Just in time for Christmas we released version 2.71 which is almost strictly about AI tweaks based on player feedback and saved games. Now, someone might ask "Why do you need save games to make the AI do [obvious thing]?". The answer is that with so many different ways of playing the game (both in terms of game setup and in-game strategies) it turns out people play the game very differently from one another. It's one of the reasons why you have most people who think the AI is really good and some people who think the AI is a total push-over. It's not that the latter group are cheating or even exploiting, they have simply discovered a strategy that is unbeatable.
But as much as version 2.71 improves the AI, I'd like to give you a sneak preview of 2.8...
Over the years, I've written a lot of different types of AI and I've generally tended to make what can broadly be called instanced adaptive AI. That is, the AI performs a series of tests on itself on the background to see how it is doing and makes a series of adjustments based on how it does on that test. This worked really well in GalCiv II for the most part
When Stardock made Galactic Civilizations III, I wasn't really involved in its design and the team chose to go with "modding" as its focus. That is, let the player have a bunch of XML files to modify how the AI works. The problem I have with that system is that it only really works if you get an AI modder who is performing the adaptation for you.
When I returned to GalCiv III for the Crusade expansion, I began working with this system to make it more adaptive. When I joined, there were 8 key areas that the "moddable AI" wasn't really suited for:
Not all 8 are equally important but all 8 need to be addressed, imo, before GalCiv III can claim the AI crown from GalCiv II: Dark Avatar.
Version 2.5 of the game was the first version to start to tackle this:
2.5: Putting together a fleet based on the state of the galaxy.
2.6: Building up its planets based on the state of the game
2.71: Exploring space that adapts to the size of the map
Those 3 items make a huge difference to the way the game plays. Being able to right-size its fleet size is crucial. You don't want an endless stream of tiny fleets uselessly attacking you and it does no good if the AI waits forever to send out some mega fleet. It was version 2.5 that really addressed this and based on what I've read on forums and Reddit I think was the key AI feature that helped word-of-mouth on the game.
Today's update, 2.71 is pretty crucial for those crazies that play on really large maps. The moddable AI had very fixed ways of exploring the galaxy and as we've increased the map size over time, the AI had very limited abilities to adapt. Contrary to what people who lose the game would have you believe, the AI can't "see" the planets. It has to explore them. It has its own FOW just like you (and that's one reason the AI uses so much memory -- every tile has to hold the FOW state for up to 255 players and there's a ludicrous number of tiles on the largest map size.
At 2.5, the AI satisfied most people. At 2.71, we are definitely in "diminishing" returns. But 2.8 is something I'm really excited about. Here's a sneak preview screenshot:
So this is from a game I was playing last night. That's 3 enemy fleets with with transports. On normal difficulty. Things didn't go well for me after that. Which isn't to say my work is done. While 2.8 addresses the moddable AI fleet governor (yea, there's an XML file you can mess with that says what must be in an AI fleet that no one has ever touched) to have that fleet adapt based on the player's needs, it doesn't deal with the moddable ship design template which affects the quality of those fleets (so you end up with meh enemy ships). HIgher difficulty levels can fix that and frankly, 17 "meh" ships will still wipe out most players.
The other thing about that screenshot is that each of those fleets is traveling at 7 moves per turn. This is due to the AI adapting its research path based on the state of the galaxy.
Next up is having the ORDER in which the AI builds improvements be based on its needs rather than based on modding. At this point, you probably wonder, what happens to the modding? The answer, nothing good. Moddable AIs are a bad idea imo. A good AI should work in a way that is well beyond our understanding. Not because it's "smart" but because it should be very complex.
My job, as the AI guy, is to simply come up with tests the AI uses to measure itself and adapt to it. That's how I've been doing it since the OS/2 days. The more data I have access to, the better tests I can perform and the AI makes adjustments based on that.
I don't do this for you guys, I do it for me. Because an adaptive AI will surprise you. Last night when those 3 fleets showed up, I woke my poor wife up when I yelled "Oh shit!" because I was totally not expecting that. Until the adaptive transport fleet AI was made, the AI had never put together a fleet group like this.
After the adaptive improvement construction is handled, next up is the AI ship building being adaptive. That's going to take some time.
As some of you know, what motivates me is you guys. That's why I harp on the Steam reviews so much. If people don't like the game, I don't really want to work on it. If you haven't already reviewed the game, I encourage you to do so.
There is a small chance that I might get an opt in of my first pass of 2.8 before Christmas. But people are starting to go on vacation so no promises. In the meantime you can hang out with us on Discord.
I agree with this. It wasn't a problem when only the races in the game were available, but when factions and civilizations could be easily created or downloaded from the workshop, it could get confusing. I was playing a game before Crusade with random opponents after downloading a lot of factions. In the game were three that looked like the Terran Alliance, but weren't. Even worse, the Terran Alliance was also in the game. I never knew which one I was talking to. When one declared war on me I had to check carefully to be sure I wasn't going to attack the wrong one.
I solved this by modding a lot of the conversations in the FlavorText.xml to include the name and race of the "person" that had contacted me. I tried to mod the text in the UIText.xml to get the information to appear in the message box, but it looked like this:
Incoming Message From {Leadername:1} of the {Playerfaction:1}
The UIText.xml doesn't work the same way as FlavorText.xml, so I gave up on that.
It seems that bugs are an issue that everyone is concerned with. I don't think the program is overly buggy but I have seen some as well. I have done a fair amount of programming, not on the level that Frogboy does, but enough to understand difficulties and needs. One need is to report bugs since knowing a problem exists is a necessary first step in fixing it. But I am guilty of not doing it when I find things. I always say I will save the game later and send something to you guys but never get around to it. One thing that would be nice for me is to have a simple way to tell you what I see and send you what you need to recreate or at least look into it. So in saying that, maybe you could create a way for me to report from inside the game so I don't have to leave the game and therefore not put it off and never do it. Maybe a button or menu item that initiates a save of the appropriate data and allows for me to write a summary of the problem. Then submit via email all from the game. This allows for you to get the data you need to fix things as well as making it easy enough to do without putting off. Just a thought. I am sure there are ways to improve this suggestion however the key is allowing it to be done right then and making it easy so us lazy bums that live a large part of our lives playing your creation can get back to doing it.
Thanks for all the effort 😊. Have reviewed the game. Absolutely love the game
Hi, I've got used to "Hexes" although i still don't really like them and I gave up commenting during the Founder's Beta stage.
I do like the change to the strategic resources needing to be harvested and used to build Ship Components or Improvements that came with V2.7.x which is more realistic than previously but it does tend to water-down my enjoyment levels because of the choice you have to make on using them on planet infrastructure or on starbases or your fleet of ships. My fix for this is my recent discovery of the Map Editor so that I can create a galaxy that has plenty of resources and add some more resources and especially add some high quality planets because map generation usually litters Dead planets everywhere even when High Quality planets and habitable planets should be abundant. I consider planets with tiles of 9 & <9 to be uninhabitable unless they have an urgently required rare resource.
Having read all the above, I now know why, when reloading my latest game, that my 2 fleets which had built up turn moves, through activating anomalies, to 15 per turn and 9 per turn, suddenly lost this ability with turns down to 9 and 7 moves; negative enjoyment achieved.
I had also edited the XML files that set the paramaters of the values of resources/anomalies (Goody-Hut spots) for Explorers before starting even the previously abandoned game, only to find that my more generous paramaters are being completely ignored [edited in the Crusade files section only]. You sure the XML files are modable [or just not like this] ?
So what has any of this to do with the AI of the game ? the short answer is nothing except to remember that the guy who wrote the rule book for this genre of games, Sid Mieir, said that the objective of the game should always be to provide rewards and that includes having an AI that doesn't detract from the gameplay and is still operative in the late game [= more rewards].
Other niggles include the fact that population growth is confusing because it seems to need both food and an improvement - a city, that will hopefully now be upgradeable for higher capacity rather than having to use another tile to provide a further improvement [whatever the larger city thing was called]. And it remains a bug that you cannot place tile resources that planets are allocated yourself, instead we still suffer the automatic clumping together of tile features so that the adjacencies contradict each other or just become unuseable.
I have still not managed to learn the ship customization possibilities at all, my first attempt failed and whereas GC2's ship designer worked, GC3's hard-point attachment spots don't. To summarize GC3 doesn't fullfill it's ambitions and at the moment doesn't have that elusive "just-1-more-turn" playability [I don't find difficulty Fun].
This is a great idea, some kind of quick bug reporting system would surely help. Or perhaps just a dedicated bug reporting forum section for a start (like Beta Feedback, but that is only for beta versions, right?). Or a form to quickly submit a bug report visibly linked on the main page.
But I have to say that the game has improved greatly from the initial release and I now consistently get that "one more turn" feeling I got with GCII, especially since Crusade. Positive Steam review is already done. Keep up the good work!
Love GalCiv3. Love Crusade even more. It's one of the best 4X games I've played in 35+ years of gaming. It's a lot better than Civ 6
There are 4 areas I'd like to see AI improvement please:
New content / DLC suggestion.
Just some thoughts.
Cheers
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