Nations Personalities

[Sirotnikov]

Ok, I know similar ideas were posted before but i can't find a thread dealing with it now.

The thread dealt with the question: How should a personality of a nation be chosen? In civ2 each nation had it's own personality that never changed (unless you played with rules.txt, and who didn't?). And every time I played a game the situation was the same:
Romans were a big civ, India was wiped out, egyptians were wiped out, Spanish were big civ, Greeks were big civ, Americans were medium civ, persians were wiped out etc.

That never changed. There was an idea in the previous thread that got me thinking. Leaders. Each civ has a number of predifened leaders that have their distinct personality and the nation would behave like it's leader. To have great empires falling, there might be revolutions (real ones) once in a while where the leader would change and the country's personality will change. For instace: Rome was glorious with ceasar but would be very weak with neron (spelling?) and weak but militant with musolini.

The leader might be chosen according to the govt. ceasar and neron are the options for monarchy (or something) musolini can be chosen as comunist or facist leader, current italian presidents will be chosen under democracy. but this raises a question: what comunist would lead the US for instance? maybe some well known figure from the 20s or 30s that was in the comm. party? a questions discussed in other threads are is US a civ? but that's irrelevant.

Also I think that user controled civs shouldn't be biased like in SMAC. If wanna have the aztecs as a small peace loving science giant I wanna be able to do that. Civ 3 shouldn't be like SMAC or Age of Empires.

So, what do you think? oh, and there's a possibility this was already suggested or decided upon. Please don't flame. One person writing it would be sufficient. I can read you know.

In hope for pleasant coop.


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Realists Rule!
(for example: David, Caesar, Bismark, Stalin, Me someday... )

[korn469]

how about having an AI leader which has a set personality...like agrresive and likes technology, or passive and like money or whatever

they wouldn't have names, just set AI behaviors, and each game it would randomly assign each civ one of those AI leaders

so caeser may be passive one game and aggressive the next depending on which set of AI scripts he got

korn469

[Sirotnikov]

korn, that's also a good idea since that way i won't be able to know who i'm playing against right after the first encounter where I discover the leader's name.

I'll have to learn his personality, and then suddenly it can change. without warning or notifying me. oh, the horor!!!

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Realists Rule!
(for example: David, Caesar, Bismark, Stalin, Me someday... )

[Slingshot]

Sirotnikov:

Recently, there have been some threads on similar topics. I am a real supporter of personalizing the very civ you are leading.

Don't worry about suggesting something that has been suggested before. And don't worry about suggesting something that may seem stupid. Heck, I've suggested LOT'S of stupid things, and nobody has "flamed" me.

In fact, I have found the Apolyton community to be very encouraging and well-mannered. There must be a good core of quality people here.

The threads that I saw about civ personalities didn't arrive at any conclusion. So fire away! You will probably get some good feedback.

[Sirotnikov]

Thanks slingshot.
I'm just used to flams since I read newsgroups a lot.

I'm happy this community is peace loving. I mean friendly. Peace doesn't last long when you're playing civ games. At least when I do. I'm really evil

I will stop posting every 10 minutes now and wait for about 24 hours to post in order to mislead you guys into thinking I actually have a life.

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Realists Rule!
(for example: David, Caesar, Bismark, Stalin, Me someday... )

[The diplomat]

I think that SE changes must affect the civ personality.
For example, less agressive under democracy, more agressive under despotism. And, a civ that changes to the free market setting might adopt a "build" agenda etc... The benefit of this system is that the civ personality could change in the middle of the game. It would become advantageous for the player to try to manipulate the SE of other civs. I remember in civ2 games, I would give another civ the "democracy" tech hoping that it would make them less agressive but they would still attack me like crazy even after they switched to democracy. If the civ personality depended on SE then manipulating the SE of other civs becomes a new, interesting and viable strategy.

It also makes a lot of sense. SE does affect how a civ will behave. For example, communist regimes behave differently than democracies etc...

civ personalities should not be written in stone!!

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No permanent enemies, no permanent friends.

[Dienstag]

It sounds like everybody likes the idea of each civ having its own personality, and that personality changes throughout the game. The hard question is exactly how to do this.

It sounds like Soritnikov would like a pool of pre-programmed leaders, that would rise to power at various times for their respective countries. This would mean that sometime throughout the game we'd actually have to deal with people like Alexander the Great and Napolean, which would be challenging and fun. My concern with this is that it will be really hard to get an even representation for each country. How many great leaders for the Aztecs were there (that we know about)? Or the Zulus? And if the leader depends on the government, what happens if America becomes a Monarchy?

Like the diplomat says, personalizing the civs might just be better done with SE than with leaders (I'm not necessarily talking SE like in SMAC, because that could probaly be improved). So although historically leaders have had a huge impact on civ personality, they might not be the best idea for Civ III.

It would be nice, though, if some consideration were made for leaders at least in scenarios, where everything would be customizable and it would really help to the general atmosphere of the scenario.

Also, has anyone else noticed that every new feature we suggest requires a bunch of other changes to Civ II? For example, Including Alexander the Great would mean that the whole years per turn model would have to be fixed, or else he would be dead the turn after he takes power. Unless we want unrealistic life expectancies, but we've got those already...

[Dr Strangelove]

Some time ago I suggested designing the game to make the personalities of the AI's civs leaders change from time to time in an attempt to simulate reality. There are numerous examples in history of civs changing their usual manner of behavior. The Egyptians were generally not very aggressive, but there were some periods where they expanded briefly beyond the Nile river basin. On the other hand the Romans steadily expanded their empire over a 300 year period, and then seem to have largely lost interest (or the ability) in continued expansion.
The change in leader's personality could be either random or controlled by some sort of alogrithm. The latter could be fun to design, involving some rather heavy speculation on human nature. What factors make a civilization aggressive, what factors make a civilization complacent?

[Adm.Naismith]

joking mode on
That's nice about AI leader personality, but what about OUR personality as human player?
Do we need to change behaviour during the game? E.g.:
20:00 game start, happy and curious about surrounding world
20:15 hut unleash a barbarian that kill your scout, raising your interest for hand weapon
20:30 first civ encountered try to grab every money you have, then kill your settler on the way to the best, resources sourraunding, place in sight. You start chewing cigar like gen. Patton and screamimg about vendetta.
21:45 after some battle you eradicate the enemy faction, singing loudly some Wagner's Walkyrie theme.
02:50 your wife start complaining about stupid game and stupid husband she has till yesterday, your morale fall under the shoes
etc. etc.
/joking mode off

Back serius, leaders have some importance, more back on the old age, but I think that global population mood is more important to reproduce. The thread about CIVilians has interesting points about population needs, more focused about how your population react to your leadership, still useful also for AIs civilizations approach.

If religion, or culture, or whatever you name it, of a population is oriented to the warfare you should have a more aggressive AI.

Conversely, if your population is been hitten by some large disease or natural disaster, probably would be more ready to make peace or revolt to you.

If you conquer a city, the original owner should be very unhappy until it will bring it back or you compensate it in some way.

If you discover a new rich territory (or conquer them) your reputation will grow on other friendly or neutral civilization.

CIV and SMAC already simulated this, and we should ask a better work on the same line, not really some crazy leader changing mood without a hint. Random mode (IMHO) is the programmers' refuge to a bad simulation of a reasonable social model.

BTW, I liked the idea of leaders changing during game, more as a way to simulate the flow of time. It should be nice to add it to the Timeline I hope Firaxis will put at the end of game replay.

Some major government/leader change should be announced to you (a news ticker or something) as a sign of a civilization main changement, so you should watch better at your intelligence report!

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Adm.Naismith AKA mcostant

[Slingshot]

Adm.

I really liked the taunts that other civ's would give, like "We see your greedy civ has claimed territory that belongs to us" or something like that.

I didn't like the "A + B signs the Timbuktu Aggression Pact against the human player." Because it always ended up as human vs. the world. Even when you gave all your techs to one other civ, and they loved you for it, a few turns later they had given those techs away and hated your guts!

[Sirotnikov]

quote: How many great leaders for the Aztecs were (that we know about)? Or the Zulus? And if the leader depends on the government, what happens if America becomes a Monarchy?

Good point. So no pre-programmed leaders. The suggestion of SE influencing personality is actually very good but it should only affect AI and not human players like in AC. But remember there are exceptions. For instance, what about the Russian democracy? They are quite agressive. India is also agressive. Also there are countries like Monaco that are very friendly and the Arabs Emirates that AFAIK are peaceful. The US has participated in much more conflicts. Or maybe the Syrian "Democracy".

Another thing about personalities, small countries shoudn't be so stupid. I mean cuba can't really affect the US. While the talk loud they will not ever start a war with the US. In Civ2 however it is different. In a scenario that I have, called the 20th century, China is a ,meduim sized weak country. Japan however is stronger. The countries start off in a war situation and then every once in a while they sign a peace agreement. But then China, already weak after losing half of it's citys to Japan will begin fighting with Russia which is very big. And then China will start a conflict with Japan. Then, after less than 20 turns - Oops, no more China. And it's their own fault. And it is very annoying!

Also, why are nations more receptive towards other AI's than to human players? I betrayed only one nation 300 years ago, but still the French would rather team up with the Aztecs that slaughtered 3 whole civilizations, and then they sign a "secret" pact. Yeah, right. Why can't I have a secret pact? with some nation?

[Dienstag]

My revised and/or clarified idea on SE and civ personalities (still assuming Civ III has SE):

SE doesn't _determine_ personality. They're just closely related.

SE affects the human player, but that's OK because the human player's personality was the reason for picking that particular SE setting.

For the AI players, SE and personality affect each other. For example, the AI player starts with a preset (or random) personality, and some initial SE settings. Every now and then, the AI thinks about how well it is doing and whether or not it would do better by changing its personality or SE settings. So if an AI civ has just lost its third consecutive war of aggression, it could decide that maybe this aggression thing isn't such a good idea, or that its citizens aren't trying hard enough and it's time to change to SE values. Or it could decide to leave everything the way it is, but this is unlikely becuase the AI should be good enough to usually realise when things are going badly. This should help with the pathetic-little-weak-country-keeps-declaring-war-on-everybody problem. Ideally, the AI players would behave just like average to good human players, each with a unique (but not too predictable) personality.

Does this all make sense? I'm just trying to figure out if two features I think are really neat (SE and civ personalities) work well together.

-Dienstag

[Sirotnikov]

quote: SE affects the human player, but that's OK because the human player's personality was the reason for picking that particular SE setting.

You are right. SE affects things. But not the nation . In SMAC each nation is a stereotype. It's not so in life. Also, if each nation has it's own pluses and minuses it becomes unblalanced and it becomes like age of kings. I like age of kings, but as a different game.

Dienstag, you're right, SE and personalities are closely related.
Would stanlin had made a good democratic president? I think not.

[Sirotnikov]

ahm... I mentioned it in my recent post, so *BUMP*. WHo did that?

[Mathphysto]

If one could incorporate the concept of public opinion, then one might be able to get continuous, non-arbitrary changes in the leadership of an AI-civ. For example, if the economy's weak, people put pressure on for more city improvements and trade, and leader changes accordingly. If the "threat factor" from other civs (determined by their strength and diplomatic status) is high, then national defense is highly valued and the civ builds more military units and improvements. If the government is non-participatory, religion is very important to the leader's status, so the leader must build cathedrals and temples.

This way, the computer doesn't need to suffer losses before it figures out that it should build more units. It should anticipate events as much as is reasonable - just like the HP does. This has been

Maybe there could also be a random "great leader" factor, so that there is a chance that happiness be increased, costs decreased, units enhanced, etc. This effect might last for 30 years (which begs the question: what is the meaning of the turns/time ratio?). Each civ might have a max of 1 or 2 great leaders. And maybe there should be a "bad leader" factor too?

The basic idea I'm trying to convey is that the needs of the civ should dictate the leadership, not vice versa. In the past, the leadership's predetermined "personality" dictated what the civ needed and should do. By letting the needs dictate the leadership, I think that makes for a stronger, more flexible AI.

[Sirotnikov]

But it doesn't always happen. Sometimes, leaders just take advantage of their country and plunder it. This should also be represented.

My idea isn't tough to do, it already exists in Civ2 with the nation's default personalitites (agressive, militaristic etc)

I want to add a few factors, and make more than one preset per nation. I also want the presets to change 3 - 6 times in one game.

[Mathphysto]

You're right that the needs of society don't always dictate the leadership - but if you want a strong AI to compete against, it had better not be a ruinous leader. I think a single "bad leader" factor might be interesting. But for the toughest possible game, the AI should not have a bad moment.

When I rule, I have a rough list of priorities:
1) meet the needs of my empire (gold, happiness, defense)
2) everything else needed to win the game

If I think that I can gain a scientific victory faster (perfectionist) and more easily than a military victory (militaristic), then I'll aim for that - but always while meeting the needs of my civ. Otherwise, I kill myself much more effectively than anyone else.

So the AI should sate the needs of its civ, then any excess effort should be put into the least costly form of victory. This is a much more formidable AI than one that suffers from multiple personality disorder.

For example, if the AI goes from being militaristic to perfectionist, it has alot of catching up to do - it is weakened by the random changing of goals and strategies. Only if the change is motivated by the needs of the civ and the desire to win will it strengthen the AI's civ.

[Sirotnikov]

quote: Originally posted by Mathphysto on 05-12-2001 06:26 PM You're right that the needs of society don't always dictate the leadership - but if you want a strong AI to compete against, it had better not be a ruinous leader. I think a single "bad leader" factor might be interesting. But for the toughest possible game, the AI should not have a bad moment. When I rule, I have a rough list of priorities: 1) meet the needs of my empire (gold, happiness, defense) 2) everything else needed to win the game

Yeah, but you wouldn't want all the AI civs using the same tech path and the same tactic to defeat you. It's easy to calculate the exact winning path to conquer the world or land a ship as fast as you can, and the AI can do it. But the point is having fun.

The goal of the human player is to win. The goal of the AI is not to win, but to provide fierce competition. Some civs are there to attack you, some are there to lure you into political traps, and some are there to race you in science.

[Mathphysto]

What fiercer competition could there be than from someone that wants to win just as much as you do? Hence the fierce competitive nature of multiplayer. I don't want pseudo-challenges - AI that makes it interesting, but isn't going to blow me off the map. I want an AI that is scrambling to build a spaceship faster than me, and another that is trying to conquer the world one city at a time, and another that is caught in the crossfire of more powerful civs and is just trying to survive.

Moreover, I want the roles of these AIs to be able to change: the weak can become the strong, the strong can collapse. That's only possible if they are trying to achieve the same objective (or if you change personalities, but changing personalities changes civ objectives, which weakens the AI civ). As it stands now, the militaristic AI is always going to trounce the friendly neighborhood perfectionist AI, etc. I want playing against the AI to be just as difficult and fun as a multiplayer game. And I want to lose occasionally, like in a multiplayer game.

[Sirotnikov]

quote: Originally posted by Mathphysto on 05-12-2001 11:05 PM What fiercer competition could there be than from someone that wants to win just as much as you do? Hence the fierce competitive nature of multiplayer. I don't want pseudo-challenges - AI that makes it interesting, but isn't going to blow me off the map. I want an AI that is scrambling to build a spaceship faster than me, and another that is trying to conquer the world one city at a time, and another that is caught in the crossfire of more powerful civs and is just trying to survive.

But this can't be as different civs should ahve different and changing (hopefully) AIs.

If the civs ahve the same bvery powerfull AI there's no Rise and Fall of civs, there are no differences. No tech trade as everyone research the same thing according to the best path possible...

quote: Moreover, I want the roles of these AIs to be able to change: the weak can become the strong, the strong can collapse. That's only possible if they are trying to achieve the same objective (or if you change personalities, but changing personalities changes civ objectives, which weakens the AI civ).

That's what I mean. A different AI personality would have differnt goals and different strategies to achieve it (military, expand, perfect, science etc).

quote: As it stands now, the militaristic AI is always going to trounce the friendly neighborhood perfectionist AI, etc.

That's exactly what buggs me. I know that the white, green and orange civ are always gonna defeat the others and stay till the end game with me.

quote: I want playing against the AI to be just as difficult and fun as a multiplayer game. And I want to lose occasionally, like in a multiplayer game.

Why is the MP fun? Cause there are different leaders, that alwyas change etween games and during games.

You'll lose if the AI cheats...