|
Soooooooooooooooooooooo ... .. how's the AI?!
|
#
¿
Jul 21, 2021 17:01
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 21, 2024 06:07 |
|
|
"can play the game" is a low bar, but that's where I'm at
|
|
#
¿
Jul 22, 2021 01:57
|
|
|
Gort posted:At least it doesn't sound like the kind of system that'll be super impactful, so it probably won't matter if it's badly balanced. 4x.txt
|
|
#
¿
Aug 4, 2021 14:44
|
|
|
SlyFrog posted:Has someone made a good, robust (i.e. not some time limited thing like Old World) 4x in the last 10 years with a good, non-cheating AI? I'm of the opinion that it's impossible, once system complexity passes a certain point Functional wargames-in-4x-skin like like Warlock 2 (... modded) or Gladius have reasonably competent 'spam units to attack the player' AI, because the strategic management is incredibly simplified. Instead of hoping devs will recalibrate the genre, I've been trying to recalibrate my expectations to treat 4x games like the Anno series or some other city builder, where it's just a tool to enjoy watching your city/nation/interstellar empire grow, without any significant expectation of an AI that will cause you more problems than your own misunderstanding of some game mechanic. Asymmetric gameplay seems like the only way to create a really challenging sandbox 4x where you can struggle against an 'unfair' simulation for the duration of the game to achieve victory. There are a few games of this nature out there (Sorcerer King?), but it's not an area that's been explored much, because the genre tends towards a sort of 'realistic' view of whatever its trying to simulate (often real world history). ... probably because frankly the vast majority of people who enjoy these games could give a flying gently caress about 'functional AI', judging by Steam numbers for Civ 5/6 (long decried by goons as horrible awful games with bad dumb AI, yet consistently posting high player numbers on Steam) Why spend time and effort on an incredibly hard problem if your customer base doesn't actually care about it? 
|
|
#
¿
Aug 4, 2021 19:10
|
|
|
FrancisFukyomama posted:Didn’t civ 4 have pretty competent AI but mostly bc combat was extremely simple? combat's really only one part of it - often the most immediately visible (and complained about) the rest of it (especially diplomacy and general ai behavior wrt winning) is often much worse, but people care less if the ai is objectively bad at winning as long as it's subjectively good at playing "correctly" correctly being "whatever doesn't annoy the casual fan/historical grog/mechanical nerd" I really think a not insignificant percentage of 4x players want an ai that helps create interesting stories, not one that presents a tough mechanical challenge (hello dwarf fortress, rimworld, crusader kings &c) currently it feels like most 4x ai has two states: irrelevant speed bump present for flavor and the illusion of action, or difficulty boosted mechanical obstacle for game breaking 1%ers to overcome through superior play (/gameplay exploits because these games are a house of cards)
|
|
#
¿
Aug 4, 2021 22:31
|
|
|
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
|
|
#
¿
Aug 13, 2021 14:01
|
|
|
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
|
|
#
¿
Aug 13, 2021 15:51
|
|
|
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)
|
|
#
¿
Aug 13, 2021 17:49
|
|
|
it's exceptionally awful for a bunch of reasons that belong in another thread
|
|
#
¿
Aug 15, 2021 01:10
|
|
|
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.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 15, 2021 07:22
|
|
|
Deakul posted:Okay so, I'm a complete idiot with Paradox games... is CK3 actually approachable or is it still a mess of buttons and tabs and graphs etc to keep track of like past games? Old World is literally CK+Civ and very approachable
|
|
#
¿
Aug 16, 2021 01:04
|
|
|
 The highest difficulty setting is Humankind, the second is Civilization 
|
|
#
¿
Aug 16, 2021 06:40
|
|
|
simultaneously from what I saw in a video, not sure if there's options to change that
|
|
#
¿
Aug 16, 2021 16:44
|
|
|
ccubed posted:So nukes don't mess around in this game. Spoiler here as Marbozir launches his first nukes on stream. WIRELESS TELEGRAPH RESEARCHED
|
|
#
¿
Aug 17, 2021 03:22
|
|
|
yeah that was a significantly better overview than quite a few early previews I watched - some of which I swear were garbage clickbait
|
|
#
¿
Aug 17, 2021 10:36
|
|
|
Still forming an opinion. I'll keep my mouth shut about AI/challenge considerations, just shelving that entirely and looking at it like an Anno game. It looks nice, and there are some general aspects of the UI and gameflow I really like compared to its peers - I've always respected their UI design and it doesn't disappoint here either. I'm also appreciating that many systems make sense on a conceptual level immediately - this is directly opposite the way mechanics were presented in Old World, where some of the connections didn't make a lick of sense to me (seemingly arbitrary technologies unlocking unrelated gameplay systems). The development of your civ feels smoothly organic, which is nice. I love the fold-out map combat. This is exactly what I wanted from Endless Legend, and it's refined and polished here.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 17, 2021 21:27
|
|
|
ilitarist posted:Yeah, this expansion phase has a lot of mysteries. What makes outposts vulnerable to cultural assimilation? What affects cost of a new outpost? Do curiosities appear again in places you've already explored? Are you supposed to get an additional bonus from getting all 3 stars in Neolitic era? Cause I got a bonus from the second one but not the third. Does murdering nomads bring any later diplomatic problems? Doesn't seem like it. Influence of nearby cities Distance to and number of other territories (applies to adding new ones to a city) afaict Yes No clue None that I've seen
|
|
#
¿
Aug 17, 2021 23:29
|
|
|
Yeah influence is super important, it's absolutely your expand juice for the early game Keep in mind it's generated by happy population, and costs go up as you expand, so you want to start with territory claiming from your first city, then figure out how you're going to handle influence + stability + growth after that - there's probably a ton of viable methods, I went for lots of early influence focus from alternate sources to expand, then transitioned to huge food growth later when I was ready to boom population, resulting in an influence boom at the same time. I don't think there's any meaningful stability management on lower difficulties, so you probably only need to start thinking about it on the higher difficulties, where access to luxuries and getting stability through other means is relevant.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 18, 2021 02:05
|
|
|
Handsome Ralph posted:Better IMHO. Kinda where I'm at, but I'm also severely burnt on 4x failings (despite loving what the genre is trying to do) One of the reviews said this game is an exploration of the spaces around Civ, and I think that's actually really accurate. At the time I read it I thought it was review fluff, but after playing for awhile, it's very evident there was a lot of thought put into systems to directly address issues with Civ, large and small, but also try to recontextualize or examine 4x tropes - the biggest probably being changing your culture every era, which you'd think would be confusing and messy, but instead it shakes up your goals and priorities regularly, which is super healthy (ambitions and events try to do the same thing in Old World). Critically, many of the systems are intuitive, which is super important with a game that has as many moving parts as this one (Old World suffered from this immensely). There's tons of other examples, everything from little stuff like being able to 'buy' the rights to build a specific wonder so you don't get sniped to the ability to build outposts and cities easily, without having to do the settler spam/escort nonsense. I'm going to do some runs on highest/higher difficulties and see how it feels. Amplitudes other games often fell into End Turn: The Game, and I hate when 4x's fall into that trap, so I want to see where this one lands. Also, again, I absolutely love what they did with the combat, it's so elegant.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 18, 2021 05:00
|
|
|
SweetBro posted:Afterwards while you can always construct a unit from your previous culture, this does not apply to buildings. So delaying era upgrades to finish construction may often be worth it. I didn't catch this, that's pretty important, surprised it wasn't signposted better
|
|
#
¿
Aug 18, 2021 05:15
|
|
|
yeah there's an animation speed slider, can't recall which menu
|
|
#
¿
Aug 18, 2021 06:09
|
|
|
Anyone know if there's a config setting/file somewhere to adjust the speed of camera movement? Edge movement doesn't seem to affect keyboard scroll speed and it's slow. Is there any way to display the output of an infrastructure upgrade or do you have to manually count/mouseover all affected tiles to figure the output?
|
|
#
¿
Aug 18, 2021 08:16
|
|
|
You can claim a wonder you can't build, and you can't unclaim it 
|
|
#
¿
Aug 18, 2021 10:37
|
|
|
Grand Fromage posted:Whoa, settlers being able to create cities with all the infrastructure buildings pre-made is crazy powerful. I'm not sure what I think about the big swings this game is making but they're interesting. Strategic resources being so rare seems like it's designed to drive wars. If I knew who I needed to attack to get gunpowder. am I missing something or can you not build this as an upgrade in existing cities? seems kinda dumb, though I guess... if you merge cities later it'll aggregate the infrastructure? my rear end is still chapped from locking myself out of wonders for an era unless I conquered another civ for... their mountain (ok I changed my mind that's kind of funny) Ether Frenzy posted:How irritating is it to play a game for 12 hours and then find out it cannot be won or lost? We'll never know because goons love to defend bad things they're completely unrelated to, it's extremely good content posting from inside the tutorial, day 2, spirits still high, have made friends with the end turn button
|
|
#
¿
Aug 19, 2021 07:21
|
|
|
Brandfarlig posted:But the game won't tell me I'm a good boy! The devs can never be forgiven. honestly these games really do need a fallout 1 style ending where it recaps your story, rather than just... 'You Win! Grats!' not sure if there's enough actual story fodder for that just yet, but it's a thought
|
|
#
¿
Aug 19, 2021 07:59
|
|
|
ate poo poo on live tv posted:Old World and Civ4 and Alpha Centauri have game recaps. I think even Civ5 did too? Not sure about civ6 or Humankind though. yeah I mean more than a timeline, like cutscenes, dialogue, etc, molded by what you did throughout the game, not just what your victory condition was
|
|
#
¿
Aug 19, 2021 09:03
|
|
|
Stability - depending on your difficulty level, you'll have to manage it to a greater or lesser degree. That said in general you should outpost everything you possibly can afford, particularly any region that looks to have multiple strategics/luxuries/natural wonders, or acts as useful tactical terrain for building forts etc. e: also simply influence cost, you'll need to pump a lot of influence out early to expand rapidly
|
|
#
¿
Aug 19, 2021 09:09
|
|
|
a pipe smoking dog posted:It does that though? It has a video with views of the world and talks about your specific achievements and failures. It's about as close to a fallout ending screen as I think you could do in a 4x ... wait, which game? I just finished a game of OW the other night and didn't see that, just a timeline thing
|
|
#
¿
Aug 19, 2021 09:32
|
|
|
There's unit spawners (can't recall the building name offhand, check the nationopedia) you can build anywhere in your territory, techs that build roads, and later of course stuff like air power and artillery. Early on expect to defend your outposts manually, especially if you can tell a nearby neighbor isn't going to be friendly - you can build forts either near the outpost or near choke points. Also general note, if you check your game folder there's a nice pdf version of the unit poster that came with the physical version.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 19, 2021 12:55
|
|
|
Fur20 posted:does anyone know how the engagement zone is calculated? i keep my armies together (as in adjacent to one another) but sometimes when i attack, or when i'm attacked, the valid tiles are all weird and checkerboarded and it cuts out all my stacks but the one that's attacking/being attacked. this is stupid as poo poo. that's with the tech for reinforcements researched?
|
|
#
¿
Aug 19, 2021 21:12
|
|
|
CuddleCryptid posted:Although that might be more due to Gamepass PC's terrible design rather than the game itself. 
|
|
#
¿
Aug 20, 2021 02:48
|
|
|
yep, you can go right back in after the (pretty nifty) ending scroll and continue if you want
|
|
#
¿
Aug 20, 2021 03:59
|
|
|
Ihmemies posted:Allllllllso wish the game had "upgrade all units" button... You can multi-select and upgrade units in an army together, between that and the army panel it's pretty quick, unless you have tons of isolated un-upgraded units scattered all over for whatever reason
|
|
#
¿
Aug 20, 2021 15:52
|
|
|
Chamale posted:My opinion is that it's outright better already, although that's based on two games. I think it has some UI jankiness that they'll hopefully patch out in a week or two, but the gameplay is incredible. Think this is where I'm at I still have some fundamental issues, but at this point they're literally issues endemic to the 4x genre and I'm not sure any game will be able to fix them That aside, this game just has a lot of Smart design stuff in it, and I love seeing that kind of very considered, intentional and thoughtful efforts to address some core problems that Civ and other games have. Not flawless, and I'm sure you'll start seeing the cracks forming here as the veterans break the game over the next few weeks, but if you're just in it to chill and build a sprawling civ, I think you'll have a good time And for like the third or fourth time, I'll emphasize how much I love the combat system. The EL system was nearly perfect in concept, but in practice it fell flat for a lot of reasons. Many of those have been addressed here, with more added, so you're left with the best parts to play with. EL had the stupid unit customization that sounds cool, but in practice meant both a lot of micro fiddling, and wildly disparate powerlevels, and another thing for the AI to fail at. Here the units have a tight power band that only goes from about 20 in the ancient era to 60 in the modern, so while you'll be able to outsmart the AI (and feel good about it), you generally won't be just brute force smashing their armies due to unit creation shenanigans (at least until goons break the empire building portion of the game anyway )One 'stack' per tile with a foldout map is just about the best of all worlds. Easier pathing and force concentration for the AI, easier to manage with less micro for the player, and more interesting combat engagements that make use of the terrain and your buildings. The limited/border skirmish warfare and basic casus belli systems are also great, because they let you both engage in smaller conflicts without full scale war, and let you see full scale war coming more clearly.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 20, 2021 17:56
|
|
|
I'm thinking strategics are bugged on certain map types Are there any debug codes? Genning a bunch of one map type to check would be an easy way to confirm it.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 21, 2021 09:57
|
|
|
Your Computer posted:combat and war was always one of my least favorite things in civ but in this game i don't dread it. Have you played Anno out of curiosity?
|
|
#
¿
Aug 21, 2021 16:50
|
|
|
Your Computer posted:never tried any of them, and it's one of those series i have no idea where to even begin You really need to play them if what you like in Civ is the building part. Really really. Anno 1800 is the latest one, on uplay and EGS, Anno 2505 is the most recent future one, that's on steam, and there's an updated version of 1404, the fan favorite older one, also on steam. I'd recommend 1800 heartily, it's amazing (you can even play it coop with a friend or friends and manage the same empire together). We have an 1800 thread: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3879146
|
|
#
¿
Aug 21, 2021 17:16
|
|
|
I really do not understand how they give the catchup cities (which is brilliant), but don't give you a buildable item to catch your existing cities up 
|
|
#
¿
Aug 21, 2021 17:27
|
|
|
Harrow posted:Somehow I never really thought about playing any of these but my favorite part of Civ is also the part where I build a big, cool civilization so this sounds fantastic Yeah 100% get in there, the games are a joy, and for anyone else trying to square peg round hole civ games as pure builders, do the same!
|
|
#
¿
Aug 21, 2021 18:25
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 21, 2024 06:07 |
|
|
twistedmentat posted:I'm poisoned on the anno series after a goon years ago described them as games for Germans. As in they're games for dry, orderly people. they're joyful, playful, charming explorations of cool periods of history (unless you crank the difficulty on pirates and angry ai I guess )even the more melancholic 2070 and 2205 have fundamentally hopeful messages
|
|
#
¿
Aug 21, 2021 20:12
|
|