rendezvous (or be prevented from it!) etc.

Asai Nagamasa, great minds eh?

For example the defender could choose outright flight, retreat to a reinforcing army within range, retreat to defensible position etc. The attacker could chose to allow the defender to withdraw, pursue to border, or pursue to engage. I'd also like to see the potential for casualties if you attempt to flee rather than engage.

This is a good idea too :)
Certainly its a minimum improvement that CA could implement fairly easily.

It has downsides that its a bit 'texty' & it doesn't solve the Allies issue though.

[fenir]

Well i no longer post much, but i still read here.

Been here since shogun. And it's nice to see a return to some developer consumer communications. Even if it is just a marketing controlled damaged limitation exercise.

Overall Mike is saying, the consumer is to blame for poor sales. Because of the negative comments.

I agree.

So lets visit this.
The developer released a poor game. The consumer complained. The big gaming houses, like sega et cetera.. do not engage their consumers, nor do they take any notice. Thereby compounding the problem.
So the consumer needs an out let. Hence the complaints.

Everyone knows someone that is a hard core gamer. Myself, i am going on 22 years of online games.
I still have Sid Meirs Civ 1 on two 3.5 floppies.
I also own majority holdings in 3 companies. So we are far from idiots here. There are marketing exec's here, software developers, and many more as such.
And with this it makes one wonder just why CA/Sega mainly, have not sort to engage us more comprehensively in the past.

Anyway, back to it...

With everyone knowing a hardcore gamer, it is not hard to find out what a game is like.
In world war II online, we were talking about the poor state of it, after telling people it should be a great game. Even the GM's where engaged in talking about it. Including a RAT. (Name given to the developers).
Unfortunately the release was not good. And we told people. Gamers listen to gamers. doesn't take a uni degree to find like minded gamers.
Even Lord of the rings online appranently, and warhammer, there was much discussed on the state of ETW.

You can hardly expect people to buy a broken down car, and for it to travel back and forth to work, without fixing it.

And this was the problem with ETW.

The entire purpose of doing what the gamers here and else where did, was to hurt Sega/CA finanically. It's the only way we can get you to take notice.
And it obviously worked.

So the lesson CA/Sega should be taking from this is simple.

Gives us a damn product that works on release, with what you claim it to do. And we will tell people. They will buy it.
Give us crap again, we will repeat the exercise.

Previously there was grace in this, because CA was a small company, but with the $1 billion mark cap of sega, I cannot see money being a problem for investment.
The blame lies entirely, at the developer/Publishers feet. Without question.




Ok i read someone saying that many wanted the game released, literally saying we wouldn't like it to be any longer than it had to be.

Well that is human nature.

If the highest ranking person at CA/Sega posted and said, look guys we found some late sreious problems. I will not release this game unfinished.

Many of us, myself included, would have reposted what we said orginally.

Ahh bugger, No worries mate, take your time.

I have no problem with delaying somthing to get it right. For one it would have had a positive effect, knowing hey no marketing crap/propoganda. Just an honest the boss saying it's not up to standard yet.
We would told everyone, look the boss said he needs more time. People would have been impressed. It would have spread like wild fire. Sales on release of a finished no hassells product of a good game could have doubled.
The most basic marketing, look at what your competitors are doing, and what are they not doing. And do something they are not.
Reputation is everything when selling.


And on release, the game would have got far better reviews, and hence far greater sales return.

Basic 101 first year university.
Professor Don Trow.
"If you make a good to sell, make sure it works before it leaves for the consumer, make the consumer want to tell their friends about your product. Only then can you place a premium on your product."

Personally i have never seen this fail.

So do what CA did orginally.
A unique product, quailty of work, place a $5, or $10 premium on the work.

As long as it does what you claim, and what the consumer expects.

But dont blame the consumer for poor products.

Sincerely

fenir

[gollum]

Originally posted by fenir
With everyone knowing a hardcore gamer, it is not hard to find out what a game is like.

CA know what hardcore gamers are very well - that's why they manage so well to make games that are not for them, but for the mass gaming public.

The entire purpose of doing what the gamers here and else where did, was to hurt Sega/CA finanically. It's the only way we can get you to take notice.
And it obviously worked.

Did it? ETW sold double what RTW and M2TW according to the link of antisocialmunky. This is after making two straight half baked and commercially oriented products (RTW and M2TW) that were full of bugs and ultimately partially fixed, AND hyping up ETW to the stars with any means possible, while knowing that the game wouldnt even "broadly satisfy them" at release.

In reality if the game had less stability issues and avoided common AI flaws and bugs with its predecessors, CA would have gotten away with it this time too. At least, the so called "professional reviewers" were revealed for what they are. The discreepency of scores between reviewers and users was nothing short of enjoyable.

[nafod]

CA know what hardcore gamers are very well - that's why they manage so well to make games that are not for them, but for the mass gaming public.



Did it? ETW sold double what RTW and M2TW according to the link of antisocialmunky. This is after making two straight half baked and commercially oriented products (RTW and M2TW) that were full of bugs and ultimately partially fixed, AND hyping up ETW to the stars with any means possible, while knowing that the game wouldnt even "broadly satisfy them" at release.

In reality if the game had less stability issues and avoided common AI flaws and bugs with its predecessors, CA would have gotten away with it this time too. At least, the so called "professional reviewers" were revealed for what they are. The discreepency of scores between reviewers and users was nothing short of enjoyable.

Easy, the quote by antisocialmonkey measures metacritic ratings. In no way is a purchase of a game linked to submitting a metacritic rating on a one to one basis. In fact I own all of the games he listed but only rated one--you guessed it--ETW. Back in 2004/2005 I wasn't even aware metacritic existed.

It is probably safe to infer ETW outsold earlier releases, I don't know about the twice as much as both combined bit though.

And yes I believe the "Professional" reviews are to blame as well. The self serving internal reviews from CA didn't help either and provided for some comedy for the community as the mirage of ETW unravelled rather quickly.

For the record I only look at game media reviews to see if a game flops entirely, (eg a 4 or less) as they do call out total lemons pretty well. It's just the difference between a 6 and a 10 is often hundreds of thousands of dollars in advertisement costs it seems.

[gollum]

Hello nafod,
it seems i got confused - i cant remember after all who linked there, but i meant this link
http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/news/45...-Sales-Records

[nafod]

Hello nafod,
it seems i got confused - i cant remember after all who linked there, but i meant this link
http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/news/45...-Sales-Records

No problem, I'm sure there was a more reliant source.

[antisocialmunky]

Hello nafod,
it seems i got confused - i cant remember after all who linked there, but i meant this link
http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/news/45...-Sales-Records

I did. :-p I was using metacritic to measure exposure which is different from sales.

[gollum]

Got it right!

[peacemaker]

Well, I just realized that at least one person has mentioned that ETW had a broken release, they should've waited a while longer to finish patching, blah blah blah. If you think about the current state as it is now, and how it's more or less the game it should be, then the 'release date' of the full, fixed game is just a few months later. Much later.

[antisocialmunky]

By that logic I should be expected to give the same tip both to a waiter that gives me prompt quality service and one that forgot to put my order in so I have to wait 20 more minutes... for the third time in a row even though I did give him the same tip the first two times because I'm a nice guy.

Its not the just the product, people expect that certain reasonable standards of conduct to be met especially after the issues have been acknowleged by both parties and promises have been thrown around so many times before.

[gollum]

Part Two - is good to quote them all here for future reference; links tend to disapear sometimes.

Originally posted by Mike Simpson
One common complaint we get from the community is that so long as there are defects in Empire: Total War, we shouldn’t be working on any new products. If there was just one of us, or all of us could work on any issue that would make sense. As it is, we’ve had Empire: Total War patch work as the top priority for everyone. The campaign AI team has worked on nothing else at all since release. The other programmers have dealt with their patch issues before moving on, and get dragged back to them if they resurface. Most of the content team have not been able to help with patches - artists and designers can’t code and most issues are code issues - and have moved on to new stuff.

Patch 1.5 has just been released. This is the last planned major patch for Empire: Total War, and attempts to sweep up the remaining AI issues that for the hardcore gamer take the shine off of the Empire apple. The previous patches have dealt with the most common crashes and tidied up a lot of bugs, and 1.4 dealt with a lot of the AI issues. What is left at this point are a few minor issues spread around the game, and the last big campaign AI problem - the aggression level.

Battle and campaign AI are completely different systems and teams. I’ll talk about battle AI another time. The Empire campaign AI has been way too passive for me, and the community pretty unanimously shares that view, so it’s not something I need to explain. It is however interesting that a good proportion of the more casual gamers - and they are probably more than half our customers - actually like the AI to be fairly passive. The US casual gamer in particular likes a more sandbox-like experience, where he can make and execute long term plans and not have them constantly disrupted by an aggressive AI. This is a play style thing rather than a level of difficulty thing - they still want a challenge, but they want it to be their game, not the AI’s.

Making a passive AI may have sold us lots more games in the US, but it wasn’t intentional. Maybe we’ll have a play style setting in the future, but for now our intention is to challenge the player with an AI that is as aggressive and varied as human players would be.

So it is campaign AI that was the main focus for 1.4, and that I think we’ve finally got sorted out on 1.5. It’s worth talking a bit about how we ended up with an AI that didn’t have the play style we intended on release, and has taken 6 more months work to get there. The short answer is an excess of ambition.

This AI is not like any other we have written. It’s a beliefs - desires - intentions based planning system, and it’s also by far the most complex code edifice I’ve ever seen in a game. I wrote much of the campaign AI for Shogun and Medieval I (Ah… those were the days…) and I know that even quite simple “static” evaluate-act AI’s with no plans or memory can be complex enough to exhibit chaotic behaviour (we’re talking about mathematical “butterfly effect” style chaos here). It does what it does, and it’s not quite what you intended. This can be a good thing - you cull out the bad behaviours and are left with just what is good, and with a simple system that’s not too predictable.

Well, the Empire AI is way more complicated than any of our previous products, but the team is bigger and has more talent that we had in my day - PhD’s, and coders sharper than a box of razor blades. It’s a V12 supercar compared with Shogun’s 50cc moped. When it’s firing on all cylinders, it will be way, way ahead of anything we’ve seen in any PC strategy game before. It thinks about everything. It thinks of everything, it plots and it plans. As we approached release, bringing more subsystems on line, it was looking amazingly good, but at some point the level of chaos reached a tipping point and we lost control. Our AI did a “HAL” on us and gained the AI equivalent of multiple personality disorder. The net result is an AI that plans furiously and brilliantly and long term, but disagrees with itself chronically and often ends up paralysed by indecision.

We’ve had it on the coder’s couch for 6 months now, and it’s finally feeling better. It’s more aggressive, it uses naval invasions, and it doesn’t dither much more than most humans I know. It should now be well ahead of Rome/Med II’s AI, but it’s still only firing on two or three cylinders and had much untapped potential.

One thing I am sure about - I don’t regret having the ambition that led to this. This AI will I think astound in the long term, but I am gutted that we didn’t get the AI we wanted for the hardcore fans on day 1.

I had 6 copies of Empire: Total War sat on my shelf intended for close gamer friends that I didn’t send out because I was too embarrassed about the flaws. Old friends are the harshest critics. Well they’ve gone out now. I think the game now meets my personal unreasonably high quality threshold - not just good but great. Hopefully my friends will agree.

Which basically affirms almost word for word many if not all of the arguments in this thread. Have fun with Napoleon guys...

edit: i'll be interested to see what new plot will be told if NTW proves to have a flawed AI...

[Elmar Bijlsma]

While I was pretty sceptical about the "damage control" aspect of the previous blog, this one seems pretty frank.
I'd love to have play style setting, sounds good. Might help me role-playing as a nation not set on conquering everything and everybody.

Dunno, but from

This AI will I think astound in the long term

it sounds like they intend to use this engine for a while longer. No longer revolution>evolution sounds good plan and I hope they stick to it. The game is sweet looking, it needn't be that much prettier. Not switching engines might give them time to consolidate the features they have and polish it till it shines.

You know? I think someone just deserved to have their DLC bought.

[gollum]

Originally posted by Elmar Bijlsma
No longer revolution>evolution sounds good plan and I hope they stick to it.

True, it has gone from revolution to revolution now, as they tell us themselves, with NTW.

So either they can design a new engine in a year in the midst of patching frantically ETW or they want fans to pay full price for an expansion. In other words from bad to worse. But not to worry; the brilliant PhDs who designed a very good AI that wasn't good after all, will fix everything - no matter how many extra fanciful, commercially oriented features suggested to the "designers" from the sales analists, they are asked to accomodate at the same time.

AIs are not the only things that exhibit non-linear behaviour - for example the quality of a resulting product and the resources (human and not) available to make it arent in all probability linearly related. These resources have interelationships and interdependencies and it is the nature of those that gives you the system of PDEs that govern quality. There is also the matter of team communication and team cohesion relative to the objective.

In other words, as has been said, the blog is (mostly) marketing talk.

[hoom]

Patch 1.5 has just been released. This is the last planned major patch for Empire: Total War

It’s a V12 supercar compared with Shogun’s 50cc moped ... We’ve had it on the coder’s couch for 6 months now, ... but it’s still only firing on two or three cylinders

Not exactly what I want to hear really

Neither is emphasis on AI aggression. I want to see Rationality not Aggression.

Aggression obviously has its place but I want to see minor factions rationally stay at peace with me if I leave them alone (unless they join an anti me alliance) or accept peace when clearly on the losing side, having just had their army smashed & with a big army poised to beseige their capital

[Owen Glyndwr]

I thought useless aggression was the major gripe during the early days. In fact I recall many threads about nations never taking peace. ever.

I think I would consider myself a hardcore gamer, and I have said repeatedly I would rather have a rational AI that declares war only when it needs to than an AI that is constantly at war.

Thank you Mike Simpson. Thanks for telling us exactly how CA feels about its own product.

[Crazed Rabbit]

I'm already astounded by the poorness of the AI.

CR

[antisocialmunky]

I thought useless aggression was the major gripe during the early days. In fact I recall many threads about nations never taking peace. ever.

I think I would consider myself a hardcore gamer, and I have said repeatedly I would rather have a rational AI that declares war only when it needs to than an AI that is constantly at war.

Thank you Mike Simpson. Thanks for telling us exactly how CA feels about its own product.

Post 1.5 is somewhat reasonable with a touch of the old madness.