good AI, bad AI

I recently played quite many games of Race for the Galaxy and Blue Moon against computer opponents, using programs downloaded from keldon.net. I have been enjoying the games very much, which surprised me a little. I have written about why some computer versions of boardgames spoil the games for me. So I wondered why I enjoyed these games so much.

The main reason I dislike playing boardgames against AI's is it makes the game feel very mechanical and formulaic. Real computer games, e.g. Civilization, Pharaoh and its siblings, the Total War series, Europa Universalis 2, are enjoyable because despite their AI's not matching human intelligence, they do many things that boardgames can't do. They handle many complex calculations behind the scenes allowing complex simulations, they can manage a real-time aspect easily, they run complex scenarios and allow much content to be programmed and presented, and of course, they have good graphics and sounds too. As for why some computerised boardgames turn me off but some hook me, I think it boils down to just one simple reason - hidden information.

St Petersburg (computerised version) didn't click because throughout the game, the cards available to be bought is open information, and cards that have been bought is open information too. So after a while you can more or less figure out how the AI's make their decisions. Same case for Yspahan. There is randomness in these games, but after cards are drawn or dice are rolled, it's all open information. However, in Blue Moon and Race for the Galaxy, you can't see the AIs' cards. I guess in a way I'm saying they appear more intelligent than they actually are because of hidden information. I can't easily figure out how they "think" because I don't know what they know. But still, they are pretty good and they give me a good challenge. Actually, I should be saying the programmer who programmed them is pretty good. In the recent 58 games of Blue Moon played against AI's, I lost 60% of them. In the recent 88 games of Race for the Galaxy with 3 players (myself and two AI's), I won 32% of the time, came in second 42%, came in last 26%.

When playing Blue Moon, once I find a combination that is hard to play, I keep playing it so that I can learn and improve. I find playing Khind against Mimix quite hard, and playing Flit against Terrah even more difficult. Sometimes I swap races, so that I can learn from how the AI plays the "weaker" race. It turns out that the AI can beat me too, but I do learn a few tricks in the process. In Blue Moon it is slightly easier to see through the program logic, because each race deck has a fixed set of 30 cards. So after a while you know some of the common tricks when playing one specific race against another, e.g. playing a character card requiring your enemy to play a booster card, when you know your enemy deck has no or few booster cards. Race for the Galaxy has many many more cards than Blue Moon, so it is not as easy to work out how the AI thinks.

I enjoy learning from the AI's. I only play these games with very few people, so there are many things that we have not explored or even thought about trying. Despite my 400+ plays of Race for the Galaxy, I still think I'm a mediocre player.

Sometimes I'm sloppy when I play Race for the Galaxy against the AI's. I don't watch their tableaus, I don't pay attention to what actions they have chosen and I don't bother guessing what they will choose. I find that when I'm lazy, I tend to lose more. Sometimes when I play a long stretch of games, I win more in the earlier games, and as I become sloppy and impatient, I lose more and more of the later games. I think this shows that Race for the Galaxy should not be played in a solitaire way. You do need to leech off your opponents' actions in order to do better than them.

In conclusion, I lied about good AI's and bad AI's. The AI's are all good. It's just how we perceive them. But then "not-so-transparent AI's and transparent AI's" is not exactly a catchy title.

Playing Blue Moon against the AI. I played Flit against Terrah. It sucks when all your cards are non-character cards. You are forced to retreat. See how my cards are all greyed out.

A game of Race for the Galaxy that I won using a novelty goods consume strategy. I had both Free Trade Association and Consumer Markets, and I had four novelty goods worlds. I also had the Alien Toy Shop, which could consume for 4pts (if I double-consumed).

I thought I did pretty well in this game, but I still lost. I had three 6-cost devs, Terraforming Guild (10pts), Prospecting Guild (14pts!) and Rebel Alliance (6pts). The other two AI's also had three 6-cost devs each! Scores were 57, 51 (me), 48.

This is one pretty extreme game which I won 81, 23, 15. I played Galactic Federation very early, and eventually had five 6-cost devs. I also won three first-to objectives and one most-of objective. Playing a 6-cost dev early is a strategy I have never thought of myself, even after 400+ games. I learned this from the AI. I used to think that 6-cost devs are just too expensive and would stunt further progress. Now I realise they can be very powerful under the right circumstances.

A close game in which I lost by 1pt. In the last round, I had the choice of ending the game there and then, or extending it by another round. I developed Uplift Code. I had the choice of whether to discard R&D Crash Program to pay for it. If I had done that, my tableau would not have reached 12 cards yet, and there would be another round, in which I could then develop Pan-Galactic League (worth at least 7pts), and possibly settle one more world if one of the AI's chose Settle. I was too lazy to do detailed analysis and just decided to end the game early. And I lost by 1pt. In hindsight, I probably should have stalled one more round.

Takeover in action (I had the Imperium Seat, which could takeover Rebel worlds). I have played many games with the Rebel vs Imperium expansion before, most with takeovers on, but even so takeovers were rare. I think I have only done it once with the physical copy of the game. So it was fun to be able to do a takeover again. Naturally I targeted the AI which was closer to me in points (top left).

This takeover did not changed the result of the game. I would have won anyway.

Another extreme game where at one point 7 out of 9 cards in my hand were 6-cost devs.

I eventually developed two of them, but I lost by a big margin, 57-45-39(me). The winning AI had four 6-cost devs.

One very blue game. Six novelty goods worlds and Free Trade Association. Other than my start world (yellow - Alien), everything else was blue or blue related.

Another takeover. Before...

... and after.

A developer dream come true. I think I chose Develop for all but 2 rounds (or thereabouts). By mid game, whenever I chose Develop, I would draw 3 cards, and get a -4 discount for developing. Also both Galactic Federation and Galactic Bankers rewarded me for developments.

non-aggressive Through the Ages

For a gamer, if you have a spouse willing to play a 3-hour Full Game of Through the Ages with you, there is probably not much else you can ask for. Michelle not only sat down to play a game of Through the Ages with me on Saturday afternoon (7 Jun 2008), she even beat me! 275 to 257. And we played a second game the next day.

We played the non aggressive variant, i.e. no aggression cards (you attack your opponent, and if successful, you grab resources, or destroy buildings, or take science, etc), and no war cards (potentially more destructive all-out wars where the severity of the outcome depends on the relative strength of the civilisations involved). This does not make military might irrelevant. It is still important, because there are many events rewarding the militarily stronger civilisation and punishing the weaker, and also there are colonies to fight over. In fact, I think removing the aggression and war cards make more colonies appear. We had about 6 colonies in both our games.

It was great fun! It was tiring for Michelle, since the games were long. The first game was probably around 3 hours, and this was after we spent the morning at the swimming pool with the children. The second game took maybe 2.5 hours. I skipped the Advanced Game and let her jump straight into the Full Game. It was probably a little overwhelming for Michelle, but I think she managed OK. Well, she did win the game!

Michelle and Through the Ages, near game end of our second game.

Michelle had the same comment as when I first played the game. This is a game where you cannot afford to neglect any single aspect of your civilisation. Ignore science, and you won't be able to keep up with your opponents' powerful buildings / efficient mines and farms / stronger military units. Ignore production, and you won't be able to build the new buildings / mines / soldiers even if you have the technology. Ignore food, and you won't have enough population to be turned into buildings / mines / soldiers. Ignore governments and related technologies, leaders or wonders, and you won't have enough actions to do all that you want to do.

Now that I have played 5 games of Through the Ages, I still like it a lot. In fact I may like it more than the Civilisation IV PC game. Or maybe I should say it removes some of the things that I don't like about the PC game. Two things that I find tedious in the PC game are warfare and the end game. Sometimes when playing on higher difficulty levels, I tend to need to wage a lot of war to gain an advantage over the AI's. This can be tedious sometimes (but not the time I meticulously planned to destroy the Greek because the warmongering Alexander the supposedly Great attacked me three times unprovoked). The end game can also be tedious when suddenly you switch focus solely to building your spaceship. Your civilisation is big and unweildy and a chore to manage, and usually by the time you get there either you are already the clear leader and victory is just a matter of spending much more time at the PC, or even when there is a serious contender in the space race, the space race itself is really not all that interesting. Either you have already set yourself up well (strong science and good production capacity), or you have not. By the time modern age is here, there are not many interesting decisions to make anymore.

Warfare in Through the Ages is very simplistic, but I'm satisfied with it. It is more about maneuvering and planning - developing military technology, training troops, drawing some defense cards, how many troops to sacrifice in case you need to spend them on claiming a colony. By the time you attack, or are attacked, you have already had the chance to prepare for it. You can only blame yourself if you are too poorly prepared for it. So the very simplistic battle resolution doesn't bother me.

The end game in Through the Ages is at least not as tedious as Civilisation IV. In the last few turns of the boardgame, you still feel there is much you have planned to do but time is already running out. It is not the case in the PC game. You feel like you don't have anything very interesting to do anymore. In the boardgame, there is still a feeling of having fewer interesting choices. There is usually not much point in improving infrastructure, increasing population, or discovering new technologies anymore, and the focus is solely on wringing that extra bit of culture (the victory points in this game) out of your civilisation. However the Age III events add some spice to the end game. These events award culture points based on various different aspects of your civilisation. You know which events that you have seeded into the event deck, but you won't know which are the ones you opponents have seeded. So at least you will feel that aspects other that culture do matter at game end.

One of the biggest advantages of PC games is they hide away all the boring accounting from you, saving you a lot of time and effort, and allowing you to focus on the fun bits. In Through the Ages there is some accounting that you have to do, but I find it simple and intuitive, so for me it doesn't get in the way of having fun. There are still times when I forget things though, e.g. I forget to make use of leader special powers, or powers of special technologies. And sometimes when Michelle's people eat a stored food, she moves the blue cylinder back to the yellow bank instead of the blue bank. Well at least that's easy to spot and fix.

There are still some things that I am not entirely sure of when I play, and occasionally I still have to refer to the rules. But overall I still think the game is quite intuitive and really is not very complex, just that there are sometimes some rare situations that you need to look up in the rules to make sure you handle them right. There is one thing I am still not sure of. With the Age III event card that awards culture based on your technologies, do you count cards that are covered by others? E.g. an older government card that has been covered by your newer government card, or an older special technology card that has been covered by a newer version of that special technology. I interpreted it as yes, you should count them, because you have spent science points discovering them. I wonder whether this is the official interpretation. It makes sense to me.

When Michelle first saw the fast food chain wonder card, she had a different interpretation from mine. I don't remember the exact text. My interpretation: you score 2pt for workers on mines + 2pt for workers on farms + 1pt for workers on urban buildings + 1pt for workers who are military units. Michelle's interpretation: you score 2pt for workers on mines OR 2pt for workers on farms, plus 1pt for workers on urban buildings OR 1pt for workers who are military units. From looking at the text on the card, I think my interpretation is the intended design. However, I think this way the fast food chain is overpowered compared to other Age III wonders, so we eventually agreed on Michelle's interpretation.

I guess I should check or ask on BoardGameGeek other players' viewpoints / interpretations on these.

My civilisation (1 of 3). I had 4 wonders, all mainly culture generating. Einstein was my Age III leader, but I forgot to make use of his power to gain culture when playing a technology card.

My civilisation (2 of 3). I was a despot most of the game and was stuck with 4 civil actions and 2 military actions for much of the game. Thankfully I eventually switched to a Monarchy, and I also had the Civil Service special technology card that gave me 2 more civil actions. I have only ever bothered to gain one more military technology, a rifleman. Not much variety there. I did spend resources in training troops, which was important for fighting over colonies. I had so many yellow cylinders, all because of my colonies (see next picture).

My civilisation (3 of 3). My 3 colonies and special technologies.

Michelle's civilisation (1 of 3). Michelle also had 4 wonders. Having many early wonders hinders you from taking the later wonders, because to pick a wonder card you need to spend additional civil actions based on how many existing wonders you already own. Michelle colonies have a bit more variety compared to mine.

Michelle's civilisation (2 of 3). Michelle has many blue cylinders. No worries about corruption.

Michelle's civilisation (3 of 3). Lots of good science and culture generating urban buildings.

A follow-up (Thu 12 Jun 2008):

I have checked on BoardGameGeek and confirmed that for Fast Food Chain, you indeed score for every worker, i.e. my interpretation. Other players do not find Fast Food Chain to be overpowered compared to other Age III wonders. So maybe it is just the way that we tend to play that makes Fast Food Chain seem overpowered. However I do remember reading somewhere else on BoardGameGeek that there are also some others who feel Fast Food Chain is one of the more powerful ones among the Age III wonders.

I have also found out that obsolete special technologies (e.g. Masonry when you already have Architecture) and obsolete government forms (e.g. Republic when you already have Democracy) should be discarded immediately and thus when you are rewarded for technologies, for example when building the First Space Flight wonder, you do not get rewarded for these technologies because they are no longer in your play area.

PC games

Before I got into the boardgame hobby in a serious way, my previous hobby was PC games. And it was actually boardgames that brought me into the PC game hobby. I studied computer science in university, but never got into PC gaming during my student days. For the first few years after starting work, I also did not get into PC gaming, despite being surrounded by computers all the time. (maybe I should say because of being already surrounded by computers all the time). I played some Axis & Allies and Samurai Swords in my early working years, and one day a colleague (who was very much into PC games) told me that there was actually an Axis & Allies PC game. That's what got me into PC gaming. The Axis & Allies PC game was actually quite lousy. It has a poor AI (artificial intelligence, i.e. a computer player), and it has some bugs. There is not much fun or challenge playing against the computer, and sometimes halfway through a game you can get stuck because of bugs in the program. But I do have fond memories with the Axis & Allies PC game. Ricky (who also sometimes plays boardgames with me now) sometimes visited me, bringing his laptop, and then we play Axis & Allies using our two laptops and a serial cable. It was fun. Much time saved on setting up and rolling dice. He prefers playing the Allies so I usually play the Axis. I also remember playing this against Ah Chung when I worked in Hong Kong for a few months in 1999 - 2000.

The games which I played a lot during my PC gaming days (approximately 1999 to 2003) were Shogun Total War, Civilisation II to IV, Europa Universalis II, and Pharaoh. None of the hot RTS (Real Time Strategy) games like Age of Empires II, Starcraft, Warcraft, or hot FPS (First Person Shooter) games like Counter-strike. I like "thinky" games and not "reflex" games. Not to say that there is no strategy at all in RTS games or FPS games, but they are just not my cup of tea. Shogun Total War is probably the only exception. This game was a very innovative RTS. It is much more realistic because terrain, morale, fatigue, troop type, weather, season are all factors during a battle. Soldiers don't fight in messy masses, but in organised units of 60 to 100 men. Unit formation, facing, whether you are near friendly units or surrounded by enemy units, are all factors during battle. Ben (or was it Ah Chung) commented that it was like playing Warhammer (we played exactly one game, ever), but in real time and the computer does all the tedious calculation for you. I played a lot of Shogun Total War. Its real-time battles are more about maneuvering and using formations and terrain to your best advantage, before you even engage in hand-to-hand combat. So, in my opinion, it is much less about being quick with the mouse than other RTS games. I was surprised no other PC games followed this excellent example. RTS games in the few years after Shogun Total War came out did not learn from it, and still stayed with their boring (to me) formula. Later there were Medieval Total War, Rome Total War, and Medieval Total War II. However, I didn't play those much. The strategic map part of the game became much more complicated and tedious for me, and although the graphics improved greatly, the basic strategies remained the same as in the original Shogun Total War.

A screenshot from Shogun Total War. This is the campaign or strategic level view, and not the battlefield or tactical level view. There was a debate on whether this gun factory building exists in the game, and I took this screenshot to prove that it does to other fellow players.

I even programmed a campaign editor, i.e. a scenario editor for Shogun Total War.

I started playing Civilisation II a long time after it was first released. This is a turn based game, where you start in 4000BC as a tribe of nomads looking for a land to settle, and then you build your empire up to the modern age. You grow your population, develop buildings, discover technology, build wonders of the world, trade with other civilisations, fight wars, and eventually race to be the first to build a spaceship to send colonists to Alpha Centauri (although this is just one of the victory conditions). Civ is a very addictive and engaging game. I played Civ2 a lot, Civ3 also a lot, but Civ4 not as much. I do think Civ3 is undoubtedly better than Civ2, and Civ4 is undoubtedly better than Civ3. One thing that I like about Civ4 is the AI's have more character and don't behave like emotionless calculating machines like in Civ3. In Civ4 a weak AI who is angry with you may decide to declare war on you, or a much stronger AI right next to you who can eat you for breakfast but likes you may never attack you. They feel more human to me than the ones in Civ3.

In the PC games that I have played, I mostly played single-player games. It was convenient, because I didn't need to look for opponents, and time was flexible - I could play at any time that suited me. The games I played offer much for a single player experience, so I didn't need to look for other players. I did play some online battles of Shogun Total War against other players, which was quite exciting, but internet connection was bad (dial-up) and maybe online battles with other people was too much for me, so I conveniently went back to just playing campaigns against the AI (you couldn't play campaigns online against other players). The disadvantage of playing against computer AI's is they are not as smart as humans. Some games are complex enough that you don't really see the AI's "stupidity" unless it is very obvious, but in some games the AI behaviour can get quite predictable, and the game becomes not challenging.

Some games require little or no AI, like Pharaoh, a city-building game which Michelle played even more than I did. You build a city and watch it grow, and the individual people in the city behave in certain known ways (looking for work, delivering goods), which you need to take into account when developing your city. You don't need an AI to compete with you. You are just building your own city peacefully, trying to achieve certain goals, e.g. a certain population level, or a certain level of culture or wealth. Pharaoh is a truly beautiful game. It is more beautiful than its predecessor Caesar III, and I find it is also more beautiful than its successors Zeus, and Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom. Well, Emperor was quite beautiful too. Pharaoh was fun. You plan your city and watch the little people move about being busy. It is a joy to watch your city bustling with activity. And you get to build huge monuments, which you will need a lot of patience for.

The other game which I played a liked a lot was Europa Universalis II. This is truly a niche game. It is quite difficult to learn. It is about the Age of Renaissance and Age of Discovery in Europe. It was a time when Christianity splintered, a time of sailing and discovery and colonisation. This is a game about managing a nation, its domestic policies, its religion, rebellions, exploration, piracy, technology, trade, alliances, diplomacy and warfare. There is a lot of history in the game, occurring as events throughout the game, sometimes giving you choices to steer your nation in a direction you want it to go, with different effects to your nation depending on your choice. There is a very interesting concept of Casus Belli (cause for war) and reputation. You need to have legitimate reasons for declaring war, to avoid taking a big hit on your reputation, which is important when engaging in diplomacy. Nations of different religions have different strengths and weaknesses. I learnt a lot of European history from this game. Two other things I remember fondly of are the excellent soundtrack and the simple yet impressive opening scene - the camera pans through a dark church, a solemn hymn was being sung, and the camera finally rests on the bright artwork of the window, backlit by sunlight from outside. The text during the opening scene sets the tone for the period in the game.

I later played Hearts of Iron (covering World War II) and Victoria (covering the time between Europa Universalis II and Hearts of Iron, I guess), which were by the same team that did Europe Universalis, but I didn't play them as much.

After I got into the boardgame hobby at end of 2003, I gradually stopped playing PC games. The good thing about boardgames is it is an activity that Michelle and I can do together. And when my children grow older I hope to be playing boardgames as a family activity. I don't know whether I will get back into PC gaming. Maybe when I have a lot more free time, but that will probably quite distant in the future. I had fun, and I remember these games fondly.