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[Sergarr]

Majesty at easy settings is somewhat like this, though not exactly. But it's pretty minimal in the number of commands you need to issue, unless it's the start of the game or some crazy super-invasion.

[Shadowlord]

I would mention MOBAs, but you appear to have requested only games in which you watch bots, rather than people.

[Itnetlolor]

You can always also play Unreal Tournament and the like with godlike bots setup, and play as a spectator, or toggle 'Ghost' mode and watch from the outside/Positive Space of the level.

[NeptunesNookGames]

The Sims can usually run ok on its own, sometimes the insanity that ensues is far better than anything I could have come up with.

There's also several AI only Civ games at the moment, it's "the thing" right now on  the Civ subreddit.

[Hetairos]

I remember setting up battles in Operation Flashpoint mission editor, then placed myself as a civilian and observed the AI armies duking it out, despite some AI quirks it was lots of fun to edit or change the various units soldiers and vehicles positions to see how the battles would be influenced.

I had no idea you could do that, good to know. Not that I ever really looked into the editor.

[MasterFancyPants]

I remember setting up battles in Operation Flashpoint mission editor, then placed myself as a civilian and observed the AI armies duking it out, despite some AI quirks it was lots of fun to edit or change the various units soldiers and vehicles positions to see how the battles would be influenced.

You can do this in Arma 1, 2, and 3 as well. If you want to go the extra step, you can download a spectator script and have a birds-eye view of the action.
Combine that with automated spawning scripts and I've spent a lot of time watching how the AI works.

[Carnwennan]

There's a game called species ALRE that can be fun to leave idling and coming back later to see how things have evolved (everything can go extinct of course, but there's not much helping that except putting rovers around to keep things alive).

I like running temperature variation on the y-axis and fertility on the x, making a very large map and having a look at what sorts of things develop after a few thousand in game years. In the high-fertility, high temperature region of one I did a while ago (it was also an island) the initial organism had grown to a stupid size and their entire survival strategy revolved around eating everything that existed on the island, desertifying the place and waiting for it to regrow after a few hundred years, surviving in the meanwhile by eating their neighbors and then repeating the same cycle over and over again.

[JohnieRWilkins]

I'll just leave this here:
http://www.saltybet.com/

[sambojin]

Star Control 2 (or the free remake, Urquan Masters) can be interesting to watch a game of Super Melee as a spectator of an AI vs AI team battle. Set up the teams and see how they do.

FUMBBL Bloodbowl is great in spectator mode, with crowd emotes, backseat coaching or actual advice all as available options to you. There's usually a few games going on, with some bigger tournaments of very good players indeed, occasionally. Check it out and make an account at www.fumbbl.com
Free and browser/java based. I wish it would work on my phone, I'd never be bored again.

[Melanthius]

bump because i want more

[Leatra]

The Last Federation is not bad. Even when you are not in the observer mode, you do a lot of observing and being idle.

To be honest I don't remember the plot exactly but from what I remember:

You are basically a guy who looks like a hydra with lotsa heads whose race has been exterminated by other races. Your ancestors were oppressive warlords who conquered the galaxy and made life hell for other races. Those races banded up and genocided your ass.

You managed to survive and escape from a planet (the planet can be decided by you or set randomly) by stealing a ship from the faction controlling the planet. Of course, they now want you dead. All other races also hate you because your ancestors oppressed them.

Your self-declared mission is to unite all races under a federation and establish eternal peace, so what other races and your race had to endure will never be repeated again. You might need to genocide a race or two if they don't agree to it and form an anti-federation alliance.

There is an observe mode. There are 2 war-like races. One race mostly declares wars when another race is getting uppity or they need to defend an ally. One race sucks at war and sticks to trade. Others are okay. All races have specific mechanisms. For example, the hivemind has a queen that can die or change priorities. One race focuses primarily on helping other races and making the galaxy a better place.

Even when you are not in the observer mode, you do a lot of waiting. Sometimes you need to spend years researching in a planet or conducting aggressive (poisoning the population, inciting rebels, etc) or helpful (strengthening the economy, building facilities, etc) operations in the background while the time passes in the galaxy screen.

[n9103]

Ooo.. that reminds me..
Both SEIV and SEV have automation options, and if you set them all it's essentially under full computer control.
Using this and changing to different empires through the Players menu is basically an observer mode.
Still have to manually end turns, but there's no further player input.
Stock AIs weren't/aren't so great (not awful, but not great), but there are many community-made alternatives.

[Gigalith]

I remember setting up battles in Operation Flashpoint mission editor, then placed myself as a civilian and observed the AI armies duking it out, despite some AI quirks it was lots of fun to edit or change the various units soldiers and vehicles positions to see how the battles would be influenced.

I had no idea you could do that, good to know. Not that I ever really looked into the editor.

My brother, having played a lot of Operation Flashpoint, spend I'd say maybe %90 of his time messing with the editor and scenarios and modding. There is an enormous amount of cool stuff you can do with it. A favorite new sport we discovered was "place explosives under vehicle, run back, press boom, and see how high/far it will go." Or jacking up the max speed of a bicycle into insanity. And yes, giant gratuitous tank-on-tank battles.

I also heard some hilarious modding bugs, such as accidentally turning things into the default unit, which was a BMP, leading to BMPs within BMPs, and possibly BMPs inside infantry.

EDIT IN RE ACTUAL TOPIC: Little Wing Pinball games (the earlier ones are better for this), demo mode. You don't need to actually have the game. Just watch the random yet-perfectly-reflexed computer accidentally get more and more points, which in my case ends up with insane scores beyond my reach.

Also, if you can find it, Crush Deluxe (futuristic sports simulator) actually offers to show you computer-only games in your league. I guess it's like actual sports, then.

[gimli]

I'm curious which games exist that either are designed to simply be watched or ones that are interesting to set up with only AI Players and then watch.

I don't mean idle games that are just numbers going up, but ones that have AI that you can observe doing things in the game.

Any out there that people like watching?

Perhaps Distant Worlds: Universe is a good candidate or Civ 4/5.

[sambojin]

I'm not actually sure if this works, but it might. FreeCiv has an observer mode and a way of changing a human player to an AI. Start a server with 1 human player, all the rest as AI. Observe an AI player. Switch the human player to AI through the server console. Hope the game keeps running. Watch the wars happen.

Then you can watch actual Civ 1 or 2 in progress.

I know C-Evo could do this, and it made for an alright observer game. Except that it sort of stagnated every time. The AI wasn't quite aggressive enough, and the modded units just kind of stared each other down.

OTTD (Open Transport Tycoon Deluxe) can be like this too. Set up two airports pretty far apart. Set up a couple of plane routes. Watch the AI do its thing while you pay down your debt. Keep watching how you should actually do things once you have. Nice because you can jump back in whenever you want. Or just play as a stock trader and town investor.

Settlers 1 (Serfcity: Life is Feudal) could run in observer AI vs AI mode. It's kind of charming and intriguing. A really good screensaver. Games took forever anyway.

Smack Down 2 emulated from the PSX can be good for a laugh. Works on my phone as well. Horrible AI, pretty bad graphics, but heaps of match types for giggles. You can even make custom wrestlers and let the AI homoeroticize them for you. Yes Rock, we smell it. It smells like Rikishi's bumhole again.