Slashdot Mirror
42 Artificial Intelligences Are Going Head To Head In "Civilization V"
rossgneumann writes The r/Civ subreddit is currently hosting a fascinating "Battle Royale" in the strategy game Civilization V, pitting 42 of the game's built-in, computer-controlled players against each other for world domination. The match is being played on the largest Earth-shaped map the game is capable of, with both civilizations that were included in the retail version of the game and custom, player-created civilizations that were modded into it after release.
Sullla is one of the best civ 4 players in the world, helped develop the game originally, and is an excellent writer to boot.
Civ V, a game historically known for its poor programming, rushed schedules and years of repair to get playable. This game still has one of the most artificially stupid AI's in the history of the Civ series, so I fail to see how this is even mildly interesting.
Someone started a single player game and decided to hand over control of his civilization to the adviser?
Nope, what he did was use the game editor to delete his city at the start and place a nuclear sub underneath the Artic. As such, while technically still being part of the game, the human has no (measurable) effect on the outcome. This is a little off topic, but frankly, I really wish more strategy games had spectator mods. It's really useful for observing the AI, and most games don't implement one, which would allow us to avoid ugly hacks like this...
"Set a man a fire, he'll be warm for the rest of the night. Set a man afire, he'll be warm for the rest of his life."
No, you need to learn more about CiV's AI.
The designers thought it would be "fun" to have AI's their own "personalities". So Shaka would be aggressive and likely to declare war on you, for example.
However, the way it actually ended up in-game, is that all of the AIs appeared to be schitzophrenic - making alliances with you and then 3 turns later breaking them. Or praising you for doing something, and then 1 turn after shunning you for exactly the same thing. The AI's would make decisions based on their personality, even if they actively hurt their own position in the game by doing so.
It was a deliberate decision by the designers to make the AI's work in this fashion, hence "artificially stupid".
In later patches, they ended up exposing a lot more of the clockwork of what drives the AI, so the player has a better idea of what is going on. I think they also toned down and tightened up the rules for the personality-driven choices, but they're still there in the background.