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Murgos posted:I'm picturing that they will forgive just about anything as long as you throw the ball for them. Also, their online forums are filled with debates about how throwing the ball for yourself is unfulfilling and using a machine to throw the ball is dirty and treated kind of like having a real doll. Avatars are replaced with scratch and sniff squares. When they talk too spice a mod puts you on pawbation.
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Mar 15, 2021 19:04
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Lawman 0 posted:Let's have a debate: What 4X strategy had the best/most enjoyable AI opponents? I liked GalCiv 2's, except that it really, really loved surrendering itself to another AI if you were beating it in combat.
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Mar 15, 2021 19:05
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Lawman 0 posted:Let's have a debate: What 4X strategy had the best/most enjoyable AI opponents? No question in my mind  Alpha Centuari
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Mar 15, 2021 19:14
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THE BAR posted:I liked GalCiv 2's, except that it really, really loved surrendering itself to another AI if you were beating it in combat. Did GalCiv 3 ever reach a point where it overtook 2? The second game was excellent.
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Mar 15, 2021 19:23
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THE BAR posted:I liked GalCiv 2's, except that it really, really loved surrendering itself to another AI if you were beating it in combat. Was that the one where if you played on easy it would say something along the lines of "we would fight more but our rules won't allow it?"
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Mar 15, 2021 19:55
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Mayveena posted:No question in my mind Agreed. Most of the original founders felt immensely real in play, even though it was mostly smoke and mirrors. Everyone hates Miriam, Yang is always an entrenched North Korea, Morgan gets steamrolled every time (  ) and the peacekeepers are always lovable ineffectual doofuses.
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Mar 15, 2021 19:55
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THE BAR posted:I liked GalCiv 2's, except that it really, really loved surrendering itself to another AI if you were beating it in combat. GalCiv2 devs always talked up it's ai, but to be honest I don't think I ever saw it do anything all that clever, or heard anything particularly clever from other people. There's probably an impressive engine behind the scenes, but as for actually being a competent ai I suspect it might be mostly marketing.
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Mar 15, 2021 20:02
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GalCiv 2 has a pretty good AI, but that's because the game itself is built around making everything very easy for the AI to comprehend. That includes dumbing down the tech tree so that it's literally just numbers go up. I always found it boring and soulless.
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Mar 15, 2021 20:20
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LLJKSiLk posted:Did GalCiv 3 ever reach a point where it overtook 2? The second game was excellent. GC3 wasn't as disappointing as Sword of the Starts 2, but it was close!
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Mar 15, 2021 20:22
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LLJKSiLk posted:Did GalCiv 3 ever reach a point where it overtook 2? The second game was excellent. I've only tried 3 briefly, but it felt exactly like 2 but with Civ 5's culture mechanic thrown on top of it. Lawman 0 posted:Was that the one where if you played on easy it would say something along the lines of "we would fight more but our rules won't allow it?" Dunno! Never played on Easy.  Bug Squash posted:GalCiv2 devs always talked up it's ai, but to be honest I don't think I ever saw it do anything all that clever, or heard anything particularly clever from other people. There's probably an impressive engine behind the scenes, but as for actually being a competent ai I suspect it might be mostly marketing. I think the most wow-y thing was that it would react to you moving your fleet in a menacing manner. It was a long time ago.
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Mar 15, 2021 20:25
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I tried so hard to like Galciv 3, but god drat it was just Galciv 2 but clunkier and more annoying 
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Mar 15, 2021 20:29
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Lawman 0 posted:Let's have a debate: What 4X strategy had the best/most enjoyable AI opponents? Enjoyable wise I'd say Endless Legends/Space 2, just because they're memorable and legitimately feel different to play against. I don't think I could identify a best though. Maybe Star Ruler 2, if you stuck to just using basic templates of ship designs.
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Mar 15, 2021 20:40
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Murgos posted:I'm picturing that they will forgive just about anything as long as you throw the ball for them. Also, their online forums are filled with debates about how throwing the ball for yourself is unfulfilling and using a machine to throw the ball is dirty and treated kind of like having a real doll. They actually share their home planet with a second species of big dumb idiots who throw the ball for them.
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Mar 15, 2021 20:55
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Mayveena posted:No question in my mind 
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Mar 15, 2021 21:01
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Lawman 0 posted:Let's have a debate: What 4X strategy had the best/most enjoyable AI opponents? The military AI in EU4 was very bad, but I enjoyed the diplomatic AI. It at least made sense for why it hated/liked someone. Alpha Centauri AI was not good and very cheaty. The phenomenal writing makes it still fun to play despite the AI limitations.
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Mar 15, 2021 21:44
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Endless Legend AI is decent enough, the factional asymmetry allows it to still cause interesting problems for the player even though it's still pretty dumb. Unfortunately this is not true of the Endless Space games, where the AI in both is legitimately incapable of putting up any sort of fight despite playing the game with technical competence. They're just slow and dumb.
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Mar 15, 2021 22:43
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Lawman 0 posted:Let's have a debate: What 4X strategy had the best/most enjoyable AI opponents? MoO2 you can actually lose to, so that's pretty fun.
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Mar 16, 2021 00:02
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Lawman 0 posted:Let's have a debate: What 4X strategy had the best/most enjoyable AI opponents? AI War : Fleet Command. I heard its AI just reached singularity...... 
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Mar 16, 2021 03:25
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Lawman 0 posted:Let's have a debate: What 4X strategy had the best/most enjoyable AI opponents? I really enjoyed MOO1 ai but that was probably just a product of being before most other games. They had just enough personality and artwork to seem believable.
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Mar 16, 2021 03:39
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PerniciousKnid posted:I really enjoyed MOO1 ai but that was probably just a product of being before most other games. They had just enough personality and artwork to seem believable. It also helps that the game is pretty simple, so the AI can actually play it to some degree. It needs bonuses to compete with a player that works hard to min-max things, and its tactical AI leaves something to be desired, but it definitely can put up a fight, and the personality traits as well as the biases built into the species creates legitimate threats and alliance blocs. The blocs are also quite dangerous because of how easy it is to lose via diplomacy if you piss everyone else in the galaxy off.
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Mar 16, 2021 05:22
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I just remember winning MOO1 with the my Alkari bros sticking by my side through thick and thin. I loved those guys!
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Mar 16, 2021 08:31
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Lawman 0 posted:Let's have a debate: What 4X strategy had the best/most enjoyable AI opponents? Reach for the Stars  Seriously, though, SSG mostly stuck to grognardy wargames and isn't well-known anymore, but Roger Keating was a pioneer of writing good, non-cheaty AI. One of his principles was not to design a game and then tack on an AI at the end, but to consider whether or not each feature could be used by the AI throughout the design phase. Their best known game is probably Warlords 3.
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Mar 16, 2021 13:10
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I count AI War as a 4X. It's AI War. There's no pretense that the AI isn't a murderous Skynet that will murder you dead. Freed from the requirement to appear like a fair AI, the devs can just go hog wild with AI behaviour. It also solves a recurring problem of 4X where the AI can't keep up once the player gets going. In AI War, Skynet will push back harder the more of a threat the player is.
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Mar 16, 2021 13:55
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Hannibal Rex posted:Reach for the Stars Reminded me of something I wondered for a while, why hasn't anyone taken some of the good stuff from Reach for the Stars 2000 remake. The biggest one was the different races, there were like 16(?) they all had different requirements for temperature, atmosphere, and gravity. I don't think the AI was designed to make use of it but you could imagine a similar game mechanic leading to certain species naturally getting along, since they're never competing for each other's resources. It had actually some of the most interesting sci fi deaigns since you had tiny asteroid dwellers, gas giant jelly creatures, among all the standard stuff you're used to seeing in 4x. Normally it's just "+20% to water planets until you do this basic research, also everyone loves Earth like planets cause why wouldn't they."
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Mar 16, 2021 16:52
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threelemmings posted:Reminded me of something I wondered for a while, why hasn't anyone taken some of the good stuff from Reach for the Stars 2000 remake. The biggest one was the different races, there were like 16(?) they all had different requirements for temperature, atmosphere, and gravity. I don't think the AI was designed to make use of it but you could imagine a similar game mechanic leading to certain species naturally getting along, since they're never competing for each other's resources. MOO3 did this. Which may be part of the answer to why nobody else did, even though MOO3's problems were that it just didn't have enough time in the oven rather than anything with the base concepts.
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Mar 16, 2021 18:03
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I don't actually have that much experience with many 4Xs (something I'm trying to correct!) but I am familiar with the AI in the Civ series and I'll say this much: the most fun I've had with the AI is in Civ 5, specifically with the Vox Populi mod. The AI was known to be somewhat psychotic in Civ 5, especially the base game (it improved with both expansions), and even worse in Civ 6. And it's difficult to enjoy an AI that just goes balls-to-the-wall insane on you. But with the VP mod, I find the AI to be actually enjoyable to engage with. It won't do psychotic things like backstabbing you for literally no reason, or going to war when it has no chance of victory, things like that. It generally behaves in its own interest. And the modders added tonnes more flavour text / dialog too, which helps buy into their decisions. I'm actually playing a game right now where even in the classical era, the various civs I've encountered are taking up sides based on what they think of my warmongering. Actually it's kinda funny - they were all friendly with each other but then I started a war with someone, and they all have opinions on it, and their differences of opinion is splitting them up. My war might actually cause another war over there, on the other side of the continent. A few of them are already on edge due to territorial disputes, this might just tip them over 
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Mar 16, 2021 18:22
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threelemmings posted:Reminded me of something I wondered for a while, why hasn't anyone taken some of the good stuff from Reach for the Stars 2000 remake. The biggest one was the different races, there were like 16(?) they all had different requirements for temperature, atmosphere, and gravity. I don't think the AI was designed to make use of it but you could imagine a similar game mechanic leading to certain species naturally getting along, since they're never competing for each other's resources. Doesn't Stellaris do this? One race's "20% habitable planet" might be another race's "80% habitable planet". Terraforming tech does kinda make this distinction pointless though eventually. You're gonna want those 20% planets anyway because of their potential
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Mar 16, 2021 18:27
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Zurai posted:MOO3 did this. Which may be part of the answer to why nobody else did, even though MOO3's problems were that it just didn't have enough time in the oven rather than anything with the base concepts. Moo3 had way too much time in the oven I think development started in like 1998? and they still couldn't figure out how to actually get any of their systems to work together this was made worse because the main system, the Heavy Foot of Government made it where you couldn't actually do anything about the broken systems as a player.
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Mar 16, 2021 18:55
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threelemmings posted:Reminded me of something I wondered for a while, why hasn't anyone taken some of the good stuff from Reach for the Stars 2000 remake. The biggest one was the different races, there were like 16(?) they all had different requirements for temperature, atmosphere, and gravity. I don't think the AI was designed to make use of it but you could imagine a similar game mechanic leading to certain species naturally getting along, since they're never competing for each other's resources. Stars in Shadow has a moderately complex biome system, though it's not a factorial model. It's sufficiently nuanced that the pillbug dudes here:  can have an affinity for deep-sea vents, while the fish people do better in higher oceanic zones and coastal reefs, and that has an effect on which planet types both prefer. It's a neat convolution of the colonisation system, though last I checked the UX for shuffling population around to max your caps was not great.
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Mar 16, 2021 19:06
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ate poo poo on live tv posted:Moo3 had way too much time in the oven I think development started in like 1998? and they still couldn't figure out how to actually get any of their systems to work together this was made worse because the main system, the Heavy Foot of Government made it where you couldn't actually do anything about the broken systems as a player. Just don't let the guy who wrote the strategy guide design the sequel?
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Mar 16, 2021 19:08
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ate poo poo on live tv posted:Moo3 had way too much time in the oven I think development started in like 1998? and they still couldn't figure out how to actually get any of their systems to work together this was made worse because the main system, the Heavy Foot of Government made it where you couldn't actually do anything about the broken systems as a player. The design was scrapped and reworked partway through development after Alan Emrich was forced off the project.
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Mar 16, 2021 19:10
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JeremoudCorbynejad posted:I don't actually have that much experience with many 4Xs (something I'm trying to correct!) but I am familiar with the AI in the Civ series and I'll say this much: the most fun I've had with the AI is in Civ 5, specifically with the Vox Populi mod. I've never heard of this mod, but it sounds neat. Really wish something similar would be done in Civ6, cause man, that game feels like playing against a raffle tumbler, except all of the numbers end in the AI denouncing you. I especially love the boat guy getting angry at you for not having enough boats, when his entire deal is invading people with his boats.
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Mar 16, 2021 19:50
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JeremoudCorbynejad posted:Doesn't Stellaris do this? One race's "20% habitable planet" might be another race's "80% habitable planet". With stellaris' border system I didn't think you can really share where someone has Rho A and you have Rho B or whatever (this was a few years ago maybe they've redesigned the system again like they seem to do from time to time). I know there are some minor examples, I think it's the kind of thing a game would have to be planned around from the outset, it's just an interesting niche and it'd be interesting to see a game where you're pickier where you want to be and naturally get along with someone who doesn't step on your toes instead of painting the board and just accepting those 20%s will be worth it one day.
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Mar 16, 2021 20:00
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threelemmings posted:With stellaris' border system I didn't think you can really share where someone has Rho A and you have Rho B or whatever (this was a few years ago maybe they've redesigned the system again like they seem to do from time to time). Well, since you bring it up, the original border system at release did in fact allow multiple states to control different parts of a single star system. Not 100% on what the motivation was for changing it (probably the war it interacted with claims, since it happened at the same time as the rest of the war changes), but it honestly didn't play that well. Given how many systems you're expected to manage in Stellaris, everything below the interstellar scale feels like too much detail to have to care about.
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Mar 16, 2021 20:36
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Hah exactly why I added that caveat, I've played on and off (including release, I remember planet tiles but not the borders thing) and I'm not surprised that at one point any number of mechanics have temporarily existed. I do wish it grabbed me more, it's fun designing a unique empire but it never seems to really go anywhere different.
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Mar 16, 2021 21:02
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There've been a couple story DLCs (mostly distant stars and ancient relics) which combined with the big title DLCs have shaken up the progression of the player empire so it's not quite as linear and samey as it was, but this is all caveated with the game still suffering from mid and late game micromanagement hell with the current population system. Supposedly the patch hitting with the next DLC is going to rectify that, we'll see. I'm actually a pretty big Stellaris fan relative to a lot of other classic 4xs, I think it's one of the best space empire RPGs ever made, but as a 4x it has some distinct flaws in terms of mechanics and the player's interaction with them.
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Mar 16, 2021 21:11
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maybe the new stellaris patch will alleviate the insane micro needed to keep on top of things post early game if you don't want to let the AI ruin your empire's economy and the game will be good again  also re: AI, early civs (1 and 2) were OK to play vs AI. not because the AI's good, it's terrible, but because there's only 3 real systems to interact with: city growth, expansion, warfare. warfare was super simplistic too (unit attack vs unit defence plus any terrain/fortification bonus and a dice roll to add rng). with only those 3 systems having any real impact on the game, you almost always had a game where one of the AIs managed to not gently caress up anything, absorbed a couple early neighbours, and held an entire continent by the time you met them. these days AI is technically better, but the games have 7 billion systems players need to keep track of, and failing any one of them can often be detrimental, so obviously AI fucks up one or two early on and is a non-threat past turn 30 even on hardest difficulties
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Mar 16, 2021 21:34
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Lawman 0 posted:Let's have a debate: What 4X strategy had the best/most enjoyable AI opponents? The same as the best 4X game overall: Fall From Heaven 2 <Insert your favorate mod mod mod here> for Civ4
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Mar 16, 2021 23:58
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I have a love-hate relationship with Stellaris. I haven't played it much, but I really really like the theme; it's the only game where I feel you can make a Star Trek-like universe come to life, without any of the pre-scripted Star Trek IP. But, I also find it rather boring. The early game is great, when you're exploring and establishing new colonies and meeting other empires and such, but when your borders butt up against other empires and your expansion grinds to a halt, it gets intensely boring for me. Interaction with the AIs seems to be almost non-existent. Nothing seems to happen, unless you end up in a war. Some things happen on the galactic council but it all seems mostly irrelevant, with proposals just being +X bonus to something or other and my diplomatic weight is too insignificant to make a difference to what happens with them anyway. That said, I have the base game and none of the DLC. I have the DLCs on my wishlist but I haven't felt confident enough to pull the trigger on any of them. They're like £7 a pop even on discount, and I just can't be sure they actually solve the problems I have with the game.
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Mar 16, 2021 23:58
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I only like exploring maps, then things lock down and you can win or lose and I get antsy and bored. Only 4X's I ever really, really played were SMAC and Civ4 and honorable mention AI War. The Minecraft and survival genres soaked up that desire to explore, so I hardly play 4X's anymore. I half-rear end the early game in those and quit before it gets hard instead. Yet I consider myself a 4X liker.
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Mar 17, 2021 00:07
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