RE: highest difficulty not so difficult?

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RE: highest difficulty not so difficult? - 3/21/2012 8:05:46 AM

jpwrunyan

Posts: 558
Joined: 12/3/2011
From: Uranus
Status: offline

About ai, unfortunately the more features in the game (eg ship design, trade, colony selection) for a human to choose from, although it makes the game more interesting for humans to play, it makes it exponentially more difficult to make an ai that can simulate those decisions. Just in another thread someone was asking for wormholes and my first thought (unexpressed at the time) was how it would probably just make the ai even worse than it is now. I know that in MOO3 they made the decision to use "space lanes" specifically so they could implement an AI around it. That made it possible to develop an AI that could recognize pinch points and vulnerabilities. It was either that or hire a masters graduate from MIT I guess.

By the way thanks for the code quotes. I remember watching The Social Network and he was like "i did it with 20000 lines of code" and I thought "wtf is that supposed to impress me?". Real applications take 100000 lines of code. Enterprise apps are even more. Not say more lines of code equals better, but that the simplest apps still take a lot of work. Again I digress.

Tl;dr I am awesome.

(in reply to Edward74)

Post #: 31

RE: highest difficulty not so difficult? - 4/29/2012 11:59:28 PM

colonyan

Posts: 52
Joined: 11/27/2011
Status: offline

I will stand on the side that higher difficulty AIs should have allowed to cheat.

They are supposed to be highly advanced space faring civilizations. They should be able to handle basic logistics pretty good. But coding resource is limited. Then there should be a way to simulate the nicely working logistic.

something like,
a. high difficulty AI freigheters never runs out of fuel. (still requires fuel to construct)
b. if not, they do runs out but speed reduction is not as significant.
c. Engine damage for them count as whole or none. No partial damage, thus no thrust reduction.
d. if neccessary, abc applies to military ships too.
e. OR, each higher diff. AI empires possess common and instant/everywhere on universe (but limited in upload/download speed and max reserve amount) fuel redistribution system. Like mineral and gas in Starcraft or other RTS.

(in reply to jpwrunyan)

Post #: 32

RE: highest difficulty not so difficult? - 4/30/2012 2:04:53 PM

adecoy95

Posts: 420
Joined: 3/26/2010
Status: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: Edward74

I think making things more difficult on yourself on purpose does not make fore a more enjoyable game

i disagree. but that's why there are difficulty sliders. im not saying that i want to be overrun every single game 15 mins in, i don't adore the defeat screen. i just want to feel threatened, at all. currently i don't feel that even slightly. when an empire declares war on me that's larger, i don't feel dread or danger, i see opportunity because that means i can start taking his worlds while he stumbles around with a fleet or two and does nothing particularly deadly. the most i have ever seen an ai do in a long war, is take two or three planets and destroy a couple of ships, after that, he just kinda shuffles around and waits to be defeated.

granted, i have not played the last few beta patches, so i don't know if any good changes happened to the ai, if there are please tell me, ill fire the game up and give it a try.

(in reply to Edward74)

Post #: 33

RE: highest difficulty not so difficult? - 4/24/2013 7:30:34 AM

saygame

Posts: 37
Joined: 1/23/2002
From: Albuquerque, NM
Status: offline

Well, here we are a year later and I must say I am unhappy with the Legends AI. And that's a shame because the system is rich and abundant with deep detail, so primed to be a classic. But I must play the game for the journey not the challenge. Perhaps Shadows will improve it. Time will tell.
Is anyone else struck with the similarity with GalCiv on many levels, like I am? Not that that is bad, just many eerie similarities.

(in reply to Edward74)

Post #: 34

RE: highest difficulty not so difficult? - 4/24/2013 7:40:06 PM

Buio

Posts: 247
Joined: 11/21/2012
Status: offline

The best strategy AI opponents are the ones in real-time games. Because there the AI has the advantage of being able to calculate a lot of options and control every single unit in real-time while a human is limited by number of decisions by time. But even so, humans are able to beat AI in RTS games like Starcraft II with relatively ease. And that is because we can still beat it on the strategy and tactic level making better decisions despite the speed advantage.

In a complex strategy game like this, it's very hard for the AI to beat a human, just like jpwrunyan says above (some time ago though). Because it's very hard to create a smart AI with so many choices to make.

< Message edited by Buio -- 4/24/2013 7:41:39 PM >

(in reply to saygame)

Post #: 35

RE: highest difficulty not so difficult? - 4/27/2013 5:25:45 PM

Plant

Posts: 418
Joined: 4/23/2013
Status: offline

Distant worlds is a real-time game isn't it? Just on a larger scale than normal RTS. With obviously less emphasis in certain aspects in the genre, but it is played in real-time nonetheless.

The reason why humans can beat AI in an RTS game like Starcraft II is the difference in effort placed upon the AI for a multiplayer game. The AI simply isn't developed. Compare and contrast with Starcraft:Broodwar, where there has been some concerted effort to create AI capable of beating humans; eis.ucsc.edu/StarCraftAICompetition

In the end, creating an effective AI is a matter of recources, which is usually a waste in a multiplayer focused game.
The other side of creating an effective AI is understanding the best possible decision making, which if you look at how the AI automates, it is obvious that it simply hasn't been programmed to win.

The AI in Distant Worlds seems mainly be designed to create an interesting universe, as opposed to one that makes sense that the Races are trying to outcompete the opther races.

(in reply to Buio)

Post #: 36

RE: highest difficulty not so difficult? - 5/10/2013 6:34:36 AM

Lithari

Posts: 6
Joined: 5/10/2013
Status: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: Astax

I think making things more difficult on yourself on purpose does not make fore a more enjoyable game.I wish the game had Multilayer so that real hardships can be experienced :)

I have learnt that facing other players is not more challenging, its just more predictable, since when I used to play RTS games back in the day when it was more about having fun, then just winning, once you learnt how a player plays the game, ultimately, it makes player vs player very predictable.

The AI is not predictable, they just suck at it. lol

(in reply to Astax)

Post #: 37

RE: highest difficulty not so difficult? - 5/10/2013 3:48:16 PM

Plant

Posts: 418
Joined: 4/23/2013
Status: offline

If playing other humans are predictable, then clearly, the multiplayer RTS game you are playing is very bad, or you are playing against a very small select group of people who are also all very bad.

(in reply to Lithari)

Post #: 38