My Final Verdict (until the next patch, that is...)

[Richard]

I know Aaron has a TCP/IP setup planned in the future, and I actually think the AI is fairly good. Sometimes (like any AI) it does some stupid things but that is to be expected.

I would encourage you to drop Aaron a line at bugs@malfador.com. Be specific and send him specific save games to show your problems otherwise he cannot reproduce the problems.

Aaron offers his community stellar support, but in order to do that he cannot read every board.

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Sarge is coming...

Richard Arnesen
Director of Covert Ops
Shrapnel Games
http://www.shrapnelgames.com

[Trancejeremy]

Just how practical is 'live' multiplayer, though? In case you hadn't noticed, SEIV is an epic games. It takes a long, long long time to finish a game. Unless you don't have a life, how many people can spend the 40 hours (just a estimate) to fully play a game?

Live multiplayer works well for simple or short games like RTSes or FPSes, where is there no real depth, but complex ones are too long for live mp. IMHO anyway...

[Kodos]

Personally, I can live without Multi-player. (I just think games 4X games like SEIV are too big and long to work that route).

On the other hand, I also think the criticisms of the AI are spot on! The same behavior (or lack thereof) I commented on in the demo still seem to be in place with the full Version: Races that are described as Xenophobic or Psychotic and supposedly "never make treaties" (direct quote from race description), come begging for alliances a few turns after I encounter them. And they never seem to break them or get PO'd at my actions: When I took to blowing up one supposedly Violent race's ships via Intel Ops, all said race ever did in retaliation was send a strongly worded note!

I don't want a MOO2 clone (as some people around here seem to), but I would like to see some distinct personality traits instilled into the AI races. Or, at least, a little agression!

[Talenn]

From what I can tell, the 'personality type' of the AIs are immaterial. A 'Berserk Psychotic' acts no differently than a 'Serene Engineer'. This is because they share the same 'Angry file' and the same 'Politics file' as well as the same 'Speech' file.

The game data is set up so that each race can have its own files, but at present, they dont. They seem to all use the default...hence VERY flat personalities. I'm tweaking it for my data, but with no info on what the files MEAN, its trial and error. Its very time consuming.

Also, I can manage to get it to be hostile towards the players, but there seems to be way to instigate it to INITIATE attacks. I've seen it happen occasionally, but more often than not, it sits idly by and is squashed piecemeal.

I think the only things needed are:

1) to flesh out the files for each race, so that they are distinctive.

2) to make the AI in general (and ESPECIALLY the 'aggressive' types) more likely to pick fights with the other players.

3) to have the AI engage in 'punitive' raids and raids bent on economic destruction. I'd like to see it seen fleets (not individual ships like I see now more often than not) in the opponent's backfield and laying waste to their colonies.

If the AI was simply forcing the players to REACT instead of act, its other flaws would be greatly diminshed or at least not as noticable. If anyone else has played SSI's Imperialism II, you know just how unpleasant the AIs can be. They dont cheat, but they do know how to kick you when you are down!

All in all, it just seems like it just needs some more time invested in the AI dept. Now that I think the 'mechanics' of the game are fairly stable, MM should be able to begin working on the 'flavor' a bit more. I hope so as its the only thing really missing from an otherwise great game.

If anyone is interested in experimenting with the AI, I'm more than willing to test.

Talenn

[Voidhawk]

I think you've got it nailed down, Talenn. I've been perusing the AI texts and what you say seems to be the case. I think perhaps a little too much emphasis was placed on the player's ability to customize the AI and not enough on basic hard-coded AI behavior. If you're able to do anything significant with it, let me know! I'd love to beta for you .

Richard: Thanks for the tip, I'll do just that. As far as the AI being pretty good, I'll admit that it does perform basic strategic tasks well enough. I also understand that AI algorithms for 4x games are probably some of the hardest to code convincingly. However, there are many fundamental features lacking. The destruction/takeover of an AI homeworld for example (instead of invoking a good measure of irrevocable AI hatred against the offending player), merely takes the current AI's diplomatic stance down a couple of notches. This is only one of the more glaring issues I've come across, but I'll save the rest for my e-mail .

Kodos: Sure, I could easily overlook the lack of multiplayer features... with a more challenging AI element. I'd vote for getting the AI up to snuff BEFORE working on the multiplayer anyday.

Trancejeremy: I have to strongly disagree. There are many popular turn-based games of "epic" proportions that have thrived via the Online gaming community. SSG's Warlords series and multiplayer Civilization/Civ2 Gold are two that pop into mind. Also, I have a 5-workstation LAN in my home and I would be (almost) ashamed to admit how many countless hours have been spent with friends playing "live" turn-based strat games . Allowing the host to save the game when everyone decides to call it a night and continue at a later time is an easy workaround for the lucky people who have "lives" to get back to. Myself, I'd be more than willing to spend an all-nighter or three on SEIV with some good human competition . I'm guessing I'm not the only one.

Reading through these Posts and learning of MM's awesome reputation for customer satisfaction, I'm confident they'll come through with some better AI. Turn-based gamers tend to be a patient lot, and I'm certainly no exception.

[Jubala]

quote:

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Originally posted by Voidhawk:
Myself, I'd be more than willing to spend an all-nighter or three on SEIV with some good human competition . I'm guessing I'm not the only one.

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You're damn right about that. You're not the only one. SEIV would be a perfect game to play over the dorm network at univ (a very big network with all dorms connected ) or back home with my friends on our LAN. Lugging around a bunch of computers and setting up a LAN at someones house for a weekend of gaming is not unheard of. Quite common actually.

[seldon99]

I agree with the original poster, this game has everything except the most important element: competition.

There is so much to like about this game it is a really pity that the AI is so inept.

My first real game (I played the demo once) I made maximum difficulty for the computer (I guess I could give the CP advantages) and proceeded to play. Now being very unfamiliar with the technologies, and the mechanics I made a lot of mistakes.

However, by turn 90 I had almost 3x the points of the nearest computer player. Every turn all of the computer wanted to be my ally. I never attack a CP and they never attacked me.

I was getting very bored and was curious about the new tech. So I proceeded to build research center and for the next 60 turns I just simply clicked on the next button. I didn't move a single ship, at the end of the period. I was still beating the computer players by a wide margin. There were plenty of undefended colonies for the computer to attack and at least one empire had the same environment I had. You'd think that the AI would prioritize attacking a Huge
world with good resources and the right atmosphere. I don't think a 10 small satellites would stop a determined attack!