Tag: AI

Oblivion’s AI is still remarkable and still influences games today.

In the Imperial City Arena District, you can see an Argonian male and a Redguard Female fighting each other. They are not in combat but in a script where has them train each other in hand to hand combat at specific times of day. Watching them for a bit gives you +5 boost to your hand-to-hand combat skills; such attention to details and interaction with the world is rare in video games.

When people talk about video games outside gaming, it still seems to be in a time warp of the 1980s. Most of the media newsmongers have no understanding of video games or even seem want to care about it. There is so much potential in the medium, yet it seems to be ignored, which I think it is sign of how video games have retained their renegade status. While men in suits attempt to continue monetizing it, video games are similar in a sense to Gladiatorial games in Ancient Rome. In comparison with chariot racing, Gladiatorial games were not as popular but had more of a cultural impact that the elites did not want to admit. Video Games linger in the shadows of the more acceptable entertainment of Television and Movies. However, it’s in video games where we see the future of storytelling going towards, beyond the linear and static movies of the past. While movies have a place, the medium is so stagnant that there is little in feature films which can change. It is in video games where you see real change.

The change is in the graphics and more recently in the AI.

With all the hype surrounding AI or Large Language Models (LLMs), gamers saw the first salvo in the spreading of AI throughout our societies.

The Radiant AI in Oblivion and Skyrim were quite competent here. They are still in the early stages of showing us what is possible in video games. The cities and villages have more life than anything you see in Cyberpunk 2077, which for me was a big step down from we saw with the Witcher Games.

You can see the influence of Radiant AI in GTA VI’s ambitions.

Seeing the Argonian and the Redguard train in the arena was just the preview of how AI can transform games as much graphics were able to do so in the 1990s. We will have more than just games but living simulations.

Civilization III: China shoots down ICBMs in the 2nd Nuclear War.

Civilization III is proving to be a truly amazing game. Persia attempted to attack me once again, this time with ICBMs. My previous war with them had put so much pollution onto the planet that the sun image was red and my environmental efforts were going nowhere. Recently planted forests were becoming grassland as the planet became filled with nuclear radiation. However, peace was far away and the war had to continue.

I had a peace treaty with the Persians while the Koreans barely managed to hang on with their own treaty. The Persians simply had too many tanks and I lacked oil and aluminum to have an armored army to counter the Persians. As a result, I relied heavily on TOW infantry and huge amounts of artillery located across the mountain passes to slow them. I then used tactical nukes onto the capital of Persepolis and other major cities multiple times to cut the empire from resources and luxuries. However, they kept sending tanks and mechanized infantry into the area around Tokyo and Osaka; I had to make peace as I was basically in a stalemate and move to peacetime economy so that my cities could get new infrastructure in order to compete with the Persians.

However, I didn’t have all the time I needed to prepare for war with Persia. I was building ICBMs to counter their military. I also ordered my city governors to build a huge air force, a part of our military which wasn’t a factor in the previous war. The main issue was always the tanks and infantry fighting vehicles. Persia had tons of such machines. I had only recently built a city on top of an oil deposit in order to start building huge amounts of bombers and jet airplanes to counter this huge, mechanized army. However, no matter how well bulit ones plans are, only experience manages to tell us the truth or show the durability of our ideas.

The attack began without warning on China.

In Civilization III, the AI is very aggressive in comparison to the later versions. Some of this is what it has to work with. The game is simpler in a sense than the games that came out later. It is not a game that the AI has a hard time understanding the rules. Under the hood, however, the game is similar to Civ 7 except in the Hexes and some of the rules. The hexes in my opinion messed up the Civilization series. Squares were just easier for the AI to handle.

The result is that the AI is competent in a war and is an actual threat. In strategic thinking, the AI in this 2001 game is still behind the human but it is clear that they were planning to attack me with nukes for some time. I was in their way for domination of the globe and I was ready for their attacks.

Beijing, once again, was hit but my SDI system was able to defend the nation from attacks. As a result, my workers would not have as many duties at repairing the radiation and damage that was caused by the ICBMs.

This is actually the only time I have seen the SDI small wonder in action.

This is why I love Civilization III. You get to run a nation in the late game, and it is truly wonderous. This why Civilization VII was able to reach its heights.

Empire Earth: The Nano Age and the Architecture of an Epoch

Starting in the Digital Age in Empire Earth, the architecture suddenly shifts to a futuristic style. The Capitol for instance, isn’t trying to replicate the St. Basil’s Cathedral in London now, but some theoretical capital in the future. Its architecture is rounded, like it belongs on some distant planet and not on Earth. The culture that it represents is one that worships efficiency over the idea of human culture. Compare that to the Colosseum wonder being built next to it.

The Colosseum was an expression of Roman culture using the technology they had in order to construct it. It also represented their many abstract ideas of how to organize their society. The Digital Age capital in Empire Earth is a representation of the technology overtaking the expression of human culture. What we see in the buildings in the future epochs is really a continuation of what saw beginning with the Modern Epochs; architecture is now functional. Now architecture is basically just housing technology within those structures.

Here is the great idea behind Cyber Labatory which is right behind the Colosseum; it isn’t about the structure which is mattering in here, its the technology which matters here. Gameplay wise, the Cyber Labatory is representing something new in military affairs in the game. These Cybers are made specifically to counter other Cybers not the remaining human units. This is Cyber on Cyber conflict not human.

This is the essence of the Nano Age.

Tech is more important than when we use it to make culture.

It is not surprising that the houses in the Nano Age do not have any distinctive cultural aspects to it. Art and Culture is subordinate to the interests of efficiency, or more specifically, how we use technology to interact with our epoch.

That is the essence of the Digital and more importantly, the Nano Ages in Empire Earth.