[Other games] Galactic civilizations released March 26th.

[neomax]

It is said that GalCiv makes use of the OS multi-threaded mechanism, which means unlike most turn based stragety games, GalCiv AI calculates when the player is thinking. There was a feature of 4x space strategy by Gamespot some time ago, in which the first GalCiv game on OS/2 was stated as the game with the strongest AI. I hope this will be the same in the upcoming Windows sequel.

[raynor]

IMHO, it just isn't fair to compare the AI in SEIV to that in Gal Civ. In SEIV, an adaptive AI would have to change its ship designs based on mines, satellites, fighters, drones, long range weapons, short range weapons, armor bypassing weapons, shield bypassing weapons, etc. But Gal Civ just has attack strength and defense strength. The difference, in terms of AI complexity, in my opinion, is even greater than that between chess and checkers.

Fortunately, I think Gal Civ may have a few "Civ-like" features that will make up for the extremely simple ship combat. I think the AI may have a better implementation of diplomacy and trade.

[Fyron]

Well of course if you make the game feature-barren you can have a strong AI. That is what allows very difficult chess programs to be written. But, it is variety and complexity that make 4X games great, not simplicity.

[raynor]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
Well of course if you make the game feature-barren you can have a strong AI. That is what allows very difficult chess programs to be written. But, it is variety and complexity that make 4X games great, not simplicity.

I don't remember getting blown up by a dozen battlecruisers in my Last game of chess. Although, I really did enjoy the final scenes of National Lampoon's Chess Maniac 5 Billion and 1. I downloaded that off an "abandonware" site the other day when I was getting Master of Orion 1. Man, even without sound, that game is still great. (Playing a DOS game in W2K Server, it's kinda hard to get sound.) You can sit down and play a complete game or two in a single sitting.

But I digress. Space Empires IV is an awesome and addictive multiplayer game. But there are some number of folks out there who may never take the plunge and play the game against other humans. For those folks, they may prefer a game that can be played on their own timetable. In such a case, all the cool features aren't going to matter much if the AI doesn't use them.

We'll just have to wait and see. I'm telling myself that I'm gonna wait for the GameSpot review before buying Gal Civ. But that's a lie. I'm gonna buy every space game that comes out. Oh well...

[Fyron]

I don't remember getting blown up by a dozen battlecruisers in my Last game of chess.

No, but it boils down to essentially the same thing. Chess has no customization. It has relatively few options. You always get the same starting pieces, and there is no ability to change how they function. I never said GalCiv was equal to chess, I was making an analogy to show why it could have good AI. When there is no customization possible and there are relatively few tactical/strategic options, the AI can be programed well. This is why Chess AIs can be very very challenging; there is a lack of advanced features in Chess. This relates to comparing GalCiv to SE4, because GalCiv lacks most of the feaures of SE4. So, it is only logical that better AI can be written for it. It has less depth, and lack of depth is what allows good AI routines. I personally prefer some depth in the game and mediocre AI to few features and a killer AI. I am not saying that GalCiv standing on its own has no depth; it will probably have some. But, compared to a game like SE4, it will come up rather lacking (esp. in the combat department).

[raynor]

If (Big If) Gal Civ has challenging AI, then this might be an accurate comparison of Gal Civ and SEIV to Chess. In a Gal Civ game, you start out with a King, a Queen, 2 Bishops, 2 Knights, 2 Rooks and 8 pawns. You carefully deploy each piece in the beginning game trying to control as much territory as possible. You carefully play out the middle game. Then, you try your best to deploy each piece to produce a result matching your goal of winning. The AI is equivalent to any of the chess programs with which Gary Kasparov is competing.

In SEIV, you start out with a King, seven queens and eight pawns. But they are really cool looking queens and pawns because you can customize how they look. When you pick them up, they talk to you in the language of your choosing. You can move the pawns, 1, 2, 3 or 4 spaces and sometimes attack forward instead of diagonally. That is what is happening on your side. On the other side, they just have the standard pieces--which although they can be any color you want, are just the standard chess pieces that move in just the standard chess way. But the AI has no opening book and does a 0-ply search looking for moves.



[ March 15, 2003, 18:14: Message edited by: raynor ]

[Fyron]

See... with SE4, the pieces are often different. In GalCiv, it looks like they will be about the same (just very minor variations of 2 or 3 traits with new tech levels). So, comparing SE4 to Chess is not a very good basis of comparison (at least, less so than comparing GalCiv to Chess, which isn't that great to begin with ).