As far as atoms the current estimate thst i know of is one times ten to the ninetieth power of atoms in the universe.

As far as credentials i grew up on battlrstar galactica. Sorry to hear about lenard nimoy.

People make it way more complicated than it is. Ten trillion cells in the human body that are copies of each other. There are only 150,000 genes with chemical placements. Okay the chess programs aren't intelligent,  and i scaled it down for the game.Let's begin with processing. You store a limited number variables which have to translate to a on of off switch somewhere. Stupid rlectronics! To make things you are limited with programming which only works in basically three forms first perform a set of instructions and exit,  the second is a loop untill either done or false,  and the third is to test untill false decision. 

Has anyone pays attention to little kids? How comethey communicate very simple. Basically i reasoned the same at four years old as iI'm reasoning hear. I just had to start with step one. 

Any took english what, where,  when, why, and how. What is this that is coming in. I search my data base. If i don't find it instead of locking up label it the closest thing with one exception,  and store it in a different spot. If it is identical instead of restoring it just add one to how many. Where did i find it, or where is it from. When did i find it,  or when is this important. Why do i know this,  or why is this important. How did this information happen. If there are different ways to analyse nyhis add it. Make each piece of detail as simple as possible. If different store different. Can this be rearrange d differently to form knew ideas. Is this unhelpful or helpful. You would need two copies of every event. One would he similar to a movie for description purposes. The other would be a database for the rest. How the information is imputed would affect this. Also how the information is disectedbfor the database is important.  The more detailed database the better.

Remember it learns by whatbit experiences. Even this is a machine iteventually reacts by what it experiences,  and told by repetitions. A value is given a string. Instead of refering to the value it uses the string. The program only knows the string not the value. would have no.way to access the value. A good example is yellow. If people usr a range instead of specific value then you would only know it by range. This would be based on repetitiveness of memories. Preferences and friendships would develope. please disect this logic. You could create a time limit where if not.relearned you will loose parts of the event in entervals that is acessedbwhen it is sleeping,  but why. This would work for a computer,  not a game.

Now comparing this to the show caprica just downloading all the records on the person is not enough. How the information is processed is signifigant. You might need to hardwire some things like it is alive,  and no one can convince you otherwise. a fear of being alone. Emotions should develope naturally,  but if they don't just put a value on certain kind of event's. You could hardwire right from wrong. You could make it situational for sbput four years,  and then give it reasoning.

That is the problem as i understand. How does someone, or an AI does compare without giving values to the points to be decided?

The wrong assignment is where all decisions, human or artificial fail. Also values change fluently and the only saving grace humans have are experiance (could be simulated ... maybe, i doubt that) and intuition.

What I get from this is normal AI= Challenging AI from before.

Don't see the problem, outside of maybe confusing vets of the series who aren't paying attention to this, and think Challenging is the fair level.

I really do wish Stardock made AI that would adapt most of the time to what a player likes to go for.

So you have a bunch of numbers. But how do you even start to weight them? Which numbers are important for the one decission at hand. Should i choose a suboptimal path, because it would further my long term goal?

I think my point is: we as humans dont even understand how our own brain decides. We are able to map where decissions are made, what parts of our brain are included in the process. But we still dont know the how and why. As long as this is the case, the blind (we humans) are trying to teach someone (AI) the meaning of colors.

All we can do is to tell the AI how we would have decided in an special case and then find as many cases where that decission might be also applicable. But no one case will be exactly as the one before in a game with so many variables, so decission failure is pre-programmed (ha!).

I think Stardock does a very good job with his AIs, but i got beat up by the Normal AI in GalCiv2 sometimes, so maybe take my opinion with a grain of salt.

I’m sorry that you are disappointed, let me clarify things a bit and see if it makes you feel better.

It may have been misleading when I said the AI will get bonuses at higher difficulties. While this is true, it is not as simple as +100% to shields credits per turn or anything like that.  In fact the cruder bonuses of that type will really only be used in Godlike, where we want even very advanced players to feel like they are threatened.  

The primary way the AI will be differentiated by difficulty, is by something we call AI Strategies. AI strategies are had crafted, by us to make sure the AI is playing to win. Each difficulty will have its own set of AI strategies

On normal, these strategies will help the AI play a rational, realistic game, they will not necessarily be out to crush you right away, and will in general be easier to deal with. If you wrong them they will try their best to kill you, without any extra help from us.

Beginner AI strategies will make the AI a bit less aggressive, and easier to push around by experienced players. We may in fact give them a bit of a -% bonus to production if needed, because we don’t really want to make the AI stupid, timid is fine, but stupid is unacceptable.

As you go up in difficulty, the primarily difference will be the strategies, they will become more aggressive and more clever. And by aggressive I do not mean, just motivated to win, in their preferred way. As an example the Krynn will try harder for an influence victory, or the Drengin will try harder for a Conquest victory. This is done by make more advanced AI Strategies. These are kind a blueprint for victory that the AI works with. They are created by us, so we can update them as players get more advanced, or figure out strategies that we have not accounted for.

At the highest level, Godlike, we will give some bonuses, but we are trying to keep them simple, things like making the AI more efficient builders, or slightly more accurate. But once again the real difference will be the AI strategies.

I hope allays your concerns a bit. We are very proud of how the AI is advancing and we do not want you to think we are just toughing bonuses at the AI player, we have done a lot of work to make sure these strategies are flexible, and smart, and can be updated as the game matures.

Hey, thanks for checking in, it is very encouraging to hear from you on this topic. I just want to say to be careful with the bonuses. My biggest frustration with FE:LH is the dodge bonus that is given to enemy troops at higher difficulties. Some bonuses are really unfun to play against, and I end up playing that game with the AI at levels that aren't very challenging for me because I don't want to deal with that one bonus. Giving the AI advantages is fine, just try to be sure they are advantages that are fun to play against and overcome.

I like what you are saying and it is more than I expected.

My experience with AI vs human is the lack of dynamic. The AI can be programmed to win with a relentless attack, but the nature of AI is status quo. When the AI goes to war it attacks with the goal of taking all your planets before you take all of theirs. They are okay with losing all their planets as long as they take your last planet before you take theirs. The AI never stops to think that attrition is taking too many resources and victory may leave it too weak to continue against other opponents. The AI can be coded to sue for peace, but normally only if the opponent is stronger.

The goal of the human player is to take all of the AI planets without losing any of their own,

The AI is relentless and static.The human is dominant and dynamic  

The experienced human player gets bonuses too in how it fits ships.

The experienced human player gets bonuses in how it tweaks planets.

Why shouldn't the AI? Why shouldn't it be abstracted as such? Just so someone can say, that AI is doing something the 'real' way, whatever that means in a computer game. As long as it's still competitive and challenging who cares. It's when it no longer becomes competitive and predictable there is a problem, all the bonuses in the world won't make it less predictable however.

The only possible way for an AI to outplay the playerbase just using behavior long term, is for people to constantly update the AI forever, literally forever with an unlimited amount of permutations. This is also why true conscious AI will be forever impossible, because infinity cannot be modeled well. Which is what it would take to accurately simulate a true conscious AI. No matter what you pre program, even conditions for learning, a human being, certainly collectively communicating ones, will adapt to. They will either come at the problem from a completely unexpected angle making your program obsolete, or find something you've missed, in life this is a hundred times worse as life changes also, but at least in a game the variables are somewhat fixed.

For the purposes of the game, giving the playerbase the tools to tweak the AI would help, as at least that'll be humans trying to outplay humans. I am not sure how feasible that would be though, but it'd certainly be helpful for modders. As long as people understand that the only reason those modders made the AI better was, player feedback and extended development / adaptation past the lifecycle of the game.

I would add multiple AI's are what usually make games, for me, interesting, as they throw up unexpected situations, and the more you add, the more complex the puzzle becomes.