We all know in most every game that ai is usually a pushover and we get so strong it becomes not much fun to continue on and boring.
So I propose the AI SURPRISE programming that knows when the game has reached that point. The AI surprise is about LUCK and there should be LUCk in this game. From out of nowhere the AI will get this LUCK and will be granted an X number of the most powerful creatures in the game that it can control (but at least a stack full). It's like a one last stand of a full stack that can romp and rampage the human player at will until he/she can come up with a plan and idea to defeat this monstrous stack of evil. (think of the Golden Horde Invasion of MTW) It should have teleport ability and/or flying. It should be rendered with several magical abilities for protection and/or offense or both. It should be so powerful the human players should go "oh sh*t where did he get all that sh*t"
Nothing I love more than to hear players complain about the ai cheating. lol Because it's quite alright for them to use every exploit in the book but if the ai gets one thing out of whack it's CHEATING LIKE A SOMBIATCH. lol
Now before you whine and wahaa Medieval Total War the first one actually has this feature. It is after you have destroyed a faction that it will return and when it does man oh mercy it returns with some very powerful units and usually a stack of them. I always loved this feature in MTW even though plenty of times it stomped me back and took several of my conquests it was still fun and challenging and of course the first time It happened quite a SURPRISE.
I am completely in line with you there since I don't see the need for maintenance in Elemental as well. I'm just saying that Civ's approach did its job. But there's nothing like essence in that game.
The AI will never be smart enough to warrant such a slider, it should always be at full intelligence and any effort to dumb it down is wasted, the bonus slider is all that is needed.
Depends on how good the AI will be, if it's comparable to the AI in GalCiv2 9which I expect from Brad) the first slider could be usefull for some people. If I remember correctly the AI in GalCiv2 would get some bonus starting at the Painfull level, but some were complaining they couldn't win the game at THough / Hard. They were mostly beginners I guess, but it's always nice to have the option to start out at a somewhat easier level and go to some harder level once you know the game.
While I also think that any player with a game or two under thier belt can woop the AI, theres an interesting point to be made here. Perhaps a slider not for how smart the AI is but rather how "gamey" it is.
The more gamey it is, the harder it tries to stop you, to the point of being uncooperative and unnecessarily agressive.
The less gamey it is, the more "realistic" it is and the more it plays like its running a nation and not playing a game.
Having a slider for THAT might actually be really cool. Some people want to sit back and just Roleplay a kingdom, others want to gun it against an insane AI for highscores. Both gameplay types are valid.
Civ4 had toggles for "No War", "Always War/Peace", "No Tech Brokering", "More Aggressive Barbarians" etc.
If they're going to add these features, better to make them as toggles you can pick individually rather than a slider which gives you far less control.
Not for nothing psychoravin, but using MTW's "reappearing factions" feature as an example is actually a flawed comparison, as -- contrary to your claim -- they're *not* guaranteed to show up again. It's not something that happens automatically; the player can prevent faction re-emergences (at least in their own territory) if they're paying attention.
Destroyed factions in MTW only reappear if loyalty in one (or more) of their former provinces drops below 120% and there's at least one uncrowned heir that was still alive at the time his faction was originally destroyed.
Example: Say the French are wiped out in 1120, but that the French king had an underage son named Jean who was only 10 years old at the time. That means that starting in 1126 (when Jean would come "of age" at 16) until he "died" (probably around 1180, as he would be 70 at that point), the French could reappear with him as king. Even then, however, Jean and the French could only re-emerge if the faction(s) that currently owns their former lands allowed loyalty to dip below 120% -- if loyalty stays above that mark (and a human player would likely make sure to do so), then the French will never reappear regardless.
Anyway, my point is that just as factions in MTW aren't guaranteed to reappear, nor should the AI in Elemental suddenly & automatically receive magical "lucky" bonuses simply as a response to a human player (or AI player, for that matter) reaching the proverbial "critical mass" where victory is inevitable. If the AI is able to thwart a human player like some of the examples cited by other folks in this thread, then that's well and good. If not, however....well then it loses; plain & simple. I respect your desire to keep the end-game from becoming the usual grind, but to give the AI massive cheats/bonuses like you've described is not the way to go about it.
I don't wish to start an arguement, but how would sliders, an inherently degree-based system, give you less control than boolean "on-off" switches?
None the less, the point isn't how its implemented, they could make different exe's for all I care. I just think the idea should be implemented. Some like kingdom sims, some like zerg-rush's. Having that option independent of difficulty and any "AI bonus handicap" option would give players more options - always a good thing
Because if a slider starts at one end with all of those things on and at the other end all of them off, will it also provide every single combination in between? If the answer is no, then it gives you less control. If the answer is yes, then that is one funky slider and I'd argue it's even a misuse of a slider.
It's rather odd that I find myself defending Endofdayz, but I realy must point out that (s)he said sliderS, as in one for each thing. You would have the thing being all the way not preasant at one end, and all the way presant at the other, but the strength of each machanic would also be changeable, in a way that oolean checkboxes simply cannot replicate (unless, I suppose, there were a whole lot of them for each mechanic.....)
I wasn't arguing against that, I was arguing against a single slider with a whole bunch of different unrelated mechanics on it.
I hope that nothing even similar to the original concept stated is placed within the game.
If the player is doing well then why should he be punished for that? Sure there should be a system that slows progress (the constantly mentioned internal politics and economic trouble system would cover quite well) as if the player has built a solid backing for his/her faction over time then it's no big deal, he played well and is reaping the rewards.
IMHO Gameplay should be equal, The AI and the player should both have the same positives and negatives for doing certain things, to me it feels fairly shoddy when a developer gives a bonus to the AI to balance things out. If things are (and should be) balanced out correctly then even the smaller players should be able to give the bigger ones an "uh oh" moment. Elemental already has a little of this, you could as a smaller player by some side-quest recruit one of the bigger monsters (like a dragon) and use it tactically to deal some serious damage.
Also there is a flaw with this uber stack idea, if it was summoned and managed to push the player into a corner do they get an uber stack? or are they just robbed of their win cause they couldn't defeat one troop even though they had outmanuvered the AI well enough beforehand to get to that situation? that seems like an unfair punishment through and through...
sorry to say psycoravin but this idea gets a from me, it would need a LOT of balance revision before I could consider it a possibility as a welcome addition to the game.
Horrible idea. Like in WarCraft 3 if I kill the main enemy hero and half the army then all of a sudden two tier three melee units come from thin air and join him....sure it keeps the challenge up but it will become a total bore since you're not rewarded for your conquests.
And a anti-steamroller effect based on armysize is also horrible since it will slow down the game....it will become like WarCraft 3 where people use 49population to avoid low upkeep until lategame where they avoid high upkeep....and if the penalties are severe then the players will be forced to go the other routes like magic, diplomacy or the master quest instead of good'ol conquest if they want to win. And speaking from a RTS standpoint, without constant clashes, scouts that raid a bit and such it becomes boring if people are just going for their quest or teching up (magic & diplomacy in a gross simplification.)
I just played my first game of Twilight of the Arnor this weekend - I have to say I was surprised at the AI improvements over original GalCiv2. (Now won't I look stupid if there were no AI changes!) On normal difficulty it seemed to give me a lot better of a game, with the AI reacting as I would expect another human to react - I was going for an ascension victory and was very pleased at the AI's reaction and repeated efforts to shut me down.
Yes, the AI reaction is trong. Last time I wanted the peaceful ascession victory I was forced to the military one. If someone declares war to me and is weaker - it is definitely bad idea.
While I don't agree with the idea of giving AI freebies out of the blue to keep the game challenging, I have a similar but different idea:
When an AI is clearly losing, they might have a priority shift, and assume a new decision making algorithm that dictates their behavior. For instance, if they are slowly losing cities to you late game and it appears that they cannot gain allies to turn the tide, they have a good chance to switch to a desperate-times-call-for-desperate measures algorithm in which they might, say, move all of their units into one massive army, leave all but perhaps their capital defenseless, and book it toward your channeler/capital city in a risky move to seize victory from the jaws of defeat (think Battle of the Bulge). If they are lucky enough to achieve this specific objective, it might improve the odds of other opponents (who were sitting on the fense or have poor diplomatic relations with you) being inspired to join with the cause against you.
Now, this kind of strategic shift doesn't have to come precisely in this flavor or occur every single time you are winning a war late game, but the general idea is that the AI makes a desperate move that has a chance for catastrophic success or catastrophic failure--- the chance of either being contingent on how deep of a mess the AI is in.
This would serve to remedy a few separate problems. First, it will challenge the player at a time when they would normally be slowly and tediously steam rolling opponents in other strategy games. Second, if the AI is unsuccessful in its all or nothing bid, it is much easier to inflict a decisive defeat upon it, thus avoiding the boring chain of time-consuming-guarenteed-victory-battles involved with defeating opponents (perhaps the remnants of the opponent's civilization will begin defecting over to you or offer an unconditional surrender once it has failed to reach its specific objective, with their remaining cities flipping over to you over the course of X number of turns.)
This method doesn't require any cheating on the AI's part, but can still spice up the late game when victory looks like it is almost guarenteed.
Then we weren't argueing lol. I would want a range of atleast a few sliders, though for simplicity they would likely make it 2 at most, who knows eh?
Not a horrible idea, but truth be told there are non-military ways to win. If your close to a magic victory (or whatever) and the AI hits your borders with a horde of soldiers... im personally not going to be "happy". The AI should see your going to win, and start a limited war with you, but realistically suicide attacks to stop the player scream gamey.
How should it be handled? The AI should start problems with you and maybe even be given minor bonuses as the end begins to dawn, but as I said earlier, the end should be the end. Don't prolong a well deserved victory artificially. The games real shine will be in the fight the AI puts up as the game plays out, not in its final moments. I have played civ since civ2, and ive started probably a few hundred games. Ive finished maybe 5? 6? the point is, the endgame really isn't where its at.
Good points, but I'm not suggesting that the AI conduct a suicide attack against you every time you are about to win. If they are fighting a war, have tried sueing for peace, and you are determined to obliterate them, it stands to reason they would try something desperate to prevent this rather than hunker down and allow you to meticulously gobble up their cities. In a lot of strategy games, the AI prioritizes a mandatory amount of defense above everything else, and this priority should change if they are facing a greatly advantaged opponent on the verge of destroying them.
I think a victory path that relies heavily on victory should get the most grief from the AI, as it stands to reason that they believe that they "might be next." This is where I would expect them to form broad alliances to prevent you from winning. On the other hand, if you are casting a spell of heal-the-world-and-I-win then it doesn't make any sense that they would rush in to prevent this from occuring.
This reminds me of a thread a long time ago about "death curses" - the ability of a channeler at the time of his death to either annihilate any nearby armies or in some other way be able to make life miserable for whoever defeated him. There was discussion about whether you would have to case a spell in advance etc. This would be a nice disincentive to absolutely finish an opponent (on the other hand he may be just a few turns from befriending a dragon or some other major accomplishment that would make him a power to be reckoned with again.
I think it plays very well into the mythology that these rare channelers, even in defeat have the power to expend the last of their essence in a significant last great act of defiance. It also creates another decision point - Do you finish him now that you have him on the ropes, knowing that you maybe be detonating a nuclear bomb? Do you keep the channeler alive which is about as safe as trying to tame a mountain lion? Also, your other opponents in the game - are they just waiting for you to finish this channeler so they can then attack you in a weakened condition?
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