Conclusions on Artificial Smarts

The application of all of these methods may well produce a game with some intelligence, but one’s expectations should not be too high. Even the expenditure of great effort is not enough to produce truly intelligent play; none of my three efforts to date play with an intelligence that is adequate, by itself, to tackle a human player. Indeed, they still need force ratios of at least two to one to stand up to the human player.

Limited Information

Another way to make up for the computer’s lack of intelligence is to limit the amount of information available to the human player. If the human does not have the information to process, he cannot apply his superior processing power to the problem. This technique should not be applied to excess, for then the game is reduced to a game of chance. It can, nevertheless, equalize the odds. If the information is withheld in a reasonable context (e.g., the player must send out scouts), the restrictions on information seem natural.

Limited information provides a bonus: it can tickle the imagination of the player by suggesting without actually confirming. This only happens when the limitations on the information are artfully chosen. Randomly assigned gaps in information are confusing and frustrating rather than tantalizing. A naked woman can be beautiful to the male eye, but an artfully dressed woman can conceal her charms suggestively and thus appear even more alluring. The same woman randomly covered with miscellaneous bits of cloth would only look silly.

Another way to even balance between human and computer is through the pace of the game. The human may be smart, but the computer is much faster at performing simple computations. If the pace is fast enough, the human will not have enough time to apply his superior processing skills, and will be befuddled. This is a very easy technique to apply, so it comes as no surprise that it is very heavily used by designers of skill and action games.

I do not encourage the use of pace as an equalizing agent in computer games. Pace only succeeds by depriving the human player of the time he needs to invest a larger portion of himself into the game. Without that investment, the game can never offer a rich challenge. Pace does for computer games what the one-night stand does for romance. Like one-night stands, it will never go away. We certainly do not need to encourage it.

Summary

These four techniques for balancing computer games are never used in isolation; every game uses some combination of the four. Most games rely primarily on pace and quantity for balance, with very little intelligence or limited information. There is no reason why a game could not use all