The game Citopolis reminded me about the processes that define game play and inner workings of the simulation. Through understanding these processes, game play should become easier. Balancing the city’s happiness is easier when you know that you will need to build new parks proportionately to the new businesses you establish and upgrade. More action in one district requires more action in another. Understanding the results of your reactions can improve your ability to respond to the situation in any similar simulation game.
This understanding of a simulation game is taken to the extreme when players write A.I. computer programs to learn and play the game themselves. FreeCiv, is an online, open source game based on the Sid Meier Civilization games. The open source nature of the game gives players access to the code and inner workings of the game. Many players take advantage of this to create programs that can master the game for them. Many players use simple optimization strategies that determine the optimal levels of resource management and unit or building construction. In Watson et al., players describe how to utilize a genetic algorithm to automate the optimization process while playing FreeCiv. Given that the computer program understands the inner workings of the game through the code, the program can essentially understand and test the results of its game play and thereby find the optimal strategy through hundreds of thousands of iterations of the genetic algorithm.
Another example of using the inner workings of the game to the player’s advantage includes the company Argo’s use of AI to play FreeCiv. In the video below, the program developers describe how they teach and train HIRO, to play the game. Through machine learning, the AI can explore all possibilities of gameplay and identify what works best. Only through the utilization of the game code and processes can all the possibilities of gameplay can be explored. HIRO can play FreeCiv automatically and eventually, after continued practice, the company hopes that HIRO can challenge some of the best FreeCiv players in the world.