Putting the 'role' back in role-playing games since 2002.
Donate to Codex
Good Old Games
  • Welcome to rpgcodex.net, a site dedicated to discussing computer based role-playing games in a free and open fashion. We're less strict than other forums, but please refer to the rules.

    "This message is awaiting moderator approval": All new users must pass through our moderation queue before they will be able to post normally. Until your account has "passed" your posts will only be visible to yourself (and moderators) until they are approved. Give us a week to get around to approving / deleting / ignoring your mundane opinion on crap before hassling us about it. Once you have passed the moderation period (think of it as a test), you will be able to post normally, just like all the other retards.

9 Ways that 4X AIs disappoint us

kyrub

Augur
Joined
Aug 13, 2009
Messages
347
But I dunno, the archetypical 4X has basically three different stages that should all be interesting and exciting and hardly any game has even gotten close. You need to have lot of micro things to do at the start and it's cool to get nitty gritty with the details. Then you get to the middle portion where you don't really want to fiddle with asteroid mines because you have bigger fish to fry. Finally you reach the late game portion where your stellar empire is big enough that you only need to focus on the macro level. I think the best 4X games have gotten two of those right but nothing has gotten all three.

I think Master of Magic got somewhat close to the formula. The original game was full of little problems, that is sure, but the blend worked pretty well.
All three stages were exciting, the beggining is hard micro, the midgame is getting the advantage through some bold actions and in the late game - although there is no solution to the micro - the player could have simply overlooked it for the exciting variety of ways of crushing your enemy.
 

Norfleet

Moderator
Joined
Jun 3, 2005
Messages
12,250
Game can simply limit the number of actions/orders player can do/issue per turn. So, he can command small kingdom/army by himself, but has to resort to AI governors/barons/generals later.
I find that kind of thing mostly just discriminates against the player, since the AI is still able to order all his actions just fine.
 

MilesBeyond

Cipher
Joined
May 15, 2015
Messages
716
But I dunno, the archetypical 4X has basically three different stages that should all be interesting and exciting and hardly any game has even gotten close. You need to have lot of micro things to do at the start and it's cool to get nitty gritty with the details. Then you get to the middle portion where you don't really want to fiddle with asteroid mines because you have bigger fish to fry. Finally you reach the late game portion where your stellar empire is big enough that you only need to focus on the macro level. I think the best 4X games have gotten two of those right but nothing has gotten all three.

What has this got to do with AI? Well, you can't just take away features from the player mid-game (or can you?) but there is the risk that those micro things that are cool details in the beginning become tiresome busywork late game. Introduce friendly AI that handles those things. Make it capable enough that players actually want to to use it.

This is why I have such a hard time deciding whether I like Stellaris' sector system or not. For those who haven't played the game, you can only have a certain number of systems under your control without penalty. After that, you need to start splitting them off into sectors, which puts system within the sector under the control of the AI. You can add and remove systems as needed, and determine what the sector focuses on. It's a mechanic that I'd basically sum up as "It's cool, but..." Sectors are a great way to minimize micromanagement in the mid-late game, as you have a lot more control over them than you would with your typical "governor" feature from most 4Xs. At the same time, though, the restrictions feel too arbitrary and it's lacking a certain something that I can't quite put my finger on. It suffers specifically from the low amount of planets you're able to have under your direct control, making the sector mechanic kind of a drag for people who enjoy micromanagement.

I think Master of Magic got somewhat close to the formula. The original game was full of little problems, that is sure, but the blend worked pretty well.
All three stages were exciting, the beggining is hard micro, the midgame is getting the advantage through some bold actions and in the late game - although there is no solution to the micro - the player could have simply overlooked it for the exciting variety of ways of crushing your enemy.

Late game MoM became so much more enjoyable once I discovered the magic of the Grand Vizier. He often makes questionable decisions but you're at a point in the game where that doesn't matter at all. Alternatively, set all your cities to Produce Trade Goods and not have to worry about it. Late game micro definitely benefits from the fact that you probably aren't going to need much new produjction. To me, the challenge is mid-game, where things are still undecided enough that building the right things is an important decision, but your empire has probably grown large enough that it's going to be a pain to manage all those buildings.
 

Ludovic

Valravn Games
Developer
Joined
Mar 7, 2016
Messages
71
Location
The Cold North
To me sectors feel like a punishment, partly because the sector AI is bad, and partly because it takes away my sense of progress. As you say, the number of planets before you need sectors is very low and feels arbitrary. I don't even get to the point of feeling I'm micromanaging before the game takes away my control with forced sectors. Also, if you have 5 well-developed planets that you do not need to micro beyond upgrading when you get a new tech - it feels annoying to have to give them to the AI, if you want to build up a colony. A colony which you generally can't micro, because it takes a while to grow.

I like that they made it so microing 100 planets isn't the optimal playstyle - but I don't like that the game design is so aggressive about forcing sectors on me. I also feel my influence on the sector governors is too limited. If I'm the autocratic god-emperor of warmongering murder-aliens, I should be able to dictate in harsh and exacting detail what their production quotas and acceptable improvements are. If it is some hippie decentralized democracy, I can live with them having full internal control. It doesn't help that the sector AI was really bad at release. Not sure what it's like now, but it really turned me off from the game (combined with the annoying tech and ship battle mechanics). Also - why does it have to be sectors? I should be able to have planetary or system-level governors, and have the sectors be a fluffy lore thing. I don't like the game forcing this structure on me.
 

Sarmatian

Novice
Joined
Jan 16, 2009
Messages
13
I think the general problem with sectors in Stellaris is that they haven't decided what their role is - are they supposed to be a hindrance to the player (forcing him to surrender control of most of his empire to incompetent AI) or help the player, by reducing micromanagement.

The problem is further exemplified with sectors having very little effect mechanically. If comparison is drawn with Crusader Kings, where you were also forced to surrender a huge chunk of your land to AI control, it's easy to see how a mechanic well integrated into the game looks like. The balancing of different characters had meaning and you had a lot of ways to influence it. You had to take it into account when you were making strategic decisions. Stellaris lacks also those things, and that's why I probably won't be playing it.

When it comes to AI, I don't think it's such a difficult topic. We all know what the problems are, we all know how they should addressed, it's just a matter whether devs have enough money/time/desire to do it.

The bigger problem with 4X games is design. When eXploration is finished, there's little left for you to find out. Then you start optimization of your empire. And why do you optimize? So that you could conquer more land. Then you optmize new land so that you could conquer more. You're basically stuck in an endless loop until the game ends.

There needs to be different stuff to do in game, and different ways to win, if applicable. I'm not talking about Civ style victories, which are mostly a red herring, but different playstyles. Not all parts of the map should be equally interesting to everyone. If you're building a trading empire, a single island/planet might be extremely important trade route for you, but just a useless piece of rock to someone else. Your government type or policies or culture or religion might make some area manageable for you but a nightmare for someone else.

When it turns to just whoever controls more map has most money and best tech and largest army, it becomes boring as soon as you acqure critical mass.
 

MilesBeyond

Cipher
Joined
May 15, 2015
Messages
716
I think the general problem with sectors in Stellaris is that they haven't decided what their role is - are they supposed to be a hindrance to the player (forcing him to surrender control of most of his empire to incompetent AI) or help the player, by reducing micromanagement.

Oh man, exactly. Couldn't have said it better myself.

The bigger problem with 4X games is design. When eXploration is finished, there's little left for you to find out. Then you start optimization of your empire. And why do you optimize? So that you could conquer more land. Then you optmize new land so that you could conquer more. You're basically stuck in an endless loop until the game ends.

There needs to be different stuff to do in game, and different ways to win, if applicable. I'm not talking about Civ style victories, which are mostly a red herring, but different playstyles. Not all parts of the map should be equally interesting to everyone. If you're building a trading empire, a single island/planet might be extremely important trade route for you, but just a useless piece of rock to someone else. Your government type or policies or culture or religion might make some area manageable for you but a nightmare for someone else.

When it turns to just whoever controls more map has most money and best tech and largest army, it becomes boring as soon as you acqure critical mass.

I agree with you. I've always thought it would be cool if more 4Xs had a "Quest" like victory condition. I can think of one that had something like it, maybe it was Fallen Enchantress? I can't remember. But some way to win the game through exploration. I mean, "Quest to find/destroy the ultimate artifact" is basically the most common trope in fantasy literature, and "Quest for all-powerful ancient technology" isn't far behind it in scifi. Players are tasked with carrying out a series of tasks or finding a series of artifacts that, when finally completed, wins them the game. The issue is that this is a tough thing to balance - if it's too easy, other players won't be able to block it. If it's too hard, it stops being a viable alternative to a straight-up military takeover, which defeats the point of having it in the first place. But the idea is something that keeps exploration fresh and makes it something you can do the whole game. I also think it's something that will really only work in a game with large maps.


I'm of two minds on the "not all parts of the map should be equally interesting to everyone" part. I agree with you that this can make things interesting, but the downside is that it also has the potential to make things more boring - competition for scarce resources is the major drive for a lot of expansion and conquest in most 4X games. I actually think HoMM does this pretty well - all resources are useful to all factions, but each faction has a specific resource it needs a lot of. If you're playing HoMM 3 as Tower, a second or third Crystal mine is a luxury, but a second or third Gem pond is something you're gonna definitely crack some skulls over. Because all resources are useful, competition remains, but we also get that "some things are more important than others" feel between different factions and playstyles.


I think the challenge with different ways to win coming from different playstyles, though, is that it limits adaptability. It can create a situation where you more or less need to have your entire playstyle worked out from the beginning, and shifting gears becomes a lot more difficult. I think it's a good idea, but it's something that would have to be done very carefully. 4Xs already suffer from a snowball effect and feeling kinda deterministic; making each victory condition related to totally different playstyles could, if implemented poorly, exacerbate this.

Finally, I always gotta give a plug for how the Warlords handled this. Around the time you reach critical mass, the AI will surrender to you. You have the option to keep going if you enjoy the mop-up phase, but the fact that victory almost immediately follows the point where victory is a foregone conclusion is a huge deal, and it's a shame how few 4Xs have picked up on that. Civ 3 and 4 tried it with the Domination victory, and that worked to an extent. But it just wasn't the same.
 

Jeff Graw

StarChart Interactive
Developer
Joined
Nov 27, 2006
Messages
802
Location
Frigid Wasteland
Very few 4Xs get combat right anyway. Tactical combat is cool but if it's poorly done, it just gets repetitive and annoying. Good example: the remastered Master of Orion, in which the tactical battles are a disgrace. Not that MoO1 and MoO2 had spectacular combat either. It's probably best to avoid tactical combat altogether and instead focus on the strategic.

The important thing is that ships and fleets have distinct roles, and you aren't just throwing like against like. GalCiv 1/2/3 and Endless Space both shied away from tactical combat, and both suffered immensely because the bare bones combat mechanics that remained were shallow, anti-fun, and anti-depth. Terrestrial 4X titles without tactical combat don't seem to have this problem very often (and also tend impart more importance on terrain and positioning), while space based ones usually do.

That said, I feel that there's something to be said for complexity when it comes to combat mechanics. When you have a complex enough rule-set, such as, say, BattleTech, you can derive depth organically through the novel interaction of the myriad variables that can come into play over the course of a game. And then when you enter the competitive sphere you then also have the benefit of a fluid and compelling metagame. This is ideal.

Of course complexity in itself is not a good thing, and should typically be minimised when possible. So when I make the case for complex combat mechanics, it's not with the view of making things as complex as possible, but with the resignation that a certain amount of evil is necessary and it is difficult to create deep systems without a good amount of underlying complexity (at least, unless you get very abstract).

In terms of design:

Fluid, organic, novel variable interactions > pre-defined roles > simple value check > mechanics that actually hurt depth

(In the real world this is actually more of a gradient than it is distinct classes)

My argument in favour of tactical combat is that if you were to try to create a deep rule-set where the background simulation would take place, without the ability to go in and tangibly interact with it, you're basically doomed to failure. So you probably either need a previously established rule-set that is already battle tested, or you need somewhere to hone and refine your rule-set. In Dominuns Galaxia, we have working tactical combat but it isn't all that good yet since the rules and mechanics are still being fleshed out, but we also have the ability to auto-resolve any encounter, and you can auto resolve at any point during the event. I feel that is the way to go since those that love tactical combat get it, and those who hate it don't but are left with a deeper strategic game all the same.

But I dunno, the archetypical 4X has basically three different stages that should all be interesting and exciting and hardly any game has even gotten close. You need to have lot of micro things to do at the start and it's cool to get nitty gritty with the details. Then you get to the middle portion where you don't really want to fiddle with asteroid mines because you have bigger fish to fry. Finally you reach the late game portion where your stellar empire is big enough that you only need to focus on the macro level. I think the best 4X games have gotten two of those right but nothing has gotten all three.

You don't need a lot of micro at the start. If you want a bunch of stuff to fiddle with and touch, there are plenty of mobile "games" that fill that void. If you want to solve math puzzles, there's Sudoku. 4X design is about two things: maximising depth and feeling like a bad ass emperor. Busywork accomplishes neither.

Game can simply limit the number of actions/orders player can do/issue per turn. So, he can command small kingdom/army by himself, but has to resort to AI governors/barons/generals later.

To me this seems arbitrary, but also feels like a band aid. You aren't really increasing depth, you're lowering frustration, weakening immersion (because of the arbitrary, abstract, and altogether game-y nature of the mechanic), and probably hiding real issues (eg. unnecessary busywork, inefficient UI, etc.)

A tweak that makes the idea far more compelling is to handle "action limits" organically instead of arbitrarily. So, for example in a real time setting you might introduce a communications delay based on the distance between any location and the position of your avatar. This means that there is no restriction on player actions, but that commands work better the closer you are to an asset. After a certain point, the delay in receiving information combined with the delay for that asset to receive an order makes direct micromanagement impracticable to the point of lowering performance instead of augmenting it.

The bigger problem with 4X games is design. When eXploration is finished, there's little left for you to find out. Then you start optimization of your empire. And why do you optimize? So that you could conquer more land. Then you optmize new land so that you could conquer more. You're basically stuck in an endless loop until the game ends.

There needs to be different stuff to do in game, and different ways to win, if applicable. I'm not talking about Civ style victories, which are mostly a red herring, but different playstyles. Not all parts of the map should be equally interesting to everyone. If you're building a trading empire, a single island/planet might be extremely important trade route for you, but just a useless piece of rock to someone else. Your government type or policies or culture or religion might make some area manageable for you but a nightmare for someone else.

When it turns to just whoever controls more map has most money and best tech and largest army, it becomes boring as soon as you acqure critical mass.

I agree with your initial assertion, but I'm not sure if I agree with the rest (simply because it's too easy to interpret what you wrote in a few different ways). In general, I'm not a fan of multiple victory conditions. Part of it is that multiple victory conditions have a tendency to be band-aids for bad design: Either the conflict driven core of the game is fundamentally lacking, so give the players something to distract from that, or at a certain point the game simply collapses under its own weight, becomes drastically unfun, and giving players the ability to "opt-out" early makes it more difficult to reach that point.

I also think that there's a ton more elegance in "one goal, many paths to get to it" than there is in "a handful of paths that are largely divorced from one another." So, for instance, I would find a technology victory more appealing if instead of immediately "ascending" and cutting the game short, you were to gain some form of massive military advantage that let you quickly mop up the remainder of the map that still left some room for counter-play after acquiring it (maybe another empire is frantically working on their own super weapon, maybe someone steals the deathstar plans, or maybe the rest of the galaxy unites against you and wins via sheer brute strength, etc.)
 
Last edited:

Norfleet

Moderator
Joined
Jun 3, 2005
Messages
12,250
I also think that there's a ton more elegance in "one goal, many paths to get to it" than there is in "a handful of paths that are largely divorced from one another." So, for instance, I would find a technology victory more appealing if instead of immediately "ascending" and cutting the game short, you were to gain some form of massive military advantage that let you quickly mop up the remainder of the map that still left some room for counter-play after acquiring it (maybe another empire is frantically working on their own super weapon, maybe someone steals the deathstar plans, or maybe the rest of the galaxy unites against you and wins via sheer brute strength, etc.)
More interesting is if ascending in such a manner and thus "winning" didn't actually technically end the game, and the prospect of your people leaving the material world behind and going to a better place won the game FOR YOU, but the game technically continued, only now your space is filled with the cast off material artifacts of the worlds your people have left behind. The game continues: If single player, pick another formerly AI empire to play as. If multiplayer, you're out, you've had your win, everyone else continues without you and a grab proceeds for your stuff, and someone else is free to win THEIR way.

The "Diplomatic" victory condition basically demonstrates an unfinished diplomacy endgame: Some games actually have it: You can merge into a singular Federation, at which point you, the player, get all the stuff of both parties. This shouldn't exist as an actual victory condition in and of itself, it should simply be the end stage of diplomacy, leading to the Domination condition.

Which brings to basically every other kind of victory condition: Domination. Some relevant stat becomes so allegedly overpowering that the player has effectively won and everything else would just be a mop-up. Which stat isn't terribly important since, in most cases, to attain domination in any field, the player must essentially be dominating everything. The game's basically over anyway, there's no need to drag this out. It doesn't mean the game has collapsed under its own weight necessarily, it just means that, at the point this has occurred, there is basically no comeback for the opposing side. The other sides can basically knuckle under and bend the knee at this point. The Total Elimination condition is basically a degenerate case of Domination where the player is the only independent entity remaining for whatever reason, and thus achieves the Domination conditions by default. The player can be given a victory declaration

Even here, the game doesn't necessarily have to END. Once the player has united the galaxy under his hegemony, he can still then achieve the Ascension and leave the galaxy, now completely bare of all advanced spacefaring civilization...and wait for life to evolve again, taking control of yet another fledgling power to rise from the muck, and do it all again in the galaxy he filled with all the ancient wonders. Or call it a day.
 

RayF

Arcane
Patron
Developer
Joined
Aug 6, 2015
Messages
324
More interesting is if ascending in such a manner and thus "winning" didn't actually technically end the game, and the prospect of your people leaving the material world behind and going to a better place won the game FOR YOU, but the game technically continued, only now your space is filled with the cast off material artifacts of the worlds your people have left behind. The game continues: If single player, pick another formerly AI empire to play as. If multiplayer, you're out, you've had your win, everyone else continues without you and a grab proceeds for your stuff, and someone else is free to win THEIR way.

On a related note, I've toyed with the idea of an AI empire achieving transcendence and "winning", leaving its empty planets behind as the player and other AI empires rush in to take over the remains. The player continues playing, of course.
 

whatevername

Arcane
Joined
Sep 2, 2013
Messages
666
Location
666

Nutria

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Mar 12, 2017
Messages
2,252
Location
한양
Strap Yourselves In
Specifically in MOO, I find #6 is the problem that's most noticeable. Your enemy might have enough ships to take over one of your planets, but they don't manage to get their forces concentrated at the right time and place. They just end up sending small fleets that immediately retreat as soon as they see you've got 20 missile bases. I think the AI is actually trying to be too ambitious. The way I play, I usually have most of my ships massed in one fleet and try to take one planet at a time. The AI might be better if it focused on hitting one target planet with one big stack and used the rest of its ships only for defense and diversionary attacks.

It's also frustrating when you're playing on impossible level and one of the AI players is pulling way ahead early in the game. The other AIs just blithely carry on with what they're doing when they should be trying to form an alliance and cut the top player down to size. Obviously you don't want the AI to just be trying to win the game at all costs, but they shouldn't be so passive that they vote in a leader in the first council meeting.

While you're trying to avoid making AI that cheats, I hope you're also keeping in mind how you will have it cheat if it needs to. It's a lot easier for a player to accept cheating if it's happening gradually and out of sight. Civ4 was relatively smart about this. AI players got production bonuses that slowly increased with each age. In the late game a production bonus is a lot less noticeable than it would be early on. It's also when the game has gotten complicated and the AI needs the most help.
 

Norfleet

Moderator
Joined
Jun 3, 2005
Messages
12,250
Also, if you have 5 well-developed planets that you do not need to micro beyond upgrading when you get a new tech - it feels annoying to have to give them to the AI, if you want to build up a colony.
But that's the kind of planet you WANT to give to the AI...if the AI weren't so brick stupid that it can't even handle the simple task of pushing the damn upgrade button as often as possible. You had ONE JOB. ONE JOB!
 

Ludovic

Valravn Games
Developer
Joined
Mar 7, 2016
Messages
71
Location
The Cold North
But that's the kind of planet you WANT to give to the AI...if the AI weren't so brick stupid that it can't even handle the simple task of pushing the damn upgrade button as often as possible. You had ONE JOB. ONE JOB!

Yeah, that's a fair point. Not really the subject at hand, but I find it really annoying that it's so relatively easy to have planets that are "done" for the current technological level. It feels bizarre how quickly an entire planet can be populated and industry/infrastructure/resource extraction be brought to fully optimal levels. It's not the I want the development busy-work of EU4, but some mechanics that allow me to develop and specialize these well-developed planets beyond just the tile buildings would be great.

Having the main "challenge" of planet management being optimization of tile should allow the AI to excel at handling it, but I suspect the issue that AI doesn't have a good heuristic as to what is actually optimal. If a game forces AI automation of player controlled assets there will be frustration, unless there is a way to tell the AI what is optimal and what level of investment is allowed. As in "maximize energy output during the next X months", "maximize research output over 100 years, but keep an energy surplus of X and a mineral surplus of Y", etc. That level of granularity might not be desireable to the all players, but that can be solved by adding pre-made descriptive choices ("Science", "Military") with tool tips or similar showing the details, so players can choose whether to customize or not.


Admittedly, real-time games and AI pose some challenge - which makes the Paradox AI pretty impressive, imo. It is much harder to build AI that has to perform in real-time on a wide range of hardware, than an AI for a turn-based game.
Paradox AI is the 2nd best AI ever, the only better AI is Tay. Proof: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...nd-strategy-game.101914/page-109#post-5006410

I should probably have added a caveat for Stellaris, which I speculate was released before it was done for business/financial reasons. There are certain aspects of the AI (and game) which seemed more unfinished than poorly executed. But even with the glaring flaws, it's still a fair level above the AI generally found in strategy games, where massive amounts of cheating can usually barely conceal how primitive the AI is.
 
Last edited:

mondblut

Arcane
Joined
Aug 10, 2005
Messages
22,205
Location
Ingrija
Which brings to basically every other kind of victory condition: Domination. Some relevant stat becomes so allegedly overpowering that the player has effectively won and everything else would just be a mop-up. Which stat isn't terribly important since, in most cases, to attain domination in any field, the player must essentially be dominating everything. The game's basically over anyway, there's no need to drag this out. It doesn't mean the game has collapsed under its own weight necessarily, it just means that, at the point this has occurred, there is basically no comeback for the opposing side. The other sides can basically knuckle under and bend the knee at this point.

"Domination" victory is horribly anticlimactic. It's basically "your land and population %% have reached 63%, yay YOU WIN". The only thing worse than that is ending the game by timer. I'd rather abandon the game unfinished once I feel it became too stale and pointless to continue, than have the game decide it for me based on some arbitrary counter.
 

As an Amazon Associate, rpgcodex.net earns from qualifying purchases.
Back
Top Bottom