🚀 go-pugleaf

"Brad Wardell" <bwar...@stardock.com> wrote in message 
news:yZudnZa7eZRE8UneRVn-og@comcast.com...
> Back a couple of years ago there was a great deal of discussion on Usenet 
> with regards to the GalCiv I AI.  Most people thought it was pretty good 
> but others felt the military tactics were bad.  That while the AI provided 
> a challenge, it mostly was able to do so because it was more effective at 
> managing its economy/industry than the typical human and thus could 
> essentially "win" through brute force.
>
> In general, my view was that the AI worked pretty well but militarily was 
> disappointed. The main issue was its lack of coordination in projecting 
> military power into a given quadrant.  The result was hat looked like the 
> age-old "Death train" (That's where units uselessly throw themselves at a 
> wall dying with no purpose). There simply wasn't enough analysis on 
> putting units together and using them effectivley.
>
> A lot of this came down to being restricted to CPU light algorithms. 
> GalCiv I was a sprite-based game -- no hardware acceleration.  So the 
> graphics were CPU bound.  Even though the AI is, and continues to be, 
> multithreaded, there are still very real limits on how much time can be 
> spent generating multi-turn strategies.  GalCiv II, however, is 
> 3D-accelerated which has freed up the CPU a great deal.  This has allowed 
> for greatly expanded algorithms during military endeavors without raising 
> the hardware requirements (in fact, on the typical PC, GalCiv II will run 
> better than GalCiv I did ironically despite immense graphics improvements 
> and 3D engine).
>
> A lot -- A LOT -- of work has been going into the AI of Galactic 
> Civilizations II in order to not just make it "challenging" but to make it 
> play intelligently.  There were significant chunks of the GalCiv I AI that 
> were scripted.  That is, the AI is programmed to do certain things due to 
> play-testing over and over.  This time around, we're trying our best to 
> make the AI build strategies based on analysis and not rely on scripts.
>
> The improvements in the AI have led to a lot of changes, probably the 
> biggest one being the elimination of the infamous "The AI knows where the 
> good planets are" issue that GalCiv from the OS/2 days on up to the 2003 
> release of GalCiv.  GalCiv II's AI has to build scouts and look for good 
> planets just like everyone else.
>
> To get an idea of what is involved in debugging such an AI, I chronicled 
> one such game.  Mind you, we're now doing several of these types of games 
> each day to tune the AI, to find flaws, etc.  The idea being that when the 
> game's released, the difficulty levels will determine how smartly the AI 
> plays rather than age old "Here's some money (or less of)" way that 
> strategy games have used as a crutch.
>
> Anyway, here's the URL to the AI debugging session entitled "Human/Drengin 
> wars".  I through in flavor text as well to make it more interesting to 
> read. ;)
>
> http://www.galciv2.com/Journals.aspx?AID=98513
>
>

Very interesting. I am glad to see that the computer AI is being taken 
seriously.  For a few years, I was in the camp of thinking that multiplayer 
was the cure for bad computer AI.

But now that I'm busier with life(TM) I prefer to play my strategy games 
against the computer only. I just don't have time to spend a day looking for 
someone else to play. So a smart and challenging computer player is very 
important.

-Craig