Re: Galaxy Results Format From: bc@fccn01.fccn.pt (Luis Miguel Sequeira) Date: Wed, 23 Dec 1992 07:42:27 +0000 In article <1992Dec23.004143.7348@netcom.com> sutin@phaeton.UCSC.EDU (Brian Sutin) writes: [...] >A simple computer program could undoubtedly play better than many galaxy >players. If a player cannot play better than an AI program written by >a rank amateur like myself, then he/she will not survive long in a galaxy >game anyway. Heh heh heh. My thoughts exactly. I _can't_ win any AI playing chess. I was often defeated by the 16 K chess program written for the Sinclair ZX81 back in '82. So, I must conclude that I'm a _terrible_ chess player (which, in fact, is absolutely true). So, I find it most interesting that someone actually has got the time & nerves to write an AI Galaxy game player! If some of you have read Loeb's articles & papers on the Diplomat, I think that an AI Galaxy player would be something interesting; for instance, if by some reason a player drops from the game (i. e., due to long Xmas vacations...), the AI could play for him for a while. Perhaps the AI player wouldn't be a genius, but, at least, the player wouldn't have to be bumped out of the game, or, even worse, being "eaten up" by his neighbours while he was doing nothing... On some very few games I've seen around there are a few hints of "automatic playing", meaning mostly that if you forget to give some orders, the computer will fill them for you. Perhaps these orders won't be a master strategist's moves, but they'll be fine to keep those blood-hungry neighbours away... I once even joined a group of PBM developers where the game concept circled around the following major issue: the NPC's controlled by the players were actually _better_ players than the players themselves. That meant that, in order to win, you should interfere the least possible with them - or, when interfering, the player _should_ be quite aware of the implications, or else... The game, of course, was too ambitious (most "programmers" had just grasped the bare notions of C...) and was never finished. You don't need to go that far on Galaxy, however. Ruling diplomacy out, an "automatic player" would be something quite nice indeed! Just add an order: o automatic on and the computer plays for you... >My program, however, is not very smart -- I have to correct all sorts of >amazing things it comes up with, and it does not know what to do in case of >an attack, nor does it understand any sort of strategy. What it does is >take care of the tactics and leave the strategy to me. But it's a start!!! >As soon as I understand the game well enough to write a program to play it >for me, then you are right -- there is no longer any reason to continue >playing. I think your program will still skip politics & diplomacy. There will always be a place for you to take part in the game... Unless, of course, Russell et. al. develop similar concepts to Loeb's Diplomat, and create some form of a "diplomacy language". I think they won't... :-) >I don't think this will happen anytime soon. You're probably right... but drop me a note. I'm interested in knowing more about it... :-) - Luis Sequeira (newcomer to Galaxy, of course) _________________________________________________________________________ / / _/ _/ _/ _/_/_/ Computer scientists do it byte by byte. _/ _/_/ _/_/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/_/_/ "We don't ask for miracles to get the job _/ _/ _/ _/ done, we RELY upon them!" _/_/_/ _/ _/ _/_/_/ bc@fccn01.fccn.pt Luis Miguel Sequeira Laboratorio Nacional de Engenharia Civil Phone 351-1-8482131 Ext. 2752 Centro Informatica/Grupo Sistemas Centrais "Don't call me, I'll call you" Av. Brasil, 101 - 1700 Lisboa, Portugal / _________________________________________________________________________/ Up