Featauril said:
To be fair, the discussion of Russian colonization was on the east coast.
And uh yeah, the Russians were here
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To be fair, the discussion of Russian colonization was on the east coast.
And uh yeah, the Russians were here
<<<<points to location tag*
Featauril said:
Oh fiffle. You get a point for snarkiness, but in the context of this thread we're talking about Eastern North America.
Again you bring up the false dichotomy between the randomness of EU3 and the scriptedness of EU2. What is really needed is historical events with more/better triggers than the EU2 events. I agree that EU2 events were too inevitable, often leading to silly situations such as getting Macao as a non-colonizing Portugal. However, I feel that throwing the baby out with the bathwater by axing the events altogether was the wrong way to address this.Drakken said:
Duke of Earl said:
Call it "false" or whatever you want, but the dichotomy remains nonetheless, enough to split the community between retrogr... errr I mean proponents of historicism vs dynamism.
And unless the devs change their minds 180-degrees, I'm afraid it will remain so.
D.
Arilou said:
I think you are mislead, in GalCiv the minor civs are sending constructors to the resources after the first few turns. Accidentally ? Also the AI knows where are the good planets, before the technology being researched.
The economy is wildly affected by few global sliders, a human will have a hard time estimating the best economic strategy, but it's a trivial linear optimization problem. The Frogboy did the same AI in GalCiv1 ,the economy is so weird because if he decided to use something like the MOO2 easy to optimize economic model (for human)- the AI will come out shining with its true colors.
Arilou said:
I do not agree a hundred percent but at the same time i see how you can say that. My main gripe is to just be respectful. If i debate history its just my opinion and no better the any one else who is well read in history(yourself included) I never had a problem with anything that you said because your polite and logical. Thats what i prefer over, "This game Suxors, its fantasy land!"
My opinions about the game seem to be very similar to yours, the only difference being that i think i still enjoy the game more then you do. Will i mod the game or help a group of modders address some of the issues that we both have with the game? Sure, i have already started on my own and can hopefully contribute to a project in the near future. Do i hope that in the near future a patch addresses some of the game mechanics that are not moddable/workaround. Sure. But if they do not i still will play the game for what it is.
Arilou said:
Why couldn't EU3's AI be made to play very much like a very good EU player? It's already making it's own decisions, of course, so improving those decisions (and giving it more to make and I can understand each country having a typical strategy while having some variation in that) would be needed.
Doesn't sound impossible for the developers (or modders if they make the AI moddable) to do. If nothing else, the developers could see what people are doing in the game and have the AI utilize those same strategies as part of it's decision making process and goals.
I think a goal-engine style AI would work. That way, it (or each individual AI Player) could have a general goal, and then all of it's strategy would be towards getting that goal. So if the goal was expansion, it could decide to expand by colonies/unowned provinces or by war/annexing and developing Land Tech. If it was trade, it could focus on Trade Tech, trading National Ideas and be aggressive in the CoTs. A diplomatic goal could make the player seek alliances or high relations with most neighbors, be cooperative with their allies, and attempt to use more subtle tactics in the game to develop.
All the while, the AI is keeping up of it's situation at home and abroad. It's watching it's border strength, domestic economy, province situations, and raising armies for defense (or offense). The AI seems to do a lot of this already, and probably just needs more tweaking/being taught better strategies.
That doesn't sound impossible to me because it seems the AI has a lot of this in it already. What's missing is the more organization of it's actions into a certain strategy to begin with (which could/probably should vary by nation/era/starting date) and then it can go from there based on the situation.
Heck, even if it's not wanted to make it country by country - it could be based on the stats of the current monarch. A ADM: 3, MIL: 8, DIP: 5 monarch would be very military oriented in his decisions. Building up land/navy tech, if he can pick an idea - chooses the military ones (maybe even changing existing National Ideas).
Meanwhile a ADM: 8, MIL: 4, DIP: 7 would be apt to use a lot of trading and initiates a lot of diplomatic actions (friendly or otherwise based on the situation). Also would favor government and production techs along with maintaining stability whenever possible (both in budgeting and event/situation decisions.
Perhaps this could be implimented by using a file that contains all these strategies that would be made available to the AI. When a country gets a new monarch, his/her stats are checked against whatever thresholds in this file and the country's goals get set.
Ming said:
I think your missing my point some what. Sure they are singular but... Had those events happened/not happened think about the repercussions of history afterwards. How would have things played out? Is it possible that things would have transpired historically that we would find ludicrous because of our point of reference after the fact? Like i said i would have preferred a middle road somewhere with the game mechanics, but then someone else would be pissed off now wouldn't they? Thats kind of the gist of my whole logic behind this post. No one is going to be a 100% percent happy with the game.
Seyal said:
While the AI isn't nearly as effective as a human player, the problem that the historical crowd has is that in some cases the AI is making decisions more like a human player. So, like our example, on Russia's turn the AI says "hey, according to my calculations I can make more money and expand better if I get QFTNW", but the player doesn't want that to happen unless it meets his or her standard of historical plausibility.
Really, the same should be true for players. Going colonizing Virginia as Russia simply should not be the most profitable use you could make of your time. (be it because of relative strength factors, income, or whatever)
Not that you couldn't do it if you wanted: It should just be hard (for all the right reasons hopefully)
A "false dichotomy" is "a situation in which two alternative points of view are held to be the only options, when in reality there exist one or more other options which have not been considered." A common argument against historical events seems to be, "in EU2 the historical events were too restrictive and/or fired in inappropriate situations, therefore historical events are bad and it's good that they are gone." This sort of argument assumes that there are only two options, historical straitjacketing and freeform randomness. Your statement that "the devs must change their minds 180-degrees" to please the other side reflects this viewpoint. What I and I think many other historical-types really want is something in between, which is perfectly possible with better event triggers. This is what Paradox seemed to be promising throughout the development process.Drakken said:Call it "false" or whatever you want, but the dichotomy remains nonetheless, enough to split the community between retrogr... errr I mean proponents of historicism vs dynamism.
And unless the devs change their minds 180-degrees, I'm afraid it will remain so.
D.
True. But is that any reason not to try to make 90% of people happy 90% happy with the game?iBaLkiD said:
Duke of Earl said:
Im afraid i am not following you here.(i assume there is a typo in your post) My point is that so many people have so many differing opinions that not everyone will be happy with the game. Like i said previously i think the old event driven system could have been improved or used as a template for EUIII giving us a middle of the road compromise compared to what we have now. Having said that, a lot of people would then be displeased with the game if it was handled in that manner.
Your 90% comment confuses me, sorry if i am being dense :wacko:
This same argument comes up in Victoria.
In Victoria, the AI can easily turn Russia into the world's leading industrial power. Why? Because the AI is better at running Russia than the Czars were. While this is humorous for a variety of reasons (imagine the Romanovs' all spinning in their graves because Swedish programmers made an AI that was smarter than some of them!) it does cause "historical plausibility" problems. Should you use events to "dumb down" Russia to keep it plausible? Should you redo Russia's AI so that it plays like the game more like it's historical counterparts (and thus does silly things like not invest in education or industry)? If you do so, does that mean human players will just walk all over the Russian bear because they know it will face extra problems?
While I do love "historical plausibility," ultimately I find that the game is more fun when the AI tries to play as well as it can. If that means Muscovy decides to colonize Virginia, the so be it. If it means that Burgundy always survives in any game that starts in 1453, then so be it. If it means the HRE is being wiped out by 1550, then so be... Wait, we can fix the plausibility of that by making tweaking the random events, like boundary dispute, that cause the member states to go on annex sprees!
I'm not interested in mods that add historical events because I know where that leads: EU2, where Burgundy gets partitioned all the time just because Charles is supposed to croak on date X, meaning that I can plan my entire 400 year strategy around this. I am interested in mods that give more historical flavor events or more government types (like different theocracies so that Muslim theocrats don't have to be called archbishop).
I think there are five main critics:
-people who think it's too hard, it's to complex
-people who think it's too historically correct
-people who don't think it's historical enough
-people who like everything perfect
-people who like to complain
-people who think it's too hard, it's to complex
-people who think it's too historically correct
-people who don't think it's historical enough
-people who like everything perfect
-people who like to complain
Duke of Earl said:
I don't have any real problem with the "dynamic concept"..., but history doesn't just leap "this way and that". It moves gradually in most cases. The "dynamic engine" doesn't reflect reality very well. I don't mean in the "this King should follow that one" sense, but in the "let's take a decade to digest this before we move on to that" sense. The AI is schitzophrenic and on amphetamines to boot. It jumps frenetically from one idea to another.
It would be nice if there were several sets of "general guidelines" that the AI controled nations could be asigned at game start. One favoring economics, another favoring exploration, a third concentraiting on military expansion, etc.
Even these wouldn't have to be "straitjackets", just positive modifiers towards efforts in that area when making choices. Maybe a special one for small nations emphasizing "survival" and "cooperation with one another" as a means of avoiding being swallowed piecemeal. Something needs to be added to bring about more rational play by the AI.
Mike Scholl said:
I agree but i feel that this would handicap the AI versus the human player. The game jumps around with its ideologies because it benefits at that point in the game from those ideologies(even taking into account the massive negative hits it takes by doing so) It does what a human player does in regards to manipulating the game mechanics to its advantage.
Mike Scholl said:
Agreed but again you would have to consider balancing said modifiers against player tendencies, in order to keep the AI from being a push over.
I like the direction your headed with this though.
Arilou said:
Hmm..sounds like there is some game balance/mechanics problems getting in the way as well?
For example, the factors that make Russia colonizing on the eastern coast of what is now the U.S. not being there (attrition/cost of ships for Russia/colonization time and chance for such a long trip, etc) not being in place - making it too good of a choice for the AI to ignore?
In that case, would some of the issues with the AI doing things too far off of history be because the scenarios (and other factors like infantry's early ineptitude) aren't set up quite as historically as needed at the moment?
That's not exactly true. "Fixing" things in Vicky is far easier than they would have been realistically.
It's not a matter of the Czars being dumb (although some of them where) it's a matter of A) Different priorities (The Czars were rather attached to their position, something a human is not) and B) A HUGE amount of stuff Vicky (which is still the most comprehensive of the Paradox games!) simply does not model.
Personally I think the AI, even when playing as best as it can, can't really provide a challenge. So better to just try to make it perform as well as it did historically first.
And again, I want to play a historical game, I want to face (and overcome!) historical challenges.
This means having a Denmark that is actually a threat to Sweden, a Russia that will (unless you try really hard) eventually "grow up" and outshadow you, a poland to struggle with.....
Without these things, without the historical *context* what exactly makes playing "Sweden" different from playing "OUter Kewjonida"?
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