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Game with the best AI ?

Silva

Arcane
Joined
Jul 17, 2005
Messages
4,778
Location
Rio de Janeiro, Brasil
What strategy game has the best AI you've seen? I'm more interested in grand strategy like CIV, SMAC, Paradox, RoTK, etc. but feel free to tell about any game you like.

Also, if possible, separate this quality in two aspects: 1) competitiveness and 2) humanlike/plausible behavior.

Eg: I love SMAC because it's AI is humanlike and full of personality. But it lacks in competitiveness and is easy to abuse aside from the highest difficulty where it CHEATS AS FUCK.
 

octavius

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Aug 4, 2007
Messages
19,182
Location
Bjørgvin
Of the Strategy games I've played enough to judge I'd rate them in roughly this order (mostly based on competitiveness):
Master of Orion
HoMM 3
SMAC
Civ 1-2
HoMM 2
HoMM 1
Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic
Age of Wonders

Sadly the AoW games, which in many other ways are the best, suffer greatly from the AI not being able to do many the same things (like exploring sites and equipping items) as the human player.
 

tindrli

Arcane
Joined
Jan 5, 2011
Messages
4,465
Location
Dragodol
i don't know. as i grow older i noticed that i tend to play easy or normal. somehow i realized that i want to play and since i don't have time as i used to i don't want to suffer. probably that's why i get bored quickly
 

Malakal

Arcane
Glory to Ukraine
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Nov 14, 2009
Messages
10,266
Location
Poland
Open Civ2 has a very very strong AI as it was designed to have a very very strong AI. Probably the hardest experience currently possible, without cheats that is.
 

Galdred

Studio Draconis
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Developer
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4,346
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Middle Empire
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
The remake of Master of Orion, remnants of the Precursots, is said to have good AI (it is made by Ail).
Pandora: First Contact has good AI too.
It is a card game, but Race for the Galaxy has an excellent AI. I think it did use self train.
Gladius AI is not too bad, as long as it doesn't play FFA (otherwise, what will usually happen is that AI 1 and 2 will murder each other, letting player finish the survivors).
 
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coldcrow

Prophet
Patron
Joined
Mar 6, 2009
Messages
1,650
Chess
M.A.X.
GalCiv 2 & 3 (shit games tho)
Pandora
Civ4 Realism Invictus
Interstellar Space:Genesis (very underrated game)
Polaris Sector (same)
 

Inconceivable

Learned
Joined
Aug 31, 2020
Messages
251
Location
Germany
C-Evo Civilization has the best AI of any Civilization-type game out there:

http://c-evo.org/text.html

The best thing about the game is that it is fully deterministic - there is no random element. A unit will always do the same amount of damage, depending on the relative strengths. There are no game mechanics like "Building the Eiffel Tower will increase AI's disposition towards you by 50%", because it doesn't make sense in a game in which every AI opponent is out to win, and it doesn't work with the deterministic nature of the game. In this way it's like chess, but at the scale of a full-blown Civilization game.
It also plays differently to Civilization in some respects, so as the developer advises, you should probably read the manual before diving in. I played a few games with it, and it really is something else. Normally I play Civ games very casually, but in this one you have to pay attention and play strategically, or you will be defeated. By smart AI, and not by cheesy hidden bonuses or bending of the rules.
 

flyingjohn

Arcane
Joined
May 14, 2012
Messages
2,945
C-Evo Civilization has the best AI of any Civilization-type game out there:
How well is the ai capable of understanding threats and actually playing the toadie if needed?
I ask because every single civ ai fails in understanding that production + science is much more dangerous then pure military score.
Also most civ ai are suicidal even against the superpower,can the ai understand that it is a bad idea to declare war on big stick guy even though they have a lot of negative modifiers .
 

Inconceivable

Learned
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251
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Germany
In the games I've played, the weaker or preoccupied AI's tend to make peace and alliances with you when it suits them, just to stab you in the back, as I guess a human player would, when they can gain an advantage from it.
The thing about C-Evo is that the AI is so effective, you usually can't afford to play the long game, putting all into science until you have the edge in technology. You will need to defend yourself throughout by investing in military units. Also, new units have to be prototyped first, costing much more production than regular units (Alpha Centuari also had this mechanic) which also puts a dent on the strategy of focusing in superior tech units.

But C-Evo has an open AI system with different AI implementations, so I guess the AI can be quite different depending on which modules you use.
 

Inconceivable

Learned
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I remember I had to learn this the hard way, on my first few games. I started out playing as I would any Civ game - focusing on prod and science, with only minimal military. At some point the enemy appeared at my borders (in one case naval invasion with transports) and my meager defenses didn't stand a chance. End of game.
 

Jason Liang

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Crait
The first game that came to mind is Chaos Overlords.

I also have a couple of digital boardgames with decent competitive AI: Twilight Struggle and Lords of Waterkeep. The LotW AI is ok but if you play fairly optimally it doesn't stand much of a chance.
 
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Jason Liang

Arcane
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Oct 26, 2014
Messages
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Crait
The first game that came to mind is Chaos Overlords.
Wow, I didn't know that. It was sitting in my gog library for all this time. Thanks!
Wait. Is Chaos Overlords working? I remember the GoG version not executing on any Windows past '95 or something.
Idk about the GoG version. The "abandonware" version I have worked on my old Win10 laptop without dosbox or emulation, haven't installed it on my new laptop yet.
 

mastroego

Arcane
Joined
Apr 10, 2013
Messages
10,250
Location
Italy
The first game that came to mind is Chaos Overlords.

I also have a couple of digital boardgames with decent competitive AI: Twilight Struggle and Lords of Waterkeep. The LotW AI is ok but if you play fairly optimally it doesn't stand much of a chance.
Race for the Galaxy is also known for its excellent AI.
Of course we're going a bit off topic there.
 

passerby

Arcane
Joined
Nov 16, 2016
Messages
2,788
C-Evo Civilization has the best AI of any Civilization-type game out there

Edit: I did spread some fake news in this post, but I leave it as it is, read my next post for corrections and additional info.

C-Evo has a slightly more realistic ruleset that makes population growth exponential, since each pop costs the same amount of food, no matter the city size.

With ruleset like this AI cheated food rows make it's pop blow past the player if given enough land to spread on and no limits on the number of cities.
It also attacks any neighbour with significantly weaker military buildup, so you have to mainatain some military, while desperately trying to keep up with exponential growth of AI with autistically optimized builder play.

The AI itself is rather basic and predictable at any given moment after few plays, it can't even spread to other continents or do a naval invasion at all, so you have to play on maps with all continents connected ( Edit: It's only a 3rd party AI, better than vanilla in builder game that has this issue ). I like the constant nutrient rows, unfortunately it makes AI bonuses overpowered and frustrating to play against, while difficulty without AI bonuses reveals how boring and barebone c-evo AI really is.

The ruleset itself is a nice *evolution* of the Civ 2 formula and probably would be great in multiplayer, but the game is too obscure to find random strangers to play with.
 
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Mortmal

Arcane
Joined
Jun 15, 2009
Messages
9,158
I think too the best are AI war and gal civ , its easier to rate poor AI , the worse i seen recently being stellaris requiring mods for wars to happen.
 

Inconceivable

Learned
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Aug 31, 2020
Messages
251
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Germany
I call this statement fake news.

C-Evo has a slightly more realistic ruleset that makes population growth exponential, since each pop costs the same amount of food, no matter the city size.

With ruleset like this AI cheated food rows make it's pop blow past the player if given enough land to spread on and no limits on the number of cities.
It also attacks any neighbour with significantly weaker military buildup, so you have to mainatain some military, while desperately trying to keep up with exponential growth of AI with autistically optimized builder play.

The AI itself is rather basic and predictable at any given moment after few plays, it can't even spread to other continents or do a naval invasion at all, so you have to play on maps with all continents connected.
I like the constant nutrient rows, unfortunately it makes AI bonuses overpowered and frustrating to play against, while difficulty without AI bonuses reveals how boring and barebone c-evo AI really is.

The ruleset itself is a nice *evolution* of the Civ 2 formula and probably would be great in multiplayer, but the game is too obscure to find random strangers to play with.

Not sure we're talking about the same game...
Last time I played, I think it was 4 years ago. But I'm fairly certain the AI didn't blow past me. The AI will play very good though, and probably carefully optimize and curate which tiles to work, etc. So as I mentioned, you can't play this game casually, like you would a normal Civilization game, or you will be crushed.
And the AI (of which there are several, but I guess I was using the standard one that comes with the game) does use naval invasions, because this is a part I vividly remember. I was feeling safe on my completely controlled, larger island, as the transports appeared on my shores and unloaded the military.
Maybe you're the one spreading fake news...
 

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