Brad Wardell's views about technology, politics, religion, world affairs, and all sorts of politically incorrect topics.
Which one is best?
Published on March 3, 2006 By Draginol In GalCiv Journals

There are 9 different AI personalities in Galactic Civilizations II.  Which makes debugging oh so fun.  But there are significant advantages to it as well.

First question, why write 9 different AI personalities? Most games have one.  The answer to this is because in a single player game, players usually find a weakness in a given AI and then it's boring.  So we coded up 9 different ones.  They are all derived from the same base class so there are a lot of similarities, but there are many differences too.

It's fun to test to see the AI play against itself.  See each one do their thing:

Watch the Drath manipulate other races to declare war on each other.  Or see the diplomatic Terran Alliance (the humans) build up coalitions to win.  Or of course, the Drengin, grinding one civilization down after another. 

So who wins? It really depends on the game.  It's usually quite amusing to watch the Torians and the Drengin start out near each other.  The Torian AI is very unstable (strategicaly I mean) so they will often do very well or crash and burn.

In the 10 games I've had them play each other, the Drengin have won twice, the Humans have won twice, the Drath have won once, the Korx once, the Torians twice, the Altarians once and the Iconians once.

But this was on a medium galaxy.  Different sized galaxies yield different results.


Comments (Page 1)
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on Mar 03, 2006
Can we do this as well? I mean, watching the AI play without a human player? If so, how?
on Mar 03, 2006

The Torian AI is very unstable (strategicaly I mean) so they will often do very well or crash and burn.

That is one of my favorite aspects of the game.  You can definately see different behavior in each race and they way the approach the game.

on Mar 03, 2006
Can we do this as well? I mean, watching the AI play without a human player? If so, how?


I second this question . I do like how all races seem unique and you can actually say "damn Terrans and their diplomatic ways" knowing you're not giving the AI more than what it really has.
on Mar 03, 2006
I'll third that motion. I know one of the other devs said it wouldn't take much effort to enable this for the everyone.
on Mar 03, 2006
If you want to watch the AI play by itself search the forums for a beta post by Frogboy. I remember he said something about using it for testing late in beta and people ask if they could do it to.

You have to enable cheats and then enter a code so the AI will take over your spot. It should be possible though. Just do a search (sorry I don't feel like doing it right now, but it's out there). You might search for general cheats too. Or just wait for someone to post it in here (I'm sure it'll turn up sooner or later).
on Mar 03, 2006
I looked but didn't turn up the exact post you're refering to. However, based on some related comments I suspect it currently only works in debug mode.
on Mar 03, 2006
I recall the post. It think it was very near the time of code freeze in early Feb. This site needs better search capabilities! It should be easy to pull up all threads authored by or replied to by a given user, but it is not! Or all messages all by a given user. Whenever I try to add a Watch to a thread, it always times out!
on Mar 03, 2006
Yes it would be very interesting to know the end results of 100 random games where the AI played against itself... it would let us know which AI personality is the strongest.
on Mar 03, 2006
I've searched for cheats and found nothing regarding a full AI game. I would love to watch the AI fight itself.
on Mar 03, 2006
I wonder, If you kept playing the same X ammount of AI's on the same preset map, Would the results be the same?

Or would random events really kick it into gear..
on Mar 03, 2006
Bump... how do we do this ourselves??
on Mar 03, 2006

I wonder, If you kept playing the same X ammount of AI's on the same preset map, Would the results be the same?

Or would random events really kick it into gear..




Well the galaxy would have to be balanced for all those players on the same map... not sure how easy that is to setup. 100 random maps for small, medium and large should give a good estimate with which AI is the deadliest for each type.
on Mar 03, 2006
I think I'd just rather play.
on Mar 03, 2006
@Draginol, Did the different AI win by different Victory conditions?
on Mar 04, 2006
the dreneg always puff out for me. they seem to be the first out nearly every game.
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