ChongLi

[quote]I am not sure if the AI can even have an agenda apar from meeting a victory condition.[/quote] Your definition of agenda is different than mine. You cannot just say "I want to meet the conquest victory condition", you have to have a plan of how to accomplish that. That plan is your agenda. Everything you do, from the units you train, buildings you construct, spells you research and cast to the diplomatic choices you make are part of that. In most typical games, your age

[quote]So far, I have been surprised how similar it seems conceptually to Age of Wonders, and wonder why MoM fans did not consider AoW a worthy successor?[/quote] AoW is not at all a worthy successor. MoM does not have a worthy successor, which is why so many people have such high hopes for this game. landisaurus had some great points, I'll add a few of my own: The "character creation" at the start of a game in MoM is still unparalleled (in strategy games a

[quote]If you read what I wrote earlier... I would even say, if the AI proposed the alliance, and you two are the only ones left, the AI has won the game, not the player because the AI 'started' the diplomatic victory.[/quote] Why would anyone (including an AI) ever agree to lose the game? Diplomatic victory in past TBS games involved electing a ruler. If the AI hopes to win a diplomatic victory, it better be able to command the majority of votes. Personally, I think d

[quote]But the AI's push is likely to simply lead to endless war. You will either A: Perish at the hands of your status quo loving nieghbors or B: tear through them, becoming larger and thus a greater threat to more people. Even if what you say is right, a game where backstabbing is common and war is a daily occurance would get boring. Didn't you start the thread wanting better diplomacy? Now you seem to be more interested in an AI balance mechanism. Pfeh. Sorry, but the human player

[quote]But it would still seem random to the player, and in that case what you get is a steamroller effect; the more powerful a player becomes the more likely he is to be attacked, be forced to conquer the enemy, and become more powerful. The infinite loop this becomes starts to get old after a game or two.[/quote] Actually, that's more of an anti-steamroller effect. The more powerful you get, the more the AI pushes back against you to attempt to slow down your momentum.

[quote]The issue is that the AI is tasked with being the game the human plays. Its meant to be an experience, a challenging one hopefully, but more importantly a fun one. The AI randomly obliterateing you simply because it wants to win isn't actually as much fun as youd think. A game thats too easy can still be fun, why do you think so many people use cheats? A love a challenge, and haven't cheated in a "real" game in 10 years, but if the games goal is to ruin everything I do and press me all

It sounds like some people here want a straightforward, smooth and predictable game where the player wins every time. Perhaps this should be the point in the discussion where we bring up the difficulty slider. Most of the ideas I've given can easily be incorporated into the difficulty setting of the game. Personally, I want to play the hardest game possible without having the AI outright given freebies, knowledge and capabilities the player does not have. Many of the rules peo

[quote]As i said earlier, only if the player has the same ability to abuse the AI in the same manner.[/quote] I guess I never mentioned in my initial post, but another rule should be: The AI should not be capable of anything that the player cannot do. [quote]All of you complaining about AI abuse would have some ground if this was a multiplayer game, but I think most people who play complex TBS games are mature enough to role-play properly to get the experience they wan

[quote]No it really can't promise things it doesn't have, because if you accept the offer its going to then cancel the trade due to not actually having what it offered in the first place, and the players time just got wasted. Same thing with offer-counter offer. It gets you the same basic result with a lot more annoyance in the middle. Players simply won't tolerate it.[/quote] Why can't the AI close the trade and rip you off? Sure, it may warrant a declaration of war on your part, but

[quote]Not really. There is not fundamental difference between several rounds of offers and counter offers and simply adjusting for the green text except for click overhead and extra dialogue to read. "I'll pay 200 gold for your longbow tech" "No, I want 350" "250?" "No, 300." "275... no, frack this. I'll just pay the damn 300." As opposed to asking for longbow tech and having the text turn green at 278? No thanks, I'll take green text any time.

[quote]Techtrading should be disabled and you should not be able to see what he got. And you should sure as hell NOT be able to micromanage the trade until the text turns green! You should just send a proposal and then the A.I either accepts, denies or gives a counterproposal (100 gold more and it's settled or "can't have that city what about this little farm over there instead..?")[/quote] You should go back and read the rest of the thread, we solved all of this already.<

[quote]To a certain degree, this is a necessary problem for a friendly UI. The player wants to make a trade with the AI. If the player can't see what the AI has for trade, the player gets to play a guessing game of trying to figure out what the AI has, and what among that the AI is willing to trade. While that might make the AI better at keeping its tech secret, it's a terrible UI and will drive players up the wall very quickly.[/quote] I think it's far more important to nail

[quote]Actually, yes it does. THink about it, is a tile being empty really synonomous with it being irrelevant? You have choke points, you have potentially important 'city building' locations, etc etc. And unless you consider every tile there's no way to differentiate between those and 'really' empty tiles.[/quote] Finding ideal city spots is pretty easy for the AI to do because it only has to do it once for each city-radius sized area

[quote]Ok, agreed. I think we disagree on the AI's ability to access the situation, not whether it should or not. You expect deep blue, im thinking more like Civ4 after some major modding.[/quote] Actually I was also thinking more like Civ4 with pre-programmed spell/unit combos and a removal of the silly +5 friendly/-1 cautious and other " We have enough on our hands right now " giveaway nonsense. [quote]Ag

[quote]But, in the interest of not coming off as a total ***, I agree with you that it needs a massive number of strategies to succeed. However strategies for every situation can't be written, so don't think a human AI can exist just because it has options...[/quote] Most situations are similar. The AI needs a formula to allow it to compare the current situation and find the strategy that most closely approximates the current situation. [quote]No, seriusly, the AI's agenda sho

[quote]At most 32 units moving inside a 64 tile gameboard. The number of permutations is indeed huge, but nothing compared to a game that might have 100 units occupying a single tile (of which there will be thousands) and constant new unit generation. The problem with a set of possible options that huge is that AIs can easily be programmed to do the best option NOW, but can't easily look three turns ahead to see the trap the "best option" is leading them into. It is absurdly diff

[quote]Chess is a comparatively simple game, with relatively few moves possible each turn and clearly defined rules of movement and power. And it still took a supercomputer to beat Kasparov - that wasn't a standard desktop he was playing against.[/quote] A supercomputer from a decade ago is slower than today's laptop. Chess may be simpler than a game like MoM or Elemental, but the total number of different strategies is far greater (in the millions). Most of the stra

Have you ever played against the AI in a game like Warcraft 3? One thing that made me recognize the power of an AI in a computer game is the fact that it is capable of multitasking to an extreme degree. If the hypothetical AI is just peacefully building away, then it is clearly designed improperly. The AI should be building, growing, amassing an army, exploring the world, levelling up its heroes, conquering nodes and amassing items all at the same time. If you are amassing an

But what do you think of the simultaneous negotiations idea? For example, you could have 3 separate windows open on the screen (none of which should block your ability to move units or otherwise tend to your empire) and have various deals going on in each of them, each with a different AI leader. If you manage to reach a deal with all of them, you can simply close all 3 deals simultaneously.

[quote]I also like your idea of being able to do diplomacy with anyone during the movement phase. This would kind of favor the AI players as once they got a tech they could quickly perform millisecond trades among themselves and the poor meat player is going to be able to trade his tech with only one AI and effectively all the AI will get it. It does shut down my unfair advantage, but it almoist goes to far in giving the AI too much of an edge. Maybe it will be concurrent turns and the AI(s)

[quote]GalCiv2 does allow it, and it is too easy for a human player to punk the AI. Allowing the AI to do the same thing doesn;t work because you still have to agree to the deal - the AI does not have the option to keep tweaking the trade until the text turns green, it has to make a trade that you will go for and the human has too big of an advantage.[/quote] Yes, the concept of "fiddling the knobs until the light turns green" is not a good one and leaks far too much information to th

[quote]Warning - this is going to be a long post. You bring up tech trading as poart of diplomacy and there is one tactic that I use all the time that I think the AI could easily emulate and it would definitely add a depth to that element that is lacking (although it will make it hard to take advantage, but it would be worth the trade off. The tactic I use is to really push down a certain branch of the tree. I also tend to play tech-centric races with research bonuses etc. As

Here's a quote from another thread : [quote]1) Diplomacy: diplomacy, both in Civ or MoM, has never played a mayor role. This thing should change (and it can be made without making changes to the game engine, or graphics). Having lots of options and opportunities for diplomacy, as well as having "metrics" to measure the impact of your actions, etc, would be a great add. Knowing, for example, that my Djinn, stationed nearby an

Haha, sorry, Starvault is another company working on a game I'm following. I get them mixed up when I keep posting in the different forums alternately. Having said that, I honestly don't care about what people think of Elemental, so long as I like it. I don't have any vested interest in it beyond that.

[quote]I'm pretty concerned that no matter how good Elemental is, people put MoM on such a high pedastil that they're going to be disappointed. You see the same thing with Everquest junkies who are disappointed every MMO launch because they're comparing it to nostalgia-laden opinions of playing EQ years ago back when it was their first MMO. Nothing can possibly compete with that, because all the broken and stupid stuff gets forgotten so easily[/quote] Why should you be concerned with