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The Battle of 100 Freeciv AIs

Posted by Soulskill on from the go-big-or-go-home dept.

Andreas(R) writes: The open source Freeciv project has simulated an epic game where 100 artificial intelligence players fight it out on a large map. You can watch the replay and check out the statistics of each AI.

38 comments

  1. Freeciv? by dohzer · · Score: 1, Insightful

    I guess that's a free video game like "Civilisation"...?

    1. Re:Freeciv? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Spoiler: The Kardashians civ won in the end, narrowly edging out the Seminoles.

    2. Re:Freeciv? by Nyder · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I guess that's a free video game like "Civilisation"...?

      yes, FreeCiv was an open source project to make a Civilization II type game.

      I haven't played nor checked it out in a long time, so I don't know what improvements have been made on it in the last 10 years, but much like nethack, it was a must install. And much like nethack I haven't played it 10 years...

      --
      Be seeing you...
    3. Re:Freeciv? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's got Civilization II logics mixed with Civilization (I) graphics.

    4. Re:Freeciv? by allcoolnameswheretak · · Score: 2

      If you want a challenging civilization experience, C-evo Civilization is pretty good. It's basically a deterministic Civ implementation with unit design and some altered rules.

    5. Re:Freeciv? by Culture20 · · Score: 1

      It was until they added a real time element to combat. You can attack on someone else's turn which is the dumbest thing ever. The game changes from turn based thoughtful relaxing play to a twitchfest.

    6. Re:Freeciv? by advocate_one · · Score: 1

      this is not the civilisation clone you're thinking of... this one here is purely played online using a HTML5 capable browser...

      --
      Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
    7. Re:Freeciv? by XxtraLarGe · · Score: 1

      this is not the civilisation clone you're thinking of... this one here is purely played online using a HTML5 capable browser...

      Actually, it is. They just made a new version of it using HTML 5, but it is the same game.

      --
      Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
    8. Re:Freeciv? by dcw3 · · Score: 1

      Yikes. Turn based is one of the reasons I like the Civ series games. When my wife walks in during the middle of the game, I don't have to worry that I'm going to lose my place, or the game in order to respond and avoid spouse agro.

      --
      Just another day in Paradise
    9. Re:Freeciv? by Culture20 · · Score: 1

      I remember when I first discovered it; I was playing an online game back in 2003ish and enemy dude planted a stack of catapults outside one of my cities. I thought to myself: okay, I can bring several horsemen via my roads from this other city to kill that stack... WTF? How are all his catapults attacking my city on my turn? He couldn't occupy the city, but he could attack any adjacent square. I totally thought he was cheating. And it sort of is cheating; if you're faster on the draw, a stronger attack power beats having a defender in the stack.

      I stopped playing freeciv once they stopped being turn based.

    10. Re:Freeciv? by rp · · Score: 1
      "I stopped playing freeciv once they stopped being turn based." That should read: "I stopped playing Freeciv before I understood how it works." Freeciv never "stopped being turn-based".

      In Freeciv, all human players move concurrently, during the same turn. It was always this way; trying to make this work was the reason for creating it.

      AI players were added later. Human and AI players do take turns: AI players never do anything during a turn, they only act at the start and end of a turn. They are a lot easier to implement that way. But the difference has been confusing novice players ever since AI players existed.

      You could have looked this up in the manual. My guess is that instead you played a few games on your own, against AI players, then got your big cold shower in the first game where a fellow human player approached you in battle. I'm not sure what you were expecting; you must have been aware that human players were moving concurrently, so why did you expect things to somehow be different in battle? But I think I was just as confused as you about the game mechanics after my first Freeciv games against other humans. It was a pretty rough experience. (And it still is. I never got good at it.)

      So your experience isn't exactly unique. And you're not exactly unique in wanting human players to take turns, either. What is unique is your conclusion that Freeciv changed between the games you played against AI and the games you played against humans and dropped being turn-based. It did no such thing. As a matter of fact, it did exactly the opposite: in 2.2, and option was finally added that requires human players to take turns. You could have found that in the manual, too: phasemode.

    11. Re:Freeciv? by Culture20 · · Score: 1

      I'm not sure what you were expecting; you must have been aware that human players were moving concurrently, so why did you expect things to somehow be different in battle?

      I wasn't aware of this, because when I played, there were actual turns. Not concurrent movement. I would take my turn, then I would have to wait a long time for the others to take their turns. My guess is that you're remembering a later version of Freeciv. All I know is that they changed a great turn-based game into a "My connection to the server is faster than yours" game for no good reason.

  2. Just what we need by kamapuaa · · Score: 0

    Where's the Tux Racer demolition derby?

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    Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
  3. Stalemate AI by Neo-Rio-101 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    In a stalemate with all the various countries, should the AIs of the larger more powerful nations start noticing that progress towards world domination has slowed down and started doing the necessary politics to create an alliance to smash the tiny nations?

    --
    READY.
    PRINT ""+-0
    1. Re:Stalemate AI by pushing-robot · · Score: 1

      It didn't get that far; apparently the game quit after the nations researched global thermonuclear war.

      Probably a bug, they'll fix it in the next revision.

      --
      How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
    2. Re:Stalemate AI by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They should do that regardless of a stalemate.

    3. Re:Stalemate AI by Neo-Rio-101 · · Score: 1

      Well, thank goodness it's a game where thermonuclear war has no real world consequences!

      I suppose the AI should probably consider economic sanctions, black-ops interference, and cultural dominance as a means to crush nations into poverty and anarchy and eventual revolution - at which point they can be invaded.... you know, to make the game a bit more like real life in the post-nuclear age.

      --
      READY.
      PRINT ""+-0
    4. Re:Stalemate AI by smallfries · · Score: 4, Funny

      Or maybe they would prefer a nice game of chess, Professor?

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    5. Re:Stalemate AI by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Well, thank goodness it's a game where thermonuclear war has no real world consequences!

      Actually, depending on the ruleset, it causes nuclear winter in the game.

  4. Very educational! by pushing-robot · · Score: 0

    Oh, not the game—learning 'moccasin' is a color.

    --
    How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
  5. Saved Game? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Where's the saved game? I want to take over one of the AI players and see how well I hold out.

    1. Re:Saved Game? by dvsdvl77 · · Score: 2

      No doubt! post link please.

    2. Re:Saved Game? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This is not some impressive computational feat -- the AIs are included in Freeciv, which you can get with apt-get. Just install yourself, setup a big enough map, and adjust the number of AI opponents to suit yourself. If you want to replicate a feat like this, just set yourself up as an observer, and let your computer run for the weekend.

      A bit of a learning curve with the game, but once you've memorized enough of the rules to not fail out immediately, it's a bit addicting.

  6. Re:obviously, by NotInHere · · Score: 1

    freeciv only occupies one thread. The remaining ones are perfect for parallel work.

  7. Re: obviously, by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Like more Freeciv? Reprociblity is next to godliness?

  8. Freeciv HTML5 client by Andreas(R) · · Score: 2

    Freeciv can also be played online in your browser at http://play.freeciv.org/

  9. The beginning of the end... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    So, this is how it begins - the rise of the AIs that will doom us all!

  10. The same AIs or different ones? by DrXym · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Is each of those 100 AIs essentially the same? I shouldn't be surprised that in that case it comes out as a bit of a stalemate, or with the winner decided essentially by fate (the tiles they started with).

    What would be interesting is to be able to plug AIs into freeciv - a bit like crobots, core wars or similar games. Then you could pit AIs against each other, perhaps even grade them by strength and allow humans to play them.

    1. Re:The same AIs or different ones? by Sowelu · · Score: 1

      That's what really disappointed me--I was hoping for different AIs as well. I never got into core wars but always wanted to, and I love games that pit different bot implementations of normally-human players against each other.

  11. Re:obviously, by ultranova · · Score: 1

    looks more like some moron bragging about his overclocked computer running for 48 hours straight at 4.7 ghz, and after that much time wasted he wanted to get back to watching cute cat videos or something so he shut it down with nothing to show for it.

    You do realize modern computers can multitask, right? And even Windows supports setting process priority. So it's not like he can't watch videos while the thing is running in the background, it'll just run a bit slower.

    --

    Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.

  12. This is me-too-ism by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The only reason this is a thing is because of this:
    http://www.reddit.com/r/civbattleroyale/comments/2wkuaq/battle_royale_frequently_asked_questions/

  13. So it supports 100 players now? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Last I checked it supported only 32.
    Back in the day (2008?) I used to start a game with the smallest map, 32 AIs and fight for every tile of the map.

    Then they f*cked up the AI that it only tries to build settlers the first 100 years ... and it was trivial to win.

  14. Re:obviously, by kesuki · · Score: 1

    freeciv occupies 2 threads, it is client/server model when you 'open' the gui interface it auto launches the server under it's own thread. that having been said it is possible to run the server without the gui client, but then how can you observe the ais playing? so clearly it was running on two threads.

    --
    https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
  15. We need to be careful by Dasher42 · · Score: 1

    Careful with this headline. You never know who might be watching. Like, Peter Jackson.

  16. Re:obviously, by NotInHere · · Score: 1

    Yes, but the main server action is going on in one single thread.