Civilization V

[Chris_Nahr]

Jon, thanks for the status update and I’m looking forward to continuing improvements for Civ5. There are some notable issues but even now, it’s the game I spent the most time on this year!

Just to clear some things up - on Prince the AI plays by almost the exact same rules as the human. It receives a marginal discount to unit gold and supply costs, but that’s pretty much it. There’s no cheating with construction, gold production, happiness, puppet rules, research agreements, visibility, combat odds or whatever else.

However, I’m not buying this. The AI often runs outrageous gold deficits which are visible on the trade screen; yet its countless units never seem to get disbanded, as they would for a human player. And those sprawling AI empires surely push its unhappiness into the deep red, especially with a lack of buildings/wonders to compensate; yet the AI never seems to get the unhappiness combat penalty that human players would get.

[rezaf]

JHowever, I’m not buying this. The AI often runs outrageous gold deficits which are visible on the trade screen; yet its countless units never seem to get disbanded, as they would for a human player. And those sprawling AI empires surely push its unhappiness into the deep red, especially with a lack of buildings/wonders to compensate; yet the AI never seems to get the unhappiness combat penalty that human players would get.

Regarding AI happiness, I’ve had that global ranking thingie which compares everyones happiness on several occasions on which there were giantic AI empires, and they were never in the negatives. On one single occasion, I saw a -1 for an AI player, but that was a mid-sized empire.

After trying to get my feet wet doing a tiny bit of modding, I have some suspicions.
For example, there’s a property for buildings that essentially seems to say “this one comes free from age x onwards”, and it contains the game eras (ANCIENT, MEDIEVAL, RENAISSANCE, INDUSTRIAL etc.).
This property doesn’t seem to do anything for the human player, but I have the suspicion AI players get those buildings or maybe even just their effects for free starting at the cited age.
For example, iirc the Colliseum has this set to RENAISSANCE, so any city the AI acquired once it is in the renaissance would automatically come with a free Colliseum, which would help immensely, especially when they go on a rampage gobbling up a huge amount of cities almost at once.

Granted, you can often see them creating puppets instead, but there, the AI has this nice advantage (which of course isn’t cheating or anything, oh no) that it can built military units in puppetet cities…

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rezaf

[Hans_Lauring]

Jon, I’d like to say thank you for the hard work on making this game. Despite its flaws, and there are definitely flaws, I think you accomplished the goal of making a Civilization where important decisions are not removed from the player and micromanagement doesn’t make you dread getting into the mid- and late-game.

Even Civ IV didn’t come out of the gate with a stellar AI, and I hope that you’ll have the opportunity to continue working on that aspect of the game until it shines.

This.
I stayed up till 3.15 last night (and am suffering at work) because that bastard Napoleon suddenly attacked with his four mean chums Catharina, Gandhi, Hiawatha and Alexander. So it still has that all important “just one more turn” effect.

Playing on King now (for the first time ever in a Civ game for me) and it’s definitely harder. Whoever said that the AI doesn’t build ships isn’t playing on Archipelago - there’s a lot of colonies in this game and every nation has plenty of ships. Napoleons frigates would be a problem if it wasn’t for me playing Elisabeth with my Ship of the Line.
But the AI is still tactically stupid with me close to wiping out Paris even though I’m supposed to be fighting on three fronts and I wasn’t expecting France to attack (most of my army was still on another continent and I was struggling with massive unhappiness and a lack of funds). And I have no idea what pushed them all over the edge at once - I did eliminate Rome a few turns earlier, but he started it (the fool).

I must say that the lack of information re diplomacy and the lack of character in the other Civs (they all say the same handful of stock phrases) is the most disappointing thing, so I’m glad that’s a priority.

[Chris_Nahr]

Regarding AI happiness, I’ve had that global ranking thingie which compares everyones happiness on several occasions on which there were giantic AI empires, and they were never in the negatives. On one single occasion, I saw a -1 for an AI player, but that was a mid-sized empire.

In that case, they must be getting secret happiness bonuses or something. There’s no way to keep such empires in the plus while I’m getting all the wonders and they are only building units.

For example, there’s a property for buildings that essentially seems to say “this one comes free from age x onwards”, and it contains the game eras (ANCIENT, MEDIEVAL, RENAISSANCE, INDUSTRIAL etc.).
This property doesn’t seem to do anything for the human player, but I have the suspicion AI players get those buildings or maybe even just their effects for free starting at the cited age.
For example, iirc the Colliseum has this set to RENAISSANCE, so any city the AI acquired once it is in the renaissance would automatically come with a free Colliseum, which would help immensely, especially when they go on a rampage gobbling up a huge amount of cities almost at once.

…well, that would explain things. :(

Granted, you can often see them creating puppets instead, but there, the AI has this nice advantage (which of course isn’t cheating or anything, oh no) that it can built military units in puppetet cities…

And there’s that, too, although I haven’t personally observed it.

[Aceris]

Hey guys. Just a quick update. Sorry for the recent absence, I’ve been traveling quite a bit lately.

There are several things which we are looking at improving with Civ 5. Most of my time since getting back has been spent working on the interface, particularly with making more information accessible. These changes will go out with the next big update in a few weeks. The plan is also to make major revisions to the diplomacy system, and while I can’t talk about the details yet, I think you all will find them an improvement. That will be added with an update later this year. Also included will be a number of AI upgrades.

Thanks to all who have purchased the game - the plan is definitely to continue improving the experience for everyone playing. The game isn’t perfect, but we feel good about the foundation laid so far, and expect Civ 5 will stand up with every other game out there and continue to get better over time. I can ensure that I’ll be working on Civ 5 as long as I’m able to.

Jon

Thanks for the update. Despite quite a bit of negativity I have to emphasize that my feeling at the moment is this is a very good game that needs some polishing, and I’m glad that that is planned. Civ4 really set an extraordinarily high bar for you to try and beat.

[Dejin]

After trying to get my feet wet doing a tiny bit of modding, I have some suspicions.
For example, there’s a property for buildings that essentially seems to say “this one comes free from age x onwards”, and it contains the game eras (ANCIENT, MEDIEVAL, RENAISSANCE, INDUSTRIAL etc.).
This property doesn’t seem to do anything for the human player, but I have the suspicion AI players get those buildings or maybe even just their effects for free starting at the cited age.

Are you sure that’s not specifying what happens if you start a game in a later stage? I’ve played a fair number of games starting in Industrial, and your cities do start with a bunch of buildings. You will never, for example, build a monument or barracks if you do a late era start – all cities start with them automatically.

[Edit] Just ran a quick game. If you start in the Industrial Era your cities will start with a Library, Marketplace, Temple, Workshop, Barracks, Colosseum, Granary, Monument, and (if applicable) Lighthouse.

[Tony_M]

I think I’m starting to see some of the elegance of design of Civ V. The way happiness, growth and resources interact, stops the game from being such a mad land grab at the beginning.

You CAN pursue a land grab strategy, OR stay small. I really like that both are viable. It makes the early game really interesting. You examine the lay of the land, the position of resources, and of rival civs. THEN you decide if an expansionist strategy would be to your advantage or stay more compact.

Tony

[Jon_Shafer]

Is this just on Prince that there’s no cheating on these things? I’d like to say I was right about the AI actually only doing Research Agreements if they can afford to, but I’m not so sure now.

On higher levels the AI gets bonuses to the production and generation of things like units, buildings, etc. and discounts to costs like maintenance, but it can never “snap its fingers” and make anything appear under any circumstances. How closely it has to obey the game rules does not change based on difficulty level. If an AI signed a RA agreement with someone, it meant they had the requisite gold (for at least one turn) - it may have gotten it from another player, from a goody hut, from disbanding something or even from losing out on a wonder (which they like to build). But it’s always legit.

Jon

[DeepT]

I want to know how the AI can field large armies with an income of -243 per turn and -11 gold without cheating. Ill grant you this is rare, but it does happen.

[rezaf]

ydejin: While that doesn’t really prove that my theory was wrong, it strongly indicates this is the case - and I did say it was just a suspicion.

I’m glad to be wrong, in that case - however, the fact how the AI manages to so quickly consolidate massive land grabs and always stay afloat, happiness-wise, remains unexplained. I’ll run some tests myself when I get back to my gaming pc.

The XML assigns a 66% chance to be captured to most buildings, yet I almost never seized a city with any serious amount of buildings intact.
I’ll do some further tests on that as well.

Also, Tony, do you really think of staying small as a viable strategy?
The Culture victory is essentially the only one that supports (and basically requires) staying small, and the AI priorizing on whether to expand or not seems too binary for my tastes. There’s countries that expand/warmonger like crazy, and those that don’t. The latter are also those that all end up gobbled up by the former.

Note that my experience is limited to Standard sized maps so far - I heard it’s actually a problem on bigger maps that large strips of land remain unsettled by anybody.

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rezaf

[Jon_Shafer]

However, I’m not buying this. The AI often runs outrageous gold deficits which are visible on the trade screen; yet its countless units never seem to get disbanded, as they would for a human player. And those sprawling AI empires surely push its unhappiness into the deep red, especially with a lack of buildings/wonders to compensate; yet the AI never seems to get the unhappiness combat penalty that human players would get.

Well, when the game core SDK is released you can take a look and let me know where I added these bonuses on accident. ;)

The AI does lose units to disbanding, but it’s a slow process (just as it is for a human). I think psychology plays in here. If a human loses one unit, he notices immediately and tends to correct the problem quickly. The AI just bleeds over time until things get better (or not). The least advanced unit is also the one disbanded, which means the strong AI units on the front line won’t be the ones disappearing. If the AI has a lot of units and is losing money, it tends to have a LOT of units, which means its going to take some time before ALL of the extra units are disbanded.

The most fleshed-out part of the AI is probably how it approaches Happiness. It is obsessed with staying above the Happiness limit. It bee-lines for luxuries, trades them quickly if it has excess (and likes another player that also has excess), constructs Colosseums, nearly always picks policies that help with Happiness, etc. As soon as the AI hits “Unhappy” (before “Really Unhappy”) it stops expanding, preventing the situation from deteriorating further. Because the AI civs are rarely unhappy, they rarely have to suffer the combat penalty.

Even with all of this though, the AI tends to lag behind the human with regards to total population. It’s not able to micromanage the numbers in the same way a person can, and also can’t build up the REALLY large food surpluses humans like to. The lack of population tends to catch up to the AI in the later part of the game, where it tends to lacks technology and cities with really high production.

Jon

[KevinC]

Jon,

Thanks for taking the time to post some responses here. Are there any plans to address scaling problems with large/huge maps in terms of happiness? I.e., there’s the same number of luxury resources but far more terrain for cities. This leaves much of the world, even in the end game, as unsettled tracts of wasteland.

[Equisilus]

Jon,

Thanks for taking the time to post some responses here. Are there any plans to address scaling problems with large/huge maps in terms of happiness? I.e., there’s the same number of luxury resources but far more terrain for cities. This leaves much of the world, even in the end game, as unsettled tracts of wasteland.

That doesn’t seem unrealistic, though. After all, there are vast areas of our current world left unsettled and I expect it’ll be so in the decades to come. I like the unsettled areas in large/huge maps more so than having cities every four tiles (which seems to be what the AI likes to do).

On another note, what’s the breakdown for how automated workers decide what to build, when, and where? I’ve started to micromanage my workers because of some odd choices, but perhaps if I can figure out why they are doing what they’re doing it might help.

[KevinC]

That doesn’t seem unrealistic, though. After all, there are vast areas of our current world left unsettled and I expect it’ll be so in the decades to come. I like the unsettled areas in large/huge maps more so than having cities every four tiles (which seems to be what the AI likes to do).

I’m approaching it more from a gameplay perspective than a realism one. I find that there’s a near-complete lack of border tension or need for conflict when playing on Huge maps. The majority of Huge maps I’ve played, I’m left alone in isolation the entire game without ever a need to expand. That’s fine to have the occasional peaceful game, but it gets dull and dreary when every game turns out that way.

[Blackadar]

I’m approaching it more from a gameplay perspective than a realism one. I find that there’s a near-complete lack of border tension or need for conflict when playing on Huge maps. The majority of Huge maps I’ve played, I’m left alone in isolation the entire game without ever a need to expand. That’s fine to have the occasional peaceful game, but it gets dull and dreary when every game turns out that way.

I’m not saying that can’t be tweaked (and it sounds like it does), but isn’t this a bit your choice? Huge maps have always resulted in prolonged isolationism. If it’s getting dull and dreary, drop down to a normal map.

[HumanTon]

I have no objection to giant swathes of desert or tundra going unsettled – it’s the unclaimed forest that’s jarring.

I think the larger map sizes need some adjustment to the game mechanics to make them feel appropriately populated (just increasing the number of civs/city states isn’t a good option to fill in the gaps, given the extremely long turn times.)

I do also get the feeling when trying to play a large (6+ city) empire that there’s always someone over my shoulder saying, “Well, you could do it that way, but I’m not sure it’s wise. Wouldn’t it be much nicer to have fewer cities?” Which frankly I find annoying in a 4X game.

[Chris_Nahr]

Well, when the game core SDK is released you can take a look and let me know where I added these bonuses on accident. ;)

I’ll be sure to take a look (just out of curiosity!) but I’m going to believe you anyway, thanks for the explanation. :)

I’m glad that you could make the AI work for the new system without significant cheating, after all. Sadly, your description also explains why the AI increasingly seems to lag behind come the Middle Ages or so, and never seems to pursue any victory condition other than conquest – how could it, when it’s always broke and builds basically nothing but units and happiness buildings in lots of tiny unproductive cities? Ah well, I’m looking forward to the upcoming AI patches!

[Hans_Lauring]

I have no objection to giant swathes of desert or tundra going unsettled – it’s the unclaimed forest that’s jarring.

I think the larger map sizes need some adjustment to the game mechanics to make them feel appropriately populated (just increasing the number of civs/city states isn’t a good option to fill in the gaps, given the extremely long turn times.)

I do also get the feeling when trying to play a large (6+ city) empire that there’s always someone over my shoulder saying, “Well, you could do it that way, but I’m not sure it’s wise. Wouldn’t it be much nicer to have fewer cities?” Which frankly I find annoying in a 4X game.

Agree.
In my current game on a large map, everybody hates me out of principle - probably because I’m most likely to achieve one of the victory conditions and this is a game. Looking at the world realistically, there’s no need for tension - there’s lots of luxuries and strategic resources still unclaimed…
It’s jarring. And I like the big long games, but I haven’t gone beyond large maps and normal number of turns here (IV would be Huge and Epic).

[KevinC]

I have no objection to giant swathes of desert or tundra going unsettled – it’s the unclaimed forest that’s jarring.

I think the larger map sizes need some adjustment to the game mechanics to make them feel appropriately populated (just increasing the number of civs/city states isn’t a good option to fill in the gaps, given the extremely long turn times.)

I do also get the feeling when trying to play a large (6+ city) empire that there’s always someone over my shoulder saying, “Well, you could do it that way, but I’m not sure it’s wise. Wouldn’t it be much nicer to have fewer cities?” Which frankly I find annoying in a 4X game.

Thanks for saying things better than I could, I feel the same way (on all points).

[Remconius]

@Jon Shafer, thank you for civ V. Is sure is a fun game!

And thanks for posting on this forum to giving us an update. It’s good to see you are working on the interface, diplomacy and AI. Those are very welcome.

What I would like to know is if you are also working on the balance?
Most notibly:
-Long buildings times for what you get, especially compared to research. Research flies by, but the most simple buildings take forever.
-Overpowered maritime City States.
-Weak food resources, which are no better than regular farms.
-luxury resources which are not scaling on larger maps. 15x5 happiness is a lot an a small map, but little on a huge map.

At the moment the empire building aspect (many, well developed cities) is a bit missing. This really should be part of building a civilization to stand the test of time!

Thanks in advance for a response!