/Agree It all comes down to preference and personal strategies in most cases. If the A.I. in any boardgame played an infallible game, it would equally boring and disappointing after a few sessions. It would be akin to playing old R.I.S.K. Rules and having the A.I. play the Iceland strategy everytime... In any case A.I. is the hardest thing to program in any game still today (hence why we have made leaps and bounds in the graphics and audio department and still find ourselves underwhelmed by challenge in most games without developers playing cheap and tipping the scales). This games A.I. Is competent enough, and at the end of the day what anyone really wants is to play against other people. Throw some online (Async and vanilla) multiplayer on top of the (personally) much appreciated local pass and play and this would be a near perfect implementation of the game in my eyes, barring my minor quibbles!
I understand there are limits to how bright an iPad AI can be (it ain't got the processing power of Big Blue), but I don't agree with: 1) Really all people want from an AI is a good foil, like some Bond villain, who only pretends to put up a good fight but will let you win most games in the end (paraphrased from Dev himself on BGG). 2) AI is nothing but a trainer for hunting the deadliest prey, man (paraphrased from Bool Zero). I personally want the best AI possible within the limits of programming resources and the iPad's processing power as I still do a majority of my gaming solo (like when at work and out of wi-fi).
I'm sure that rule book is helpful to our German friends and all, but I just felt compelled to commend you on your user name. It may be the best that I've ever seen. I certainly hope that it relates to Christopher Cross.
That would (presumably) be David Neumann from the iOS gaming blog on BGG, one of my favorite stops on the web. He and Brad are supposed to have a review up some time this week, and I'm sure they will comment on the AI. I'm with Tim, though, I mostly play boardgames solo (and don't buy games without AI). http://boardgamegeek.com/blog/164
Just played a 4 player game with interesting results. Pirate won with me second, Spacer third and Admiral last! Very strange.
So maybe all of these claims of the toughest AI being a joke have some validity and it is the third tier Pirate AI that will give a player a good run for their money?
That's my experience, as well. The Admiral and other AIs are chumps, but the pirate can be tough and is the only real challenge. Great app, though.
Clint made a couple of posts on BGG that you might want to check out: Thoughts on the AI http://boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/13761?commentid=3240737#comment3240737 A more detailed overview of the AI implementation http://boardgamegeek.com/article/8057566#8057566 At least you'll have some more insight into Clint's decision making process as well as the AI's. --DotComCTO P.S. There are a LOT of posts on those pages so it will take a moment or two to render the page and move to Clint's posts.
Thanks! I understand he needs to first deal with his KickStarter promo fiasco, but hope making subtle tweaks to the AI can be done as he works on his Async Multiplayer stuff.
Well - just played another game with the same set-up and this time Admiral won with me second (again) Pirate third and Spacer last, which is I guess what you would expect. My conclusion would be - given that I have never played the actual board game and have only played 5 games with the app is that the AIs are OK but really need beefing up to provide a long-term challenge.
I think it might be useful if, via PM to Clint, someone like you could point out some of the tweaks you'd like to see. The AI-related posts I've seen so far are lacking in details and high on whining. --DotComCTO
actually.. Deep Blue peaked at 11.38 GFLOPS in '97. According to this article, the iPhone 5 A6 GPU gets around 25 GFLOPS - but that's just the GPU. Deep Blue was using something similar to a GPU by using parallel processing. AI uses the CPU, which gets around 700 MFLOPS on the A6 (you can test this with the free Linpack app in the App Store - make sure you enable multithreading). Until Apple puts OpenCL or something similar in iOS, AI will have to be calculated on the CPU. Still though, 700 MFLOPS would be considered a super computer back in 1993. basically, we're almost there!
I bought this game after reading Clint's post in BGG. The game is amazing, really simple rules and you just need to play some games to realize what everything does in the board. I would say this game is one of the best games I have that give me the feeling of playing a real board game, so congratulations! Now I would only want online games AND the expansion as IAP PLEASE!!!
Brad Cummings from the BGG iOS blog posted his review: http://boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/13911/ipad-review-alien-frontiers He was in a tough position here, trying to evaluate the game for both beginners and experienced players. When you watch the review, it doesn't really sound like it was a game he would give 3/5 to. I was kind of surprised he felt the barrier to new players was so high (I haven't played it yet, though). This one is on my rainy day list and I'm sure I will pick it up at some point.
It reminds a bit of Ghost Story in that it sort of feels like they just throw you into the thick of things but, after a game or so with frequent checks to the detailed documentation, you'll be up to full power by your second or third play through.
Maybe it doesn't make sense to you guys, but I liked the idea of not having a tutorial ingame, because it felt like a real boardgame when I started playing it. I had to watch a youtube video and read the manual like if I bought the real thing, I don't know maybe I miss to buy real boardgames lately! PS: Online game and expansion ASAP please!
