RTS with a good AI?

[bovi]

The only really good graphics in GalCiv2 are in the ship battles, which you'll probably disable after you've seen it played out about 100 times (and the ship designer where you make the nice ships, image below). The rest of the graphics are pretty functional, and I usually zoom out so it becomes sprites instead of the nice ship renderings anyway. You don't need much of fancy FPS-graphics in a TBS anyway.



A lot of other screenshots can be seen here: http://www.galciv2.com/Journals.aspx?p=5

[iwwtf_az]

total annihilation was pretty good. the reason is, there was no unit cap. so even if the ai was horrible, i never noticed since i was constantly under siege.

[Landwalker]

Wow, Total Annihilation--there's an old one I haven't played in a while. Such a shame that TA: Kingdoms never even came close to living up to the first game.

Cheers.

[antisocialmunky]

Its too bad but Supreme Commander is nice even though the late game is somewhat broken in its eco spammage. Strat Bombers FTW!

Now that I think about it, Master of Orion 2 has a pretty good AI. I wuvz that game so much. Shame about Moo3 though.

[Gazius]

My mistake on the RTS thing. I thought that was the name for these sort of strategy games in general. Turn based, real time, whatever, I just want an AI to outwit me, not mass outproduce, unless I can realisticly match that. It's one of the reasons I like the RTW/EB system of unit production. You could just as easily match theh AI stack for stack if you had the same income. It seems like in Civ4 BTS no matter if I have every city just make units, they can still outproduce to the point that it will negate my relatively small tech advantage. The Battle for Middle-Earth one sounds rather interesting.

[Landwalker]

I'd suggest downloading a demo for Battle for Middle Earth (be sure it's BME 1, not 2. The second one is pretty feh.) It's a pretty entertaining game, but it isn't very complex (which may be why the AI seems more competent--it doesn't have as much to deal with). Whereas a game like EB has literally hundreds of units, BME probably has, off the top of my head, no more than 40-45 spread out among the four factions. It's a fairly simplistic strategy game, but it's one that the AI can for the most part handle without completely humiliating itself. You still probably won't be losing any games to it, though.

On the note of losing games to the AI, you might take a look at Warcraft III. I haven't played it in a while (and I never played the Frozen Throne expansion), but I do remember that I was always convinced that the AI was going to tear me apart. I don't know if that's because it gets significant resource bonuses, or because it has some of the more successful "starting tactics" programed into its operation (to facilitate rushing and the like). Just some thoughts.

Cheers.

[shlin28]

On the note of losing games to the AI, you might take a look at Warcraft III. I haven't played it in a while (and I never played the Frozen Throne expansion), but I do remember that I was always convinced that the AI was going to tear me apart. I don't know if that's because it gets significant resource bonuses, or because it has some of the more successful "starting tactics" programed into its operation (to facilitate rushing and the like). Just some thoughts.

Cheers.

Warcraft 3 is quite hard, even on easy it requires early rushes or some heavy recruiting to take the enemy base. Thats why when I play the AI I always have a computer ally to help out, if only to act as meatshield for me

[econ21]

My mistake on the RTS thing. I thought that was the name for these sort of strategy games in general. Turn based, real time, whatever, I just want an AI to outwit me, not mass outproduce, unless I can realisticly match that. It's one of the reasons I like the RTW/EB system of unit production. You could just as easily match theh AI stack for stack if you had the same income. It seems like in Civ4 BTS no matter if I have every city just make units, they can still outproduce to the point that it will negate my relatively small tech advantage.

What difficulty level are you playing Civ4 on? If it is noble, then I believe the AI does not get cheats. You should be able to reliably beat it, but still it does reasonably well considering the great complexity of the game. Personally, I find the level just above noble - prince - is my comfort zone. To me, that indicates very good AI (in Civ2, I could play on deity).

Usually I find Civ rather inept at the tactical issues of handling its units, but it can do very clever stuff. One of the best examples, was in an early war when the Japanese sent two small amphibious invasions. I swatted them easily, but when the dust settled, I realised they had just destroyed my two sources of copper - sabotaging my entire war economy.

Perhaps the best aspect of Civs AI is the way, when it wages war, it does so whole heartedly. It is awe-inspiring to be declared war on by a far distant faction and then see several full stacks emerging out of the fog of war, when your border cities have only a couple of units. Even more impressive, when you realise those stacks have been stalking towards you at one hex a turn for the last century or so.

Also on Civ, the issue of war vs development is a big issue for gameplay. Income for income, you could squash the AI by producing more stacks - because the AI is more geared to peace. But there is an option for aggressive AI that has the opposite effect - the AI may focus on units more than you would. Personally, I've always enjoyed Civ as a building game, not a wargame (too slow for the latter) and that is why I prefer Prince. At higher difficulty levels, I think you have to be militaristic and conquer some AI factions in order to offset their cheating advantages.

The Battle for Middle-Earth one sounds rather interesting.

My problem with BME is the game speed. The only ways I think you can get a computer to outsmart a human is either make the game very "simple" (e.g. chess) or to make it very fast paced (e.g. most RTSs). BME does the latter. It is just too frenetic for me - sort of RTW x3 speed. And my initial attraction to EB was that it slowed the movement and kill rates down to MTW levels. If the game could be modded to slow it down - as Dawn of War can - then it would very good. As it is, it just fails to keep my interest.

[Kurulham]

Now that I think about it, Master of Orion 2 has a pretty good AI. I wuvz that game so much. Shame about Moo3 though.

I thought MoO had better AI than MoO2 actually.

I haven't played GalCiv II but the original GalCiv had VICIOUS AI. Like, knife-fighter vicious. Stab-you-in-the-kidneys vicious. Carry-on-simultaneous-affairs-with-your-wife-and-daughter-and-sisters vicious.

Civ 4's is okay. Not spectacular, but decent.

[NightStar]

Yeah I agree that Civ 4 has okay A.I of course depending on the difficulty you play. If you play on Noble then the A.I is on the same lvl as you. If you go over that difficulty the A.I receives bonuses.

Yes Galciv has wicked A.I, I remember when I started my first game on normal and got trounced by the A.I. I was like oh...I must've made some mistakes and got trounced again, but luckily I learn from experience and got better :)

I must say that I love Stardock and if every publisher would take their example and support their product like they do I think the world be a better place.

And yeah, those who wish to know more about Galciv I&II, you can buy their games online and download and they support their games better than any publisher/developer I know of

http://galciv.com/

[dominique]

The problem with AI is twofold.

1) It cost a lot of man-hours-money to develop

2) It doesn't sell.

A cute animated Hatshepsut (like in civ4) sells and it doesn't meet problem 1.

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Why is it so difficult?

You need to have a solid pathfinding algorithm, and that cost you one of these nerdy-geeky sociopath team who will wreck your payroll and the work ambiance.

You need time, a lot of it, to tweak everything in place. I don't think most people can just imagine how many variables are to be checked and verified just to make a phalanx fight like a phalanx and a legion fight like a legion, + react correctly tactically (throwing javelins at the elephant and not at the skirmishers...). It's long, it's taxing, it gives good reviews (sometimes), please the geek god, but when christmas comes, people have to choose between DOA-like games (with da big balloons) and a CTS with a performing AI...



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I don't remember ever playing against a competitive and realistic AI. Either the computer cheats, or is too predictible. There are MOUNTAINS of exploits (like the diplomat and the fort thingy) and there are pathfinding problems, like you just have to stack yourself in an island and you're ok.

I take pleasure in nation building, ambiance, historicity. Like EB, like EU.

If I want competiveness, I'll play a strategy game at home and sweat it out against intelligent opponents!