Burress

I think everyone hopes for a singularity soon, we just have trouble envisioning the means. Whether it is the Second Coming or technological immortality, we hope for something that makes everything we have believed too good to be true not even good enough. Religious or technological visions of paradise tend to be most satisfying in the abstract, because whether it is curse or blessing, bliss or hell, we have no native capacity to imagine the bounds of good as we have the far reaches of torment

The bell curve analogy is fascinating. I can't imagine it being economically feasible to go beyond it in almost any game, but that high end tail would be something to tackle. When I tackle a novel problem it is like magic the criteria I come up with to make a decision on it, if I had to make up a system or some rules or weights I would be restricting the creativity of the mind. People great at a task can give all kinds of heuristics for how they do it, but they also do some intuitive assi

[quote who="Frogboy" reply="16" id="3375811"] If we can simulate a human brain, down to the very atom (and we most certainly will be able to do that in coming years), I don't see any reason why we won't be able to simulate a mind soon after. I suspect we'll be able to replicate a mind long before we can understand the mind. [/quote] Even if we could block by block connect fabricated neurons, there is no guarantee that will make a mind. If a mind is not a T

Maybe highly elegant means for brain-computer interface will be found. I just think our investigations of the human brain and body have increased exponentially, but the results on those efforts aren't nearly on the same track (there is no accelerating returns on biology, maybe logarithmic returns). Biology is a huge hurdle, and assuming that the brain works like our technology, or even that the success of our technology proves that the brain must be like our machines, is som

I haven't read any of Kurzweil's books. I just picked up and read How To Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed for a while at a Barnes and Nobles, and it seemed like the kind of wild claims you make to sell a lot of books, which he does very well. No one is even close to understanding the title content, and it seems like a backward way of looking at what AI technology is. We try to understand our minds through creating algorithms and the effort expands our minds, but nev

Does anyone actually know anything about quantum computing? I sure don't. You can hit up wikipedia for something like "quantum algorithm" and get some voodoo that every problem of exponential complexity suddenly has an at worst linear complexity. This is because of quantum mumbo jumbo of the qubit being both on and off, superimposed with each other so that N qubits is essentially 2^N bits. That is great if nature cooperates, but I have read that recent attempts have had large amounts of e

I remember Stardock employees actually defending the removal of encumbrance against complaints. That was an easy argument to make though, they just removed a layer of abstraction from the effect of equipping heavy stuff. I don't think a strong argument can be made that the XP split has any positive effect on the game, especially now that it is common to get 8-11 heroes in a game. If you play a whole game and don't sit at least half your heroes on the sidelines, you are working far too

How do you modders do it? I see all these workarounds for simple conditional statements. It is mind-boggling how creative you are to get things to work that would be easy with logic, but you only have data to define and work with, and data that was almost always meant for some other function that what you are trying to make work. It seems if programming were a boxing match, modding this game is like fighting with one arm and one foot.

This is actually the only campaign mode I ever completed in a Stardock game. It was really good, and I hope they go this direction with all future campaigns. The Gal Civ 2 campaigns were painful to me, the reteching and rebuilding over and over did not play to the strengths of the game. The Relias RPG-like campaigns I played before this never really drew me in, and I quit on them shortly after starting. They should combine story and sandbox like this campaign in future dlc/expansions/

I think there is a widely different meaning of challenge to people who play this game. I have never heard of save/loading as a legitimate strategy, it is something only available to the human player and it disables many mechanics that make the game difficult. There are also a lot of overpowered racial abilities that if maximized amount to an absurd advantage, but to the vast majority of players they are just a fun advantage they don't ever maximize. This game pleases the many at the expen

It seems almost impossible, or at least extremely impractical, to manipulate the weights fruitfully without knowing how they are implemented. I am guessing it might be possible for someone with a lot of time, but I doubt they will come up with any major improvement without expending an unbelievable effort compared to what it would take if you could at least know how they are used (much less tinker/add/rework them to a personal approach to the problem). I am almost certain by the time a proble

The extreme faction differentiation makes conceptualizing how a great, straight-up AI solution would work difficult. I play so much to the strength of the specific faction I am playing, I would imagine it wouldn't be possible to really get competitive without designing for each faction (it will be hilarious if we ever see complaints like, "Kulan has allied with half the wilds, no fair"). I was amazed how well this worked in Gal Civ 2's expansions, but the challenge to do the same in t

I edited in a parenthetical aside about Vasily Smyslov on reply #7. I don't know if the comment would have been a 10 out 10 or not if I had quoted the source, world champion Boris Spassky, who said "Vasily Vasilievich has an incredible intuition, and I would call it his "hand"- that is, his hand knows on which square to place every piece, and he does not need to calculate anything with his head." I did not know if talking about chess at all would add that certain something or detract from

Well if reviewers always knew what games were missing, they would also be the most creative game designers. We toss out ideas by the bushel here on the forum, but we really have little idea what the effects of our suggestions would be (except me, my ideas are always the best ones). Davrovana, I think it is always a pleasure to work in one of the most controversial statements in the history of philosophy to a debate. It is such a delight to be repulsed, then attracted, and repulsed, ov

Well the problem isn't that you can't come up with a reason, it's that you have the intuition that it in all honesty it won't be the reason. Parrottmath, you must be a great educator, because I almost never got back the reason I got exactly a 90 on a paper instead of 95-100. Believe me, I tried on occasion, but I have seen the wisdom since then in there not being a good answer. Even the GRE has an essay section that is graded holi

Our emotional memory is a heuristic and the corresponding events don't necessarily get imprinted. These emotional marks carry inordinate weight in our memory: the high point, the low point, and how it ends. If you play the game 40-100 hours, you have emotions that come up when you are asked how good is the game, but because it is a heuristic, the corresponding events that were imprinted with these emotions may not be there. I just hate seeing reviews where they give it 8 because<

That is what all qualitative judgements are though. We have an emotional memory of the game, and that is its quality. Then we start justifying our emotions, or just say we can't put our finger on it if we can't find anything. The reasons come after the feeling and may or may not be related to the feeling. I think "I don't know what is missing" is more intellectually honest than just searching for reasons that sound good because the truth of what is unfavorable is complex and diffi

The problem is you get a lot of champions in the game, probably 5-6 from fame and another 2-5 from quests. If you maintain that you don't put them together because of the XP split, then there is an entirely unmanageable number of armies to create and level. If you start putting them together, the XP for starts slowing way down, and that can be a real problem when you want to be starting to take off. There is no conceivable way to use all the heroes in an active and effective way w

I love Magnar. The free 1 turn slaves are great in the beginning, cull the weak and consume keep mana high (I Consume on all shards except death and fire), their flame breath ability is probably the best race active ability (high-level trained units, 10 or so, have a free touch 80 damage fire attack), the sovereign is a one man killing machine, and razing will get your capital to level 5 in a reasonable amount of time. This is a fun sov-led war faction.

I have not read anything by Jonathon Haidt, though I can already see a couple of titles he has written I would really enjoy reading. I think there are two features where negative emotional memories pollute two mechanics which should be associated with only enjoyment, the level-up screen and the hero arrives screen. The first problem arises from unfulfilling choices and what seem like barrier roads to good choices. The result is that the level-up screen is not a pure fun

In the thread on future Stardock titles Frogboy said: [quote who="Frogboy" reply="35" id="3366181"] There are no Elemental related screenshots there (i.e. no sequels / derivatives / DLC) in there (would be too easy to spot I figured). [/quote] I am reading in to this that the answer is yes, and by jumping to that conclusion I am very excited! I can't wait for it! [e digicons]:thumbsup:[/e]

I generally head off in one direction with the main stack, and with about three militia and a hero I can comfortably clear most things that are immediately around the starting area. I don't try for anything other than bandits, mites, wolves, and maybe some lesser stacks of other things. With two militia and a hero, it is more the weaker stacks of that previous list. The clubbing ability kills those creatures pretty well, and the militia are tough enough to live through an attack or two of

I don't think I ever explained the psychology part very well in the original post. Here is the kind of thing I am basing it off of. In "Thinking, Fast and Slow", Daniel Kahneman explains an experiment about pain perception. Subjects had their hands held in painfully cold water, and then were given a warm towel at the end of it. They did this twice, once where they had it in the cold water for 30 seconds and once where they had it in the cold water for 30 seconds followed by 30 more second

1. Almost positive it only affects troops trained after you build the building. 2. This is tricky and opinons probably vary. This is why I am big proponent of removing the XP split. You can send the hero out solo to grab goodie huts and scout, but I find two or three militia is usually enough to clear low-level mobs. I go cheap with them until everything is up and running full steam. 3. The magic tree is good for the spells, shard harvesting, and magical equipment. The magical

I see Gal Civ 3 and an RPG. I have no idea what else I am seeing. My guess on the top one... knife, demon, head, ball... Suicidal Soul Demon Peggle in collaboration with Popcap. But I could be pretty far off on that.