I appreciate the work you've done, but I still think the law of "the more complex the game, the dumber the AI" still applies. Because even if you put aside the various advantages of human players (undead hive thinking), humans still have an absolute advantage over AI-thinking ability. The game's AI is nothing more than a bunch of nested if statements (as you said, neural networks and machine learning are not supported on consumer-grade hardware), making short-term decisions randomly or on a case-by-case basis. Players have the ability to collect information, comprehensive analysis, flexible decision-making and execution that AI will never have. This is evident in CK3, where through kidnapping, clever marriages and murders, blackmailing the pope for claims, and space marine cavaliers created by stacking modifiers, players can unify hre and ere as earls over three generations. In contrast, the AI can only slowly forge the claim that Byzantium is invincible to the AI. Admittedly, pdx is not doing very well. But it also shows that the player will always be better than the AI in terms of long-term strategy (especially the AI is limited by role-playing, such as AI with the status quo trait is less likely to expand). Players can set multiple strategies for one goal, and can also set multiple parallel steps for a strategy. If the execution fails, the player tries again or changes strategy. AI will never be able to do these things. Your vision is so complex, and the mechanics so varied, that I suspect the result will only be players crushing the AI in dozens of ways.
Well in Axioms your direct control is so limited. First you don't *have* to roleplay but if you read the section on Dissonance you'll see that there are penalties.
Sexondly in Axioms you have to declare your intentions, even if it isn't alays public. And the AI can sometimes access your metadata, just as you can access theirs, through intrigue or other characters spilling the info.
Finally, because you no longer have perfect information, perfect control, and perfect execution by subordinates, the player advantage is heavily negated. So much of the heavy lifting of an empire needs to be done by the NPC agents because you are limited by your attention points.
So you can't directly control your armies like in many games, you need to set up the campaign plan, and later the battle plan, and then you only have direct control over an army you are directly leading.
You can't easily respond to things that happen away from your immediate location, because you won't know about them. Messengers, generally, move faster than field armies, and there are also fancier communication methods, but there is still a delay. And you won't be receiving perfect information even when you get it.
If you read the post on Banditry you'll see some things that result from this. A fast mounted group can travel at similar speeds to messaging and also dodge lots of information gathering methods.
The NPC agents *can* in fact execute complex plans. That's why even being turnbased with multi-threading, including doing the planning phase on the player's turn, you are still not getting *instant* turns.
The NPC agent decision making has access to way more information, because the simulation and consciousness/metadata is far more detailed than a typical strategy game, and so it does a lot more processing.
I appreciate the work you've done, but I still think the law of "the more complex the game, the dumber the AI" still applies. Because even if you put aside the various advantages of human players (undead hive thinking), humans still have an absolute advantage over AI-thinking ability. The game's AI is nothing more than a bunch of nested if statements (as you said, neural networks and machine learning are not supported on consumer-grade hardware), making short-term decisions randomly or on a case-by-case basis. Players have the ability to collect information, comprehensive analysis, flexible decision-making and execution that AI will never have. This is evident in CK3, where through kidnapping, clever marriages and murders, blackmailing the pope for claims, and space marine cavaliers created by stacking modifiers, players can unify hre and ere as earls over three generations. In contrast, the AI can only slowly forge the claim that Byzantium is invincible to the AI. Admittedly, pdx is not doing very well. But it also shows that the player will always be better than the AI in terms of long-term strategy (especially the AI is limited by role-playing, such as AI with the status quo trait is less likely to expand). Players can set multiple strategies for one goal, and can also set multiple parallel steps for a strategy. If the execution fails, the player tries again or changes strategy. AI will never be able to do these things. Your vision is so complex, and the mechanics so varied, that I suspect the result will only be players crushing the AI in dozens of ways.
Well in Axioms your direct control is so limited. First you don't *have* to roleplay but if you read the section on Dissonance you'll see that there are penalties.
Sexondly in Axioms you have to declare your intentions, even if it isn't alays public. And the AI can sometimes access your metadata, just as you can access theirs, through intrigue or other characters spilling the info.
Finally, because you no longer have perfect information, perfect control, and perfect execution by subordinates, the player advantage is heavily negated. So much of the heavy lifting of an empire needs to be done by the NPC agents because you are limited by your attention points.
So you can't directly control your armies like in many games, you need to set up the campaign plan, and later the battle plan, and then you only have direct control over an army you are directly leading.
You can't easily respond to things that happen away from your immediate location, because you won't know about them. Messengers, generally, move faster than field armies, and there are also fancier communication methods, but there is still a delay. And you won't be receiving perfect information even when you get it.
If you read the post on Banditry you'll see some things that result from this. A fast mounted group can travel at similar speeds to messaging and also dodge lots of information gathering methods.
The NPC agents *can* in fact execute complex plans. That's why even being turnbased with multi-threading, including doing the planning phase on the player's turn, you are still not getting *instant* turns.
The NPC agent decision making has access to way more information, because the simulation and consciousness/metadata is far more detailed than a typical strategy game, and so it does a lot more processing.
What is your future roadmap?