Maximize AI Competitiveness or Maximize Fun Gameplay?

I disagree. I perfer a non-cheating AI and slower pace game to a cheating AI any day. Yes I like a complex game but if the AI is dummer than a rock then what is the point in playing a non-challanging game.

I never understood why a person playing any game just wants everything to be handed to him in a easy mode game. I see this in all games. For some reason these days people don't want a challanging game.

The problem if cheating AIs is that it's impossible to play strategically against it. It's difficult to cut the AI's supply lines, sabotage its production or manipulate it if its power comes from arbitrary reasons. It's difficult to analyze its moves and progression if they don't obey to similar rules than the ones humans are subjected to.

By the way, I disagree with the statement that the older games you mentioned all play faster then FE.  I remember in MOM, at least in the early stages, clicking next turn numerous times because early production of improvements and mana was slow while your empire build to the point where you could produce things.

I loved MOM, but at least in the early stages, it was not a fast paced game.

I also like the current pace of FE, and think the AI should be as challenging as possible on the more difficult settings.

If the AI cheats then how can the game be fun?  Everything you do and everything the AI does is meaningless and boring. The game becomes meaningless and boring.

I think that it's great not to have a cheating AI as  a matter of fact that's why this game has the potential that it does, plus the pace does quicken as the game goes along. I personally like to have maxium monsters & resources in my games it give me plenty to do in the early stages, matter of fact I wish there was a higher setting for the amount of monsters & resources.

In 0.912 I remember often watching a AI army prancing around acting hard, then getting kicked on its arse by some wandering beasties.  Not only did this make me laugh but also made the game feel real somehow.

They are not mutually exclusive. The current iteration is by far the best I have tried. I just played a game and having to defend cities and not just run around creating a super stack is just plain FUN to me.

I don't think this has anything to do with AI competitiveness, it's all about how you like to play the game. Basically, it's the difference between quick domination versus slow, drawn out war. You might like to play quick simple games, and that's fine, but not everyone feels the same. Heck, sometimes, I feel like the movement is still a bit too fast (particularly because of roads) because as soon as you break the front lines the war might as well be over, since there's just no time to muster a feasible defense to counter attack.

Also, when you move too far, too fast, the world feels small, conversely, when you slow movement down, the world naturally feels bigger.

I'm definitively a fan of a slow developing, epic scale game. I mean, you build an empire, and this shouldn't be done in a few days. So slowing the game down is fine for me, and if it makes the KI better in the same time, it's a nice bonus.

I'm with those in favor of AI competitiveness, but you do realize that the AI does cheat at higher (challenging and above at the very least) difficulties?  At Challenging they all get a gold mine (though I've never seen one put a mine on it, even 270 turns in), at Hard it's sometimes 2 gold mines.  They can cast spells like Tireless March at turn 1, and can double cast things like Inspiration and Obsession (even when they shouldn't be able to cast Obsession at all).

I don't have a problem with these things, and there's nothing wrong with cheating AI at harder difficulty levels, but it needs to be done intelligently.  And, for the most part, it is being done intelligently, so good work Stardock. 

If the AI didn't already cheat by being invisible to monsters (for the most part), and capable of debuffing FACTIONS they have never even met (let alone cities), I would be on the side of "mostly non-cheating AI" with just enough trimmed off to make the game faster paced.

I concur. 

One main change I'd like to see is the exp for heroes to be based on map size.

I am not 100% sure these goals are incompatible, but I do see many signs that the approach taken to making the AI better has been to make the game less fun.

And there is certainly a fundamental dichotomy among *players* about what makes a game "fun". Some folks get the most enjoyment out of fighting a hard AI on a level playing field, but others like me frankly do not - or do not any longer. If I want a grueling challenge that plays out over months and years I can go back to my job, managing the strategic direction and architecture of a million-line codebase while also coding on (i.e. micromanaging) individual modules. For fun, I want to do flashy things against an opposition that is not a cakewalk; I don't want my win to be *assured* but also don't want it to be dependent on making no mistakes or failing to optimize every variable.

I was very excited to start playing Beta 3 with the promise of more flavor, but after a few hours I found the new magic to be locked behind the same hours of grinding micromanagement that it took to get anywhere in Beta 2, and that overall there were even fewer moments of rewarding progress than before.

I realized that I was simply having less fun per hour than if I went back to older games. After an evening of playing Civ 5, Civ 4, or even even Master of Magic or MoO2, as I reluctantly shut down the computer and go to bed with my head full of what I want to do the next night, I have a feeling of progress - that "to do" list is markedly different from the night before. But after an entire evening of FE I am too often saying exactly the same things as the night before - "Get my heroes up enough to take on those monsters to the NW and see what's behind them, grow my cities." Even Civ 4, which I've stopped playing because I no longer have so much gaming time in a week that I want to take on a 200-hour game, gives me much more of a feeling of accomplishment after a night's play.

The problem is in fact pacing, and I have to agree with the OP that even from Beta 2 to Beta 3 the pace of the game seems to have gotten even more glacial. Perhaps these pacing changes are not aimed purely at simplifying the decision trees for the AI, they certainly come from some sort of philosophical basis, and they are making the game unfun.

I think the current pacing is geared toward the hardcore player and really should not be the default setting. Casual players will want a faster pace game where their champions feel powerful. The current pacing works when you have a good understanding of how the game works. One thing I like about the current pacing is that the game does not drag out unnecessarily. While the game did take longer to play, I did not have to spend half the night mopping up stray cities which I've found to be a problem in some of the older games.

Maximize AI Competitiveness = Maximize Fun Gameplay

I don't believe they are mutually exclusive goals. And in some ways they are complementary in that having a competitive AI enhances and makes the gameplay better (in the same way that playing solitaire chess isn't nearly as much fun as playing against a competitive opponent).

However I do agree that achieving both goals is much harder than just achieving one of them and in some places Stardock have deliberately taken the easy way out by removing things that the player finds fun in the name of making the AI easier to code. I would like to see less of this, or at least countering any such moves by adding back other things that the player finds fun.

Actually, Sid Meyer (I believe) did a really good presentation just after Civ 5 came out about one of the main reasons why the AI was received so poorly. The perception was that the Diplomatic Civ was broken. The reality was that they programmed the AI to try to win rather than to "be challenging to beat" which made it so that the AI ultimately determined that it was only ever in its interest to be hostile with the player over the long run rather than work together because (accurately) working to benefit the player puts the AI at a disadvantage.

I found that a rather astute observation.

So, do you want the AI to be competitive (try to win) or to be challenging? They are different things. I personally would prefer a challenging AI rather than a competitive one.

In my original post I used language that expressed intent instead of effect. I don't know what the intent was behind the changes made from earlier betas, but the effect is a game that is a more manageable AI problem. But the thing is it will never be enough. Games like this are problems that are far harder than Chess and Go from an AI standpoint. To list some factors that make up this huge gulf of complexity: there is a larger number of both candidate moves and actual moves per turn, there is the fact there are multiple opponents, the rules are made up for this game and are not well-studied problems, and there is the randomness of the world as a hostile actor. There is simply no way anyone can write a straight up AI (anytime soon) that will beat the hardcore players on here, not even give them a good game. I think this is realistic. Now if the rules are tweaked to play to the AI strengths which are actually the human player's weaknesses, then maybe it could beat most people who play the game, but still nowhere near the above mentioned class of players. The sacrifice to do this would be that the human weaknesses are a lack of attention span over long periods of time, a distaste with micromanagement, and they want the long-term goals to arrive sooner so they press the turn button to get there faster instead of maximizing their moves. The result of using this against them would be at least some players (I suspect many) will have less fun.

I think the straight up AI is a good thing and it should be a setting in the game, but I don't think any of the hardcore players should expect that it could really challenge them (barring advantages like being immune to dealing with a hostile world). Given this, I think the focus on challenging players should be giving the AI advantages that make them mimic a human's effectiveness, while leaving the human the most exciting game possible to play.

Until the game components are relatively complete, I vote an intriguing, challenging PVE / PVP type of environment. After that the AI parts of the game could be addressed fully.

The World (monster) AI should be challenging.

The Faction AI should try to win via one of the many victory conditions.