I’m not sure about that. A common complaint about these kinds of games is that the AI’s blatantly cheat, especially on higher difficulty levels. I could very well see a market for an AI that could give the human a challenge without cheating.
Several years ago, Backgammon AI was at the point where it could absolutely demolish humans without cheating. My impression is that people hated it, and even if they rolled the dice for the AI and input the results themselves they were pretty sure that it had to be cheating somehow.
May have been a vocal minority. You get some people incorrectly complaining about AI cheating in any game that utilizes randomness (Civilization and the new XCOMs are two examples I know of); usually this leads to somebody running a series of tests or decompiling the source code to show people that no, the die rolls are actually fair or (as is commonly the case) actually actively biased in the human player’s favor.
This never stops some people from complaining nonetheless, but a lot of others find the evidence convincing enough and just chalk it up to their own biases (and are less likely to suspect cheating when they play the next game that has random elements).
Right, I meant that Civ doesn’t cheat when it comes to die rolls—e.g. if it displays a 75% chance for the player to win a battle, then the probability really is at least 75%.
That’s why I said “AI that could give the human a challenge” not “AI that would demolish a human”. Better yet, have the game difficulty setting actually control the intelligence of the AI, rather than how much the AI cheats.
Several years ago, Backgammon AI was at the point where it could absolutely demolish humans without cheating. My impression is that people hated it, and even if they rolled the dice for the AI and input the results themselves they were pretty sure that it had to be cheating somehow.
May have been a vocal minority. You get some people incorrectly complaining about AI cheating in any game that utilizes randomness (Civilization and the new XCOMs are two examples I know of); usually this leads to somebody running a series of tests or decompiling the source code to show people that no, the die rolls are actually fair or (as is commonly the case) actually actively biased in the human player’s favor.
This never stops some people from complaining nonetheless, but a lot of others find the evidence convincing enough and just chalk it up to their own biases (and are less likely to suspect cheating when they play the next game that has random elements).
The Civ 5 AI does cheat insofar as it doesn’t have to deal with the fog of war, IIRC.
The XCOM AI seems to cheat because they’ve don’t report the actual probability.
Not just that, especially on higher difficulty levels.
Right, I meant that Civ doesn’t cheat when it comes to die rolls—e.g. if it displays a 75% chance for the player to win a battle, then the probability really is at least 75%.
It does cheat in a number of other ways.
That’s why I said “AI that could give the human a challenge” not “AI that would demolish a human”. Better yet, have the game difficulty setting actually control the intelligence of the AI, rather than how much the AI cheats.