6 ms·

Civ VI 'AI Battle Royale' on Twitch

79 points by sdebrule 10y ago

jakebasile 10y ago
This is the kind of AI that matters to me as a gamer, not yet another chat bot :)
- cLeEOGPw 10y ago
  AI in games like civ isn't some unsolved problem. It's just limited by what your computer can do in reasonable amount of time to not get in the way of other things the game does. Civ games in general are kind of a solvable problem, because there's little randomness there. So if they really wanted they would make AI so good it would be impossible to win. Whole challenge is to make AI bad enough to be enjoyable. So it's not very interesting from AI science point of view.
EtienneK 10y ago
I just wish the Mac OS version was also being released on the same day.
- beefsack 10y ago
  Same re: the Linux version, though I believe it's still up in the air whether it'll even be released.
  - akerro 10y ago
    I've been lied a few times and will no longer pre-order, so this time I'll wait for official Linux release + at least 3 weeks.
  - SwellJoe 10y ago
    If there's no Linux version, I'll keep playing Civ V. The only reason I switched to Civ V from IV was that I wouldn't need to reboot or use Wine to play it (and deal with the quirks of doing that). My excitement the day I saw that Civ V was available for Linux was massive.
- dylanz 10y ago
  Oh no! I didn't realize it wasn't released on OSX on the release date. UGH. Do you know when? Time to change my calendar entry :( Really looking forward to this edition. This game was my intro to video games back on the first release. Such a well thought out game.
- dget 10y ago
  It looks like it might be: https://blog.aspyr.com/2016/10/04/sid-meiers-civilization-vi-faq/ https://blog.aspyr.com/2016/10/04/sid-meiers-civilization-vi...
Flammy 10y ago
Oh this should be fun. Commentary will be interesting to hear what the devs will say about AI logic. Use Slack for work? just type /remind me Catch every turn, live on twitch.tv/2k at TIME on Wednesday, October 19 and replace TIME with 3:30pm ET / 12:30pm PT / 8:30pm or whatever :)
austinl 10y ago
I'm a long time Civ player, and I'm curious to see how the AI compares to the previous versions. I've been somewhat disappointed in the past, because the challenge of playing on the higher difficulties comes less from a smarter AI opponent and more from the handicaps given to the player. For example, on Deity, your base happiness is lower than the AI's, you start 5 techs behind, you pay up to 2x the price for routes, buildings, units, and so on: (http://civilization.wikia.com/wiki/Difficulty_level_(Civ5) http://civilization.wikia.com/wiki/Difficulty_level_(Civ5)). It definitely forces you to play smarter, but the AI seems to more or less play the same way on King and up. I'd be really interested to hear some commentary on difficulty level and AI tactics!
- SwellJoe 10y ago
  That's the most frustrating thing about every previous Civ on higher difficulty levels, to me. It doesn't require you to just play smarter, it requires you to exploit the limitations of the AI. AI wages war (incredibly) stupidly, so you have go to war a lot. AI will always build wonders faster, so you have to take the cities the AI built them in rather than build them yourself (you might be able to beeline to some specific wonder, but if a neighbor attacks you while you're doing it, you're done for because everything else suffers). Because the advantages are so extreme on higher levels, if you get a bad start, there's pretty much no turning the game around no matter how well you play (I've tried replaying the same bad start three different times with three different strategies, to no avail). That's frustrating, to me. I have a bunch of complaints about Civ (particularly compared to Civ IV with all expansions), but the AI is among the biggest complaints, and it's always been a problem in Civ games. I do hope it's gotten better.
  - benjaminjackman 10y ago
    It's a really hard problem I think. Consider the complexity and branchiness of civ compared to go where humans have only recently been beaten. Better ai would be great however I don't think Firaxis has the resources to try to do it all themselves. However maybe this ai competition shows the way forward? Perhaps someone could mod in an interface (or Firaxis could add it themselves) to make writing ai agents very easy in the spirit of ALE ( the arcade learning environment [1]) so that the next ai battle royale is actually different community designed ais competing. 1: http://www.arcadelearningenvironment.org http://www.arcadelearningenvironment.org
gregman1 10y ago
How much does it cost to convert to UTC? iirc it's should be 20:30.
- joncrocks 10y ago
  BST is GMT+1, and UTC ~ GMT, so 20:30 BST should be 19:30 UTC
jbmorgado 10y ago
Brazil is now one of the "great civilisations"? RIP Civilisation, your quality is been declining every iteration anyway and if I want a fantasy world, I'm better off with Endless Legend, at least they have good mechanics and the game doesn't need a NASA server to run properly.
joshstrange 10y ago
How are they going to do the video? I'm guessing you just have to watch what the current player is doing and can't pan/zoom around. Does anyone know of any "player" that allows for more interactive "watching"? I want to say StarCraft (1, not sure about 2) had a replay option but that was of course built into the game and not available via something like a web player.

79 points by sdebrule 10y ago

jakebasile 10y ago

This is the kind of AI that matters to me as a gamer, not yet another chat bot :)

cLeEOGPw 10y ago
AI in games like civ isn't some unsolved problem. It's just limited by what your computer can do in reasonable amount of time to not get in the way of other things the game does. Civ games in general are kind of a solvable problem, because there's little randomness there. So if they really wanted they would make AI so good it would be impossible to win. Whole challenge is to make AI bad enough to be enjoyable. So it's not very interesting from AI science point of view.

EtienneK 10y ago

I just wish the Mac OS version was also being released on the same day.

beefsack 10y ago
Same re: the Linux version, though I believe it's still up in the air whether it'll even be released.
- akerro 10y ago
  I've been lied a few times and will no longer pre-order, so this time I'll wait for official Linux release + at least 3 weeks.
- SwellJoe 10y ago
  If there's no Linux version, I'll keep playing Civ V. The only reason I switched to Civ V from IV was that I wouldn't need to reboot or use Wine to play it (and deal with the quirks of doing that). My excitement the day I saw that Civ V was available for Linux was massive.
dylanz 10y ago
Oh no! I didn't realize it wasn't released on OSX on the release date. UGH. Do you know when? Time to change my calendar entry :( Really looking forward to this edition. This game was my intro to video games back on the first release. Such a well thought out game.
dget 10y ago
It looks like it might be: https://blog.aspyr.com/2016/10/04/sid-meiers-civilization-vi-faq/ https://blog.aspyr.com/2016/10/04/sid-meiers-civilization-vi...

Flammy 10y ago

Oh this should be fun. Commentary will be interesting to hear what the devs will say about AI logic. Use Slack for work? just type /remind me Catch every turn, live on twitch.tv/2k at TIME on Wednesday, October 19 and replace TIME with 3:30pm ET / 12:30pm PT / 8:30pm or whatever :)

austinl 10y ago

I'm a long time Civ player, and I'm curious to see how the AI compares to the previous versions. I've been somewhat disappointed in the past, because the challenge of playing on the higher difficulties comes less from a smarter AI opponent and more from the handicaps given to the player. For example, on Deity, your base happiness is lower than the AI's, you start 5 techs behind, you pay up to 2x the price for routes, buildings, units, and so on: (http://civilization.wikia.com/wiki/Difficulty_level_(Civ5) http://civilization.wikia.com/wiki/Difficulty_level_(Civ5)). It definitely forces you to play smarter, but the AI seems to more or less play the same way on King and up. I'd be really interested to hear some commentary on difficulty level and AI tactics!

SwellJoe 10y ago
That's the most frustrating thing about every previous Civ on higher difficulty levels, to me. It doesn't require you to just play smarter, it requires you to exploit the limitations of the AI. AI wages war (incredibly) stupidly, so you have go to war a lot. AI will always build wonders faster, so you have to take the cities the AI built them in rather than build them yourself (you might be able to beeline to some specific wonder, but if a neighbor attacks you while you're doing it, you're done for because everything else suffers). Because the advantages are so extreme on higher levels, if you get a bad start, there's pretty much no turning the game around no matter how well you play (I've tried replaying the same bad start three different times with three different strategies, to no avail). That's frustrating, to me. I have a bunch of complaints about Civ (particularly compared to Civ IV with all expansions), but the AI is among the biggest complaints, and it's always been a problem in Civ games. I do hope it's gotten better.
- benjaminjackman 10y ago
  It's a really hard problem I think. Consider the complexity and branchiness of civ compared to go where humans have only recently been beaten. Better ai would be great however I don't think Firaxis has the resources to try to do it all themselves. However maybe this ai competition shows the way forward? Perhaps someone could mod in an interface (or Firaxis could add it themselves) to make writing ai agents very easy in the spirit of ALE ( the arcade learning environment [1]) so that the next ai battle royale is actually different community designed ais competing. 1: http://www.arcadelearningenvironment.org http://www.arcadelearningenvironment.org

gregman1 10y ago

How much does it cost to convert to UTC? iirc it's should be 20:30.

joncrocks 10y ago
BST is GMT+1, and UTC ~ GMT, so 20:30 BST should be 19:30 UTC

jbmorgado 10y ago

Brazil is now one of the "great civilisations"? RIP Civilisation, your quality is been declining every iteration anyway and if I want a fantasy world, I'm better off with Endless Legend, at least they have good mechanics and the game doesn't need a NASA server to run properly.

joshstrange 10y ago

How are they going to do the video? I'm guessing you just have to watch what the current player is doing and can't pan/zoom around. Does anyone know of any "player" that allows for more interactive "watching"? I want to say StarCraft (1, not sure about 2) had a replay option but that was of course built into the game and not available via something like a web player.