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aaatoysandmore -> RE: Are Wargame AIs Fated to Suck? (6/18/2016 11:59:10 AM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: MrsWargamer
I'd like to ask a question, which I don't expect to get answered.
Why do war games HAVE to have an AI?
In the great before time (prior to machine driven games), a war game was still playable even if you lived in the middle of nowhere and were something of an anti social hermit. you could still play the game even if the designer intended for you to play another human.
So it's not like the advent of efforts to make AIs was ever actually required. Because you CAN make a PC war game ever bit identical to a board game war game, and just as playable and just as potentially enjoyable played without the presumed human opponent.
If they had never made a single PC war game with any form of AI, we'd have still bought them in the same numbers we were buying the board game war games. And the designers would make about the same amount of money off of them that they do when they make them with AIs.
In the commercial world, just because you make something, doesn't necessarily mean the market needed it or wanted it. And if you get a small pool of fans demanding it, it doesn't automatically mean there is enough demand to justify the effort.
I think AI development is the greatest and the dumbest waste of game development time and resources. But that is just my opinion.
If I were to develop war games for a machine, the only thing I would be interested in doing, is eliminating all of the nuisances that bedevil board game war games. Dust collecting, catapocalypses, set up time loss, and only one copy limitations to name 4 easy examples. I would not create an AI, and would flat out refuse to make an AI and that would be a firm no regardless of temper tantrums by the usual crowd that freak out over "all the money I'm going to lose from doing so".
I know nothing of AI design, and I plan to keep it that way actually. I know plenty about board game war game design. But I am not a programmer so it is unlikely I'd ever create a PC version (I'd need someone to translate a board game into a program meant to clone the physical environment).
And if you must ask, "why am I on a thread about war game AIs sucking?", well it's a discussion, and there is no rule saying I can't participate.
I wish war game makers would stop wasting so much effort trying to make war game AIs better than the morons they currently are. They could be making so many more war games successfully without them. AIs are a waste of effort. They're costing the hobby game development time.
I'd say there are fewer people/players like you than there are players that want an artificial opponent. I'd say the sales say so. [:D]
It's fine to make a game so that one can play "both" ways though but at least make the AI way challenging and not just a by the numbers type game.
Norbsoft does it well in his civilwar and napoleonic wargames where he does teach the ai to flank and surprise you. That's all I'm asking from most tactical games. But, when you have them that just frontal assault all the time you get pretty used to it and tired of it.
I still say make the AI in the games more open to scripting new patterns and paths of building and movement and priorities and certain things like stay put if winning. First they gotta tell the AI to WIN like they did in Spartan. It was one of the more easy games for me to mod and make the AI very challenging "for me". That's all I'm really asking. Open it up a little more.
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