Mind Games (about AIs)

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Mind Games (about AIs) - 12/9/2002 12:23:44 AM

Kraut

Posts: 2551
Joined: 8/13/2002
From: Germany
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Mind Games

To beat the competition, video games are getting smarter

By Stephen Cass, Associate Editor

The war was going well. City after city had fallen before my advancing army. Although I had been forced to commit nearly all my military units, I was now within striking distance of the enemy capital. Suddenly, disaster! A transport ship had sneaked past my naval blockade and was unloading a division of tanks onto the shore beside my own capital. The city was far from the front, and I had thought it safe, but now I watched in horror as the enemy easily overpowered my troops and occupied the metropolis, plunging my nation into chaos:

http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/WEBONLY/publicfeature/dec02/mind.html

Post #: 1

- 12/9/2002 12:27:47 AM

CCB

Posts: 4208
Joined: 3/21/2002
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[IMG]http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/WEBONLY/publicfeature/dec02/mind01.jpg[/IMG]

Me on the right. :D

_____________________________

Peux Ce Que Veux
in den vereinigten staaten hergestellt

(in reply to Kraut)

Post #: 2

- 12/9/2002 8:10:47 PM

Les_the_Sarge_9_1

Posts: 4392
Joined: 12/29/2000
Status: offline

Nice enough example, but a real wargamer knows to defend his vitals.
That would never happen to me, because I know the game exists at more than just the front line.

I am not one iota convinced that AI design has progressed at all.

AI's don't make bad choices by mistake, nor do they bluff, they don't let you look down the top of their girl friend's dress to distract you, nor offer you beer to cloud your brain.

AI's don't learn from their errors, and they don't learn from ours. They don't use my cool move, and they don't develope theirs.

A computer is only a tool for rapid computing, and all an AI is doing is calculating all the possible moves and picking based on a mathematical model.

It doesn't think, "what's best here the 3 to 1 odds I can rely on, or go for the 3 1 to 1 odds and hope one works?"

The AI won't pick to play the underdog nation just to see if it can actually win with it. It will always pick something with an unthinking choice.

I have scorned the AI in my beloved Steel Panthers, so the fact that I openly call the AI in HoI worthless enough to render the game a waste of time even if the game was free, is not uncalled for bias.

I get challenged in Civilization 3 primarily due to the game having a modifiable difficulty setting. I play it because it is fun, I like it for being turn based, and the fact it is not pretending to be real history, means I am not going to fault it on that level.

If I win to often I up the ante. The AI doesn't get smarter, I am just slanting the odds in its favour now. My units get more expensive, more powerful computer units win more often. And I get less slack for my own poor choices.

But people telling me that an AI in a game is "smarter" are just wasting there time telling me this.

_____________________________

I LIKE that my life bothers them,
Why should I be the only one bothered by it eh.

(in reply to Kraut)

Post #: 3