Can you set up a bot-only match in Quake 3? I can imagine that being pretty fun, and I am sure there are some mods to spice it up.

M.U.L.E.?
Spy vs Spy?
CRobots?
GRobots?
Drox?
Life?
SPAZ (intro)?

On the 4x topic, Distant Worlds Universe can do that. It's pretty cool actually.

Paradox games in general are good for this. In fact, there are even YouTube videos of players taking control of an obscure and small country, having it essentially on autopilot and then just watching how the rest of the world unfolds.

A case could also be made for sports games. My brother used to enjoy letting AI teams play against each other in Pro Evolution Soccer.

I would never do this, so I'm probably not the best reference, but if Rise of Nations has 0-player, that would be pretty fun to watch.

Thanks for mentioning Distant Worlds Univers. I forgot I have this on GOG, and it's due for some playtime :)

Never played Romance of Three Kingdoms 2 or Fracas.
Distant Worlds Universe is kinda special because beyond generating the universe + the Player race(can be randomized) + starting the game, out-of-the box literally everything else can be switched to "fully-automated mode" and the game will literally play itself. And you can spend hours just watching ships explore, tech tree filling up, space monsters wreck endless amounts of ships before dying, or monitor ancient ship graveyards/caches.

NHL 2002

You can just watch the matches play out where even your team is controlled by the AI.

All you have to do is team management in-between games like player exchanges, drafts, changing lineups etc.

SpeedBall 2 has a manager campaign, you just buy train the team and buy players eventually, hard as hell though.

Technically, Га́рри Ки́мович Каспа́ров [Garry Kasparov], who was at age 22 the youngest ever undisputed World Chess Champion (1985), may have been beaten by the IBM Deep Blue chess computer, but the staff also intervened, using social engineering psyops to psych the Grand Master out of the game/s. (They were literally bugging his off-time conversations and programming his worst-case scenario fears overnight for the next day's play!* ;)

Does that correlate with the inherently evil energy known as "Psycho Power", utilized by the Capcom Streetfight fictional character Vega (or ベガ Bega), known outside Japan as the Mighty Bison? Conspiracy!




* See GM John Nunn's commentary, included with Albert Silver's (2015) article, Deep Blue's cheating move, for the evidentiary trail.

I don't get this Vega is Bison with a different name joke.
EDIT I have read about it, it's crazy that they switched names. But I think that Vega is more elegant and suits the acrobat better and viceversa with Balrog.

When I was younger I could watch the computer play against itself in North & South. It's an old Amiga game that looked good at the times. I dug it out of the past to find it wasn't this great game tbh.
Many chess games should offer the option to have the A.I. play by itself.
I am thinking of a bot fighting game that was popular among (at least the Italian) nerds in the early 90s. "Players" could only their bots and share them, and the software would do all the fighting. Sadly I cant recall its name.

One Must Fall?

No, it was not a commercial title. Some old nerdy stuff you could get from a BBS.
Oh my, I searched one must fall and I loved it. And it is freeware now, I'm gonna go back to it!

Operation Flashpoint/ARMA with mission editor:

Set up a battle with tanks, infantry, even aircraft and watch it unfold.