Semi-serious question: how long till I can ask an LLM to code for me a bespoke Crusader Kings-type strategy game with Total War-type battle mechanics set in Ancient Rome

The replies are ranging from “never” to “right now”

@Thinkwert I'm currently building the spaceship game that I've wanted to build for the past, I don't know, 10 years, but I never had had the time. It's not one prompt to do it yet, but I'll be able to build in a month as much as would have taken me 1 year before.

@Thinkwert What mod(s) are/is this? Or is it just AI?

@Thinkwert I think the best way to have the ck3 battle open up total war match with the correct troops and that result be the result in ck3. More of a mod then anything else.

@Thinkwert Highly recommend Crusader Wars mod - while Total War Attila isn’t my favorite it makes CK3 way more fun. Battles you would normally get smoked you can win if you’re good lol transition is seamless

@Thinkwert You can do it now, but it’s still a ton of work. Having a strong software engineering background is still needed, but the barrier to entry is now much lower. Think of it this way: anyone can buy all the power tools they want, but not everyone can build a solid house with them.

@Thinkwert There's a Field of Glory game where you have the Paradox-style strategic layer and drop into battles in wargaming engine, but I've never played it yet

You can start now. The AI can't do it all for you because there are hundreds of tradeoff and taste details. A game that complex you will probably run into challenges where the AI wrote code that got too complex and tied itself in knots. But, you will have a lot of those decisions made, so in 6 months you can ask a newer smarter AI to rebuild it correctly, using the buggy version as a set of requirements.

@Thinkwert writing code is the cheap part. designing a sim that holds up for 300 hours is the bottleneck.

@Thinkwert @frater_dt I don't know, but if you ever do I would play the absolute shit out that game.

@Thinkwert Never, llm does not scale out to this level of complexity.

@Thinkwert Would this actually be a good thing though? Total war works because 70%+ of your time is spent on battles. That's the whole point. Total war. In comparison, CK2 works because 90% of your time is spent on politics. Try to do both and there's no game progression

@Thinkwert Im having some success using claude code to moding ck3. But the hard part is more of architecture and balancing this systems. So isn't trivial and demands to know what you are doing.

@Thinkwert Forever, sooner or later this game will collapse under AI slop, overengineered code and lost links.

@Thinkwert How many image gens do you need before your UI-Gameplay-Complete, Previously-5-Figure Concept-Art-Mood board is a sufficient enough north star to guide your production?

@Thinkwert How long until an LLM can just make an updated version of command and conquer

@Thinkwert @frater_dt GSG is the one genre where vibe coding the whole game is generally impossible.

@Thinkwert i can do it right now, but the tradeoffs, you may not like them. hint: it's gonna be all cubes!

@Thinkwert Never. Instead, you'll have a world-simulation model, where you tell it which game you wanna play, and it will generate the pixels for you. Few years from now, I'd guess.

@Thinkwert How much in token credits are we talking about? $10K? Probably 10 years give or take.

@Thinkwert If you know how to code, you could do this today in a few months with AI. Otherwise AI alone is still not quite there yet but in a few years possibly

Now. Unless you mean, a one shot. In which case, there's essentially a problem that is like of the halting problem and incompleteness had a baby. Only YOU can say what "it" is. The orchestrator can be complex and intelligently designed. The LLMs can be first rate. The iterations can continue until the requirements are met. Heck, even bot play testing can happen. But only YOU can say "yes this is what I envisioned" and only YOU can say "no, this is off, make these corrections." So, the answer is both "now" and "never."

@Thinkwert The functionality? You can do it now (albeit with a lot of mistakes you need to QA) But assets, visuals, art style, sound, etc Thats a stretch

@Thinkwert Given that the game mechanics between a lot of these games are very similar, I imagine the same game can be played with different skins. Space War vs Ancient Rome vs modern C&C Style. Same for 4X games like Civ and MOO.

@Thinkwert Probably depends on how much effort you want to put in. I wouldn't be surprised if LLMs today could write all of the code needed for a game like this, but obviously that is not all or most of the work of making one of these games

@Thinkwert I saw there's a working mod or mods that connect both games but I'm to lazy to look it up rn. Needless to say, that would be the best thing since sliced bread.

@Thinkwert 12 months, but the problem will be that by then we will hit computing scarcity so it will be expensive. In 5 years it will do it in realtime

@Thinkwert Never say never but everything in a great game is deliberate. The placement of a rock, how many px wide a margin between two UI elements is. Every note in a piece of music and when it plays. AI can't do that unless it becomes conscious. But most people aren't conscious either-

@Thinkwert @iSinGaming Total war strategic battle view, but you can play as your general like in Mount and blade, and build cities like Manor Lords/other city builders.

@Thinkwert No LLM's yet, but you can already do this with Crusader Wars and The Fallen Eagle mods for CK3

@Thinkwert Sooner than you think, but I wonder if it will be as good? Or, hell, maybe it will be better. My faith in AI competence is growing, but I still think it needs babysitters and a tremendous amount of direction. But will "agentic" concepts replace that need? Dunno.

@Thinkwert You can ask it right now. And it will confidently tell you whatever you want to hear, and only produce complete garbage.