|
Anno posted:Of all the bigger strategy games I think Paradox games generally have the best AI? Compared to Civ, TW, Endless * etc. By a good bit, too. eh, this is short-term memory cursed by how bad the strat gaming scene is right now lol. setting aside Old World, which legit has some of the best, you have Civ4 with an AI that makes Deity challenging to this day, a TON of tactics games and CRPGs (which i would compare here due to the semi-turn-based nature and number of variables, though dont worry i dont think skills are transferrable in terms of AI development), Colonization (both), XCom: Long War (..okay i know this might be controversial LOL). firaxis has completely dropped the ball since civ 4 and Endless games have never had AI, yeah. I'd say Total War's AI is....around the same level, though.
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2022 03:38
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 30, 2024 08:58 |
|
|
I'm not sure if crushing your beginner players is a great way to have them play enough to become experienced.
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2022 03:45
|
|
|
it's a cultural problem!!! lower the game difficulty if the AI kicks ur rear end gamers it's NOT BAD to do so!! arghghghgh
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2022 03:48
|
|
|
bokoen's vid was my fave so far, but spiffs was a wild ride. "printing arrest warrants in 4 languages means I need a lot of paper"
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2022 03:53
|
|
|
Hellioning posted:I'm not sure if crushing your beginner players is a great way to have them play enough to become experienced. Works in chess, and honestly in most activities and games. People tend to show more improvement if they lose because they more quickly realize their mistakes. The caveat of course is that the process of losing should probably still be as fun as possible, people can lose while still enjoying themselves. And their enjoyment can come instead from measuring their improvement. Like in Dark Souls. e: to add, I don't think it's a reasonable gameplay consideration to have it so a first time player can "win" (by some reasonable metric for a paradox game) their first playthrough before fully mastering all of the mechanics if otherwise aiming for a more moderately skilled player, they would otherwise for sure lose in the same circumstances. Like in Dark Souls, you can and should, through recommended starts and so on, play so that you can learn the ropes, but playing overly aggressively should still be punished by a competent AI as it would be by a competent rival player and so on; because otherwise I think it's impossible beyond a passivity toggle to balance the AI for both kinds of players; personally I think its better to lean on the side of a more challenging and consistent experience across all players. Raenir Salazar fucked around with this message at 04:00 on Oct 23, 2022 |
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2022 03:53
|
|
|
Lady Radia posted:
Stellaris is different because everyone starts with one planet. The asymmetry is in the starts. How do you make an AI that knows how to play the game, but doesn't immediately take France/Ottomans/Spain and flatten the player? Even if you can strategically weaken it, you need to make the AI of OPMs different. It adds even more complication to a difficult set of parameters.
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2022 04:06
|
|
|
Slim Jim Pickens posted:Stellaris is different because everyone starts with one planet. i don't actually know that there is additional complications here so long as a decision on what sort of game paradox games are. the default wisdom is they're strategy games, but most people play them as roleplaying games.
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2022 04:08
|
|
|
Lady Radia posted:i don't actually know that there is additional complications here so long as a decision on what sort of game paradox games are. the default wisdom is they're strategy games, but most people play them as roleplaying games. A lot of them are designed like strategy games, so they have a lot of mechanics that AIs are ill-suited to navigate. That and/or humans are bad at creating AIs to navigate such mechanics. Vicky 3 does a good step in abstracting war into a hands-off area. But it's missing something on the domestic front. There needs to be more tangible friction for the player. CK has a good thing going where it's character focus allows relatively simple mechanics to transform into RP narratives, even if you're powergaming. Slim Jim Pickens fucked around with this message at 04:35 on Oct 23, 2022 |
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2022 04:31
|
|
|
The Cheshire Cat posted:Complaints about AI I think always boil down to what players want is to win, and to feel like they won on their own merits. They want an AI that will seem smart enough to not be trivially defeated, but not smart enough to actually beat them. And there's not really any right answer to designing an AI like this because what people consider to be "trivial to beat" or "unfairly good at micromanagement" varies wildly, as do the sorts of strategies players want to be able to pursue and still be able to win. This also makes the argument that technology is not yet there moot. Older game often had much simpler rules and fewer actors, but people were generally happy with AIs in games like Civ4 or Master of Orion, Rise of Nations or GalCiv 2. They didn't feel trivial to beat, they've often had a personality, it didn't feel like they're winning due to inhuman micramagement. No one wants a chess-like perfect AI playing to win, it's enough for AI to never look like it doesn't understand the basics.
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2022 04:35
|
|
|
Slim Jim Pickens posted:Stellaris is different because everyone starts with one planet. I think the important thing here is the AI should have goals; and those goals should probably reflect what would be reasonable for those slots. Russia wants a warm water port and to secure its hinterlands; so any player in its path is going to have a fight on its hand. France wants win the 100 years war and round out its borders. A player within those borders is going to have a fight on its hand. China just wants to sit there and collect tribute. A player being Japan is probably fine; as long as you don't rock the boat. Etc. So to follow on and elaborate on my earlier post, the AI should not be hindered in carrying out its primary goals. If the AI is likely to win as France in the 100 years war against a newbie UK player then the UK player should lose. If Byzantium is expected to lose to the Ottomans they should lose if they don't have the experience and skill to use the games systems (as intended) to win. On the other hand playing a Elector in the HRE, like Brandenburg, has no reason to attract the immediate ire of any neighbour and should take exceptional circumstances for either Austria or Sweden to look at you funny; and if you keep your head down and aren't overly aggressive should be able to fight a couple of small wars and develop your country while the AI only interacting with you only so far as having one of the larger HRE minors on their side or not against them is useful to achieve their goals. While a newbie human in France might lose against UK, the odds are probably enough in your favor that you might not lose, but there's no guard rails to keep you from fumbling it; but with just a couple of games in recommended starts should be enough that you should be able to win as France or maybe as England etc. Because just because you're new doesn't mean the AI shouldn't be able to still kick your rear end if you're a direct obstruction; the difficulty slider maybe should instead just determine how long it takes them to get around to it, which maybe buys you more time, but little else.
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2022 04:42
|
|
|
Raenir Salazar posted:I think the important thing here is the AI should have goals; and those goals should probably reflect what would be reasonable for those slots. That sounds too deterministic to me.
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2022 04:44
|
|
|
Pylons posted:That sounds too deterministic to me. If you're new to the game, the expected result being "the AI handedly kicks your rear end" isn't being deterministic; its giving the AI the means to achieve their plausible goals so they can challenge the player that presumably is going to be challenging them. If you're the Ottomans and know the ropes, you should be able to defeat Austria, but it should be challenging because well, for all the same reasons it was difficult historically; a far off siege of a major European city that's being vigorously defended and reinforced by allies.
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2022 04:48
|
|
|
Deterministic is good actually
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2022 04:51
|
|
|
Raenir Salazar posted:What would be a grognardy game; Dwarf Fortress? Also if you weren’t aware, there’s a thread for those games.
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2022 04:52
|
|
|
Slim Jim Pickens posted:A lot of them are designed like strategy games, so they have a lot of mechanics that AIs are ill-suited to navigate. That and/or humans are bad at creating AIs to navigate such mechanics. agree basically. there doesn't seem to be friction in the tending-your-garden situation. and i am unsure how you would provide it tbh.
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2022 04:54
|
|
|
Raenir Salazar posted:If you're new to the game, the expected result being "the AI handedly kicks your rear end" isn't being deterministic; its giving the AI the means to achieve their plausible goals so they can challenge the player that presumably is going to be challenging them. But AI Ottomans shouldn't always be going after Austria. There shouldn't be any hardwired behavior that they do that to the detriment of better/more fruitful possibilities elsewhere. They could do it more often than not because the right opportunities present themselves more often than not, but not just because that's what happened historically.
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2022 05:07
|
|
|
ilitarist posted:This also makes the argument that technology is not yet there moot. Older game often had much simpler rules and fewer actors, but people were generally happy with AIs in games like Civ4 or Master of Orion, Rise of Nations or GalCiv 2. They didn't feel trivial to beat, they've often had a personality, it didn't feel like they're winning due to inhuman micramagement. No one wants a chess-like perfect AI playing to win, it's enough for AI to never look like it doesn't understand the basics. Simpler rules are what enable AIs to be competitive. For example, the shift from Civ 4's stack-based armies to Civ 5's one-unit-per-tile system hamstrung its ability to fight wars. The former is just a pathing problem for the AI, the latter is multiple pathing problems, positioning problems, and a more complicated assessment problem Lady Radia posted:agree basically. there doesn't seem to be friction in the tending-your-garden situation. and i am unsure how you would provide it tbh. The political groups just need more bite, and political instability shouldn't both undesirable and easily avoidable. The basketcase political upheaval in Victoria 2 was only slightly exaggerated from reality
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2022 05:23
|
|
|
more than slightly 
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2022 05:26
|
|
|
Slim Jim Pickens posted:
It should be a pretty simple numbers tweak to make IGs more pissed off that they aren't in the government (or citizens more pissed off that you can't pass the reforms they want because of the IGs that are in your government).
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2022 05:27
|
|
|
Pylons posted:It should be a pretty simple numbers tweak to make IGs more pissed off that they aren't in the government (or citizens more pissed off that you can't pass the reforms they want because of the IGs that are in your government). Maybe. I think I would like it if IGs had the capability to have reactive politics. So if you ice an IG out of power for too long it starts trying to attract more support by abandoning or picking up certain positions.
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2022 05:39
|
|
|
I still can't believe that Victoria 3 is real, and that it's coming out this week.
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2022 05:40
|
|
|
Lady Radia posted:more than slightly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rebellions_and_revolutions_in_Brazil#Empire_of_Brazil_(1822%E2%80%931889)
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2022 05:40
|
|
|
Raenir Salazar posted:Works in chess, and honestly in most activities and games. People tend to show more improvement if they lose because they more quickly realize their mistakes. The caveat of course is that the process of losing should probably still be as fun as possible, people can lose while still enjoying themselves. And their enjoyment can come instead from measuring their improvement. People can have more improvement if they lose! But I don't think people play many video games to get better at the video game.
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2022 05:42
|
|
|
Pylons posted:It should be a pretty simple numbers tweak to make IGs more pissed off that they aren't in the government (or citizens more pissed off that you can't pass the reforms they want because of the IGs that are in your government). To some extent this could come down to a slider, though there are also some mechanical aspects that could be added. For one thing, I’d like to see Political Movements interact with institution levels the way they currently do with laws. So if you already have Religious Schools, then the Devout would push for greater Education funding and resist decreases in it.
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2022 05:44
|
|
|
Slim Jim Pickens posted:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rebellions_and_revolutions_in_Brazil#Empire_of_Brazil_(1822%E2%80%931889) and they all rose up in exactly 3,000 sized militias that were immediately deleted by a single unit of guards before rising up and getting annihilated again next month. geographically all over the place with no rhyme or reason. wild fake e: i realized halfway through they were 1,000 sized. sorry bout that.
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2022 06:25
|
|
|
Lady Radia posted:and they all rose up in exactly 3,000 sized militias that were immediately deleted by a single unit of guards before rising up and getting annihilated again next month. geographically all over the place with no rhyme or reason. wild they're 3,000 man brigades in Vicky 2
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2022 06:36
|
|
|
Slim Jim Pickens posted:Stellaris is different because everyone starts with one planet. Jazerus posted:v3 would be the game to implement it in, because balance of power politics defined this period diplomatically. if you pop your head too far above the rest of the pack, imo you should start to run into issues where other great powers weigh in against your diplomatic plays just to get an excuse to gently caress with you. i think infamy probably does do this, but it seems like raw power doesn't? it's hard to tell without having hands on the game yet Year 0: Country A has a rating of 400. Country B has a rating of 350, Country C a rating of 200. - Country A worries about B, but not C, simply due to their power levels. Year 25: Country A has a rating of 450. Country B has a rating of 420, Country C a rating of 250. - Country A still worries about B and not C, and to a greater degree, due to B's trajectory pointing to B overtaking A within a couple of decades. Year 50: Country A has a rating of 500. Country B has a rating of 430, Country C a rating of 400. - Country A deprioritizes keeping B down, because its trajectory does not point to it being a threat currently or the near future. Meanwhile, C is seen as a threat, due to its rapid growth that threatens to overtake A. To "simulate" the inertia that often exist in how people think about other countries, there could be some delay on this signal, which would allow C some time before A shifts its focus from B. Conversely, infamy could be added on top in the calculation or remove this delay, basically making unjustified aggressive expansion cause a more prompt reaction from the countries you're about to become a rival to due to that sort of behavior making them pay attention. That delay could even be used as a difficulty slider of sorts, with a reduced delay making it harder for the player to leapfrog its rivals and become untouchable. yeti friend posted:Was it? I know the western euros intervened against Russia a lot, but Prussia and Italy didn't face any outside intervention in their wars did they?
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2022 06:48
|
|
|
Lady Radia posted:and they all rose up in exactly 3,000 sized militias that were immediately deleted by a single unit of guards before rising up and getting annihilated again next month. geographically all over the place with no rhyme or reason. wild Yes
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2022 06:54
|
|
|
Slim Jim Pickens posted:The political groups just need more bite, and political instability shouldn't both undesirable and easily avoidable. The basketcase political upheaval in Victoria 2 was only slightly exaggerated from reality Yeah I may be misremembering some things but during last stream, the way Prussia could just…dismantle its entire existing power structure while ignoring all opposition because the magical civil war threshold wasn’t reached felt really off.
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2022 07:08
|
|
|
VostokProgram posted:they're 3,000 man brigades in Vicky 2 should have trusted myself. massive radia l
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2022 07:11
|
|
|
A Buttery Pastry posted:France shouldn't flatten the player, because the player is beneath their notice. Make the AI prioritize maintaining the status quo by keeping its peers/rivals in check over trying to just conquer everything, with a random variable that sometimes flips its switch and pushes it into being aggressive. A flip made easier if one of its neighbors is in a very weak position but hasn't yet found protection from a peer/rival. Basically, every country should have a variable for its current strength, but also current trajectory, with the AI reacting increasingly strongly as the trajectory indicates a country is becoming a threat or threatening to overtake them. So for example, something like this: The AI already does something similar in its diplomacy. The problem with EU4's AI is just mechanical, there isn't much to do in that game besides fight wars and expand your country in a way that lets you fight more wars and expand your country more. The main form of resistance in the game is from AIs fighting wars with you. However, they can't match players tactically or strategically. Tactically, there isn't really much for it to do, and even if there were more, it would be more annoying than anything. War is already a system where you have to chase the AI around or bait them into the mountains, making that more unpleasant isn't good. Strategically, these games are both insanely open and insanely limited in that there is one correct way to build your country (it needs to fight land wars). It's both difficult to make the AI better at the game without making it just look at a player in a smaller country and methodically seek opportunities to grind it down. Most of the heinous poo poo you do to break a country in EU4 single player are absolutely enraging when done to another player in MP, and you can't design an AI to do something so disgusting Dayton Sports Bar posted:Yeah I may be misremembering some things but during last stream, the way Prussia could just…dismantle its entire existing power structure while ignoring all opposition because the magical civil war threshold wasn’t reached felt really off. tbf swapping from fascism to communism to liberalism and back is really easy in other Vickies as well (unless you are a democracy). I think it's just accentuated because most of the gameplay seems to be changing your politics, whereas Vicky 2 has fake economics and politics masking a straight-wargame, and Vicky 1 is about micromanaging pops and consulting an event guide. Slim Jim Pickens fucked around with this message at 08:10 on Oct 23, 2022 |
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2022 07:52
|
|
|
Mantis42 posted:Honestly the last Paradox game I actually loved was EU4 so if this sucks then I think I'll give up on them. In the last decade what you view as paradox has grown from a team of 8-10 people led by me to about 7 different studios with 25-100 people in each with the creative leadership being differrent. While we still talk and have a lot of knowledge sharing its creates a difference in philosophies and goals with the games. If we just view new games, as DLC are so much easier to do compared to a new game, we now have 4 different paths of ganes, All old then hoi 3, v2, eu4, imperator => me. Ck2, stellaris, ck3 => Doomdark HoI4 => podcat Victoria 3 => Wiz
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2022 08:21
|
|
|
pdxjohan posted:In the last decade what you view as paradox has grown from a team of 8-10 people led by me to about 7 different studios with 25-100 people in each with the creative leadership being differrent. While we still talk and have a lot of knowledge sharing its creates a difference in philosophies and goals with the games. feel like if you're including HoI3 it's only fair to include Sengoku and March of the Eagles
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2022 08:51
|
|
|
Lady Radia posted:feel like if you're including HoI3 it's only fair to include Sengoku and March of the Eagles Yesh, blame me for them as well. I am so old and senile now that i dont remember which order we made some games now
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2022 08:54
|
|
|
pdxjohan posted:Yesh, blame me for them as well. I am so old and senile now that i dont remember which order we made some games now lol, no worries.
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2022 09:03
|
|
|
Slim Jim Pickens posted:The AI already does something similar in its diplomacy.
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2022 09:26
|
|
|
Love the uproar over at r/Victoria3 over the perceived lack of difficulty
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2022 11:41
|
|
|
Star posted:Love the uproar over at r/Victoria3 over the perceived lack of difficulty It’s really a thing of beauty. I think the meme videos are great and have me very excited to play this game, even if I’ll never try half the things other people do.
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2022 12:41
|
|
|
I want to play as my adopted home, Sweden, and hope I can do something with my home state of Texas as well. I’m very excited for this game.
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2022 12:42
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 30, 2024 08:58 |
|
|
I can't hate too much on it being easy playing Austria or one of the other strong powers in Vic 3. Playing as a great power in Eu4 or Hoi4 is also easy against the AI. The videos have actually made me want to play smaller countries also now. 2 more days!
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2022 12:52
|
|
