Interesting idea from the main forum

[easytarget]

This was posted up by a guy by the name of deadmarine1980, a rather intriguing idea I thought:

Hey guys last night I had an idea about an alternative way to play. Here it is: Mimic mode. How would it work? Well when you select "Mimic mode", and then you pick your faction, lets say you pick Rome. When you start the game the computer will note on how you play on the micro and macro level in the game. So when someone else connects and plays "Mimic mode" but they are playing say as Carthage their "Rome" will act like how you play Rome. So the Carthage player will be fighting a Rome that builds its cities and stacks like you build them and deploy them. In other words he is not playing you directly but playing an AI "trained" by you.
At the same time all your AI faction are mimicking other players that are playing the same mode, but I should point out that it is random and double blind. I think this mode would be very fun, because each A.I you fight will have different stacks and would structure their society differently.
I think this could be a valued mode of play. Other games have done this in the past. This could be seen as a "multiplayer light", or that a person is not fighting you, but fighting your chess peaces. But anyways guys please post share ideas on how this mode could be improved. I would like to see CA read this and consider a mode like this for the game.

[Hooahguy]

Very intriguing, I would love if it was implemented. Which other games use this idea?

[easytarget]

The OP didn't say where he came up with the idea, not sure that any game does it right now. But I thought it was interesting given that CA has stated on several occasions the use of meta data about how players play their games, this seemed like an interesting idea to put that sort of information to use in a way that addresses one of the challenges players have pointed out to them in the TW series repeatedly over the years.

Anyway, I thought it was interesting enough to re-post.

[Bramborough]

Which other games use this idea? I was wondering same...would be a game worth checking out.

It's a pretty interesting idea. Not sure if it would be feasible to include in R2, but perhaps a future TW..."M3" perhaps?

At first I thought "well, the two folks would have to be online & playing at same time". But I don't think this would have to be the case at all. The game could maintain an online library of player profiles. City builds, tech research priorities, army compositions at different levels of tech, ratio of army/fleet, propensity to assault instead of siege/blockade, sally-out percentage, could all be compiled over the course of a campaign to populate the profile. Once the campaign is won, this profile then becomes active in the library. When a player opts for this mode, the AI factions are loaded in with one of these randomly-chosen player profiles from past games. The campaign and battle AIs would still be largely a (hopefully improved) evolution of what we have now...but at least the city builds and army compositions would be "player-tested" from successful campaigns.

Is this workable? I have no idea.

Edit: Toward end of his post, the quoted OP did say "Other games have used this in the past." Hence my and Hooah's interest in what games to which deadmarine1980 might be referring.

[easytarget]

I PM'd to ask what other games he was referring to, I'm curious to hear as well.

And your player profile library and randomizing that seems like an interesting idea as well.

This is a bit like the online drop in w/o the hassle of hoping someone will drop in, you play to the strength or propensity of most TW players to play SP and just collect what they do and close the loop by feeding it back into the system to help improve the factions.

[easytarget]

The game he was thinking of as a point of reference for this was Spore.

[Sp4]

Sounds interesting but it also sounds like a lot of work.

[easytarget]

I guess, I was sort of thinking the "light" version would just be using what humans use as a build order for settlements, provinces and stacks as a place to start.

I mean CA is already putting this in already, it's not like this is new code. We're just suggesting they tweak what's there because right now it loads up a script list that's brain dead resulting in countless encounters with starving AI factions, stacks that never build past 1st tier and settlements not properly built out.

[al Roumi]

Probably unfair to pick at the OP (especially as they're not even here) but you couldn't really have a direct replica of your play as e.g. Rome with another AI faction. This is simply becasue the circumstances under which the player makes their decisions are surely varied in many different ways to the context of the AI faction in question.

That said, and this may be the real merit of the proposal, if the AI were to learn from how other people ahve played said faction and apply it to your game, that could eb interesting, but again - once the AI starts interacting with other AIs and the player, so many different options are available that the AI still needs to find its own way in each game.

So perhaps the most that can be applied is a sub-set of scripts for pre identified contexts/situations that the AI can "choose" to apply, but then again (again again!), this is surely how the AI has been coded anyway by CA. Choosing what to do when and why, flexibibly and responsively, is surely the problem AIs struggle with anyway, rather than the particular strategy to pursue, which can be scripted.

[MadKow]

In photography there is one thing called matrix mettering that basically analises the image by dividing it in zones and compares it to a database of scenes and then chooses the best exposure for that scene. This happens while your fingers does "click", so it's pretty fast. Nikon claims to use a db of 10 000 scenes.
I mention this because i guess this sort of thinking could be, maybe, used to program the AI to take a "snapshot" of it's present turn, and deciding on its next move by comparing it to similar situations in it's database. The key here is to have a large enough database that covers as many situations as possible, and thats where the input from players experiences comes in.

[BroskiDerpman]

Memory hooks?

[TargetSlayer]

The "sales pitch" with the Company of Heroes titles was that their AI adapted its play somewhat based upon the human player. Civ relies on a lot of upfront advantages given to the AI as you advance in difficulty levels. This is an interesting discussion but difficult for me to understand how it could be implemented.

Perhaps a more practical approach would be to consider more advantages (some would call them cheats) given to the AI both at the start and at strategic points during the campaign. With regards to this discussion, perhaps in our own solo games the larger factions at least could also be given redirection based upon our gameplay, so that if we are forming heavy seige-based armies (or whatever) they would counter appropriately. Something resembling Skyrim's leveling system to help the AI stay competitive. I realize this is difficult to balance as one should not be "tricked" out of outpacing the AI, but an introduction to this concept (if possible) would mean we would be almost competing against ourselves.

Regards

[BroskiDerpman]

Interesting, it would force yourself to be on your toes trying to out think yourself hopefully. It would also make the game seem less artificial in difficulty so that's a plus.