There are a number folks in the special forces community who would describe the situation differently, but they tend to carry a grudge.  The downside of this scenario is that it leads to playing "whack-a-mole", which is available in other games.  Traditionally, this causes folks to circle around the cave and then capture or kill the pop-up perpetrator.  Remember that Geronimo died in bed of pneumonia at Ft. Sill as a prisoner of the US Army. 

On the other hand, in "Master of Magic" there are instances where the ruling mage is banished from the plane and his empire stops moving units around until he casts the spell of recall.  In that case an all-but-exiled mage can scoop up a lot of territory in the now uncontrolled lands.  An interesting variant of this effect that applies to this thread is that while the returning mage is off-site, they could send snarky comments to the residents of the plane in play.

okay fine then, no caves ... just retreat to the nearest Castle. I mean ... a Dragon can probably fight many battles up and down the country before it has to retreat to a castle, if played well. Saying "hide in a cave" was largely irrevelant as a Dragon cannot hide in a cave, merely rest there, to recover HP and stamina.

my main question was wether Dragons can gain levels or not ... cause thats relevant even when you DO have a sizable army you can field.

This DevJ made me think about one thing. How much will AI know about me (myself and I)? In other words: will it cheat to get all the info it needs to crush me? Or will it be tied to the same rules as I am, so it will have to send a scout/spy to know more about me.

Why I am mentioning it here? If the AI is to choose an appropriate dialog when speaking with me, shouldn't the choice be made basing on what he has seen, not what I really am? Think about such situation. I was unlucky, and I was spawned in the middle of nowhere - with no bonus zones around. I built like 3 cities which didn't grow too fast making me quite week in comparison to opposition. Now, suddenly I tamed a dragon, however, it's quite late (200 turns have passed) and my foes have much bigger armies, which can crush my dragon + a bunch of soldiers. Eventually I met a AI-controlled enemy with my dragon. He has no info about me, so he assumes that with a moderately strong army and the dragon, I will be able to defeat him. Basing on that event, from now on (until he scouts me, or I lose my dragon) he will communicate with me, as if I was super-powerful opponent.

What ya think?

Well, Boogiebac only talks about AI to player conversation in the OP.  IMHO, it'll be quite a waste, if they only use it in such a limited context.  I just need to expand the OP idea for all other uses, especially role playing.


This is a great idea!  This should allow more organic diplomacy.   In the mechanism you stated, when someone declared war to you, other friendly AI players may or may not help you.   Or when some fractions tries to gang up on you, other fractions will make a defensive pact with you to protect you.

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Anyway, I will very happy if Boogiebac show us how they will link the result of conversation to action.  How will they make this portion data driven too?

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This is a very keen observation.   It also relates to the 1st point of my reply #8.

The conversation choice MUST be base on what he has seen.   This is a principal that should applies to all other AI decisions too.   There must NOT be any chart comparing player A vs player B's true military strength, true tech/magic level, true diplomacy skill etc.   However, there can be charts showing the "perceived" strength on each category.   Gamer & AI opponent will base their conversation/action on this limited piece of information.   And I may be (or not) happy that such charts do exist at all, because I found that while they are useful, these charts may distract my immersion to the game.

These "perceived charts" can be made to be quite accurate but not necessary true.   When you see your opponent has a dozen pole-arm wielding knights & they see that your best units is only foot soldiers, you (& your opponent) will perceive that your military is weak and base their follow up action to that.  (However, they don't know you have 10 dragons hidding somewhere else in their FOW).

yea, perception would be cool. However, games like Civ 4 work well with all players constantly knowing the calculated "power" and "economic might" of nations. I mean, there are power charts, food charts, GNP charts, Productivity charts, ect. All of these are points of comparison. However, perhaps it would be better to focus on percieved power in Elemental ... especially since the power of a Sovereign's magic, ect, is hard to make "absolute calculations".

I really like the idea of perceived power and limiting the AI to what it has seen rather than giving it any type of meta-information.

This conversation system seems very, very cool.  I have not used Python in the past.  Is it difficult to pick up?

Negotiations generally should be quick, short, simple and straight to the point.  No time for small chatter and idle banter.  Unless a very good reason to justify advanced negotiations exist, players might favor the fast route when dealing with many civs.

Now if the game could make negotiations entertaining well that might be a very good reason indeed.  Like if the emmissary I am speaking to is laying out his war plans in a video feed of the cloth map plus moving chess pieces on the next window.  "As you can see the military forces of [player X] is advancing into our neutral zone, mutual action is required to counter this threat."  Think of it as the space war combat video in GalCiv2 only for negotiations.  Would make threats look far more threatening too.

Good stuff! I'm always for a more robust AI interaction system!

maybe the more airs you are willing to uphold (in order to appease your diplomatic guest) the higher the chance that your proposal will pass. of course, there are only so many airs that you can uphold before making a fopa, and this number increases with your diplomacy score. (so diplomacy score is not purely "I can talk better" but also has a mechanical factor as well)

Actually I don't like this. I think the AI's should make decisions according to their interest and then explain that in some way. The total war series fails in this way by relying on your diplomats skill. If you don't have a high skill diplomat the answer from the AI is always 'no', even when you offer deals that will really help them out.

well ... of course I want things that interest the AI to be accepted by the AI. What I mean is that for particularly though things (like getting your son to marry their daughter, or allowing your workers to mine ore in their territory "a gift of raw resources", it might need some ass-kissing, or rather diplomatic and respectful language, and your options in speach are limited by your diplomacy value)

Although, if someone needs a military alliance, it wont matter if your an ugly, hairy, ill-mannered bumpkin

If there was a way that each AI could only calculate your military strength by what was visible to them on the map that would be good.

I also have another concern. I know a lot of modders aren't going to put a ton of work into it (I hope to put a ton of work into mine, but not everyone will). So will there be a way to streamline the conversation tree optionally? If there isn't, oh well get back to work slackers!

I am more concerned about the race issue discussed. So when I create my mod adding another race to elemental, how will they interact with humans and Fallen in this conversation tree?

perhaps they will make Fallen-Human interactions generic enough (mostly) to just be Bigger creature > Smaller creature interactions, and when "Fallen" and "Human" are mentioned, its a Variable word. "Greetings lowly (enter species here), do you delight in our destruction of your puny ideals? Kiss the royal finger."

If not however, then yes, modders will need to do alot of work. It wont be so bad though ... I mean, you could just copy "Fallen" diplo text ... and then spend hours scouring over it to change discrepancies

Although, either way, doing a mod to a race, with consideration to conversations, is going to take ALOT of time ... even if very little programming knowledge.

Back to topic, who launches dialogues?

 

Can dialogues be initiated by individuals or leaders?

For instance, let's say there is a Sphynx unit somewhere. When you meet it, it spawns a dialogue and if you answer correctly, it joins you, otherwise, it eats you. Does the Sphynx have to be a leader of a faction, does it have to have its own faction, or can it be a character of the Neutral/Barbarian faction?

In the latter case, which is probably the best for modding (think a unit which you could bribe or convince to join you), you'd want to change the image in the diplomatic background so you represent the unit and not the civ leader.

So, can a faction be a unit rather than a civ? Ot will it have to be Topic-related?

What about background images/art? How do you link it to the Topic? Does Topic-specific override Faction-specific art/background or vice versa?

This is really cool.

 

I wonder however willwe be able to threaten the AI and will they be able to comply in kind?