I'm not going to get into a semantics war of words with you since every computer program is a script in one form or another. And if there are conservatively say 100k people playing this game then 5% of that would be 5000. Maybe you are just one of those 5000. Also while I'm sure that 5% was a magic target number I highly doubt Stardock has actually polled every single player to see if they can in fact beat it on Tough. Also the game can be very easy if you stack things in your favor. There are a lot of things you can tweak that will make the game easier or harder depending on your style. And for the record Brad has stated several times that the toughest thing for the AI to counter is an aggressive player that immediately starts wiping out the other players. Course a lot of human players have trouble countering this as well and why rush tactics are so popular in RTS games. Something a few of his journal entries throughout the beta addressed.

Out of curiousity just how long do you think it would take the computer to figure out something simple (for a human) like say the optimal loadout for a ship with say a dozen parts to choose from while trying to maximize damage but keeping in mind that the ship needs to be fast in terms of movement? And then to figure out what to build optimally on each of its 20 planets. Oh and then decide where to move each of 100 ships. All the while figuring out not only what the human player is doing but all the other AI players in the galaxy as well. Now multiply that by say six other AI players. Even putting in what I consider short times I get somewhere on the order of a week or more. And that's for one turn. Go look up O(n^2) analysis to get a rough idea. Given this I think the AI does a fantastic job with just the few seconds it does have now.

People are fond of pointing out chess AIs in terms of a benchmark. Unfortunately this is flawed in the sense that the chess game board does not change nor do the pieces. Also while I've never played up against IBM's machine most chess AIs can be set anywhere from a 2 year old can beat it up to a grand master. But the 2 year old level takes only a few milliseconds to deside a move where the grand master level can take upwards of several minutes.

I guess for me this AI is the best simply because it tries to play the same game as I do. And sure I can manipulate it just as well as any other AI but this one just seems to be able to adapt to what I'm doing and also at times sneak a ship or two into areas I didn't think it could.

One last request. How about you post a few games to the metaverse? I find it amusing that the people that usually complain about the easy AI don't ever have any record of games that the rest of us can look at to say *yep they've beaten the game at the hardest level*.

Edna:
I'd really like for you to point out the game that does what you are saying. Military applications do not apply since in general those are very CPU intensive and for the most part could not be used in a game situation. Also if you dedicate the entire 80386 to any single task it is extremely powerful but that is not what happens in a desktop machine. Anyone with 12 years of programming experience should know that . And unless some one is running a dual processor machine multi threaded does not mean that the computer all of a sudden gained a bunch of cycles. In a multi threaded app on a single CPU the operating system *simulates* the multiple program paths by cycling very fast between operations. And Stardock has said that this AI is multi threaded and apparently are adding the option to expand the time allowed for the AI to think.

Today I written a quick and inteligible post (while working) disagreeeeeeeing (do this word exist?) of the bullfrog about AI and CPU Times, please refer to it for some comments: Link You would be amazed to see the wonders that the 80386 computers were capable of doing. Today, with multi-threading, the computer can "think" while we are thinking. What I mean is that the computer can gather information while the player is Idle. And with "Idle" I am including the time between mouse clicks. How long take a player's turn? Don't you think it is enough for the computer AI to elaborate an strategy on their own? And if the CPU don't have enough time it is not a problem. If the computer have to spend one o two turn to think of their strategy don't you think this is acceptable for the computer to take wrong decisions? This sort of thing can make AI feels even more like humans. It is possible. We done it already.

For someone who has no resume for writing computer game AI you sure like to lecture.

You obviously were unaware that Galactic Civilizations for OS/2, back over 10 years ago was the first PC game to make use of multithreading. GalCiv has always had its computer players calculating their moves while the player is moving. It's one of the game's main claims to fame.

Just because the player usually takes longer to make a turn than it would take for the AI to do the same doesn' t mean it always does. There are plenty of times in th e game where I'm just hitting the turn button. If I had to wait 10 seconds between turns it would still be a problem.

I find the game's AI very tough. If you don't, then turn up the difficulty.