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.

Comments

news, why?

[X0563511]

So... someone started a really big Civ V game. This is hardly news, even for nerds.

Re:news, why?

[LifesABeach]

My first reaction was, "cool." It's 2 A.I.'s from Seth's crew, and 45 from other folks. It's a shame we'll not see the process of the outcome. This is only one application of A.I., not the A.I. in total. It one can see the various moves of the game happen; I'm going to go microwave some pop corn, and kick back to watch.

Re:news, why?

[kolbe]

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.

Re:news, why?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:news, why?

[mjwx]

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.

For the same reason people prefer to watch 42 meat heads wrestle each other for a ball rather than watch 42 of the brightest minds debate.

I dont mean the suppressed homoerotic desires either.

Given my experience with Civ V, they'll build about 2 cities each and never actually go to war, let alone attack. It will be a paint drying simulator. The incredibly stupid AI was what ultimately forced me back to Civ IV.

Re:news, why?

[mjwx]

Why so defensive?

Why do you dictate that anyone with a different opinion to you must leave? Are you so insecure that you cannot stand criticism? BTW, I'm Australian, we play football without helmets and padding.

Re:news, why?

[sarysa]

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.

The AI may manage to make things interesting against other AI, but against human players...it's easy for human players with a tiny military to essentially be King Leonidas, and win. Particularly egregious if you have a bottleneck, which you can easily defend with one ranged and one melee unit. This is due to the inability to combine military units (which you could've done in Civ IV) and the suicidal aggression employed by the AI.

With that in mind, a bunch of idiot AI's battling it out actually sounds interesting.

Re:news, why?

[LittleEars]

Goodness, we used to write ai bots for UO back in the day and pit them against each other. I can only imagine this has continued. Look at the most heavily hacked online games and I would guess a good deal of the top fights are not between players but scripts. probably more entertaining to watch also.

Re:news, why?

[dywolf]

Sounds like real life modern politics / diplomacy.

So ...

[Opportunist]

Someone started a single player game and decided to hand over control of his civilization to the adviser?

Re:So ...

[EmeraldBot]

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...

Re:So ...

[Whiteox]

You could create and even modify the AI in AOEI and AOEII. There was no documentation for it, but it was simple to figure out. The only problem with the game was that you had low population limits/civilization.

Kind of neat, but....

[Zitchas]

I find this rather interesting, personally. Although I imagine that the turn lag time must get huge very, very quickly.

In manner of explanation, apparently it is actually a 43 player single player game, where the human player used a mod to a) reveal the whole map, b) delete their capital city, and c) give themselves a nuclear submarine that they parked under the icecap. That way the human stays alive, but out of the game, and everyone else can play as if they weren't there. I'm not sure how much residual impact simply having an active human player in the game might have.

On the other hand, must be a slow day for news. But then again, Sundays usually are.

AI competition

[Anonymous Coward]

If everyone had written their own AI, and those AIs were being pitted against each other, that would be interesting news.

Submarine versus Viking longship

[angel'o'sphere]

Can a Viking Longship still sink a submarine with lucky dice rolls?

Re:Submarine versus Viking longship

[Linsaran]

The math still caps at 99.9% or .1% there's always a .1% chance of any unit defeating another no matter how out gunned they are. Of course in practice this very rarely comes up. And I could see a longship having a piece break off after getting shot at and having that debris end up in just the right spot to clog the subs engines or torpedo bays or something like that. Sure it's statistically unlikely, and probably not even a 1/1000 chance of actually happening, but for the sake of game play I can accept it.

Re:Submarine versus Viking longship

[Kjella]

And I could see a longship having a piece break off after getting shot at and having that debris end up in just the right spot to clog the subs engines or torpedo bays or something like that. Sure it's statistically unlikely, and probably not even a 1/1000 chance of actually happening, but for the sake of game play I can accept it.

At that point you're better off imagining the sub had a critical weapons malfunction and blew itself up so the longship wins on walkover. Or that the warrior sneaked into the riflemen's camp and poisoned their water supply.

Already done for civ 4

[njahnke]

I enjoyed Sullla's civ 4 "AI Survivor" while he was publishing it: http://www.garath.net/Sullla/civ4survivor.html

Sullla is one of the best civ 4 players in the world, helped develop the game originally, and is an excellent writer to boot.

I have not kept up

[wbr1]

But with old Civ it was one AI and different rule sets fro each civilization. Isn't that the same case here?

Re:I have not kept up

[abies]

42 artificial intelligences = 42 instances of same AI.
It is opposite of having a car race where 42 people would drive same kind of car to see who is the best. It is a car race, where 42 clones of same person drive different cars starting in different race tracks under different weather conditions.

So will it finish successfully without crashing?

[King_TJ]

I know that sounds a little snarky .... but that's been one of my issues with the Civ games for quite some time. It seems like as you get into the "thick" of the game, with a lot of units occupying more and more space -- the system resources taken get pretty large. It often leads to slowdowns and a freeze-up or crash before the game can be completed.

Artificial but Intelligence?

[Roger W Moore]

My reaction was why Civ 5? Given the quality of the AIs in it I'm not sure 'intelligence' is really an apt description.

AI is a bit of a stretch

[Karmashock]

The AI in these games are morons. The only ones that are even remotely threatening cheat like crazy.

In video games, the AIs that will rip your lungs out, make bag pipes of them, and play El Degüello on them tend to never miss, see through the fog of war/through walls, and often as not have access to infinite resources, higher health, and do more damage for no reason.

And... THAT is why they're a threat. Not because the little idiots are actually any good at tactics or strategy.

I honestly can't think of a single RTS game where the AI wasn't a joke. Yes, you have to know how to play the game and you might need to learn how the AI thinks a bit. But that's really easy to figure out. In strategy games, winning against AIs typically requires that you just be quick about doing things. Against humans this is important as well, but humans are sneaky.

The AI for example in Homeworld only uses hyperspace jumps to run away and they only bother with critical shipyard facilities. Human players will mass a fleet, dock their fighter craft into their hyperspace capable craft, bait an attack by making it look like their capital ships are unsupported, and then when you move your forces out of position, they'll jump their forces into point blank range, spew out their whole forces, and annihilate you. Humans are also the only ones that will use cloaking fields properly or defense field frigates... etc. And that's the same for Starcraft or CnC or any of it. And in the FPS games the only thing the AIs ever have going for them is that they're damn accurate with their shots because they have auto aim... and they can frequently see through walls so they always know where you are.

What the Civ devs are talking about is not AI but behavior profiles. They do this a lot in strategy games. They'll try to mix it up by giving some of the idiot AIs a preference for air units or a preference for sea units or a preference for building fortresses or something. And that's supposed to be a different AI. But it isn't really. Its just the same AI with a different priority list.

As evidence, the only AI's of this type that tend to be dangerous are the ones that try to rush you really early. Its a high risk high reward tactic that can end you before the game really begins. Those AIs force you to build some defenses really early. I find in any of these games, if you survive that attack... there really isn't anything the AIs can do to stop you. They're so dumb you can kill them at 10 to 1 ratios in practically any game.

Re:AI is a bit of a stretch

[BevanFindlay]

This does beg an interesting question: what if someone actually used modern, advanced learning algorithms to develop truly smart game AI? e.g. do what they did with chess and get something to "watch" lots of games and learn from them. I saw a headline recently about Google setting a learning machine against a bunch of old-school arcade games - I wonder what would happen if you applied that sort of thing to an RTS? I also wonder which would be the cheaper to develop - a set of rules to watch lots of beta testers to learn from them and select the best strategies, or trying to build a fully-realised computer player by hand? The former might be unpredictable, but could be quite interesting to watch (due to the possibility that it does something you actually didn't expect.

Has this ever been done/attempted?

My biggest peeve with computer players was how they don't respond at all to unexpected limits on their environment - they just stall and cease developing. I used to play lots of C&C: Red Alert (the first one, so long in the tooth now), and quite liked creating my own maps. But, doing something that required creativity like starting the player with a tiny island where you had to carefully plan your base would just see computer players stop building after about the fourth structure - while even a noob human player would have been able to do something, and would have realised the need to build a shipyard earlier than usual and hit the seas (such as getting a mobile construction unit so you can start populating/harvesting resources from the next island). Actually, on that note, I am hard pressed to think of any RTS game where I've seen a computer player populate more than one island, or build a second base.

I think you're right about the "only AIs that are dangerous are the 'rush' types" - partly out of nostalgia for the above, I played OpenRA with my kids recently, and at first we tried a "Turtle AI" 3 human/1 AI (to get them used to it), and it was boringly easy, so next we tried a 3-vs-3 with the AIs set to "Turtle", "Normal", and "Rush" respectively - and the Rush AI had us all (including myself, by far the most veteran) pinned for ages; and even managed to wipe the Turtle AI out completely. Just as I was starting to get the upper hand though (spamming the last remaining ore deposit in the centre with tanks, while simultaneously sneaking a mere two missile subs around the back), my daughter quit the game, so we never quite got to see the ending - but it did look like "survive the first onslaught and you've won". I have never seen a computer player survive when a map approaches resource starvation, whereas human players adapt.

My first encounter with "stupid AI" was Dune 2, where you could work out which direction the attacks were coming from (usually, a straight line from their production facility to your most valuable structure), and build a "catcher's glove" of turrets or strong tanks and wipe out everything coming at you with minimal (or sometimes no) losses. That worked in a game as recent as C&C: Generals (where I could add something to repair units and actually achieve zero losses). I don't even bother trying a "catcher's glove" against human players, unless it's a really obvious choke-point (because after the first loss, they try something and somewhere different - even on a choke point, they'll just start using air units instead). I would applaud the first RTS game developer who had an AI do something as sneaky as "air drop an engineer to take over a structure in the back of your base, then immediately drop a ready-built powerful turret and start turret-walking through your base" or (in Total Annihilation or Supreme Commander) "grab the enemy's (or your own) commander with an air transport, so it goes nuclear when it gets shot down over their base". It's the unconventional that AIs never seem to achieve.

Re:AI is a bit of a stretch

[Karmashock]

As to something that shifts between various preprogrammed responses and something that invents them on the fly or learns new strategies entirely on its own. Iâ(TM)d argue that the former already exists and those are the ones that are so easy to beat.

A big difference between chess and an RTS is that there are so many more moves to make. In chess you get ONE move per turn and the amount you can move and in which directions is highly finite. In an RTS game imagine a chess board a billion times larger, with people able to move as many pieces as they want every turn. That is, in an RTS game EVERY piece can move every turn. And whether you even move anything in a turn or not is entirely up to you. In chess you MUST move something every turn. In an RTS game you donâ(TM)t have to do anything. You can just sit there and space out until you lose. And of course in RTS games

Defeating RTS AIs in games is largely a matter of understanding what theyâ(TM)re going to do at given times and just being rock to their scissors⦠over and over again. In starcraft, I know when the AI is going to expand to a new resource location. I know what types of armies it likes to build. I know it is probably just going to attack me head on.

So there are different ways to deal with that. I personally like to fortify so that my base is really hard to attack with anything short of overwhelming numbers. And rather than having a lethal âoedeathballâ which is what they call a big mass of units that you just march through everything to win. I prefer to have very mobile forces that are only good at killing something specific that I want to kill. So Iâ(TM)ll probably distract their forces in the middle with something stupid, and then sneak behind their lines to destroy resource acquisition or unit production facilities. Then the attrition of their death ball in the middle has meaning because they cannot replace lost units in a timely manner. They lack either the resources or the production facilities to do it.

Then I start dominating the map once they start having supply issues. And because I like it⦠I tend to hold off on killing them until I have top tier units that I can just humiliate the remaining forces with⦠and then I get bored and stop playing the AI.

A truer AI that makes up its own strategies on the fly, learns from mistakes, or adapts to my strategies in anything but a formulaic fashion has never been seen in consumer RTS games. Or if it has, Iâ(TM)ve never even heard of it.

As to RTS games where they build a second base⦠you see that in starcraft and in the newer CnC games. If you bomb out their primary but leave their expansion alone⦠theyâ(TM)ll usually rebuild their forces there if they can. Though even for a good human player, losing your primary base is generally game over.

As to winning after youâ(TM)ve survived the Rush, you should play that AI a bit more then. You just need to know what it will do after it does that initial rush. I like to set up a kill zone that the AI will mindlessly suicide all its units into. You can put a strong defensive structure RIGHT next to an enemy base and theyâ(TM)ll often just suicide their units into in penny packets. That bleeds their forces on an ongoing basis and keeps them weak and preoccupied. Then you can do whatever you want on the map. As to an AI surviving map starvation⦠the hardest AIs tend to cheat. So they have their own revenue streams. Starcraft is the best example of this⦠you set the AI to hardest and they get a trickle of resources from nowhere that they can use to buy stuff even if theyâ(TM)ve had no access to other resources for a long time. Again, those are the only AIs that are actually hard and theyâ(TM)re not any more clever than the stupid ones⦠theyâ(TM)re just cheating.

As to them never being unconventional, that is because theyâ(TM)re not really AIs⦠theyâ(TM)re

Re:AI is a bit of a stretch

[AK Marc]

Actually, on that note, I am hard pressed to think of any RTS game where I've seen a computer player populate more than one island, or build a second base.

Empire Earth (not sure which version, if not the original). The AI was told to understand that space empire will have two starting islands, and you are to conquer the foreign island, and they'd invade and build up (with local production), if you locked yourself in a small corner defensively.

My first encounter with "stupid AI" was Dune 2, where you could work out which direction the attacks were coming from (usually, a straight line from their production facility to your most valuable structure), and build a "catcher's glove" of turrets or strong tanks and wipe out everything coming at you with minimal (or sometimes no) losses.

Age of empires. The AI would build multiple home bases (town centers), so is smart for that, based on your measure, but dumber than a 2 year old in so many other ways.

They'd build walls up to (but around) trees. When the trees were cut down, it would never extend walls to protect the exposed areas. So workers, sent along with the military could take out a superior force.

Also, they won't attack a wall when there is another way in. So if you make a maze of walls, with a clear (but winding) path through, and no buildings in range to attack, they'd *always* take the long and winding path. And you can pick them off with strategically placed defenses. Few to no losses, even against massive attack forces.

so it goes nuclear when it gets shot down over their base". It's the unconventional that AIs never seem to achieve.

Reminds me of your complaints about Dune. The Harkonnen couldn't use nukes effectively. If it got to that point of the game, put a few structures away from the base, in a protective ring. The nukes will fall on them, and they'll never push to try to get a nuke to hit the make core of the base. So put all your important buildings packed tight in the corner, and unimportant ones scattered around. The AI will never do max damage with a nuke. Once you figure that out, the AI will spend more resources bombing than they kill with them.

Re:AI is a bit of a stretch

[Karmashock]

hmmm... While I agree there should be an easy mode in most games so that people can learn how to play you are going to want a harder difficulty maintain replayability.

The best games are the ones you can play over and over and over and over again. And those games are only fun because you're either playing against human beings that in a dynamic framework that permits creativity OR if the AI/game mechanics can be made progressively harder.

In most games, the first playthrough, I'll play through it on normal or something like that. And if it starts getting too easy, I'll jack up the difficulty if I can. If the game was fun enough on normal, then I'll probably play through it again on a harder difficulty or possibly limit myself to specific strategies.

In most games there is a cheap way to win. So... I'll make it a rule that I can't do that unless I start getting bored... then the gloves come off. I might set up time limits for myself... finish this level in under this many minutes or achieve all optional objectives or something.

As to age of kings... The "ai" is not really an AI in that game anymore then it is in any other RTS. Its a pre configured decision tree. IF this THEN that.

I can't speak to your Juggernaut decision tree AI. It could well be very hard. However, that difficulty is likely either the result of limitations in the game itself limiting the player from coming up with novel ways to expose the AIs inherent lack of creativity or... and I mean no offense here... you might not have played against that AI long enough to figure out the things it does that you can exploit to instantly win every single time.

I'll give you another example, I played DotA2 for awhile and I played against the bots for a long time to relearn how to play the game. The bots in DotA2 are vicious. They're very fast, don't miss, and towards the end of the game they like to all group up into a death ball and just gobble everyone on the map.

They do have one big weakness though. And that is that they don't defend worth shit. They're so aggressive that they don't account for sneaky mother fuckers like myself that will just ignore the team fights entirely and take all the strategic objectives while they're not watching. What is more... they've basically got comical ADD because the instant I go attacking their base, they will break off from the team fight to stop me. If I destroy the objective and then run away... they'll confirm that I'm not around anymore and then go right back to trying to team fight. And while they're doing that... I'll just kill another tower or something... which will cause them to break off the team fight in the middle and try to kill me again. Rinse and repeat.

Now a human team would keep at least one person back to defend while the rest went to team fight. Sounds basic and logical right? Well, they're not programmed to do that. So they can't win no matter how good they are at team fighting because I can cause my team no matter how bad it is to win every single time. I don't have to kill an enemy team member even once. I just have to be willing to ruthlessly exploit a flaw in their AI to win.

And I do that in every game where I play an AI. I figure out how it works... what it does when I do this... and eventually I find a stupid thing it does in an unlikely situation. And then I just create that situation in fight... and I can't lose. The AI will make the same mistake every single god damn time.

And that is when I get bored and stop playing. A human being is typically more interesting because while you can use a trick against them once or twice they learn at least that something didn't work and TRY to do something else. Sometimes they come up with a really good counter and sometimes they just keep failing. But its at least more interesting.

Re:So will it finish successfully without crashing

[mujadaddy]

So will it finish successfully without crashing?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines

Re:Far from reality

[Whiteox]

The urheimat of the Slavs was north of the Carpathians towards West Ukraine. By the 5th-6th century, they began to move into the Northern Danubian region. Makes sense to me as the Polish are a Slav race.

Re:Far from reality

[Talderas]

Though I wonder how Europa Universalis would do it.

My guess is that Russia would form and Kebab would start gobbling up the Balkans. A fractured mess of power would persist in the HRE while Castile inherits Burgundy. England would sit around and not do much except colonize, sip tea, and munch on carpets I mean crumpets. Consequently, Poland would do jack and shit and remain split from Lithuania.

Meanwhile Ming explodes like usual and in an uncommon strange turn of events Japan fails to unite and instead you only see the Tosokawas.