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I mean, yes but also no? A lot of games are so complex that I don't think it's even possible to program a challenging AI. Old World only does it by giving the AI massive advantages over the player. Which is perfectly fine design imo, but doesn't mean you've actually taught a computer to navigate your mechanics succesfully. Meanwhile a good chunk of players seems to want and expect games to become more complex rather than less, and see less complex as inferior, even if it results in a greater challenge because the AI can grapple with the mechanics better. Furthermore, different types of players want very different things from the AI. Having been like, officially good at a couple of games in my life, I can tell you most people both hate losing, are terrible at the games they play and don't appear to find expending effort to get better fun. So even if you did create a challenging AI, it would probably also mean players enjoy your game less. Hence why the only real challenge in games is playing against other people, and also imo the best board games tend to have much tighter design than pc strategy games, because they don't let the mechanics get completely out of hand in terms of complexity. Even then nobody has managed to port a board game to pc and create a decent AI.
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Nov 4, 2022 15:41
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Lostconfused posted:These post release plans seem like they should have been pre-release Isn't a big thing in Vicky pops & what they want/are doing? Why would you release without ways to give the players that info?!??
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Nov 4, 2022 15:48
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BadOptics posted:Isn't a big thing in Vicky pops & what they want/are doing? Why would you release without ways to give the players that info?!?? Because this is a Paradox game and they've been releasing games in this manner for the entirety of their company's history.
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Nov 4, 2022 16:16
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BadOptics posted:Isn't a big thing in Vicky pops & what they want/are doing? Why would you release without ways to give the players that info?!?? It’s more that currently you can only get that info from a thousand different tool tips, sometimes nested 3 deep within other tool tips.
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Nov 4, 2022 17:10
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Weembles posted:Because this is a Paradox game and they've been releasing games in this manner for the entirety of their company's history. Oh yeah, it's just hilarious they keep doing it. Watch briefly a video of someone playing the release version of Stellaris and it's almost unrecognizable. HoI4 likewise and in some ways not for the better as every fancy new mechanic makes the previous paid DLC packs broken so you'd have to play dumb poo poo like Switzerland instead of, say, the Scandinavian countries. Trabisnikof posted:It’s more that currently you can only get that info from a thousand different tool tips, sometimes nested 3 deep within other tool tips. The "Balance of Power" or whatever thing they added to Italy is only accessible if you happen to know a certain window (that's unmarked) needs to be clicked on. A+ UI/UX design.
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Nov 4, 2022 17:22
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I spent like an hour when I first tried vicky 3 just lookin for the list of pops and their demands because this was a very basic menu in 2 and as far as I can tell it just isn't available? You have to reverse engineer pop demands from the market ledger or wait until you get a notification that whatever necessary good is in low supply?
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Nov 4, 2022 17:22
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the bitcoin of weed posted:I spent like an hour when I first tried vicky 3 just lookin for the list of pops and their demands because this was a very basic menu in 2 and as far as I can tell it just isn't available? You have to reverse engineer pop demands from the market ledger or wait until you get a notification that whatever necessary good is in low supply? No it's just hidden somewhere in the tool tips. Which frankly aren't much different from menus within menus, mr Paradox UI designer. It's funny because in V2 you could look at your pop needs very easily and also have negligible ability to affect them. You are just supposed to grow your economy habitually and make a judgement on what you think the domestic prices should be. For example, basic foodstuff shouldn't be extremely expensive. oscarthewilde posted:The most fundamental issue, and one that extends beyond Paradox into the whole strategy genre, is the apparent inability to program a challenging and interesting AI. The last big strategy game I can remember with an actually challenging AI is probably Civ 4 (Old World has a very good AI, so Soren Johnson's still at it, but I find the game as a whole less interesting and definitely less 'mainstream' and big than Civ), and it's completely insane to me that AI tech has essentially been stagnant for more than a decade. loving financial capital and its blinding focus on efficiency and profitability... Computers are fundamentally very bad at reading ambiguous states and making decisions. Or at least, humans are bad at programming computers to do that. When people develop complex games, they make AI dev exponentially more difficult. The biggest nerf to the AI between Civ 4 and Civ 5 AI-wise was probably just changing armies from stacks to single tile entities. Oops, now the pathing problem is 5 different pathing problems, also now there are tactical deployment issues and also the strategic AI needs to predict these comprehensive issues to be effective at war. btw no AI is at this level state of cognition, have fun making the AI. Then the AI dev(s?) spend all their time chasing the other 50 features added to the game that need basic AI functionality.
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Nov 4, 2022 19:15
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Lostconfused posted:These post release plans seem like they should have been pre-release Victoria 3: The rest of the loving owl Coming 2024
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Nov 4, 2022 19:25
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BadOptics posted:The "Balance of Power" or whatever thing they added to Italy is only accessible if you happen to know a certain window (that's unmarked) needs to be clicked on. A+ UI/UX design.
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Nov 4, 2022 19:53
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Lostconfused posted:It's also just hidden some of the time. I was under the impression that only the DLC nations (Switzerland, Italy, and Ethiopia) got that mechanic (explaining why it would be hidden).
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Nov 4, 2022 19:58
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BadOptics posted:I was under the impression that only the DLC nations (Switzerland, Italy, and Ethiopia) got that mechanic (explaining why it would be hidden). It just doesn't show up for Italy during a war for whatever reason. So you get notifications for decisions in that window, but you just can't access it.
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Nov 4, 2022 20:04
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 Amazing.
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Nov 4, 2022 20:04
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Lostconfused posted:These post release plans seem like they should have been pre-release we are going to improve the following categories of our historical economic, diplomacy, and warfare game: historic immersion, economy, diplomacy, and warfare
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Nov 4, 2022 23:02
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the bitcoin of weed posted:I spent like an hour when I first tried vicky 3 just lookin for the list of pops and their demands because this was a very basic menu in 2 and as far as I can tell it just isn't available? You have to reverse engineer pop demands from the market ledger or wait until you get a notification that whatever necessary good is in low supply? I just assume that my pops need stuff like cheap food, clothing, and heating to live and follow on logically from there. Maybe it'll somehow turn out that idk having a liquor shortage or clipper shortage is what causing all those weird radicals to keep popping up or something.
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Nov 4, 2022 23:05
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What I do know is that automobiles are unprofitable forever because I have trains everywhere.
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Nov 4, 2022 23:06
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Trying to industralize china and its making me realize how correct Deng was
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Nov 4, 2022 23:16
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I love all the 'wow look at this [completely historically appropriate] bug, paradox fix your game' content V3 is generating I just saw this on the subreddit with the op assuming the intelligentsia being racist must be a design failure 
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Nov 5, 2022 01:55
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oscarthewilde posted:The most fundamental issue, and one that extends beyond Paradox into the whole strategy genre, is the apparent inability to program a challenging and interesting AI. The last big strategy game I can remember with an actually challenging AI is probably Civ 4 (Old World has a very good AI, so Soren Johnson's still at it, but I find the game as a whole less interesting and definitely less 'mainstream' and big than Civ), and it's completely insane to me that AI tech has essentially been stagnant for more than a decade. loving financial capital and its blinding focus on efficiency and profitability... I was puzzled by this years ago and spent some time thinking about it. There are actually strategy games with good AI! They just tend to be grog wargames. Often made by either a small team or just one guy. So why does a more complex game, made with no budget by a single dude, frequently have way better AI than AAA games? I think there is an actual simple reason. Turn processing time. The games I'm describing have turns in the mid-game take minutes. That's simply not an option for a mainstream audience. This finally clicked for me when I saw games start adding an option for how long you want to allow the AI to think on turn end, explicitly stating that faster turns = dumber AI. There's of course other aspects like difficulty tuning - most people are idiots but they want to feel like geniuses who win against impossible odds. But I think turn time is a key piece of the puzzle I used not to understand.
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Nov 5, 2022 02:36
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the bitcoin of weed posted:Trying to industralize china and its making me realize how correct Deng was More and more people are saying!!!
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Nov 5, 2022 02:42
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Zeppelin Insanity posted:Turn processing time. The games I'm describing have turns in the mid-game take minutes. That's simply not an option for a mainstream audience. This finally clicked for me when I saw games start adding an option for how long you want to allow the AI to think on turn end, explicitly stating that faster turns = dumber AI. Civilization turns take for loving ever.
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Nov 5, 2022 02:50
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Lostconfused posted:Civilization turns take for loving ever. I think that's because the launcher app has a memory leak or something. I remember having that problem until I disabled the 2K launcher.
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Nov 5, 2022 05:06
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So it turns out that if a major is in default it boosts their base desire for peace just enough to enforce one demand.  Five years of free cash to un-turbofuck all the things that are going wrong now that I'm out of the customs union.
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Nov 5, 2022 06:49
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Most grog wargames have terrible AI too, ime.
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Nov 5, 2022 09:20
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Mantis42 posted:Most grog wargames have terrible AI too, ime. Yeah I can’t think of any with a good AI.
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Nov 5, 2022 11:27
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imo it's harder to define good strategy game AI than most people want to admit, and that's also why AI that "cheats" upsets some people so much
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Nov 5, 2022 15:26
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Mantis42 posted:Most grog wargames have terrible AI too, ime. I haven't played a lot of them, but off the top of my head I found the AI in Shadow Empires very challenging. Sure, it probably cheated since it tended to have a much larger and better equipped army than I could support, but I found it to be very merciless in exploiting gaps and missteps for example. It might not be absolutely good, but relative to, like, Civ and Total War and Paradox games I think its night and day.
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Nov 5, 2022 15:38
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I wonder if Victoria 3 can even understand the difference between external and internal consumption. If you say get cutoff from the market capital because someone decided to start a war and get all their shipping lanes raided, you create huge internal demand for resources except the locals will never provide that resource because they still using the overlords market prices which show there's no demand at all.
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Nov 5, 2022 15:47
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Lostconfused posted:I wonder if Victoria 3 can even understand the difference between external and internal consumption. If you say get cutoff from the market capital because someone decided to start a war and get all their shipping lanes raided, you create huge internal demand for resources except the locals will never provide that resource because they still using the overlords market prices which show there's no demand at all. I don't know how it works or if the game takes it into account, but it looks like the game has a mechanic for local prices for commodities. Or at least the stub of one - every item has the exact same price everywhere in the games I've played. I can see them implementing a mechanic for partial markets in the future. Like, food is cheap in the country and expensive in the city while engines are cheap in the city and expensive in the country sort of thing. Something that accounts for the shipping traffic to maintain a common market in an overseas empire would be nifty too. Weembles has issued a correction as of 16:03 on Nov 5, 2022 |
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Nov 5, 2022 16:01
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Zeppelin Insanity posted:I haven't played a lot of them, but off the top of my head I found the AI in Shadow Empires very challenging. Sure, it probably cheated since it tended to have a much larger and better equipped army than I could support, but I found it to be very merciless in exploiting gaps and missteps for example. Shadow Empire’s AI cheats like absolute mad and there are entire game systems it basically doesn’t have to engage with at all (it uses an extremely simplified version of the logistics system, for example, and it can’t build new cities at all). It’s a pretty good wargame AI but the only way to make it work in such a complex game was to just have it play a completely different game from what the human player sees. If you like it, you should also try his Decisive Campaigns games. Shadow Empire is built off of those, and they have similarly decent tactical AI.
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Nov 5, 2022 16:12
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i really wish shadow empire had mod support, the 'empire' part of the game is very underdeveloped adding some more customization (like name lists) and making a better politics system would improve it a lot currently massacring your striking workers has less impact on your ideology numbers than choosing what kind of specialist dude one of your battalions should get
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Nov 5, 2022 18:46
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hello, i am trying to play unity of command 2 and after comfortably managing the italian campaign i'm getting completely wrecked in operation overlord how do i avoid german armoured divisions instantly mulching the guys i send to take pegasus bridge, pls help
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Nov 5, 2022 18:53
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It's been too long since I played it. Maybe try with other HQ upgrades?
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Nov 5, 2022 19:01
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Weembles posted:I don't know how it works or if the game takes it into account, but it looks like the game has a mechanic for local prices for commodities. Or at least the stub of one - every item has the exact same price everywhere in the games I've played. It's the infrastructure/market access mechanic. States can only ship (infrastructure demand / infrastructure use) of their produce to the greater market and must try to sell the remainder locally, almost always resulting in a lower price; in addition areas separated by sea must use convoy capacity to interact with the greater market. It just rarely comes up except as a malus to swat on new colonies, or if you're ocean-spanning but navally weak and end up in a war where your convoys are getting picked off.
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Nov 5, 2022 20:10
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Mandoric posted:It's the infrastructure/market access mechanic. States can only ship (infrastructure demand / infrastructure use) of their produce to the greater market and must try to sell the remainder locally, almost always resulting in a lower price; in addition areas separated by sea must use convoy capacity to interact with the greater market. It just rarely comes up except as a malus to swat on new colonies, or if you're ocean-spanning but navally weak and end up in a war where your convoys are getting picked off. I guess that says something about either me or the game that I've put in so many hours and never noticed that. I've seen colonies be isolated at first when they don't have a port and I've seen notices of foreign trade routes needing more convoys, but I've never noticed it affect any of my own territories or resource prices.
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Nov 5, 2022 20:27
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Because that's a totally different thing. Trade routes are external, for the internal market it only counts the number of convoys used for port connections. And to see that you need to go actually click on one of the sea shipping lanes.
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Nov 5, 2022 20:47
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bedpan posted:they released the game without those things? pretty dire Modern game design rules, release a bare beta version of the game, than release a roadmap of added contentbfor 6-12 months later to bring it to a state that would look like 1.0 of a game made in the 90s or early 2000s. I also wouldnt be shocked if most of thise improvments will be paid DLC. The American Civil War one especially
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Nov 5, 2022 22:18
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V. Illych L. posted:hello, i am trying to play unity of command 2 and after comfortably managing the italian campaign i'm getting completely wrecked in operation overlord IIRC, put some infantry with plenty of AT specialist steps and dig them in like a tick (do not move or attack). I also used my air attacks on armor as it's way more effective than against infantry. Does it also require you to hold it to the end of the scenario? I think some missions all you need to do is cap something by X turn and if it doesn't say "and hold" you can fall back if needed (a bit cheesy I guess). I did find the Overlord missions to be a good challenge. After that market garden is the tough mission. Definitely recommend keeping your armor steps alive as it seemed I could never get more later on (even on normal difficulty). Edit: Also prioritize those SS tank poo poo heads, they have better stats. The regulars in the Pz4's can hit hard but not as bad as those and your armor can fight them pretty effectively.
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Nov 6, 2022 04:13
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Megamissen posted:i really wish shadow empire had mod support, the 'empire' part of the game is very underdeveloped Yeah it's uncomfortably realistic in that way
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Nov 6, 2022 05:36
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https://twitter.com/bloomfilters/status/1589367983238848512
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Nov 7, 2022 02:00
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played another session of my Victoria 2 Brazil game I used the Install Communism casus belli on Gran Colombia (which was released from Colombia) because it was one of two countries in the Western Hemisphere that wasn't already in the USA's sphere-of-influence I had a very modern army with planes and tanks, so this was easy then, I used Install Communism on Ecuador, the other country that still wasn't sphered. This one was a little more complicated because I didn't have a land border, so I had to launch an amphibious invasion with my fleets sailing through the Panama Canal to get to the western coast of South America, but I also had full fleets of Dreadnoughts, so that was pretty easy and then Colombia decides it wants Gran Colombia back, and with the backing of Mexico and the United States, declares war. Since they're in my sphere, I'm allied with them and have to respond, and I jump in Colombia gets overrun rather easily by my armies, but it's not long before the USA starts landing 70k stacks of troops and I am in for the fight of my life because there's just way too many Yanquis. I catch a break because Mexico is the war leader and after blowing up some 100k starts from their mobilized infantry I can manage to get their warscore up to about -40% and they agree to a white peace it's now March 1932 and Communist Brazil is in 6th place overall
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Nov 7, 2022 10:10
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