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boar guy
Jan 25, 2007

JeremoudCorbynejad posted:

If you have to be winning to be having fun I dunno what to say.

it's more like, oops the barbs spawned three horsemen on a turn and killed my second settler, now it's turn 35 and there's no possible way to catch up.

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John F Bennett
Jan 30, 2013

I always wear my wedding ring. It's my trademark.

Multiplayer games stress me out because there's always a sense of urgency in my mind.

I don't like playing with other people. I do enough of that at work.

turboraton
Aug 28, 2011
You can also join the real time multiplayer we want to have, we can have 3 or 4 hour sessions.

boar guy posted:


edit: playing "live" multiplayer is even worse. i tried to play a game with some buddies in other states and it got so boring that i got a loving coloring book for killing time while they took their turns



You can set turn timers.

turboraton fucked around with this message at 17:47 on Mar 13, 2018

Tofu Injection
Feb 10, 2006

No need to panic.

turboraton posted:

You can also join the real time multiplayer we want to have, we can have 3 or 4 hour sessions.

I'm interested in this, but can't realistically commit to an ongoing thing. Maybe if it was like once a month or something.

turboraton
Aug 28, 2011

Tofu Injection posted:

I'm interested in this, but can't realistically commit to an ongoing thing. Maybe if it was like once a month or something.

Sounds great to me, any MP game is better than eternal discussion of warmongering and "i'm a story player" talk.

Taear
Nov 26, 2004

Ask me about the shitty opinions I have about Paradox games!

turboraton posted:

Sounds great to me, any MP game is better than eternal discussion of warmongering and "i'm a story player" talk.

Meanwhile I'm bored at people posting about multiplayer games or their play by plays of their games.
Because sometimes different people like discussing different stuff.

Microplastics
Jul 6, 2007

:discourse:
It's what's for dinner.
Yeah we can be flexible if we have to (and given the dearth of interest, we may have to)

boar guy
Jan 25, 2007

turboraton posted:

You can set turn timers.

at the midgame of a 4 person game the adaptive timer gives you twenty minutes per turn, or did last time i tried to play

Zulily Zoetrope
Jun 1, 2011

Muldoon

Straight White Shark posted:

That's legit and if that's what you want from the game, that's fine. My whole point is just that different people want different things from the AI and wanting the AI to roleplay more necessarily means making it perform worse in other regards.

I'm not even talking about "playing to win" or "playing like a human", either--like The White Dragon said, the AI's willingness to attack doesn't have anything to do with either. It's about wanting the AI to pose an interesting obstacle instead of just existing and taking up space (and processing power.) Barbarians for example do not play to win and do not pretend to be a human civ but they frequently wind up being more interesting to play against than the AI. But personally, I still prefer AI that offers a weak threat over an AI that offers no threat.

You're not describing an interesting obstacle, however. You can overcome the AI militarily, or through the loyalty mechanic. You can hinder its cultural or scientific progress using spies. Why is diplomacy not an interesting tool for overcoming an obstacle, outside of Civ VI's diplomacy being hella basic? Hell, once you realize the AI will always betray you given the chance and telegraphs it from miles away, it's no more of a challenge than the belligerent AI on any other border. If it was able to surprise you or at least keep you guessing, that'd be something.

E: Does VI multiplayer not have simultaneous turns? That seems like a step back!

Zulily Zoetrope fucked around with this message at 18:48 on Mar 13, 2018

onesixtwo
Apr 27, 2014

Don't you realize that being nice just makes you get hurt?

Zulily Zoetrope posted:

E: Does VI multiplayer not have simultaneous turns? That seems like a step back!

It has Simultaneous turns by default, I play a lot of MP sessions with a friend vs AI and we always do Simultaneous because sequential turns would take forever per turn. I could see this getting very messy in a 6 player live game.

Elias_Maluco posted:

I might try someday, but Im just a SP guy. Videogames for me are a solitary experience

This is kind of the exact scenario PYDT games are a good fit for, all the same. You don’t have to coordinate with players it’s just a ‘oh it’s my turn! Load map, do your turn, go from there next time’ sort of thing. Pretend we are just AIs that have awful response times! Yeah the first 20 moves suck, but it’s also a lot of fun going through a 20 turn war imo, but I enjoy a long term board game, and civ is satisfying that board game itch while only requiring 5-10 minutes a day of my time. YMMV, entirely, yes.

Absolutely valid critique if you don’t enjoy this as a long-term basis, or bit by bit for sure.. For me it takes maybe a minute or two for your opening turns, so it isn’t a chore. I can load up a turn anytime I’m off work without needing to put what I’m doing on hold for a substantial period of time. Things do heat up nicely when you get past the land grab phase and people start revealing their true intentions since in-game diplomacy rules mean less without any AI present.

I don’t mean to stoke the fire more, so to each their own, and apologies for continuing it, but the thread keeps making GBS threads on itself on a broken record status, again. I’ll drop it, but I really hope people at least try out a PYDT before writing it off.

I’ll continue posting games, I understand it isn’t compatible for, reasons, to everyone, but I’m trying to positive post and get more people to play games with instead of just trashing on a non-perfect version of a video game. I like this dumb game, and it confuses me with how many of you do not, yet insist on posting about it. Come play with us and give it a chance!

onesixtwo fucked around with this message at 19:07 on Mar 13, 2018

Magil Zeal
Nov 24, 2008

Zulily Zoetrope posted:

E: Does VI multiplayer not have simultaneous turns? That seems like a step back!

It does, as far as I'm aware, as an option.

boar guy
Jan 25, 2007

Zulily Zoetrope posted:

E: Does VI multiplayer not have simultaneous turns? That seems like a step back!

no it does but then it turns in to a contest of manual dexterity/network speed at the start of a turn to attack the other guy first, although you can turn on some war time time setting which means everyone else has to sit on their hands while you and the one you're fighting shuffle units around in a turnbased way

Gort
Aug 18, 2003

Good day what ho cup of tea
I always made do with a house rule that in the event of a war the declaring player would move first and the defending player would move afterwards. Everyone going at the same time is a clusterfuck that detracts from the strategy of the game, and game-enforced sequential turns takes forever since you can't even queue up production or look at research while you're waiting.

Tofu Injection
Feb 10, 2006

No need to panic.

turboraton posted:

Sounds great to me, any MP game is better than eternal discussion of warmongering and "i'm a story player" talk.

K I added my availability, with the caveat of only being available once a month.

Taear
Nov 26, 2004

Ask me about the shitty opinions I have about Paradox games!

onesixtwo posted:

Yeah the first 20 moves suck, but it’s also a lot of fun going through a 20 turn war imo, but I enjoy a long term board game, and civ is satisfying that board game itch while only requiring 5-10 minutes a day of my time. YMMV, entirely, yes.

I can't imagine why I'd want to play a game of any kind for only 10 minutes. Why even bother with it? They exist to take up some time.
Honestly, the idea totally baffles me!

Microplastics
Jul 6, 2007

:discourse:
It's what's for dinner.
Understandable but it's surprisingly popular. There are some 1400 people playing the web version of diplomacy (http://webdiplomacy.net/), most of the games there being a turn a day.

(admittedly the games last only a few dozen turns at most, so they're a lot more accessible)

Gort
Aug 18, 2003

Good day what ho cup of tea

Taear posted:

I can't imagine why I'd want to play a game of any kind for only 10 minutes. Why even bother with it? They exist to take up some time.
Honestly, the idea totally baffles me!

Presumably you play more than one game in a session

the holy poopacy
May 16, 2009

hey! check this out
Fun Shoe

Zulily Zoetrope posted:

You're not describing an interesting obstacle, however. You can overcome the AI militarily, or through the loyalty mechanic. You can hinder its cultural or scientific progress using spies. Why is diplomacy not an interesting tool for overcoming an obstacle, outside of Civ VI's diplomacy being hella basic? Hell, once you realize the AI will always betray you given the chance and telegraphs it from miles away, it's no more of a challenge than the belligerent AI on any other border. If it was able to surprise you or at least keep you guessing, that'd be something.

Most peoples' idea of diplomacy is "I leave you alone and you leave me alone." That's not an obstacle to navigate.

I mean, yeah, it would be awesome if there were more diplomatic tools available. But if it's less expensive to ward off attacks with diplomacy than it is to defend yourself, you basically wind up making all military stuff completely optional. Civ 5's diplomacy got patched to the point that it was a little better than what we have in 6 and the end result was that it was a lot easier to neglect your military and just hit space bar until you won.

the holy poopacy
May 16, 2009

hey! check this out
Fun Shoe
so I'm poking around into basic AI modding and it's even more opaque than Civ 5

but

there's a series of giant obvious typos in a spot that seems like it could be extremely relevant to the AI's generally poor performance :eng99:

Microplastics
Jul 6, 2007

:discourse:
It's what's for dinner.

Straight White Shark posted:

so I'm poking around into basic AI modding and it's even more opaque than Civ 5

but

there's a series of giant obvious typos in a spot that seems like it could be extremely relevant to the AI's generally poor performance :eng99:

Do tell

turboraton
Aug 28, 2011
Wait there's a web version of diplomacy? That board game is cool.

Poil
Mar 17, 2007

Come on, this is why you should hire proper professionals instead of amateurs who need to wear bibs to avoid drooling into their keyboards. :rant:

the holy poopacy
May 16, 2009

hey! check this out
Fun Shoe



This isn't just a case of it being spelled wrong throughout--elsewhere in this table there are other modifiers that reference YIELD_PRODUCTION etc. And they seem to work--the main reason I embarked on this experiment was that I noticed that AI civs with an agenda that gives them a preference for production or science or something useful tend to perform dramatically better than civs that do not. So the production-loving agenda for example gives the AI a favor weighting of 20 towards YIELD_PRODUCTION, which seems to be enough to get them to do noticeably better.

Which means, as near as I can tell, the baseline for AI civs should have them prioritizing production bonuses by a larger factor than civs that have a specific agenda bias for it currently do, but they don't, because the AI is actually programmed to prioritize YEILD_PRODUCTION which isn't a thing.

Bouquet
Jul 14, 2001

Straight White Shark posted:

Which means, as near as I can tell, the baseline for AI civs should have them prioritizing production bonuses by a larger factor than civs that have a specific agenda bias for it currently do, but they don't, because the AI is actually programmed to prioritize YEILD_PRODUCTION which isn't a thing.
For gently caress’s sake.

Roland Jones
Aug 18, 2011

by Nyc_Tattoo
For people who want to do live MP sessions but can only get in a few hours per week/month, maybe check out some of the scenarios? Those are meant to be finished in a single session, and some of them seem pretty interesting.

twistedmentat
Nov 21, 2003

Its my party
and I'll die if
I want to
Wait, I just noticed my Venicen Arsenal isn't giving me a second unit. Wtf?

Byzantine
Sep 1, 2007

twistedmentat posted:

Wait, I just noticed my Venicen Arsenal isn't giving me a second unit. Wtf?

Never trust Venice

the holy poopacy
May 16, 2009

hey! check this out
Fun Shoe
So as a quick and dirty experiment I fired up an autoplay mod and ran a game for 151 turns on the true start Earth map. Here are some choice graphs for an unmodded game:







And here's the same civs, same start map, with the YEILD preferences corrected:







So... yeah. Civ 6's AI is hobbled by a really dumb typo.

Beamed
Nov 26, 2010

Then you have a responsibility that no man has ever faced. You have your fear which could become reality, and you have Godzilla, which is reality.


Straight White Shark posted:

So as a quick and dirty experiment I fired up an autoplay mod and ran a game for 151 turns on the true start Earth map. Here are some choice graphs for an unmodded game:







And here's the same civs, same start map, with the YEILD preferences corrected:







So... yeah. Civ 6's AI is hobbled by a really dumb typo.


Hopefully this will put to rest the trolls insisting the AI is better than people think, but it does imply that with mods alone the AI can be substantially improved?

the holy poopacy
May 16, 2009

hey! check this out
Fun Shoe
Well, baby steps. This is just scratching the surface of what mods can do... it's just that this is a change that's already supposed to be in the game, but never worked because of a goddamn typo.

EDIT: Specifically, in case it's not clear what exactly is going on here, this is why the AI is so prone to spamming Holy Sites and faith improvements even if it's not really a competitor for religious victory. Fixing this doesn't correct any of the numerous other flaws with the AI, but if the AI correctly prioritizes production it has a much better chance of brute forcing its way to some kind of vague competitiveness. You can rarely see this in action when AI personalities line up just so and you get a runaway civ in action, which I assume is what people are referring to when they defend the AI, but 9 times out of 10 you wind up with paper tigers that are built of wall to wall Holy Sites and Entertainment Centers.

the holy poopacy fucked around with this message at 05:21 on Mar 14, 2018

Don Pigeon
Oct 29, 2005

Great pigeons are not born great. They grow great by eating lots of bread crumbs.

Straight White Shark posted:


So... yeah. Civ 6's AI is hobbled by a really dumb typo.

You call it a typo, but I see a guy who doesn't know how to spell.

Microplastics
Jul 6, 2007

:discourse:
It's what's for dinner.

Roland Jones posted:

For people who want to do live MP sessions but can only get in a few hours per week/month, maybe check out some of the scenarios? Those are meant to be finished in a single session, and some of them seem pretty interesting.

Do the scenarios support MP? That could be amazing if so - I would have loved to play Civ 5's Into The Renaissance in MP.

Microplastics
Jul 6, 2007

:discourse:
It's what's for dinner.
Also good detective work Shark :stare:

The incompetence knows no bounds.

turboraton
Aug 28, 2011
Yeah scenarios work in MP, I have played 2 with my friends and they are ok. I do miss the Scramble for Africa one tho.

Ratios and Tendency
Apr 23, 2010

:swoon: MURALI :swoon:


Did you alert firaxis?

Serephina
Nov 8, 2005

恐竜戦隊
ジュウレンジャー
That is amazing and potentially game-changing, literally.

I remember something almost identical happened in Diablo2; a community called the LurkerLounge was poking about on why the AoE hit-detection seemed so bloody wonky. It seemed that at random times an aoe-check ability (anyhing from fireballs to DoT auras) would suddenly hit something comically far away. So they did extensive in-game testing. They got a player Paladin many points in a Frost-slowing aura, and set him hostile to other players. The paladin sat idle, while other players whould carefully toe around seeing where the edge of the aura would start/stop to slow, and drop a tiny pile of gold at the spot. It eventually traced out a shape, and thanks to the aura being quite large (several screens worth), it was clear what the shape was; a star. Instead of a circle as you'd expect. The Star's "points" where at a 45 degree offset from the game's internal grid, and asymptotically extended towards infinity. The star's closest points actually matched the printed in-game distance in meters. After a lot of brainstorming on why the bizarre shape, one guy casually walked in and pointed it out: when calculating a circle, you use the formula r^2 = (y^2 + x^2) (assuming centered on zero). However, if you typo the plus into a minus, ie r^2 = (x^2 - y^2), it traces a star...

The game's hit detection for EVERY loving AOE DISTANCE CHECK was hosed due to a high school level error. This had been in for years and years and the odd behavior (if not it's cause) was well known. It was quietly fixed in the next patch, with no credit to the LurkerLounge. Which, this is where things get really funny, was a huge mistake since the bug had been in since literally the first build, and it totally hosed all sorts of game balance to have everyone (and -thing's) AoE nerfed hard, roughly by half empirically. Rather than quickly go trough and just incrase the AoE for everything (now with correct hit-calcs), Blizzard just reintroduced to the bug quietly in the next patch.

The End.

Serephina
Nov 8, 2005

恐竜戦隊
ジュウレンジャー
I guess the point of that story is that this is more-than-plausibly the issue, and sure as gently caress StraitWhiteShark will get zero credit for it.

Goa Tse-tung
Feb 11, 2008
Probation
Can't post for 6 hours!
Yams Fan

Serephina posted:

I guess the point of that story is that this is more-than-plausibly the issue, and sure as gently caress StraitWhiteShark will get zero credit for it.

but that's not his n... OHHHHHHHHH

flatluigi
Apr 23, 2008

here come the planes
Report it to the devs, and post it on the subreddit to get eyes on it.

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Darkrenown
Jul 18, 2012
please give me anything to talk about besides the fact that democrats are allowing millions of americans to be evicted from their homes
And that's why it's important to have regular code reviews when making a game.

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