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Game with the best AI ?

Alpharius

Scholar
Joined
Mar 1, 2018
Messages
585
MoO2 vanilla has pretty good AI imo. Pick max difficulty + non-custom race for maximum challange. It cheats like a bastard on max difficulty ofc, but it managed to keep me entantrained for a year(!). (Partially because my work PC was pretty obsolete at the time so i couldn't play modern games on it). I don't think i've ever saw a better AI in a 4x strategy game. Stacraft 2 AI is possibly comparable but its a different genre.

Edit: Saw M.A.X. mentioned above. Its AI may be better but i didnt play enough games to judge. (I think i didn't ever win one skirmish against AI in that game/out of ~10 :roll:).
 
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passerby

Arcane
Joined
Nov 16, 2016
Messages
2,788
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...

OK I've refreshed my memory a bit and I indeed did spread some fake news.

It is one of the community made AIs - Liberator, that is unfinished this way and cannot into the sea, but is otherwise much better than the default one in a builder game, so I've played only connected continents to give it a shot at conquering the world.
Now I remember that stock AI was very aggressive and a threat early, but Liberator was spreading very fast and always dominated middle and late game, unless got unlucky and got destroyed early by the stock AI.

I could still after a while consistently win on the highest difficulty setting with a good start and the power of autism, since the AI's were predictable and exploitable enough to fend them off until you get a chance to catch up.
Bottom line is that most of the challenge came from ruleset and bonuses, if you made them play by the same rules they were all cacewalk like in any other 4x, if you gave them all the cheats it felt unfair and boring.

I probably over exaggerated by calling it extremely basic, I was just really disappointed after all the hype I've red about c-evo AI.
It was few years ago, but this discussion made me want to check c-evo again, I'm curious if I find it better than SMAC with thinker mod on the AI front.
 
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Mefi

Prophet
Patron
Joined
Apr 7, 2005
Messages
1,364
Location
waiting for a train at Perdido Street Station
So not grand strategy, more operational level and below. And I do need to go revisit it at some point, it's now rebranded and bundled under Command Ops and can pick up the engine and some trial scenarios for free on Steam, but my initial thought was Conquest of the Aegean. At the time I played it, close to release, the AI was pretty competent at managing its forces and leveraging the real time aspects of the game such as command delays and dysfunction.
 

Inconceivable

Learned
Joined
Aug 31, 2020
Messages
251
Location
Germany
It was few years ago, but this discussion made me want to check c-evo again, I'm curious if I find it better than SMAC with thinker mod on the AI front.

There is an AI mod for SMAC? 8-O

I had no idea you could mod SMAC in this way. Love the game so much, but the weak AI always made it hard to go back. Will have to check it out sometime. Thanks!
 

Silva

Arcane
Joined
Jul 17, 2005
Messages
4,778
Location
Rio de Janeiro, Brasil
Do these SMAC AI mods respect the factions individual profiles/philosophies? Or do they make every AI a Yang -like bloodthirsty base boomer doing boreholes in every square?

Challenge is important, but so is theme and setting.
 
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laclongquan

Arcane
Joined
Jan 10, 2007
Messages
1,870,144
Location
Searching for my kidnapped sister
The AI patch for SMAC make it a quite difficult experience compared your memory from 20 years ago~ If you havent played it, I recommend you try it.

It will be refreshing to see new SMAC experience.

As for theme and lore, I dont feel, didnt feel anything out of place with them. Gaians still green and Yang still pollute like nothing else. In fact climate disaster happened despite my forested cities.
 

Nutria

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Mar 12, 2017
Messages
2,252
Location
한양
Strap Yourselves In
Somebody mentioned M.A.X. in this thread. Went back and played it for a while. It's pretty amazing how good the AI is. It succeeds at all the stuff that you assume AI will always suck at. Specifically, it can integrate land, sea, and air forces together. And it actually understands how reconnaissance works. It will try to keep your units in sight, and if you're hitting him from a place he can't see, he'll pull back and not just sit there and take it.

It's also a frustratingly unstable game. I wonder if they were so ambitious with the AI that it just trips out sometimes and crashes.
 

Fluent

Arcane
Patron
The Real Fanboy
Joined
Apr 8, 2021
Messages
830
Not sure if it's been mentioned yet, but my humble offering would be the Age Of Fear series. I know the main developer, Les, and he has a phd in Artificial Intelligence. Besides that, I've played some of the campaigns of his games and completed a couple of them, the enemy AI is very, very good. I didn't know Les was a phd until I talked to him on Steam and commented about how good the games were, and that I was impressed by the AI being so devious and tricky. He really programs it to push you into some epic battles, and the series has all the trappings of making for very memorable fights and content.

If u want to play the series, worry not about newer games having more or different features than the older ones. Les backports all the new features to the older games, so the only difference between them all is the campaing mode stories. Each game has 2 campaigns generally, so pick the campaign(s) that look interesting to you and buy and play that one. If u like this genre u really shouldn't be disappointed by them, I found them to be amazing tactical games and plan on playing more of the campaigns in the future. Hope this helps! Take care guys. :)
 

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