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Old April 24th, 2007, 11:54 PM

MaxWilson MaxWilson is offline
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Default Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?

Quote:
HoneyBadger said:
The context was, "who cares about MP (in terms of the objective balancing of nations, because SP gives us much clearer and more useful data").
Hmmm, I think I need a little bit more clarification on what you're trying to say. You say the human brain is relatively more infinite than a computer AI, and tie that to SP being a more objective environment. I'm a little confused because I would expect that balancing by playing against a limited intelligence (the AI) gives you inferior balance to playing against a good intelligence (presumably human). It may be that there's a devastating counter Y to tactic X, which the AI will never find. (For instance, the AI can't handle SCs, and in fact doesn't seem to do much research at all.) That doesn't mean that X is too strong, it means it's risky with a payoff, except that against the AI there's no risk. Evaluating nations by playing them against the AI carries a high risk of identifying false positive imbalances. Conversely, evaluating nations by making the AI play them against you proves nothing--perhaps an imbalance exists but the AI isn't set up to exploit it. Therefore, I'm having trouble seeing how MP can be dismissed when you're trying to analyze balance, since it's the only opportunity you have to play against an opponent as intelligent as you.

Speaking as an SP player, I highly appreciate the MP players' finely-honed insights into the strategy of Dominions.

-Max
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