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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

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

BigJono 10y ago
IMO a good API for developing AIs is an absolute no-brainer for a strategy game. Especially one like Civ that doesn't focus on multiplayer at all.
SwellJoe 10y ago
I never knew, until just now, that I would really enjoy being able to write AI modules for Civ games and compete against other people's AIs. That would be fun as hell, if there were a simple framework for doing it; I wouldn't want to have to do all of the grunt work of hooking into the game, but if Firaxis exposed it all via an API that's usable from Lua (or whatever language...doesn't really matter, as long as it's something high level and preferably not proprietary). And, it might help them solve their biggest problem in Civ games. Seems like they could just license the best AIs from a contest, and give someone a nice prize for making the best one. Kind of like the Netflix Prize.
- deleted 10y ago
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- Can_Not 10y ago
  I was really interested in this kind of thing. The goal for me was to make an AI that was fun to play casually (for people who think diplomacy should have been a feature in civ V, like it was in civ IV). The secondary goal would be that anyone could write whatever AI types they wanted and could also mix them in one game. FreeCiv kind of sucks and I don't know if their AI was intended to be extendable. It seems too min-maxy and edgecase perfectionist to be fun to play against, unless that's your idea of fun. But I would need to solve several problems first. I would need a server component that only sends remote players/AIs the data they have access to (no cheating possible). I haven't been able to start on the parts of my idea that I'm really interested in because I would need to create the entire universe before I could start. But imagine open source servers, open source AIs, and open source clients. It would be amazing.

BigJono 10y ago

IMO a good API for developing AIs is an absolute no-brainer for a strategy game. Especially one like Civ that doesn't focus on multiplayer at all.

SwellJoe 10y ago

I never knew, until just now, that I would really enjoy being able to write AI modules for Civ games and compete against other people's AIs. That would be fun as hell, if there were a simple framework for doing it; I wouldn't want to have to do all of the grunt work of hooking into the game, but if Firaxis exposed it all via an API that's usable from Lua (or whatever language...doesn't really matter, as long as it's something high level and preferably not proprietary). And, it might help them solve their biggest problem in Civ games. Seems like they could just license the best AIs from a contest, and give someone a nice prize for making the best one. Kind of like the Netflix Prize.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
Can_Not 10y ago
I was really interested in this kind of thing. The goal for me was to make an AI that was fun to play casually (for people who think diplomacy should have been a feature in civ V, like it was in civ IV). The secondary goal would be that anyone could write whatever AI types they wanted and could also mix them in one game. FreeCiv kind of sucks and I don't know if their AI was intended to be extendable. It seems too min-maxy and edgecase perfectionist to be fun to play against, unless that's your idea of fun. But I would need to solve several problems first. I would need a server component that only sends remote players/AIs the data they have access to (no cheating possible). I haven't been able to start on the parts of my idea that I'm really interested in because I would need to create the entire universe before I could start. But imagine open source servers, open source AIs, and open source clients. It would be amazing.