You’re describing something that another poster above said he saw on a island game. However, others not playing on islands have said there are plenty of wars going on, and I’ve seen decently handled naval stuff myself. Seems like something specific to islands - perhaps other kingdoms aren’t causing enough “aggro” to each other in that setting?
I might try out a continents game with Denmark when it is released, I was just excited to try out an island map since some of the patch notes were directed at sea invasions and embarked unit AI movement. As an example, I was able to take out two Great Generals in the water and there was no naval escort. I am sure my destroyers were out of vision when they moved the generals, but it was still pretty sloppy. So yeah…island games…bad if you are looking for wars. However, if you prefer a builder approach, that would probably be the perfect map type.
Rywill
5203
The tactical AI seems to do significantly better in open terrain. Its main problem seems to be that it doesn’t recognize the danger inherent in unseen territory, and will send vulnerable guys blundering ahead sometimes rather than scouting with melee/cav units. In tight terrain and choke points, the AI still seems to have significant problems. But for cities in reasonably accessible terrain (which is most of them), the AI puts up a credible threat now and I’ve definitely lost wars (and therefore games) on King.
On the sea, it is defensively much better. It used to be that you could routinely sink dozens upon dozens of transports. That is no longer the case (although you still can sink some, particularly if you have fast ships – the game really should model some sort of zone of control or something on the sea, because it’s pretty easy to zoom past screening ships and sink transports). Offensively, though, it seems incapable of doing anything. I’m almost done with an islands game on King, and despite having the majority of the world at war with me from the Renaissance onward, the AI has never attempted a naval invasion of even my outlying islands. That renders sea maps pretty useless, which is a big loss (especially given that a couple of the civs and one of the policy trees are naval-oriented). Assuming this isn’t some quirk of this one game, the seem to have ratcheted the naval AI too far in the other direction.
So, incremental improvements in the AI but it’s still markedly worse than a human player, and in certain situations it remains moronic. I still have to play on King in order to get a competitive game, but now when I do I know iI might lose due to military losses rather than just getting out-built or out-teched. I’m interested to see what the “part 2” balance patch is like. In my experience the game is still slanted too much towards “wide” rather than “tall” empires.
Looks like waiting for the +2 expansions gold pack was the right move.
I was (and am) all in favor of 1UPT and was really excited for the game, but after the hash they made of the Civ4 release I figured I’d wait until either people were freaking out with the sauce of awesome, or until the gold pack.
Forgive me if this point has been made before, and I’ve never even played Civ V, but could it be that 1upt and the strategic scope of Civ are fundamentally incompatible? I’ve never been bothered by the SoD, considering it a reasonable abstraction.
Having payed CIV V a bunch, I think that is a fair question ask since the AI is not capable of playing the game as it stands right now. However, I am comparing this against CIV IV BTS when Spain would send Galleon after Galleon with transport ships to storm my non-Catholic, unprotected coastal cities. I still have hope because my latest game illustrated a strategy that had not worked previously. The same all island map I described earlier and as the Arabs I was trading luxuries with everyone. The Mongols had coal that I lacked and they weren’t friendly with anyone (being Mongols I guess). My friend Russia asked for a joint war and I agreed. My luxuries for cash with the Mongols stopped and all of their units had the major happiness penalty (-33% I think). I took the city with coal and asked for peace along with cash money. I had never before seen the AI in negative happiness which to me is a step closer to the AI actually playing by the rules.
Well, Harun had no issues landing a gigantic fuckoff mixed force of camel archers, cannon, and muskets to wreck me in my most recent Hiawatha game on Emperor. Granted I had little to defend with, but I got destroyed by an AI naval/land invasion pretty handily.
To me, that sounds perfect. What map type was it?
I’m with you here, and I remember somebody posting to a guy’s blog where he makes the exact same point. I don’t know if 1upt is anathema to grand strategy, but Firaxis sure as heck failed to make the two work together this time around. It’s not just an AI issue, either. Its a fundamental problem of how to balance game economics and literal game space (doing 1upt means map sizes need to be carefully considered). I think Civ V’s maps were far to “small” to truly use tactical level gameplay.
I could not disagree more with that.
The one unit per tile is the by far best improvement in the civ series ever, and it is the one thing that ALLOWS any tactic at all.
Every civ before was a purely economic game. Build as many units as you can, put them in a stack. The stack of doom smothered anything resembling tactics in its crib
It worked fine in Panzer General, which had way more units. I think it’s just a paradigm shift that the guys (guy?) on AI detail weren’t ready for.
Civ4 had a decade or two of background on how to do stacks of doom, and the AI was still rubbish at wars, even by the last expansion.
Gotta give Firaxis credit for being willing to put so many years of effort into a game. They might not be the best when it comes to programming AI, but they’ll hammer away at it with patches until they get bored and release the SDK. At which point some modders will hack away at it, produce something and the community will hail it as the second coming of sliced bread despite being, as far as any reasonable human can tell, not all that bleeding different.
KevinC
5212
1UPT is okay but it could use some tweaks. Non-combat units, such as workers and the like, should have a higher stacking limit. It’s silly that you can’t have a worker and a General inside a city, for instance.
This is where I land as well.
Rywill
5214
Yeah, 1UPT is the bee’s knees. Even with a tactical AI that has problems, this is significantly more enjoyable (for me, anyway) than the old system. The bad AI just means I move the difficulty up a notch, and then pretend I’m the greatest general who ever lived. If you’re Napoleon, you probably shake your head in wonder at the idiocy of many of your enemies’ tactical decisions. The challenge is using your tactical acumen to overcome your enemies’ greater numbers/wealth/whatever. As long as the AI has enough other advantages to make the game challenging, it works. I’d prefer a game with great tactical AI that I play on Prince, but I’m fine with a game with mediocre tactical AI that I play on King. Civ 5 is the most interesting and entertaining sequel in the series. It’s the first one with a radically new playstyle.
Quitch
5215
I think this has been covered in this very thread. The AI doesn’t cheat happiness, it simply over-prioritised it which is one of the reasons it has been so weak. High happiness just isn’t that important.
This does link nicely into that ever-lasting point of that it’s a waste of time making a fair AI because people don’t believe it’s fair.
The Polynesians are quickly moving into the #1 spot above the Babylonians as my go-to civilization for the higher difficulty levels. I just beat the game on Immortal, again, using a large-sized islands map and building out 4-5 scouts. Basically, I can get to all the ruins and city-states well before any other Civ can enter the water, which gives me an unbeatable jump start.
Denmark is fun to play with, although I obviously don’t have too many hours in with them. Berserkers have a very handy movement advantage, and I love the extra space that embarqued units get. The ability to pillage without using any movement points is quite handy in an all-out assault, but I normally don’t take advantage of it because I want to use the improvements after I puppet a city. The only time I pillage is if an attack of mine gets beaten back, and I usually take precautions to make sure that doesn’t happen. I haven’t gotten to the Norwegian Ski Infantry, but it’s nice to see they’re medieval (or is it Ren?) units and not the 20th century variants.
They are rifleman replacements. I’m a bit disappointed that they don’t get to cross mountains but the movement bonus over difficult terrain that is kept for the infantry upgrade is pretty nice, too.
Oh man, pillaging is awesome. You get soooooo much money out of it. The unrest period in a recently-conquered city means that as long as you have some spare worker turns (which I almost always do), I can get things rolling in my new vassal well in advance of the break-even point relative to the cash money I extracted out of the landscape.
I need to play me some Denmark, apparently.
Well, I guess it depends on your point of view. For me, the best civ improvements were culture and religion. They added a sense of building an actual civilization, not just mass-producing armies. IMHO, Civ is just not a tactical wargame and will never be able to compete with them on their terms.
