A sci fi or SF+ fantasy Space 4x game with a strong diplomacy & strategy AI.
There's a crop of space 4x games that have come out recently, but I've been pretty disappointed with all of them. Partially, it's the standard "Noone's recaptured MOO2, much less improved on it" gripe. But a lot of it is just how badly the AI sucks, even compared to non-space 4x games.
To me, a good diplomacy AI/game would include:
- A good understanding of when a player is starting to enter the 'steamroller' state, to up the challenge by allying with former enemies to stop the steam roller.
- An appropriate penalty or Cassus Belli system to prevent a player from being a backstabbing bastard without suffering the consequences.
- The ability + incentive to 'declare intentions' to other parties. When human players play, they routinely tell each other what they're thinking/doing (with lies, of course). AI's, either don't tell you what they're thinking, or they do but the game never requires the player himself to do that, giving the player a large advantage as the AI.
The idea of course is to have players have a strong incentive to play diplomatically even with AI players. This does not prevent backstabbing, but backstabbing should have the appropriate consequences.
Strategic AI is similarly awful. Most 4x AI's don't identify front line/rear line systems, and they tend to throw under-powered fleets at predicatable systems so that even if a player is in a 'weak' position (usually only due to game start handicapping), he can just play defensively and economically efficiently until he catches up to the AI's economy while the AI wastes resources attacking something they can't defeat. Similarly, on defense, the AI tends to throw everything willy-nilly at the player's doom stack.
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Topic: Games you wish existed (Read 967904 times)