Civilization V

Jason_McCullough · 2010-09-28T11:56:29.000Z

Ok, then in PG it’s definitely not scripted; the scenarios don’t have AI data. That’s just the “regular” game-wide AI behavior hurling itself at you - or more specifically, the victory hexes. Eventually it runs out of full-strength units and easy targets and kind of stalls. I don’t think there’s a “front” AI; I’d guess it’s just a “nearest victory hex” plus some sort of combined arms % targets.

pg1 · 2010-09-28T12:36:28.000Z

The game is getting easier the more I play no surprise there. Won all my games on prince trying different strategies. Maybe I should move up in difficulty. In every game I’ve ended up controlling all the city states. Seems like the AI wastes all the money it has on upkeep for usually relatively massive armies compared to their economy. Given how many times I’ve seen a single city or city state stall an AI attack it just seems like they’d be better served by going after city states and having a smaller army. I have repeatedly managed to defend city states against huge AI armies by giving them units. The AI in general seem to get too many cities; I’ve had great success keeping my city numbers down but getting them high in population via city state food bonuses.

I tried to play as peaceful as possible my current game as Egypt but I still ended up having to take out Russia who seemed bent against me even after continually taking her cities. When Russia declared the first time I was weaker militarily but I had close city state allies to help and lots of gold/gold income which the AI should have realized would make it lose. The bad part was if the AI had it’s units positioned close to my frontier cities I might have lost a few but it has units scattered all over and attacked piecemeal like usual. I’ve managed to build tons of wonders as my capital is focused on production together with policy, marble bonuses, and Egypt bonus.

jpinard · 2010-09-28T12:46:59.000Z

Adam B:

That’s never made any sense to me either.

ravenight:

I just don’t really buy the argument that the game isn’t fun if the AI has to “cheat” to compete with you.

If you can’t strangle a civ into submission then you’ve suddenly axed a big chunk of playability out of the game. Imagine playing a Civil War game and not being able to affect supply issues with the South. Imagine playing a WW2 game with no German subs to affect supply.

That’s why many of us don’t like AI cheating via massive resource boosts.

DeepT · 2010-09-28T12:56:35.000Z

What is the highest level where the AI doesn’t cheat? I guess if AI cheats at level X + 1 and you can easily beat it on X, then you really have no choice but to accept a cheating AI. I would assume that X is the best AI the programmers can make without cheating.

It is my personal preference that the AI never cheat, however, if I have to choose between getting bored with the lack of challenge or a cheating AI, Id prefer to have the cheating AI option.

Miramon · 2010-09-28T13:05:39.000Z

Personally I don’t mind a cheating AI so much as I mind punitive overhead costs that make it hard to manage a normal civilization.

So far as I’m concerned, let the AI have no fog of war at all. It sure needs the help. Let it crank out a few extra units in an emergency even if it doesn’t have the cash; that will just give it more to make research agreements with me…

But don’t make it so a civ with 5 cities and 10 units has to be micromanaged to avoid bankruptcy and all-pervasive despair – that’s just annoying, especially when nearby AI civilizations have more cities and no problems at all.

Woolen_Horde · 2010-09-28T13:08:45.000Z

DeepT:

What is the highest level where the AI doesn’t cheat? I guess if AI cheats at level X + 1 and you can easily beat it on X, then you really have no choice but to accept a cheating AI. I would assume that X is the best AI the programmers can make without cheating.

Prince is the only level playing field. Neither side gets bonuses.

At difficulty levels lower than Prince, the human player gets bonuses. At difficulty levels higher than Prince, the AI gets bonuses.

Quitch · 2010-09-28T13:13:07.000Z

DeepT:

What is the highest level where the AI doesn’t cheat?

Prince. Mouse over the difficulty levels, they say which chear.

jpinard · 2010-09-28T13:17:12.000Z

Miramon:

Personally I don’t mind a cheating AI so much as I mind punitive overhead costs that make it hard to manage a normal civilization.

So far as I’m concerned, let the AI have no fog of war at all. It sure needs the help. Let it crank out a few extra units in an emergency even if it doesn’t have the cash; that will just give it more to make research agreements with me…

But don’t make it so a civ with 5 cities and 10 units has to be micromanaged to avoid bankruptcy and all-pervasive despair – that’s just annoying, especially when nearby AI civilizations have more cities and no problems at all.

exactly

strategy · 2010-09-28T13:17:18.000Z

Jason McCullough:

I’m not sure what definition of scripting you guys are using; there’s none at all, using “hardcoded instructions telling the AI to always do a specific thing in a specific circumstance.” There’s no scenario-specific AI packages, there’s just one set of AI for all of them. There’s an offensive AI (taking victory hexes, nothing else) and a defensive AI (defending the current victory hex front line, nothing else). We know this because that crazy guy rewrote the game! :)

Oh snap. Now you’ll force me to go back and look the game over again, because I’m fairly convinced the scenarios were heavily scripted. Though it is possible that my impression is simply based on the effect of Defensive AI + scenario-specific deployments - hmm.

P.S. Won’t bother to look it up; I’ll believe your word on that.

Netriak · 2010-09-28T13:23:35.000Z

Although the prince difficulty is most fair, there are still some differences for both AI and the player compared to the normal rules:
The player has only 90% inflation.
The AI has only 80% inflation.
The AI gets a 50% unit upgrade discount.

strategy · 2010-09-28T13:29:52.000Z

Miramon:

I didn’t play any of the later games in the V for Victory series, so the AI might have improved in those games. In the large scale OC scenario with a lot of desert to move tanks freely around, the OC AI is very bad, and can’t coordinate any attacks. It’s like Rommel was invalided out a couple of years too soon and replaced with a magic 8 ball.

As I recall the OC AI was much better in the smaller tighter scenarios that are more amenable to scripting. But as I said, even with its open-desert shortcomings, it seemed superior to most other hex-based AI, including of course that of Civ 5.

V4V pre-dated the World at War games, so it’s not that. But it’s certainly true that the AI was superior when playing in “closed” terrain than in big open spaces - and offense is always one of the biggest problems for any AI (also in the V4V games - it was competent, not brilliant). I missed OC for some reason, and never had the patience to play the big scenarios in the Russian front games (way too many units). Gold-Juno-Sword was always my favorite of those games and the bocage and rivers no doubt helped disguise the problems you mention.

I’m pretty certain that it wasn’t (only) scripting that made it good, though - otherwise I would have had more success with my counterattacks (ooh - all these nice panzer battalions, we can’t let them just sit there and do boring defensive duties now, can we?)

Quitch · 2010-09-28T13:33:32.000Z

Netriak:

Although the prince difficulty is most fair, there are still some differences for both AI and the player compared to the normal rules:
The player has only 90% inflation.
The AI has only 80% inflation.
The AI gets a 50% unit upgrade discount.

Where did you get that from?

Sarkus · 2010-09-28T13:35:58.000Z

I just finished my second full length game. This time I lead Greece to a timed victory. I would have won a cultural victory, but pressure from Songhai lead me to annex some puppets and that was a mistake from a cultural victory perspective as the larger you are the slower your acquisition of cultural policies is.

I also decided to play past the end for a turn to see the basic nuke in action. ;-)

slikster · 2010-09-28T13:43:51.000Z

Deadbuffalo:

But how do you determine what buildings, if any, survived the attack?
When you raze/annex you can go into the city menu and see the building list on the right, but I can’t access the city menu of a puppet.

If you take a city, they start from scratch, with the only surviving buildings being those you can actually see on the map. Colosseum, wonders and such. You have to know what the buildings look like to know what buildings a puppet has. If you keep track of what a puppet is building, they seem to have a build que of sorts that always starts with monument and then moves to temple or whatever you have unlocked in the tech tree.

Jason_McCullough · 2010-09-28T13:49:40.000Z

strategy:

Oh snap. Now you’ll force me to go back and look the game over again, because I’m fairly convinced the scenarios were heavily scripted. Though it is possible that my impression is simply based on the effect of Defensive AI + scenario-specific deployments - hmm.

P.S. Won’t bother to look it up; I’ll believe your word on that.

It was convincing! Come to think of it, probably some of it was that the designers hand-placed the starting units just so, though. Anywho, it’s clearly doable to write a “fun” AI for combat hexes + modifiers + 1 unit per hex.

Kael · 2010-09-28T15:26:36.000Z

The Modding Tools for Civ5 have been released. The are on the “Tools” tab on Steam.

I put together a guide to help people get started: Modders Guide to Civilization V

Dejin · 2010-09-28T15:42:42.000Z

Does anyone know does the Workshop (+20% Production of Buildings) impact Wonders as well as regular Buildings?

Orangist · 2010-09-28T15:44:47.000Z

Kael:

The Modding Tools for Civ5 have been released. The are on the “Tools” tab on Steam.

I put together a guide to help people get started: Modders Guide to Civilization V

Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay! :)

Lizard_King · 2010-09-28T15:52:56.000Z

Dejin:

Does anyone know does the Workshop (+20% Production of Buildings) impact Wonders as well as regular Buildings?

As far as I’ve been able to tell, it’s purely for regular paid buildings.

Netriak · 2010-09-28T15:54:39.000Z

Quitch:

Where did you get that from?

sid meier’s civilization v\Assets\Gameplay\XML\GameInfo\CIV5HandicapInfos.xml