[raynor]

Space Empires IV is far and away a better game than MOO2. I have already spent more hours in a month playing SEIV than all the time I've spent playing MOO2 since buying it when it first came out.

Does MOO2 have AI? Well, if I loaded it up right now and played a game on Impossible, I'm quite sure I would get spanked.

Does SEIV have AI? The game started out one hundred times better than MOO2 and doubles in quality with the release of every new patch. I love playing the game. Am I concerned about losing? No.

Let's think about how hard it is to create AI for a game. Let's start with the simplest game of all: Tic-Tac-Toe. A child learns this game at an early age and quickly masters it. Could you sit down and write an AI that would always result in a tie game? You bet.

What about the game of checkers? This is a much more complicated game than Tic-Tac-Toe, wouldn't you agree. But it is still a children's game in comparison to chess. Could you write an AI for checkers that would be challenging to the casual checkers player? I think you could. But for chess? I don't think so.

I think this is a good comparison. The lack of tactical options in MOO2 makes it very much like Checkers vs. SEIV as chess, IMHO. Let's say I spend the time to write an AI for checkers and then spend the same time writing AI for chess. Which AI is going to be harder to beat?

In conclusion:

If I spent a week writing a checkers program that could beat you two/thirds the time and a week writing a chess program than can only beat you one game in ten, would you say the AI for the checkers game was better than the chess AI?

[This message has been edited by raynor (edited 07 March 2001).]