Checkpoint

Frank Zappa - Camarillo Brillo

Why is it that a promised income tax removed can't cause people to lose money?

I saw Jethro Tull live about six or seven years ago. The concert was average and the tickets fairly expensive, but overall an okay show.

I hope EU3 doesn't have the same issue EU2 had, being that the AI liked to go after provinces according to province numbers. Ireland's provinces were among the first, so the Green Isle often ended up owned by a bunch of different super-powers...

Yes. Nothing as stressing as RT; I passionately hate not being able to sit down and have a good look at my options and act accordingly. Thank God for the pause button. And never play multi-player.

Isn't the full game out? Anyone got it? Friend of mine told me the demo sucked big time, and he's an long-time EU2 player and should know what he's talking about. He still was very excited about the full release, however, so I was wondering if anyone got their hands on it.

I'm currently working on a take-home exam, and I'm missing the succession AAR of Medieval II: Total War that me and my cousin have going.

The strangest part is that the graphics in EU3 look ugly, uglier than the 2D in EU2 as I think Llyranor pointed out. Why all this development hassle over a step backwards in terms of eye candy?

The game probably failed to load following some excessive Danish war success.

I think it's detailed enough to be on a day-to-day basis. What I meant by historical monarchs being in the game was related to that. If you start as England in say 1590 you'll have Elizabeth as your queen, but if you start as England in 1453 you'll have Henry VI and a completely random monarch in 1590.

From what I gather, no. Though there will obviously be historical monarchs for the entire era in the game, given the whole start-at-any-date thing. Personally I'm excited about the prospect of having random monarchs, since EU2 got very predictable. Having said that, there is a risk that the balance will be screwed when the AI doesn't have any natural guidelines to follow. I think there's a great risk of strange over and under powerings going on.

Yes and no. Given his age and injury proneness it's remarkable, but when you consider what an amazing talent he is I guess it isn't so odd. He was great in Ottawa last year when healthy, so it's only natural that he keeps performing this year too. I guess the main worry for the Wings is that he'll get injured and they'll be let down by their goalie in the playoffs yet again.

3D is, as usual, the poorest plug for a game of this type, but whatever sells it to the kids. The game is supposed to have more forms of governments and alliances (like personal unions and stuff) and the concept of national ideas which will allow you to direct your research towards certain branches of the "tech tree," as it were. Added to that there will be more realistically sized armies, random monarchs and the possibility to start at any date in the game's timespan (something that only makes me wonder if they didn't put in too much effort into a mammoth task that couldn't possibly be very accurate). The focus on stuff like that (start-at-any-date) and 3D makes me skeptical, and it probably won't be playable until after a number of patches, but at the same time it's bound to end up better and more enjoyable than EU2, which would speak volumes. We know that Paradox are great at still patching their games years after their releases, which still, however, makes you wonder why they just can't seem to get it right in the first place?

What I hated about last game was how Marc-Andr

Obviously RP is respecting our more sensitive grammatical sensibilities at Obz. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I.e. we would have ripped him apart...

Er... Thanks. But how is your post anything more than a summary that couldn't be gathered by reading a relatively short thread? We went off topic right after the first page... Also, I think I'll change my username to "The Originator of This Thread." The Destroyer of Worlds. The Annihilator of Injustices. The Originator of This Thread. Yeah. That rocks.

That's exactly how Kasparov was beaten by the IBM Deep Blue; the computer was busy scanning all the possible moves from the current position, so that when Kasparov eventually made his move the computer moved immediately. Part of the psychological strategy of the IBM team. (It is a commonly held belief that Kasparov was the superior player; the IBM team used all sorts of meta-gaming techniques to put him off his best game.) <{POST_SNAPBACK}> If only a strategic computer game could psycologically intimidate the human player...

Interesting indeed!

Well, I'm not playing the hardest level in Civ IV. The difficulty there is very much based on cheats which I don't like. The problem with terra maps, though, is that the AI is bad at going after the new world and its resources. That, in part, is also related to its poor navies.

I liked the progress made from Civilization III to IV, but the AI there is still very beatable. Particularly so on terra maps.

I mostly play strategy games, so yes. I'm obviously not advocating "unbeatable" AI, but I'm sick and tired of the dumb behaviour generally displayed to wonder what the reason is for all this. All this input actually helps me, though.

What makes you say that? " :D I'm referring to games like Europa Universalis 2 as well, though. I realise that chess AI is easier to program, but it was just a parallel given the near impossibleness of beating certain chess AI compared to the AI of a host of computer games.

This is not my field of expertise, hence the query. Why is the AI always dumb? We know that they can make chess AI that beats the best human players in the world and so on, and I don't really know how much time that has been put into developing such AI, but what is the poor AI in computer games down to? Lack of time? Or is it simply an intentional decision to keep it at a certain level so as to not become too hard? If it is the latter there obviously is a problem, because I imagine it is very difficult to create AI's that have different depth for the same game. Is it this problem they have to address? Do they go "people are too stupid, so for the better players we'll just have to give the AI cheats that won't help it anyway since it's too dumb to put its new-found cheat assets to any real use?" The next problem is, would the majority of strategy-game players be that stupid? I'm not going to pretend I'm the best player out there, but I still manage to beat a lot of strategy games on the hardest difficulty setting. The AI is predictable and inefficient, and most of the time you can out-think it to compensate for its cheats. Is it simply just difficult to make good AI? Sometimes it just feels like they put a lot of time into a game, and then its ruined by the AI saying "we declare war! lolz!" and proceeding to mess things up. I just can't help suspecting that the game developers underestimate the brain power of the regular strategy gamer.

I've been playing some with the Lands to Conquer 2.0 mod, and the AI is fairly sucky. It declares war on you left and right, and most of the time they get their collective arses handed to them. I (playing as the French) was also invaded by Scotland, who really should have been more eager to accept my alliance proposals, only for them to abandon a siege on one of my cities in order to declare war on Denmark, who had a city next to mine. :crazy: Then as I'd taken Rennes and Caen from England, I was finally about to negotiate a peace with them. Their clever action was to buy my diplomat, so that I coudn't open negotiations... :crazy: It also seems a touch too easy, even with modded battles. I haven't lost a single one, even with the odds against me. Sure, France have some good leaders, like that faction heir, but come on!

Isn't the name Harry Potter actually in the game?