tl;dr version: Anyone have any TBStrategy games that don’t fall into common AI tropes?

I’m a big fan of turn-based strategy games, typically referred to as 4X-style games. I’m also kind of good at them (like a world champion body builder is “kind of good” at lifting things).

I’ve played a lot of them, and sunk a very large number of hours into them, and while I love playing them, the AI is, shall we say, disappointing. It isn’t capable of figuring out when to hold them and when to fold them, as the case may be. It isn’t capable of realizing that certain strategies are good at different times in the game and not so good at other times. To borrow from chess, you have a beginning game, mid game, and end game. Using a beginning game strategy end-game doesn’t work.

This saddens me. It also makes me wonder if I can do better. Sadly, I’m not much of a coder and I’ve never tried making an AI (well, more like a decision algorithm), so I have no idea if I could do better or not. However, I can be an armchair developer/designer and pick at AI foibles.

Problem #1: Deciding when to attack. Read More →