quote:Original post by InnocuousFox
However, your approach in your initial messages was more like storming through the door and saying "is every HERE stupid as well?" Not a good start, sir.
Yes, I tend to do that. But as I said, the charge is fair. There are no excellent diplomatic AIs in any commercial game out there, past or present. There are only adequate ones. Whereas we can clearly say, excellence in tactical AI has been achieved in quite a lot of games. So what''s the holdup? A strategic reality, expressed in a way that isn''t palateable to your ear, is still a strategic reality. I think AP''s tone is significantly less productive than even my tone, but he has a point. People talk the talk; who walks the walk?
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What''s more, your question was more along the lines of a game of "guess the number" or "I spy" where we had to figure out exactly what your parameters were and what it was you wanted.
Sounds like an AI problem. I''d expect people around here to be good at that. :-) As I said, in AI circles it seems to take a long time to come up with common frameworks of discussion.
We''ve been much more specific on DIPAI. The first thing we did was start arguing about what the common framework of discussion was going to be, rather than having a "what do you mean there''s a problem?" or a "but you''re not providing any framework!" tiff. Maybe this is because Diplomacy programmers have a deep and pressing interest in diplomatic AI.
One person provided a Coin game, which I derided because it had no territorial component and its tactics were too trivial/boring to be worth studying. I said, we should sooner study the game of "Sit 7 people down at a table. Decide who wins." Which is worth pondering, but happens to be a class of problems that computers today can''t solve.
We explored various equivalencies and non-equivalencies to "decide who wins." A lot of productive intellectual jockeying without a lot of attitude about whose tone, expertise, conference, or burden of specifying things was at stake. Eventually we started talking about Tic Tac Toe because we had common ground in it and could actually whip out "Sez you!" answers quickly. Now we''re moving on to what "victory conditions in general, or Diplomacy [TM] specifically" should be.
Here we''ve still got a long way to go on framework. We can''t even agree, for instance, whether "joint alliance" should be dealt with. I say it should always be dealt with, because regardless of what the Diplomacy [TM] rules formally say, many players informally operate according to a joint victory paradigm. When you''ve had your ass handed to you by Players #1 and #2, you can whine and scream all you like about how there''s only supposed to be 1 winner, and they''ll just laugh and gloat.
People''s desire for easier problems and clean aesthetics get in the way here. The reality is that for freeform alliance in general, the matrix of disparate player motives is quite large. We found this out even in Tic Tac Toe, with only 2 players. Can you force your opponent to win Tic Tac Toe, if he''s determined to draw? We have a whole matrix of those questions, it''s messy.
Or, maybe ease and cleanliness isn''t the problem. Maybe a lot of people simply can''t accept a world where other people don''t share their same goals of how Diplomacy [TM] is "supposed to be" played? Irreconcileable politics is certainly a component of diplomatic problems.
Brandon Van Every, 3DProgrammer, Seattle, WA
20% of the world is real. 80% is gobbledygook we make up inside our own heads.
