Civilization V will simply be another puzzle, not a conflict. Since most folks play it solo, the AI is really just a complex puzzle. It is NOT human.
The only way it could be a real conflict simulation would be for 18 humans to play in one game without any AI. Is that possible and / or likely?
With puzzles we usually only play it a few times to solve them. Conflicts have longer playing lives since different humans in different games make for continuing competition.
That's what multiplayer is for.
What are the Multiplayer variants?Originally Posted by Conservative American
Really?! could you have come up with more of ....a.... DUH phrase.
AI equals Computer neither equals Human.
I hope we all learned a lesson from this genius.
Well said. Maybe they can implement artificial brains to play the AI and that will make this dunce happy.
Duh the AI isn't human. The only thing that is human is another human!
AI is just a complex algorithm. The computer just sees lines of code, not images like a human player does!
Good luck solving this "easy puzzle" anytime soon. The biometric locks and computer passwords which change every hour used protect to the Declaration of Independence are just "easy puzzles" so it should be easy to crack those too right? The complex algorithms used to encrypt data by the CIA aren't human so they're also easy to break right?
Of course the AI isn't human. Machines will never be fully human.
I would in fact argue the opposite to your argument: computers are harder to beat than people. Why is it that the best human chess player can't beat a computer? Can a person map the pattern of fallout generated by a nuclear exchange over Pakistan in ten minutes? Can a person run 2 million equations in his head simultaneously and answer them all correctly in a few seconds?
People make mistakes and computers don't. The only reason why you can beat the AI is because it is programmed to be able to be beat. Otherwise people wouldn't want to play against the AI.
Very smart answer
If you want to learn more about MP come look at Civplayers MP Leagues, we have been running MP leagues since Civ3 Play the world and currently offer a league for Civ3 Conquests and Civ4 Beyond the Sword, with a Civ5 league in the design phase right now.
www.civplayers.com
Yes you are right to a point. As Sid himself stated in his GDC presentation, programming the AI is not really about cloning human intelligence, in code. But about understanding human psychology, the goal of the AI is to give the human SP player a fun challange but allow him to win within a reasonable skill set range.
If the AI is too smart or cunning and beats the majority of players, customers will stop buying the game. If you make the AI to dumbed down the replay value is gone and players will shelve the game after a month of playing it out. So the devs have to find a balance that challanges the player but doesn't overwelm them.
Yes in the end the AI does not think at all, it just reacts the way it is programmed too, and this trains SP players to learn how to exploit the static behavour of the AI. But if there is enough variety in the routines this is still fun for 99% of SP players.
Mind you us MP players after playing each other can never really go back to playing the static AI ever again, it's just not a challange for us any more.
CS
I am basking in the pure intelligence of the OPs post. Astounding logic.
You and me both!I am basking in the pure intelligence of the OPs post. Astounding logic.
I am basking in the pure intelligence of the OPs post. Astounding logic.Same. I guess that makes three now doesn't it?You and me both!
Make it 4, but I have already posted and bashed on that phool.
Right. A complex puzzle.
The problem with this statement is the word "complex". It's sort of like the word "theory": To the average person it means "a suspected explanation", to a scientist it means "a model for observed phenomena with supporting evidence", to some lobbying groups it means "a guess based on assumptions".
Some people think that a hundred-piece jigsaw puzzle is "complex".
Statisticians disagree. It is a simple problem of permutations. They see chess as "complex" because the number of possible permutations changes with each move.
Computer scientists and theoretical mathematicians disagree. The set of permutations makes a tree, which is constant. Each move simply resets the root of the tree or prunes off some of the branches. They see the game Go as "complex" because there are so many branches of the tree and many of them form cycles with other branches.
AI specialists disagree. They see Go's simple rules and dizzying number of possible moves as proof that the human mind doesn't use exhaustive methods to play the game and therefore believe that a collection of fairly simple heuristics should be able to match a human's ability to play. They still see a jigsaw puzzle as insultingly simple and they still haven't actually found the heuristics to make a Go AI that can match a master-level human.
That said: Civ has almost all of the complexity of Go... just in the aspect of moving military units around the map. Managing overlapping, interconnected cities is just as complex. Controlling the logistics of managing shared resources (workers, defenders, strategic resources, science output) is just as complex. And then we add the problem of reacting to and even anticipating the reactions of up to 17 other intelligences trying to solve the same set of problems. The game of Civ is easily a few orders of magnitude more "complex" than Go.
So, yeah, it's a "complex" problem. It's a problem with a complexity so high that no AI has ever come close to finding an optimal solution. All attempts are still based on randomness to simulate the reaction to a problem vastly more complex than the AI's ability to analyze it. Can a human reliably beat an AI? Of course. We have better hardware at the very least. But is it a problem you can understand sufficiently to be able to predict the outcome on a regular basis: No.
What's the point of all this wordiness on a subject that everyone else seems to understand already? To prove that playing against a Civ AI is not the same as figuring out how to finish Myst or Monkey Island. Single player Civ has plenty of replay value because none of us, not even you, have the capacity to find solutions to problems as dizzyingly complex as Civ.
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