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Charlz Guybon posted:Hasn't machine learning mastered Starcraft II? SC II only has 6 matchups though, and IIRC there are separate ML AIs for each one.
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Aug 13, 2021 13:38
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Not to mention "playing the game well" means something very different to casual 4x fans than the 1% who care about challenge. "we need you to train an ai to play this game" "ok sure" "but not too well" "what?" "well if the ai plays the game wrong players get mad" "wrong? what does that mean??" "it's complicated" There's literally an AI checkbox in the Old World options menu that says "Play to win" which is extremely lol
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Aug 13, 2021 14:01
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The goal of game AI is to make the game fun, not to make it challenging. There's some overlap but it's not at all the same thing.
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Aug 13, 2021 14:12
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victrix posted:Not to mention "playing the game well" means something very different to casual 4x fans than the 1% who care about challenge. the old world options for the start conditions/how hard the ai goes at the player are honestly really awesome and should be taken up in more 4x games
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Aug 13, 2021 14:39
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Wouldn't you be able to train AI by giving it skill based matchmaking of sorts? Have the very easy AI trained by the lowest 20th percentile of players, easy the 20-40th percentile, and so on, so if you play against very hard AI it will emulate moves done by the top 20th percentile of players and if you think you want an easier time, it adopts the strategies of players who lose more often? and honestly I don't mind a "play to win" toggle. Some games that err more on the simulationalist side than the boardgame side, could use with AI that wants to just survive and faff about in a populated world instead of being cutthroat warlords. It should be up to the player whether they want to play an actual competitive game or a more simulationalist experience of tinkering with societies and tools and discovering the emergent sotrytelling.
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Aug 13, 2021 15:01
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Staltran posted:SC II only has 6 matchups though, and IIRC there are separate ML AIs for each one. Yep. SC II is also just a less complex, shorter game than any 4x game, really.
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Aug 13, 2021 15:05
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There is an AI toggle for Humankind that’ll prevent them from declaring wars, but if you declare on them they will still fight at the same level as they normally would for that difficulty. I think that’s a cool option.
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Aug 13, 2021 15:20
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Deltasquid posted:Wouldn't you be able to train AI by giving it skill based matchmaking of sorts? I think you are probably misunderstanding what "training an AI" means. A "trained" AI (as opposed to one that is programmed manually to follow certain rules) doesn't try to copy players of any skill level, it runs millions of simulations against different iterations of itself to determine optimal strategies. There's no simple way to scale that up and down. And even if it did work the way you imagined, how could they possibly get enough player data to emulate before the game is even released? Clarste fucked around with this message at 15:30 on Aug 13, 2021 |
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Aug 13, 2021 15:26
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Archduke Frantz Fanon posted:the old world options for the start conditions/how hard the ai goes at the player are honestly really awesome and should be taken up in more 4x games oh don't get me wrong, I think it's cool too, it's just a really stark reminder that the player base for these games is pretty broad and wants very different things from the ai players and overall game experience remember when rts games were big and there was always a subset of players that just wanted to build a huge base and got extremely angry if you rushed them? same energy
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Aug 13, 2021 15:51
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victrix posted:remember when rts games were big and there was always a subset of players that just wanted to build a huge base and got extremely angry if you rushed them? same energy oh, definitely, there's a significant subset of people who play 4x games as a weird version of simcity where they just want to 'play tall' and not get interfered with by people who play more optimally than themselves
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Aug 13, 2021 16:06
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Here’s a new video talking about some late game systems. Idk how much of this is totally new. Also I really hope there’s that much unbuilt space between cities in late game maps. I know some people dislike that in Civ but I always kind of hated that basically every tile had to have something built on it by the end of the game. https://twitter.com/humankindgame/status/1426185564399800321
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Aug 13, 2021 16:27
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Clarste posted:The goal of game AI is to make the game fun, not to make it challenging. There's some overlap but it's not at all the same thing. I would say that if your AI plays well but is not fun to play against, that's probably because something's wrong with your game mechanics. Like perfect play in a 4X might be to check and analyse the player scores every turn to work out the size of a player's army or economy down to a minute level of detail. However, it's not fun to do that, so most human players wouldn't bother doing it, so an AI would have a big advantage over them since it'll never get bored or mess up its calculations. A fix might be to reduce the amount of information the scores give everyone so they can't be analysed like this.
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Aug 13, 2021 17:19
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Clarste posted:I think you are probably misunderstanding what "training an AI" means. A "trained" AI (as opposed to one that is programmed manually to follow certain rules) doesn't try to copy players of any skill level, it runs millions of simulations against different iterations of itself to determine optimal strategies. There's no simple way to scale that up and down. Not to endorse the overall idea but you could scale it by giving it constraints. For example instead of having it learn to win you have it learn to play in such a way it hits benchmarks pegged to difficulty level. That way it's really good a building an appropriate strength empire but kind of dumb at the larger strategy needed to win and gives the player room to "out smart" it. Edit: the other idea would be to train AIs to do specific things, sort of old world without play to win checked. Give the AI specific goals that aren't necessarily victory conditions. It's really the only way to do it without essentially programming it to lose on purpose. The AI then isn't really a direct competitor but it gets in the way of the player in the process of pursuing it's own agenda. Jarmak fucked around with this message at 17:41 on Aug 13, 2021 |
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Aug 13, 2021 17:36
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Something 4x games have struggled with is surfacing exactly that behavior - sometimes the ai may actually be intentionally (or unintentionally cf. Gandhi nukes) trying to follow a behavior rather than a winning strategy Problem is, unless the game clearly communicates that info, you wind up with behavior that looks nonsensical (which may be intentionally so), and reads as "bad ai" The various diplomatic scores and visible modifiers have been one attempt at tackling this, but they still feel kinda bland to me. In games with really unusual races and cultures and leaders, this gets even harder because there's no baseline touchstone of familiarity (Montezuma vs... well any Endless race really)
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Aug 13, 2021 17:49
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Anno posted:Also I really hope there’s that much unbuilt space between cities in late game maps. I know some people dislike that in Civ but I always kind of hated that basically every tile had to have something built on it by the end of the game. Oh my god me too. Early screenshots of Humankind worried me because it looked like cities - even ancient ones - were taking up sizable fractions of the Earth's surface. It's part of why I don't like Civ 6 to be honest. Their idea is unstacking the cities had many good bits but it made the world so much smaller. Vast tracts of mostly unspoiled wilderness were easier to come by in Civ 5, and it looked like cities were separated by countryside.
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Aug 13, 2021 18:36
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I think worrying about if the AI is still fun to play against if it plays well is premature, since we havent seen games where it CAN play well since Civ 4, excepting maaaybe Old World. e: I just haven't invested the time in Old World to confirm it, that's not a knock against it.
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Aug 13, 2021 22:40
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Panzeh posted:oh, definitely, there's a significant subset of people who play 4x games as a weird version of simcity where they just want to 'play tall' and not get interfered with by people who play more optimally than themselves ah poo poo I think this might be me
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Aug 14, 2021 11:36
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Was gonna pre-order the game since it seemed interesting and you can get it for 40 eurobux right now but reading this thread made me reconsider.
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Aug 14, 2021 13:29
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Jack Trades posted:Was gonna pre-order the game since it seemed interesting and you can get it for 40 eurobux right now but reading this thread made me reconsider. Never preorder games. To be honest I don't think it'll be really bad or anything, but there's a lot that remains to be seen. Let people's actual hands-on experience with the released product guide your decision making instead of our kneejerk reactions to the beta.
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Aug 14, 2021 13:35
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After watching Marbozir's archived stream for like 7 hours the last couple days I'm actually more confident than before that it'll be at least a "good" game if you enjoy building a cool and honestly extremely good looking empire. I even like that the culture/religious stuff is hands off and passive and there's just nice UI for seeing it clash against other empires. I still think it'll be a relatively shallow strategy game. But it'll also probably be quite popular at least initially so hopefully Amplitude will have years of support to help sure up that side of things.
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Aug 14, 2021 16:45
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Anno posted:After watching Marbozir's archived stream for like 7 hours the last couple days I'm actually more confident than before that it'll be at least a "good" game if you enjoy building a cool and honestly extremely good looking empire. I even like that the culture/religious stuff is hands off and passive and there's just nice UI for seeing it clash against other empires. I mean, all the Endless games have been shallow as gently caress, I don't see why they'd suddenly become not-so.
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Aug 14, 2021 21:37
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Jack Trades posted:Was gonna pre-order the game since it seemed interesting and you can get it for 40 eurobux right now but reading this thread made me reconsider. Get Gamepass for like £8 instead my dude You could play Crusader Kings 3 instead, which is a confirmed Good Game
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Aug 14, 2021 22:01
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Gort posted:Get Gamepass for like £8 instead my dude But then I'd have to install that microsoft store malware.
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Aug 14, 2021 22:04
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Jack Trades posted:But then I'd have to install that microsoft store malware. Sure, it's a piece of poo poo, but it has a shitload of free games. Can't be worse than the Epic launcher.
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Aug 14, 2021 22:05
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The xbox app is pretty unobtrusive and lightweight. 
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Aug 15, 2021 01:03
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it's exceptionally awful for a bunch of reasons that belong in another thread
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Aug 15, 2021 01:10
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Gort posted:Get Gamepass for like £8 instead my dude There are countries without gamepass.
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Aug 15, 2021 01:16
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Is this game worth looking at if you found all of Amplitude's previous games to be a bit meh?
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Aug 15, 2021 02:54
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It's not out yet. Probably not? It feels somewhat different, because the idea of unlocking gunpowder is just more intuitive than unlocking hexium crystals or whatever, but it still feels like the same studio. All the Civ/RTS-focused LPers are putting up videos of it at the moment.
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Aug 15, 2021 03:13
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It depends upon what you found meh about them? I played in the Poe Beta (the most recent one), and found that in the end it was a decent enough 4x largely hamstrung by being very obtuse in explaining what parts of its systems were important or what options you had, along with it doing the standard “the AI sucks so we just give it four times as much starting stuff so if it meets you early and hates you you’re dead” and then making the open beta a single map where you started next to an AI that hates you. But it’s decent at doing all of the standard build-a-civ stuff: scouting out the map, planning out where to build cities to maximize your numbers, planning out which techs to take to best prepare for what you need; along with some interesting new ideas like regularly choosing which civ to play and what bonuses you get, which adds more “how do I maximize long term number growth without screwing myself short term” choices which are good. It also does the same thing Endless Legend did with armies moving across the map but then fighting in a small replacement map when they ran into enemies, with new twists around being able to support and reinforce those battles. Of course, it was also completely unbalanced, with some civs being clearly superior and others being just trash, with era advancement shooting you through civs while you barely made it through techs and influence being the absolute limiter to everything early and then just useless later. The AI was Civ V/Civ VI level, so the computer only beats you through early advantages of getting regular boosts, I never felt challenged, only overwhelmed when I was obviously outnumbered by their starting advantage. Some of that will get fixed, and if you like Civ V and Civ VI it’ll be a fun alternative.
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Aug 15, 2021 03:23
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skeleton warrior posted:It depends upon what you found meh about them?
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Aug 15, 2021 04:05
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Oh, no, you’re not going to feel anything different about Humankind. Unless they’ve put in some serious post beta changes or the modern era takes half the game, it’s going to be very much Endless Legends with FISMI and adjacency bonus and allocating people to slots and developing generic, nameless religions to support your indistinct culture. It’s solid and competent, but I can’t imagine someone who thought Endless Legends wasn’t good will think much better of this one.
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Aug 15, 2021 06:51
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I feel like Amplitude's superb writers, concept artists and world builders are let down by their game designers, which is really super unusual, triply so for a studio specializing in 4x games where you don't usually see super interesting world building done. It's really really strange. I also love their UIs and dislike their music, but can't have it all  I hope the game does well for them regardless, they clearly put a lot of effort and love into it.
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Aug 15, 2021 07:22
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skeleton warrior posted:It’s solid and competent, but I can’t imagine someone who thought Endless Legends wasn’t good will think much better of this one. The only thing I didn't like about Endless Legend was the fantasy setting so I can't wait for Humankind. Speaking of, I really liked the minor civ mechanic in EL (the villages you have to pacify and do quests for) and the city states were my favourite part of Civ 5, but it looks like minor civs aren't a thing in Humankind? Very disappointing if so.
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Aug 15, 2021 08:53
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Minor civs do pop up in unclaimed land from what I've seen in SBs videos. You'll have the 'Akkadians' pop up as an outpost and then a full city. They can be aggressive or peaceful and will have a specific ideological makeup that will make it easier or harder for you to improve your relationship with them. You can conquer them, rent their armies or eventually assimilate them. I didn't see any quests in the videos but I was only kinda watching at points. Want to keep it fresh because I do think I'll pick this up on release. I just hope there's a community patch created to tighten things up like Endless Legend.
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Aug 15, 2021 09:03
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Its not that hard to make an ai thats pretty good as long as you're willing to wait a (truly) unlimited amount of time for each turn.
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Aug 15, 2021 10:12
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victrix posted:I feel like Amplitude's superb writers, concept artists and world builders are let down by their game designers, which is really super unusual, triply so for a studio specializing in 4x games where you don't usually see super interesting world building done. It's really really strange. I actually have a lot of respect for Amplitude's game designers in certain areas because they do things like abstracting all of the trade out of Endless Space 2 into a system that's hands-off and human-parsable without having to click "Renew trade route" five times a turn like I do in Civ 6. It's just that every single one of their games is stuck on top of the same bland as gently caress FIDS economy system, which is why they all feel so generic. I don't know why the studio is so invested in it, even Civ finds interesting ways to spice up its equivalent food/hammers/gold/science but Amplitude's games are all just "number go up!". Also they're really bad at expansion DLC. I still have absolutely no idea what was going on with that hacking mechanic they introduced into ES2, absolutely incomprehensible. Rupert of Hentzau fucked around with this message at 10:24 on Aug 15, 2021 |
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Aug 15, 2021 10:20
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Rupert of Hentzau posted:I actually have a lot of respect for Amplitude's game designers in certain areas because they do things like abstracting all of the trade out of Endless Space 2 into a system that's hands-off and human-parsable without having to click "Renew trade route" five times a turn like I do in Civ 6. It's just that every single one of their games is stuck on top of the same bland as gently caress FIDS economy system, which is why they all feel so generic. I don't know why the studio is so invested in it, even Civ finds interesting ways to spice up its equivalent food/hammers/gold/science but Amplitude's games are all just "number go up!". I wanted to like hacking, I really did....
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Aug 15, 2021 11:28
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The hacking race was really loving cool in ES2 and I wish literally any other 4x game let you play a "parasite" empire but for every other race hacking was just busy work.
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Aug 15, 2021 11:32
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victrix posted:I feel like Amplitude's superb writers, concept artists and world builders are let down by their game designers, which is really super unusual, triply so for a studio specializing in 4x games where you don't usually see super interesting world building done. It's really really strange. They also have like one programmer that jumps between all their games.
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Aug 15, 2021 19:06
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