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Comment by Buttons840 | Hacker News Reader

I've been thinking a lot about trying to make an AI for a turn based 4X game. I believe an AI that could defeat the strongest human players in (for example) Civilization would be more impressive than AlphaStar and the Dota AIs.

I think it might give the gaming industry a kick in the pants to start utilizing more advance AI techniques in general, since it seems almost all discussions of strong AI in games are dominated by apologists explaining why it's not practical. Just one example of strong AI in a successful game would change the industry.

After strong AIs are common, we can persue the even more interesting task of dumbing them down in fun ways.

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Having an AI defeat the strongest human players (without cheating) isn't often the hard part, its making it fun, believable, interesting or, indeed, beatable (its no fun if you can never ever win) is often the hard part. A perfectly minmaxing AI that makes perfect decisions isn't very interesting to players. Outsmarting players in interesting ways is, well, interesting, but just always playing the best move in any given scenario (like what deep blue did with its search-based "AI") can create perfect play if the search space is within the bounds of time/memory of the AI, but that's not very interesting to play against or watch.

Have you played Civilization? The challenge of making a legitimate, human-beating AI, is near insurmountable.

> After strong AIs are common, we can persue the even more interesting task of dumbing them down in fun ways

An artificially handicapped or limited smart ai in video games is often obvious and not fun.

I don't know about that, I much prefer playing chess video games against an artificially limited AI. Granted you did say "often", and I agree this is the exception.

Starting with an AI that is weaker than human players, and then artificially limiting it even further does not produce a great AI. Although, some players still choose to play against these easiest of AIs.

I believe starting with an AI that is far stronger than any human, and then artificially limiting it will be fun. This is a fundamentally different situation. This is like a chess engine, no human can hope to win without some artificial limitations on the AI. This is a type of AI we have never experience outside of a few abstract board games like chess. I look forward to seeing AIs like this come to 4X style games such as Civilization.

Would you rather play chess against a computer you were bound to be crushed by 100 out of 100 times, or a still formidable opponent you could eke out a 25% winrate against?

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