How good is the single player mode?

[Doc✪Hollywood]

Hi there!

Just had a second look in the store and find it graphically appealing. It says "PvP" so I wanted to know if that is the main focus of the game or if it's also worth to buy it for someone who prefers to play alone?

Thank you very much for some answers.

[Kerostasis]

Single player mode is fine, and most of my games so far have been Single Player just due to time considerations - you can play with a friend, but it will take many hours to complete each game, so it can be complicated to arrange exactly when you will play together.

The only downside is the AI is not as smart as human players, but that's always the downside of single player.

[Seppl]

I like singel player. And i think it's more single player as pvp.

[Zheppon]

I have 78 hours so far and all of it single player no multi and i havent stop playing

[The Doctor]

Originally posted by Gordon✪Gekko:

Hi there!

Just had a second look in the store and find it graphically appealing. It says "PvP" so I wanted to know if that is the main focus of the game or if it's also worth to buy it for someone who prefers to play alone?

Thank you very much for some answers.

I think you'll find almost all of us play this game SP. There are some PvP players. for sure and some play SP too. I've read a negative review or two that claim that this game is not balanced for MP so you can draw your own conclusions from that.

I have 60+ hours in this game at the time of typing and that's exclusively SP. It's a great game for SP.

With regards to the AI, it's better than you'll find in many other 4X games but don't let that claim mislead you into thinking it's a GOOD player. It plays the game better than other 4X AIs can.

[Doc✪Hollywood]

Thank you very much for all the encouraging and positive answers. I give it a go then.

About the conderns about the AI not as good as human players: Is that really something you notice and find disturbing in this game?


In Civilization and many other strategy games the AI gets boni and perks and is so strong, that even just a bit above "chieftain" I face a hard time against the AI.

Differently it was in the 2017 Master of Orion: In the real time battles the AI sucked so extraordinairy much, that the battles became a joke, as you can outsmart it so easily.

So how is it here:
More like in Civ with the AI too powerful (at high levels) or like in Master or Orion's real time battles, where the AI really can't handle it?

[The Doctor]

More like Civ's AI. I'd say it is better than Civ's as the AI knows how to use its units and their special powers/abilities as well as the faction's operations.

However, it's obviously not a human player and will do some stupid things that may disappoint you, especially if you team up with an AI. You'll be shouting at them to run away from the neutrals when they're getting murdered. But if you find the AI in Civ to be acceptable, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised the Zephon's AI.

[Doc✪Hollywood]

Originally posted by The Doctor:

More like Civ's AI. I'd say it is better than Civ's as the AI knows how to use its units and their special powers/abilities as well as the faction's operations.

However, it's obviously not a human player and will do some stupid things that may disappoint you, especially if you team up with an AI. You'll be shouting at them to run away from the neutrals when they're getting murdered. But if you find the AI in Civ to be acceptable, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised the Zephon's AI.

Thanks.

Well, I never played WITH the AI in Civ. Just against it. And I found Civ so overly complex that I never knew if I am doing right or just nonsense. The difficulty I have chosen was always one of the lower tiers.

[Ail]

Originally posted by Gordon✪Gekko:

So how is it here:
More like in Civ with the AI too powerful (at high levels) or like in Master or Orion's real time battles, where the AI really can't handle it?

I've written AI for similar games as this myself in the past and I'm still writing AI for some other games. I think I can also gauge pretty well how good an AI is compared to that of other games.

I'd say Zephon's AI is above average but not top-tier either.

It needs some bonuses to become competitive with better players but there are plenty of difficulty-levels to choose from, so there's really no way to run out of ways to make the game more challenging.

I haven't really seen the AI doing something fundamentally wrong. It's small mistakes here and there, some inefficiencies in regards to what they build and wasting resources on rather pointless operations.

It could be made quite a bit stronger with a few small tweaks to some of their decision-making.

Tactically they are relatively good as well. Which is most likely the main-concern. They don't really predict enemy moves but they react well to those that happened. They retreat damaged units to heal them up, they focus fire on damaged units of the enemy to take them down and they use all the fancy abilities the units come with.

There is a caveat that I think is not really concerning but you might want to know:

The default-game-mode is pretty easy to win almost regardless of difficulty-level. That's less because the AI is bad but because the default-game mode allows you to pick a side for the end-game-showdown. So all you have to do there is to pick the stronger side and then you get an allied victory with everyone else who was on this side.

So unless you really screwed up your relations you can be a winning-team-joiner.

If you want a real challenge you have to disable the default-game mode and set teams to fixed. Then you actually have to beat others on your own in order to win and it becomes a lot more challenging.

[PlayGameToday]

Originally posted by Ail:

Zephon's AI is above average but not top-tier either.

What game has top-teir AI in your opinion?

[Ail]

Originally posted by PlayGameToday:

Originally posted by Ail:

Zephon's AI is above average but not top-tier either.

What game has top-teir AI in your opinion?

For 4x:

Old World
Remnants of the Precursors Fusion

The list is a bit longer for digital Boardgames (as those are usually less complex and have a smaller time-scope, which makes MCTS or ML a viable technique):

Through the ages
Gaia Project
Race for the Galaxy
Arimaa
Carcassonne

And then there's Chess, which has Above top-Tier due to decades of combined development

[Toegewyde]

Old world ? Sorry not comparable to Zephon.

[Doc✪Hollywood]

Originally posted by PlayGameToday:

What game has top-teir AI in your opinion?

Unreal Tournament 3 from 2007/2008.

In deathmatch, teamdeathmatch, capture the flag and vehicle capture the flag the AI is incredibly skilled. It moves so darn unpredictable, it choeses the right weapons in each situation, it's always on time at the spawning of new power-ups and it shoots incredibly accurate on "godlike", and they don't cheat.

People need to train for years, and even then just a few are able to beat a bot on "godlike".

Just in warfare mode the bots do oftenly not the best decision and in vehicles they stuck sometimes. But in the other game modes they are incredible good, especially when thinking back how other game's AI performed at that time. But even now in 2024 they still perform outstanding well compared to other games. And I am not talking about using hitscan weapons. They are very talented with every weapon. But the best feature is really their movement. It's incredible hard to predict, unless they are very near a power-up, but even then they might sidestep or backstep before picking it up.

[Ail]

Originally posted by Toegewyde:

Old world ? Sorry not comparable to Zephon.

Well, the question was which game has good AI, not whether the game is actually fun. I tried getting into Old World several time but it's really hard to enjoy. The pacing is excruciatingly slow. The most annoying part about the game was to figure out what my workers should do next. It has so many options for what they can do, that it doesn't fit on one screen. And it only shows how much a specific building will yield on each tile, once you've selected that building type. So it always took me so much time figuring out what and where to build stuff next.

Then there's the point that it's usually very unwise to start a war against a major faction and it's all about appeasing them so you don't have to. So you also just fight barbarians and minor-factions.