|
that's where you want it to be tbh - if you have the option to let the AI take the wheel and it's as good as or better than you are, you're kinda being incentivised to not play the game (and the tactical layer is pretty much the game in AOW3 anyway) I remember when there was a huge fuss over the Starsector devs making trade almost always lose you money in their space trader game, to which they pointed out that shuttling bear asses back and forth for 600 hours tends to be much safer than anything involving touching the combat mechanics, so risk-averse players feel compelled to do that as long as it's even possible to advance by doing so, but shuttling bear asses back and forth is also very boring, so those players then get bored and drop the game A Wizard of Goatse fucked around with this message at 16:57 on Mar 23, 2023 |
#
?
Mar 23, 2023 16:35
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 29, 2024 09:48 |
|
|
Thanks everyone for the great AI discussion so far. It sent me on a tangent to see if there are any interwsying projects in strategy game AI and I have to say I came out disappointed - it doesn’t seem there are any interwsying initiatives, not wven something like taking an old Civ game and doing machine learning with that. It seems that any effort in this front so far is concentrated mostly on arcade games (Google’s Deep something) or RTS/Moba games. As far as I can gather, it’s just a chore to build an external AI that would be well integrated with a strategy game and most of the time it’s easier tonwrite a simple AI-training game from scratch, but you still don’t end up with something that’s plug and play into existing games. There’s also consensu coming across various things I read that a challenging AI i generally not a oriority for most players, thus investing heavily into it when developing Civ-like AAA games is just not worth the investment.
|
|
#
?
Mar 23, 2023 16:44
|
|
|
dead gay comedy forums posted:anything promising from there? Nothing specific crosses my mind, but a lot of stuff from previous games is being overhauled in a way that, among other things, seems like it might be easier for an ai to handle, which generally tends to improve the experience of dealing with an AI without actually needing to improve anything about the AI.
|
|
#
?
Mar 23, 2023 23:38
|
|
|
Jabor posted:Anyway it turns out that even mid-level Go players can pretty reliably beat top AIs by exploiting specific weaknesses in how they evaluate the position. If you tried to machine-learn up your own 4X AI, it would almost certainly have a similar blind spot - and now not only is there a single "optimal" way to play, you as the designer have absolutely no control over what it's going to be. Go is a game where every individual play matters a lot, in a way they absolutely do not in 4x games. Additionally, these exploits would have very low discoverability - even if they exist, they are unlikely to be noticed by even an excellent player intentionally testing the system, at least for a while, so have no impact on the standard player experience. Finally, it wouldn't be consistent or predictable, because unlike Go players don't start every game with the same exact board - even if there was a consistently reproducible exploit, it would be a local one you could opportunistically benefit from, not some game-winning one. Like, it would absolutely make a ton of mistakes, all the time, it would not be playing the game optimally and even then it would still be too brutally difficult, but it would be a lot harder to take advantage of in most situations than something like a Go AI would be simply by nature of the game. The most common exploits would be something like "If I leave a scout 2 tiles out from their city they'll send a unit out to destroy it and then I can counterattack and destroy that unit" or something of the same sort you see with current iterations anyway.
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2023 19:01
|
|
|
I think Wesnoth has pretty good AI, and it's 1upt. Obviously a competent player crushes the AI, but a new player can easily struggle in a symmetrical start position.
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2023 19:27
|
|
|
1upt AI is doable, if the game is designed with that in mind. A 4x almost by definition is not; meshing together tactical, strategic, and economic layers means something has to give. For example, in Wesnoth a single battle spans hundreds of hexes, so even though there are local choke points, in general there is room to arrange your units without traffic jams. In Civ, battles take place over, at best,dozens of hexes, and even getting units to the battle is crowded, so now the AI has to deal with vastly increased complexity just from having to sort out what order to move its units to get around self blocking.
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2023 20:48
|
|
|
You could probably get decent tactical ai if you did master of Orion style tactical battles but itd also get really tedious unless you changed up how stacks/terrain worked in the strategic map
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2023 21:14
|
|
|
Tendales posted:1upt AI is doable, if the game is designed with that in mind. A 4x almost by definition is not; meshing together tactical, strategic, and economic layers means something has to give. For example, in Wesnoth a single battle spans hundreds of hexes, so even though there are local choke points, in general there is room to arrange your units without traffic jams. In Civ, battles take place over, at best,dozens of hexes, and even getting units to the battle is crowded, so now the AI has to deal with vastly increased complexity just from having to sort out what order to move its units to get around self blocking. Yeah true. Movement is also hugely different. In Wesnoth a default infantry unit can move about 5 tiles/turn, compared to the 2 tiles/turn in CIV games. You'd think this would make the game more difficult, because there are exponential more potential moves, but in practice it means the starting positions of units is less important when attacking. I wonder if you could take the 4X map from Old World (i.e. lots of tiles) and mess with unit balance and combat mechanics until you get something like high level wesnoth play: rotating units in and out of combat, constant position switches, zone-of-control and flanking being extremely important, the difficulty of using glass cannon units, etc.
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2023 21:50
|
|
|
Maybe we should just ask the AI what it wants to play.
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2023 22:18
|
|
|
PerniciousKnid posted:Maybe we should just ask the AI what it wants to play. Thermonuclear War
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2023 22:50
|
|
|
TNW? No, it prefers a nice game of Chess.
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2023 23:20
|
|
|
Node posted:My biggest concern with 4Xs is noted in the title of this thread: the AI. I just loaded it up and got my rear end handed to me on Prince difficulty. It's my usual go-to difficulty for Civ V and VI lol.
|
|
#
?
Mar 26, 2023 10:40
|
|
|
There’s a standalone expansion for GalCiv IV called Supernova apparently. I played GalCiv III last and found it mediocre, and even though IV has been around for a while, I see regular updates published for III so I don’t know what’s the deal with that is. Continuing in the Paradox school of trailer design, the trailer for the new expansion is story-based with no gameplay or any mention of the new mechanics or features, and tbh with an approach like this from the dev I don’t think I can be arsed to look for details myself.
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2023 21:37
|
|
|
Trying to decide if I should be excited about age of wonders 4, I discovered I own but just never played AoW3. It did not make me excited, when I played it.
|
|
#
?
Apr 2, 2023 00:56
|
|
|
Cabbages and Kings posted:Trying to decide if I should be excited about age of wonders 4, I discovered I own but just never played AoW3. It had that usual grocery list of buildings for every town thing, that most 4X games devolve to. E: Sword of the Stars is the only 4X that handles this in a sane manner, that I've played.
|
|
#
?
Apr 2, 2023 09:49
|
|
|
If you're looking for a 4X experience with AoW, you're barking up the wrong tree. At its core AoW is a wargame and most of its focus is oriented towards the combat; the overworld and systems are all just there to enable it.
|
|
#
?
Apr 2, 2023 12:54
|
|
|
Planetfall (the most recent age of wonders) has a tactical combat with cover, overwatch, flying, teleporting, allegiance manipulation, unit summoning, resurrection, defense projection, stagger, etc etc etc. The combat system is about a hundred times more interesting than any other 4X I’ve ever played. The strategic layer is all about feeding into the combat, your research points advance two separate research trees simultaneously, one of which is purely military, so you literally cannot make the decision to research society improvements while neglecting military ones. Age of Wonders 4 appears to have taken this even further, where your cities have two simultaneous build queues, one for units and one for buildings, so city improvements never happen at the expense of military expansion. I like the game a lot and am not usually interested in arguing whether it “counts” as a 4x, but it is certainly a very tactical wargame focused 4x, and that just might not be what you’re after.
|
|
#
?
Apr 2, 2023 15:19
|
|
|
What's the verdict on Songs of Conquest? It's 40% off at the moment and I like the look of it, but it's early access and the recent reviews are kinda middling.
|
|
#
?
Apr 3, 2023 18:31
|
|
|
Chas McGill posted:What's the verdict on Songs of Conquest? It's 40% off at the moment and I like the look of it, but it's early access and the recent reviews are kinda middling. It's alright but it does not veer too far from Heroes of Might and Magic III.
|
|
#
?
Apr 3, 2023 18:40
|
|
|
Chas McGill posted:What's the verdict on Songs of Conquest? It's 40% off at the moment and I like the look of it, but it's early access and the recent reviews are kinda middling. At 40% it's a good deal. The AI is suffering from not having implemented the hard variant yet, but there's still fun to be had with the varied factions and spell system. It's all about building combos with your troop and spell composition - you can cast more than one spell on your unit's turn, and the different mana types accumulate over the fight, meaning you'll be able to pull of some crazy stuff. Like pushing enemy units out of melee range of yours, triggering attacks of opportunity, into another group of friendlies repeating the process. Throw in some mines for them to step on as they're shuffled around by you. The AI is clearly incapable of combining spells outside of preprogrammed routines, so with any practice you'll wipe the floor with it. I'm not sure how they'll fix this, but for 40% off there's enough to see and do as you learn. E: I also like the flexible town system. If you want more of a certain unit, you can put down more of their dwellings as long as you have empty slots for it. Or just turn a town into an economic base, since you can build daily generators for the basic resources.
|
|
#
?
Apr 3, 2023 18:43
|
|
|
Thanks, sounds like it's worth the 2hr refund window punt.
|
|
#
?
Apr 3, 2023 19:23
|
|
|
I’ve been playing Spellforce: Conquest of EO. It’s probably my favorite game of 2023 so far. The overworld mechanics are pretty smooth and the battles zoom into this turn-based tactical grid system which works for me. It’s still not clear to me how to win the game but I’m happy just exploring the edges of the map and beating up weaker enemies. I’d love if the base-building elements were more significant but it’s pretty clear they’re going for this transient, movable base situation, which is pretty interesting too.
|
|
#
?
Apr 3, 2023 19:42
|
|
|
Vegetable posted:I’ve been playing Spellforce: Conquest of EO. It’s probably my favorite game of 2023 so far. The overworld mechanics are pretty smooth and the battles zoom into this turn-based tactical grid system which works for me. It’s still not clear to me how to win the game but I’m happy just exploring the edges of the map and beating up weaker enemies. I’d love if the base-building elements were more significant but it’s pretty clear they’re going for this transient, movable base situation, which is pretty interesting too. You receive the victory conditions for the game a while after playing. Basically, there are 6 goals, and you need to meet a majority of them for strategic victory. Conquest of Eo was a lot of fun, but I found it a bit frustrating when they decided in a patch that some landmark/stronghold battles couldn't be auto-resolved. I play Necromancer, which means I have like 30-40 stacks of units in midgame, and I have auto-resolved every fight I possibly can. One of my neighbors is down to just a capital, but it is sufficiently well defended that it is less tedious to park 6 stacks of skeletons and militia (as snacks to restore their HP via the Cannibalism spell) than to fight all those manual battles in sequence and hope I wear them down.
|
|
#
?
Apr 3, 2023 19:56
|
|
|
Chas McGill posted:Thanks, sounds like it's worth the 2hr refund window punt. I haven't touched the campaigns, so starting with those might not be the same experience that I had.
|
|
#
?
Apr 3, 2023 20:00
|
|
|
Songs of Conquest is extremely pretty, but the feedback after Early Access suggested the difficulty in the main story campaign was tuned a bit too high by default. I've been holding off, but they've had plenty of updates to address that in the time since I believe.
|
|
#
?
Apr 3, 2023 20:06
|
|
|
Been playing moo2 with the ice mod and jeez the psilons really snowball if you don’t take care of them fast. I allied with them and convinced them to attack what was then the highest ranked civ in the game and they just rolled over them
|
|
#
?
Apr 3, 2023 20:22
|
|
|
Mzbundifund posted:Planetfall (the most recent age of wonders) has a tactical combat with cover, overwatch, flying, teleporting, allegiance manipulation, unit summoning, resurrection, defense projection, stagger, etc etc etc. The combat system is about a hundred times more interesting than any other 4X I’ve ever played. A lot of words to say Planetfall is a 6/10 tactical game married to a 4/10 4x
|
|
#
?
Apr 3, 2023 23:37
|
|
|
Infidelicious posted:A lot of words to say Planetfall is a 6/10 tactical game married to a 4/10 4x Only if you bump both of those numbers up by 4/10.
|
|
#
?
Apr 3, 2023 23:49
|
|
|
I played Planetfall with all battles set to auto-resolve, and I have to say I didn't like it much!
|
|
#
?
Apr 3, 2023 23:50
|
|
|
I dunno if you're joking but then again I have heard of people playing the Total War games but only using auto-resolve and it just makes me go ?????? Like what are we doing here
|
|
#
?
Apr 4, 2023 00:08
|
|
|
toasterwarrior posted:I dunno if you're joking but then again I have heard of people playing the Total War games but only using auto-resolve and it just makes me go ?????? I’ll auto resolve boring fights but full stacks are fun to play out
|
|
#
?
Apr 4, 2023 00:09
|
|
|
That's the intention but using AR for easy fights and using AR the entire time and completely bypassing what the series is about are two entirely different things.
|
|
#
?
Apr 4, 2023 00:11
|
|
|
I'm not joking. I think fighting battles in a 4x is universally a tedious waste of time so I opt out if I can. Apparently Planetfall was the wrong game for that, but I'm using this to dispute the notion that it's 8/10 separate from its tactical battles.
|
|
#
?
Apr 4, 2023 00:13
|
|
|
the strategic layer is a very bad UI for what should be a slay the spire series of pitched battles awarding new units and upgrades change my mind
|
|
#
?
Apr 4, 2023 00:16
|
|
|
Well alright but as far as I'm concerned it's like playing Heroes of Might and Magic for the civilization-building element. Godspeed, I guess??
|
|
#
?
Apr 4, 2023 00:16
|
|
|
victrix posted:the strategic layer is a very bad UI for what should be a slay the spire series of pitched battles awarding new units and upgrades change my mind I think I would've enjoyed that more too, honestly.
|
|
#
?
Apr 4, 2023 00:18
|
|
|
toasterwarrior posted:That's the intention but using AR for easy fights and using AR the entire time and completely bypassing what the series is about are two entirely different things. Yeah firmly agreed
|
|
#
?
Apr 4, 2023 00:25
|
|
|
toasterwarrior posted:Well alright but as far as I'm concerned it's like playing Heroes of Might and Magic for the civilization-building element. Godspeed, I guess?? It's when combat is bogged down by inane animations, that I just auto everything. Heroes is deliberate and fast, while something like AoW3 has you doing the same superfluous troop shuffling at the start of every fight. And yes, I know, you have to get into range in Heroes as well, but like I said, it feels more deliberate.
|
|
#
?
Apr 4, 2023 00:54
|
|
|
Heroes Hour feels like it was made specifically for that, it's HoMM to a fault but the combat is real time army auto battle
|
|
#
?
Apr 4, 2023 00:55
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 29, 2024 09:48 |
|
|
victrix posted:the strategic layer is a very bad UI for what should be a slay the spire series of pitched battles awarding new units and upgrades change my mind this is how I feel about total war too tbqh
|
|
#
?
Apr 4, 2023 00:59
|
|
