Endless wars issue and AI vs. AI wars

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Zuikaku
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Re: Endless wars issue and AI vs. AI wars

Post by Zuikaku »

Anthropoid wrote:
In this case, I have no problem with the war being 'endless,' as that is likely how it would tend to play out in real life. There have been in the last century some very long duration wars. Vietnam being the main one that was high intensity for many years, but there are others too. One could argue that the Arab-Israeli wars which started in the late 19th century have been on and off hot phases of one long drawn out war.
I disagree on this one. Large scale wars that lasts more than a year or two are not that often. We are talking here about wars lasting for decades, for 20, 30 or more years. And it's not problem that some wars lasts for decades. Problem is that any and all last forever or untill one side is anihillated. Realistic? NO!
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Re: Endless wars issue and AI vs. AI wars

Post by icbm78 »

Zuikaku wrote:
Anthropoid wrote:
In this case, I have no problem with the war being 'endless,' as that is likely how it would tend to play out in real life. There have been in the last century some very long duration wars. Vietnam being the main one that was high intensity for many years, but there are others too. One could argue that the Arab-Israeli wars which started in the late 19th century have been on and off hot phases of one long drawn out war.
I disagree on this one. Large scale wars that lasts more than a year or two are not that often. We are talking here about wars lasting for decades, for 20, 30 or more years. And it's not problem that some wars lasts for decades. Problem is that any and all last forever or untill one side is anihillated. Realistic? NO!

Very few things in this game are "realistic". It's very raw and barely playable, just abandon it for a year or two and check later whether they can get it right. I personally wouldn't put my money on it, the designers were unable to fix SR 2010 for 7 years now (no arms market, important detailing, etc.). They think that if you give Somalian tribes lot of money they'd train themselves to the level of American marines and adopt modern warfare)). I personally don't care anymore.
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Re: Endless wars issue and AI vs. AI wars

Post by PyongYang »

icbm78 wrote:I personally don't care anymore.
Then why are you here?
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Re: Endless wars issue and AI vs. AI wars

Post by Anthropoid »

This is the best strategy game ever made. Certainly it is not perfect nor 'realistic,' but then it would be ZERO fun if it were.

It does however strike a nearly perfect balance between fun, playability and accuracy, more so than any other strategy game I've ever played. Certainly there are areas for improvement, but as always many of those probably relate as much to basic limitations in technology (processing power and AI for example) as anything else.
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Re: Endless wars issue and AI vs. AI wars

Post by PyongYang »

^ +1
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Zuikaku
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Re: Endless wars issue and AI vs. AI wars

Post by Zuikaku »

Anthropoid wrote:This is the best strategy game ever made. Certainly it is not perfect nor 'realistic,' but then it would be ZERO fun if it were.

It does however strike a nearly perfect balance between fun, playability and accuracy, more so than any other strategy game I've ever played. Certainly there are areas for improvement, but as always many of those probably relate as much to basic limitations in technology (processing power and AI for example) as anything else.
It needs to be polished to function properly. We now have AI not researching new units since database is messed up! We have diplomacy with too few options (give money to improve relations). We have endless wars. And the list goes on. I'm concerned about BGs just abandoning this game before it is polished. There are not many global strategy games, and cold war era games are even fewer :-(
Please teach AI everything!
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Re: Endless wars issue and AI vs. AI wars

Post by Anthropoid »

ARGH!!

I just realized that this thread is in the SRCW section of the forums! :oops: a game that I do not own!! :lol:

. . . okay, so I was talking about SR2020 [_]O

My most recent comments 'redacted' below :D
Well, hopefully it hasn't been 'abandoned' so much as 'shelved' for a while? It seems quite obvious to me that this game right here was the product of love as much as a business venture. That tells me that, while the guys behind it might have had to 'step away' from it for a bit (probably to pay the bills by making progress on some other paying projects) it has not been 'anbandoned.' I won't disagree with any of your specific suggestions for polishing the game, as I haven't been playing long enough, and still am not sure about how certain rather major aspects of the game even work! But yeah, if those problems exist, lets hope that they get patched as much as the base game allows in the near future.

I agree with you that the 'offerings' on the market that come anywhere near close to this game are woefully few and I love to try to be as supportive to the crews behind a gem like this as I possibly can be. Hell, I'd be absolutely delighted to pay $5 or $10 (or $25 for that matter!) if they bundled all the remaining fixes into a DLC or small expansion. Obviously some things that are viewed by some players as limited or in need of fixing might not actually be fixable given the limitations of the game engine. But I'd say that if even 85% of the things that players would like to see added/fixed/changed were bundled it would _easily_ be worth the current market price of a DLC. I know that 'paying for patches' in the guise of DLC is a sore spot for many gamers, and it is certainly not a habit I'd like to promote among designers and publishers. I'd complain as loud as anyone if (e.g.) a certain Swedish based publishers whose games are notorious for needing a years worth of patches before they are 'done' tried to sell me any of that years worth of patches as a DLC . . . but that is a different story. In this case, the Gold version that I bought off Gamersgate a few weeks back is one of the most 'complete' (bug free, relatively error free, stable, polished, coherent) games that I have EVER played.

So in my estimation, while I may not disagree with you that the game could use a little more love, I don't blame BG one bit if they are not producing more patches for free.
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Re: Endless wars issue and AI vs. AI wars

Post by Aragos »

Funny, my problem is the AI--unless forced to do so by event--rarely if ever fights itself. In 2020, you could have a fun old time with the Shattered World scenario just watching the bloodbath. SRCW, even if you mod out all the treaties, etc at start, just does not do AI vs. AI wars unless forced to do so (Korea, Vietnam, etc.). Personally, I'd love the option of having an unrestrained AI vs. a predetermined 'historical' event chain.
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Re: Endless wars issue and AI vs. AI wars

Post by Anthropoid »

Now that I do own, and have played a bit of SRCW, I'm not entirely sure that I agree with the OP that "AI on AI wars" are a major problem. Well, this is with respect to 7.3.1 patch, and also based on only two plays, both of which I've set up AARs of a sort.

As Egypt, there were (if memory serves) no wars which were not scripted. North Korea was crushed within a month. North Vietnam was crushed in about a year. The Ethiopia-Eritrea thing: yes that has drug on for years and some mechanism to bring it to an end somehow would be good, but given there are so few AI vs. AI wars overall, it doesn't seem like a big deal.

I agree however that, once the AI gets into a war with the AI, it would seem that the conflict will either drag on interminably or end with one side being conquered. Efforts to make wars more of a stalemate and resolve more historically would be welcome (e.g., the Korea war never actually 'ended' in peace, but merely in an armistice; the Indochina war was more or less constant from ~1950 to 1975).

In some games, we have different levels of warfare and perhaps that could somehow be included in this game in a patch or a mod? For example, in the Vietnam war, had the U.S. seriously put its full-capacity into that war and invaded North Vietnam, there are many who have argued that it could have won it. The main constraints in reality on this happening were that initially (as I understand it) the deployment was piecemeal and intended to be as much of a diplomatic demonstration as a strategic military action. By the time a realiztion was made that this commitment involved lots of negatives it was too late to escalate without equally negative if not worse negative consequences. In sum, the U.S. became trapped by a strange combination of needing to be shown not to be defeated, trying ineffectually to serve South Vietnamese allies interests, and trying not to anger U.S. and worldwide public opinion too much.
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Re: Endless wars issue and AI vs. AI wars

Post by Aragos »

What is needed, I think, is a set of "if/then" triggers.

Examples:
Vietnam. If North Vietnam takes Saigon or Danang, France automatically sues for peace. If France takes out North Vietnam (or has units next to their capital) there is a chance PRC or USSR will intervene ("ally") and send troops in.
Korea: If US or non-ROK forces reach Yalu River (N Korea/China border) there is a chance PRC will intervene. If US or non-ROK country holds/annexes territory if N Korea falls, there is a chance USSR and/or PRC will declare war. Once the territory is reoccupied, PRC will make peace.
Germany: USSR is given an option to "annex" West Berlin. If it does so, it gains big sphere bonus but also has a major chance of US, UK, France and West Germany declaring war.

As the game is now, you can play the USSR and pretty much conquer all of Africa, etc. without doing much else than shifting the spheres. Same with the US in the western hemisphere--US can conquer everything south of Texas and the only real result is the UN gets mad and your allies leave (but who even needs allies if you own it all?)
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Re: Endless wars issue and AI vs. AI wars

Post by Anthropoid »

Agree that some if/then conditional states might serve well. Those are obviously a big part of determining whether an outcome is a Draw, Marginal or Decisive Victory in many wargames. The nice thing about a computer game as compared to a paper board game though, the designer can include two, three maybe even more 'alternative' or optional conditional if/thens some of which the player might only be made vaguely aware of. Certainly in most conflicts, each side often has some sense for what it _might_ take to cause the other side to come to acceptable terms, whether that is unconditional surrender or simply peace. However, in reality it seems that the bluffing game of holding out for just a bit longer is a major part of warfare throughout history, though perhaps especially in modern times.

I have no idea how the AI 'makes decisions' or if something like this could conceivably be modded into the game. But if it could, it would be something I'd certainly take an interest in contributing to.
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Re: Endless wars issue and AI vs. AI wars

Post by number47 »

Aragos wrote:What is needed, I think, is a set of "if/then" triggers.
Well, IIRC the devs said that they are considering improving events system to have more triggers than currently just one (time) but that is not planed for SRCW. At least it wasn't at the time they mentioned it which is kind of sad since this could be "easily" fixed by "newly triggerised"( :lol: ) events... :-(
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Re: Endless wars issue and AI vs. AI wars

Post by Aragos »

number47 wrote:
Aragos wrote:What is needed, I think, is a set of "if/then" triggers.
Well, IIRC the devs said that they are considering improving events system to have more triggers than currently just one (time) but that is not planed for SRCW. At least it wasn't at the time they mentioned it which is kind of sad since this could be "easily" fixed by "newly triggerised"( :lol: ) events... :-(
I agree. The game needs more triggers than just time.

I'm an historian in RL; it is what I do for a living. If history has taught me anything, it is that there is no such thing as predetermination or preordination of history. Random acts lead to random futures.

In SRCW, it is a deterministic model--that history will play out exactly like it did every single time. The US could take over Mexico, but that only slightly bothers Europe. The Soviets always get the news message about putting a dog or man in space--even if the player isn't putting a cent into the space race.

The game needs more triggers (if/then, location control, alliances) to allow for more variety of events. As it is now, you only can have events based on time/date, which is problematic at best.
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Re: Endless wars issue and AI vs. AI wars

Post by catatonic »

I haven't played SRCW - SR2020 will start all major regions out set for a massive military buildup, which then over the years floods each region with wondering units, clogs air fields with clouds of aircraft and eventually over-loading the game engine.

Does SRCW still do this as well? Does each AI continually add units weather it is at war or not?
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Re: Endless wars issue and AI vs. AI wars

Post by Uriens »

Don't think so. It seems to behave differently then it was in 2020. For example, in 2020 Albania would just continuously produce units until it filled all the hexes. In latest build however (and using Fistalis mod that converted Shattered World scenario for CW) it was actually having only few units deployed and some in reserve even though it had war before that ended (with Serbia getting defeated). I've noticed also that you can't manually set defcon for your county, It's done by the minister and when you have war with neighbor, it will go to full alert, if you have war with distant county it will go to high alert and when you no longer have war it will revert back to peace state. This is unlike 2020 where AI would never go back to defcon 5 even though it was no longer it war.
Also, AI seems to actively use all units it builds when at war, making it much more active. And there are new subs logic where AI actually deploys subs all over the world patrolling and looking to intercept enemy ships/transports, no longer just responding to incursions. AI seems to be vastly improved since 2020.
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