4481

Very true, and this is why the game is basically broken.

If all the other victory conditions are just there as achievements, for a superior player to show off that they could have won a domination victory but chose not to, they are almost pointless. If all the AI nations are doing is waiting until they think they have the best chance for a backstab, then you’d best crush them as soon as possible.

If the designers cared about balance, they’d make mutual money-generating trade alliances that are clearly bad to break, and they’d make advanced and advantageous civics that punish you for declaring war. Of course to preserve the game’s fun-ness, conquest should still work, but it shouldn’t be the only sensible way to play.

4482

So is it worth playing yet?

4483

I think so, yes.

4484

Exactly how is that AI behavior different from any previous Civ? Were they all “basically broken” in your opinion, too? I mean, why did you even buy this iteration?

4485

Probably not to you since you’re asking in a thread where most participants are still playing warts and all.

Just bought the DLC and won my first game as Spain. Only one of the scenarios, so I didn’t really notice any difference in behaviour.

4486

It is, even with all the problems. But it has the potential to be amazing.

4487

Oh, I’m just looking for “mostly not broken.” I’ll take a look.

Edit: $7.50 for two scenarios and civs? You’ve got to be kidding me.

4488

Every Civ game I’ve ever played, going back to Civ 2, has been Me vs. The Psychopaths. Oh sure, they’ll be friends with me for a few turns but it’s just a nasty, short & brutish trip to the Betrayal Barn. If you’re winning, the AI wil be come for you. This is not a new development.

I’m pretty sure that the original name for this series was Sid Meier’s Civilization: Bums to the wall, laddies!

4489

I don’t know, maybe I was hoping that they had improved something. After all, even with no AI at all to speak of FFH for Civ 4 is a better game than Civ 5.

But in fact in some earlier Civs there was considerably better balance for not killing off all other nations.

4490

I don’t mind the psychopath part. I’d prefer that not be the case, but I can handle that.

My problem is that the psychopaths are apparently retarded. So it’s like you’re being betrayed by a psychopath who, immediately after betrayal, shows up drunk and passed out on your front steps. It doesn’t feel right to beat out a psychopath’s brains when the psychopath is mentally challenged, drunk, and passed out.

4491

I wouldn’t say it’s “broken.” The diplomacy aspect is just less interesting than it should be. I transitioned from Civ Revolution to Civ V, and Civ Rev’s AI behavior makes Civ V’s players look like cuddly bunnies. It took some mental adjustment after Civ IV, but the AI players in Civ Rev treat it like a board game: they’re playing to win, always, and there’s no such thing as “liking” anyone.

My feeling is that you can go essentially two ways with designing diplomacy into a game - either leave “feelings” out of it entirely, in which case it’s all about situational advantage and alliances of convenience, or treat Diplomacy like a system that can and should be gamed by the player, where you can avoid warfare no matter how weak you look if you play the diplomacy game correctly. Civ V’s main failure is that it doesn’t really do either one. It’s true that earlier games in series tended to push the AI players into ganging up on you toward the end, but Civ V is is definitely worse in that respect that III or IV. There’s very little to the “diplomacy game,” though admittedly more than in Civ Rev.

  • Gus
4492

Aye. I’m wrapping up my first successful Emperor game post-patch, and at one point I had the Ottomans, Egypt, England, and France all launch a sneak attack in the same turn, with India following a turn or two later. Which sounds much worse than it was, since I’d crippled England, Egypt, and India earlier in the game, and they had about 1 military unit apiece. The Ottomans were a threat, and France was #1 but on another continent. The net effect was that I was only really fighting a one-front war against a mostly-unprepared Ottoman Empire. France never sent a single unit overseas, and my City State allies managed to wipe out most of England without my help.

Incidentally, post-patch warfare seems to be mainly about artillery. Horse units are nerfed so they’re significantly weaker than infantry against cities, and you need about 7-8 attacks with infantry or artillery to take a city. Since infantry gets chewed up enough that it really has to retreat after making a single attack, this pretty much means 2-3 artillery (catapults / trechebuts / artillery) plus a couple of infantry to keep defenders off the ranged units. A single artillery doesn’t cut it because the cities regenerate too fast.

This is true even into the modern period, since cities get defenses in the 50-70 range. Mech infantry simply can’t cut through cities unsupported unless your opponent is still stuck in the Medieval period.

4493

Just tried again, to be sure about this:

It’s 3480 in a vanilla King-level game. I have an axeman and an archer because my scout just tripped over an upgrade village. Sweet. I have done nothing at all in the game yet but clear fog and find a couple of villages; one gave me the bow and arrows, the other gave me 30 culture.

I meet two civilizations this turn, Russians and Chinese. The Russians denounce me instantly right after I dismiss the first welcome screen. What? What did I do? The Chinese insult my army. What? What? What? My little army is as strong as I could reasonably hope at this point, since I’m still working on my third unit, a worker, and I’m being insulted the same turn I meet the enemy civilization, which is like me still in the ancient period.

Next turn the Chinese also denounces me. What have I done to deserve this? I haven’t even built my first worker yet, haven’t done anything at all except wander my first two units around a little, and in fact haven’t come anywhere close to the other civ borders.

So fine, I hunker down for 20 turns or so, build my first two cities, and build the great library to jump to iron working. I’m not bothering anyone, and my cities aren’t close enough to any other civ to piss them off. I meet the Japanese, and am shocked to discover they don’t denounce me on sight.

At this point the Russians, who had been marked as hostile after denouncing me, are suddenly said to be friendly. OK, fine. I trade luxury goods with them. Next turn after that, they declare war, throwing 8 units at me including several swordsmen. What, they discovered iron-working AND mined it, AND built 3 settlers, 2 swordsmen, 3 archers and 3 axeman while I’ve managed just 2 more archers? Nice handicap :)

So fortunately there is this tiny lake between me and “Russia”, which their units could easily go around, but don’t, so most of their units embark (optics too, I guess) and get annihilated in the water by the couple archers I’ve now managed to build. After the Russians drown their last axe-man, they surrender. Pathetic, really.

I can’t account for this behavior except for something being fundamentally wrong with the latest patch.

4494

Sounds like they thought you looked like an easy target. Essentially they went hostile because they had a good-sized, advanced army and you had a couple of starting units.

Errors I can see: building the Great Library instead of expanding rapidly, and probably dilly-dallying with techs other than Writing and Iron Working. You don’t really need luxuries before you build your first couple of swordsmen.

4495

Oh, I don’t claim to be playing perfectly in that game. I was Egypt with marble and the tradition wonder bonus, though, so it seemed more efficient to build the great library at more than the usual speed than to crawl with actual tech towards iron working, and by the time they did attack, I had the 2 additional archers at least.

While Russia should probably have taken at least one turn to be hostile or at least not friendly before attacking (otherwise tags like “friendly” are meaningless or actually lies from a game information point of view) the really weird thing is being denounced on the first turn of meeting 2 civs in the earliest turns of the game.

4496

True. Frankly, I don’t like the “denouncing” mechanism as written. The way it’s worded, both when they denounce you and when you get pop-ups showing the negative effects, it should only apply when you betray someone. If they want your land, fine, go to war, but don’t pull some stunt where you get a diplomatic hit with everyone just because Russia was greedy.

4497

I’ll admit that the bipolar attitude of AI leaders flip-flopping between denouncing, attacking, and befriending me is annoying. The AI needs better strategic planning, and then it needs to stick to its strategy.

In other news, Dan’s explanation for protection pledges was too good to be true. In my last game, I had a city-state ally whose menu offered the pledge to protect option. Sigh. Makes no sense at all for an ally, and at this point I can only assume this feature is basically broken and needs an overhaul.

I also got my first glimpses of the post-patch tactical AI, and it wasn’t good. Spain was attacking an allied military city state, and had a great general sitting right next its nearest city – out of range of the attacking units it should have supported. Then the city-state gave me a paratrooper, I jumped next to the general, waited a turn – and Spain did nothing! Next turn I simply destroyed the general.

England, on the same continent as my empire, later advanced a lone unsupported artillery toward my fortified city. My third enemy, Russia, didn’t even show up for the fight – it was an archipelago map, and the AI evidently still can’t figure out naval invasions. Sad.

4498

So, yeah, I’ve played around with it a bit after the patch and I’m as disappointed as ever. I didn’t get very far once I saw units in action, doing the same stupid things and not taking advantage of the actual gameplay. If you design a game in which terrain matters so much, in which positioning is a huge part of the fight, in which units have distinct roles, the game absolutely falls apart if the AI doesn’t understand this.

I’m afraid Civ V is going the way of Civilization Revolution in that it’s never going to be anything other than an interesting you-vs.-the-world puzzle/RPG kind of strategy game rather than something where you vie against other civs playing by the same rules. And I hate to keep bringing Civ V discussions around to Civ IV, but I’ve been playing a lot of Civ IV over the last week or so (the excellent Dune mod), and I got really spoiled watching the AI counterattack, mount amphibious invasions, use air power, pillage, defend, refuse attacks against superior defenses, and so forth. At this point, I see no reason to play Civ V instead of Civ IV and it’s a damn shame.

 -Tom
4499

I don’t see anything wrong with this.

  1. Each turn can be years or decades, and historically countries have been known to change tack in unpredictable ways on timescales of that magnitude.

  2. If it was multiplayer, it would also be You vs the Psychopaths, only now the psychos are other ppl trying to win. So the AI is just trying to give you a consistent experience.

4500

Hope springs eternal in the true grognard’s heart.