OT - Strategy games with GOOD AI

[SlipperyJim]

Originally Posted by LDiCesare

Strange. With aggressive ai on, which should always be the case, the ai is somewhat aggressive. Not as much as a human, but it will strike early if it feels its neighbour is weak, akthough it depends a lot on the personality (Gandhi will hardly ever attack for instance).

Agreed. Here's a checklist for good AI in Civ4:

1. Are you playing Beyond the Sword?
2. Have you installed the 3.19 patch, which includes some AI improvements?
3. Have you enabled Aggressive AI?

Please note that Aggressive AI is sort of a double-edged sword. It encourages the AIs to build more troops, which definitely gives them a better chance against bloodthirsty humans. On the other hand, all of those troops can cause the AIs to fall behind in other areas, especially tech. A dedicated science fiend could have an advantage over Aggressive AI by simply out-teching the AI until he can send Riflemen against Longbowmen.

Off-topic a bit, but if you enjoy Civ4:BtS, then you should definitely try the BUG or BAT mods:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/forumdisplay.php?f=268

BUG stands for "Beyond the Sword Unaltered Gameplay". It doesn't add new nations, units, techs, or other content. Instead, BUG improves the user interface. It includes a lot of great alerts to minimize the micromanagement. BUG also serves up a lot of information to the player. Civ4 will show you all of this information by default, but you usually have to go clicking through half-a-dozen screens every turn in order to find it. BUG saves you the work.

BAT is simply BUG with a number of graphical enhancements. It makes a pretty game look even prettier.

[Arralen]

@vfb
Scripted, timed scenarios are never a measurement for AI, but only for the players' ability to fight against the running clock

@sevenwarlocks
"AI's that react on a turn by turn basis will never be effective." - that's exactly what the Dominions AI (mostly) does .. go figure.

@DakaSha
I don't know which "modded" Civ4 AI you have played, but I'm pretty sure the "Better AI" mod in it's later versions gives a pretty good AI - and the cheating does not come from the AI routines, but from the difficulty settings, which basically do not do anything else than giving the AI lots of adavantages, but not making it smarter. I always feel that the highest difficulties do not make for harder game, but a worse one, because the whole thing becomes seriously unbalanced, and I have the slight suspicion that they're even detrimental to the AI because of the missing balance.
Pretty nice AI I also found in the TAM and Rhye's mod, and in AoDII for Colonization.


Actually, Civ4 is the game I play the most at the moment, not because I like it that much - I actually, I rather hate the 3D crap - but because it's the one with the most stable network code and the best AI mods, and it Alt-TABs very fine on my machine...

I own GalCiv2, too, and IMHO the AI is greatly overhyped - and it's a rather simple game, compared to SE4/5, Civ4, Dom3 or others ...


Finally, on the question for a strategy game with a really good AI:

There ain't !!



edit: PS - I should do Kwok some justice. He's doing fine work with this Balance Mod for SE5, and the AI really has become much better. Sadly, with all that additional AI scripting (partly to get around design errors in the hardcoded part of the game) turn generation times skyrockets ... I'm running 15min- end turns calculations now, and I'm barely midgame

[Illuminated One]

Originally Posted by sevenwarlocks

I say this because to have an effective plan, an AI need not be perfect, or even extremely complicated. The most important thing is that the AI have some plan. By which, I mean, a long-range plan that it will stick to - at least for a time. AI's that react on a turn by turn basis will never be effective. As a chess-master once said - it is better to have a bad plan than no plan at all.

Well, I guess all AIs have some sort of plan hardcoded into them.
However an AI that just gets some goals and formulates the plan themselves reacting to the situation is a whole different matter and far from easy imo.
It might be not even possible, take game theory, most of the algorithms designed to lead to the perfect strategical behaviour fail miserably when put against normal human behaviour. It's not even that humans play better, but they don't necesseraly take the determinable "best" step invalidating the underlying algorithm.

[DakaSha]

I have the latest version of CivIV BtS... always play with aggressive AI, USE BUG and have tried the BetterAI.. sorry... it just turtles itself with a billion units.. gets along fine and dandy with everybody and and is just plain boring. see thats the real problem... ok so the game is complex... the AI needs to cheat. but could it at least be more aggressive??? please? This game is about human history. there should be more than 15 wars by 2000AD (max!). Ive played games where the computer declared war ONCE (on another AI) by 1650.... thats when i just quit and officially branded the game a retarded piece of crap :P

I wish Space Empires' Interface wasnt so tedius or id try kwoks mod out. He is planning on some interesting changes next update... see this is how important it is to me... i know about mods for games i dont even play

GalCiv is pretty fun now... It is really simple under all the glitz but i prefer some simplicity with decent AI over super complexity with braindead AI's.

Ill prob notic it doing something extremly stupid over the weekend and quit though *sigh*

[Stretch]

I like Masters of Orion II with personal modifiers like "no missile ship whoring." The AI isn't brilliant but the game is so much fun and can be made challenging if you want it to be. You can also just not spend race creation points to take the score multiplier.

Pick "Uncreative" for an extra challenge!

[DakaSha]

heh ive played countless hours of moo2. ai = braindead.. but yeah at least it fights. actually its really aggressive so at least a good challenge

[Torin]

Heroes 3 is quite decent. The game is so simple the computer cant make foolish mistakes.
Is quite challenging if you use the hardest level. Is not perfect tough.

[Gregstrom]

HOMM 3? Arguably the best of the series, and some of the scenarios could be a real struggle. Some of the mini-campaigns that were released were rather fun too.

[DakaSha]

actually heroes 3 was quite good ai wise

[Theonlystd]

I cant even remember the last time i lost to an AI that wasnt caused by overwhelming advantage the Ai is given in production

Ai doesnt seem to be improving as fast as the rest of games is ...


Last time i came close to losing was a Matrix game Advanced Tatics.. First few games i nearly lost... And prolly would of one if not playing wtih a friend to who saved my bacon.. Its super aggressive and goes for supply lines

But sadly one notices the Ai cant choose more than 1 division to attack with.. And once you figure out how to do flank attacks with multiple divisions and such and it doesnt.. It becomes so easy..