6121

Overall I am pretty impressed with the expansion. I think religion is handled pretty well, albeit confusing what benefits occur when. The AI seems improved I was play as Byzantine (Emperor) and the Babylons launch a large attack which eventually overwhelmed my 3 defenders.

6122

Turin, the AI of a game has to work hand-in-hand with the design. Conquest of Elysium 3 is a game about scouring the world of stacks of monsters. As such, the AI works fine for what the game is trying to do. Sometimes the stacks of monsters aren’t assembled very well, or sometimes they suicide themselves at me so I feel like I’m playing horde mode in Gears of War. But it creates this grand experience of driving a fantasy army through a hostile world. It’s not an empire builder, it has no diplomacy, and the tactical stuff is confined mostly to the automated battles, which avoids many of the problems you have when you tether your tactics to the main map. Conquest of Elysium III never did anything as baldly stupid as parking a battleship in front of a city and letting me gradually kill it over the course of five or six turns.

When the AI can’t play the game as designed, when it doesn’t understand the rules of the game, it’s a much bigger problem than whatever shortcomings you think I’ve failed to notice in Conquest of Elysium III.

 -Tom
6123

That’s one of the few beliefs that makes spreading a religion beneficial.

 -Tom
6124

Erm… what happened to the strategic AI? I’m playing on King as this is my first game in a year or so and it’s about 1600AD, Huge|Continents map, yet none of the AI’s I’ve run across have settled more than 3-4 cities? For comparison, I have 15 cities… 14 colonized, 1 captured during a war with Sweden.

Anyone else seeing similar behavior?

6125

Okay. I’m stumped. How do you stop someone else’s religion from spreading into your cities? I used the Inquisitor, but he keeps negating my religion instead of the other one!

6126

So far, I’ve countered an opponent’s religion by just firing off a missionary or great prophet of my religion at them, and everything goes back to Great Moobly Booblyism (GMBism). It’s a difficult thing for my religion, as the ceremonial garb for GMB Missionaries includes three gorillas and a certified horticulturalist.

6127

My problem is that the other guy’s religion has already spread to my city so his is dominant, while mine has less followers. Generating a Great Prophet or Missionary or Inquisitor just seems to make more of his religion.

6128

If you’ve reached the point where you don’t have a city with your dominant religion, you’re kinda out of luck.

If you still have one city with your religion, then make an Inquisitor there and use it to root out other cities. Unfortunately, you’ll also have to back it up with a missionary, or the pressure from all the surrounding cities will just reconvert it.

Burning down all nearby cities with the enemy religion might help with pressure, and an inquisitor stationed in a city will block other missionaries.

6129

Hmm. I’ll have to try that. Thanks.

6130

I don’t agree with that, CoE3 has a clear winning condition where x players start the game and the one who defeats the others/ is the last survivor wins. As you say the game don’t have diplomacy, it’s not a real empire builder, etc, it’s just about factions beating each other, and the AI is really bad at it. In fact it’s a game much more focused about player vs player than for example a Civ game like this where part of the experience is raising up your own civilization, which sometimes doesn’t need a competitive AI.

But that’s really something for the CoE3 thread, not for this thread, so I will stop :P.

6131

Uh, okay. I think that right there tells me all I need to know about what you’re looking for in the AI for Civilization V. I mean, heck, why even have other players on the map?

-Tom
6132

I was thinking along the same lines. Let alone that comparing a game like Civ V with Coe3 says a lot about the state of the former, I see this complacency with AI brain-deadness as not an isolated incident but rather a disturbing trend.

The clearest example for me is the Heroes of Might and Magic series. The AI in the last three games has defined various shades of wretchedness. Not just weak, mind you, but won’t-recruit-units-to-defend-own-castles wretched; inept to the point that the the games have been increasingly focusing on the smoke and mirrors (“story”, graphics, scripting, strings of meaningless battles, etc) to hide that the “strategy” layer has become basically an afterthought. The way the games are marketed reflect this shift.

What I’ve come to come to terms with is that these series are aiming at a different audience. Some people like the sandbox aspect – building their forces, enjoying the exploration and the pretty pictures, having the occasional battle with neutrals, etc. Others like me will see this only as a nice wrapper to the actual meat, and the lack of a working AI as a sign of a system that’s fundamentally broken, and piling up glossy DLCs on it a move akin to putting pearls on a pig.

6133

There has only been one company I remember that actually brought out significant AI improvements in the form of a DLC. Paradox with Semper Fi. I wonder - did this pay off for them?

Other than that, games with bad AIs but shiny graphics represent all that is wrong with the games industry nowadays in my opinion.

Also looking at the credits screens usually shows one/two programmers vs. about 10 2D artists, 10 3D artists, etc. In my opinion that should be reversed.

6134

I think you are turning the corner from being fair to singling out Civ V. I disagree with the above post that a game such as Civ doesn’t need an strong AI as much because it is about building your own empire. I can respect that some people may play it that way, but I want an AI to give me a challenge along the way. I also didn’t like the split personality black box diplomacy system in vanilla Civ and agree with some of your complaints. Civ V was disappointing to me (but still a decent game) compared to Civ IV as I expected more to be added to the game instead of stripping it down and funneling players into victory conditions so early.

I know you enjoy Conquest of Elysium 3, but giving a free pass to its AI weaknesses while ripping Civ V seems inconsistent. Since the feature set of CoE3 is much more focused than Civ V I would think the AI should be easier to make more competitive. It frequently bypassed cities it could have probably taken and was easily manipulated by taking their resources and waiting for its army to come back to reclaim them. That’s how I would corral them back in to kill them. Much of the difficulty comes from the placement of the tough neutral creatures.

I hope you can take a step back and think about why you are so critical about Civ V, but more lenient with other games. Is it because you truly have such a big beef with Civ V or are there other reasons? I’m not stating there is a conscious effort on your part to be unfair, but sometimes when we’ve been forced to support an argument for so long we get more focused on winning the argument instead of looking for the truth.

Peace Tom, I still love reading your stuff.

6135

Every time I pick up the latest Civ game or expansion/dlc, they start out all new and shiny with a couple of cool features (3D! great leaders,expanding influence zones, hex-based, purchaseable tiles) but it takes only a few days for the newness to wear off, and I find myself going back to Brian Reynold’s masterpiece.

Warts and all, for me, all 4x roads lead back to Alpha Centauri. After 13 years, it’s still the pinnacle of the Civ series.

6136

Civ5 is a AAA strategy franchise with a dedicated staff and a budget that dwarfs that of other games in the genre. COE3 is a game made by two guys as a hobby in their spare time.

Is it fair that the latter’s AI woes get more slack? The answer for me is yes, same as I don’t expect COE3 to have comparable graphics or intro movies. It doesn’t get a full pass from me, there’s a reason I didn’t recommend COE3 to my friends, but I certainly expect more out of Civ and I don’t feel it’s unfair to do so… Especially when they’re working on an established franchise.

In my opinion the AI was better in the previous game in terms of diplomacy, strategy, and especially combat. When the sequel falls short compared to its predecessor you can guarantee I’ll be disappointed and voice my complaints.

6137

I guess I judge games independently of their budget. Either I want to play a game or I don’t, and to me that is what matters. Games like Unity of Command show that a small team can make a top notch game that both looks good and plays good. I’m glad that you voice your complaints, that is the only way change happens. I don’t think many people want critical discussions about games to end. I get a good challenge in Civ V on the King difficulty level, so I’m not an elite player, but the AI could definitely use work in some areas. I hope Gods and Kings at least improves it in some noticeable ways.

6138

Fundamentally that’s what it comes down to for me as well. I have big gripes with the AI that detract from my enjoyment of the game and that combines with their very shoddy MP implementation. It’s disappointing because there certainly are several good things to say about Civ5 and I really want to like it but those flaws tend to get in the way. I’d be a raving fan of 1UPT if they got a decent tactical AI that understood how to use it and if polished some things up (right now I’m trying to get a prophet up to a citysstate and can’t due to a carpet of units surrounding it). If they had a fraction of the dedication of some indies and smaller studios I think they could turn this into something really good, but they don’t seem to have of an inclination to so. I’d be more than willing to buy more DLC if they’d fix some underlying issues.

6139

Yeah, development budget doesn’t matter much to me in my determination of whether something in a game is done well or not. Rather, the portion of the budget assessed to me (cost of the game) does impact my view of the game overall. If someone charges me $5 for a game, I’ll be a lot easier on it than if someone charges me $30 (COE3) or even $50 (Civ V) for a game, let alone the costs for DLC. I simply expect proportionately more for my money. That said, I get a lot more with Civ V than I do with COE3, so I figure that’s all fair.

AI is just a facet, and how important it handles specific things (such as not leaving generals out in the open) is probably connected to what type of enjoyment someone wishes to get out of a game. Do you want to be seriously challenged militarily or not is likely at the crux of the issue. Some days, I like steamrolling AI opponents in a display of my digital awesomeness. Other days, I get a lot out of knock-down, drag-out battles that I could win or lose at a moment’s notice with a single mistake by either side.

Depending on the game, I don’t mind the AI getting a helping hand to overcome its moments of stupidity. However, that really does depend on the game: for instance, I can’t stand the leveling of enemy forces in the Homeworld series. Learning about that essentially ruined a vital part of the game for me: the search for resources. I also can’t stand “catch up” assists in driving games or other such techniques. On the other hand, I have no issues with boosting up the AI in a game of Sins of a Solar Empire. I think the difference between what’s acceptable and what isn’t boils down to how well I can rationalize the advantages within the framework of the gameworld. The lack of a campaign backdrop and the fact that it takes place in an entirely fictional world means there’s little risk of inconsistencies that might ruffle my mental feathers.

Civ V, is a different beast altogether. It’s the historical fiction of the gaming world. The campaign is essentially the collective lives of our forefathers. Balance is of the utmost importance to me, as I recognize the successes and failures of different civilizations have depended upon their resources, their choices, and their opportunities and not some inborn “betterness” and I want the game to bring that out. I think it does admirably in that respect. Each Civ provides various benefits that you can successfully use to get a leg up in the game and none are truly overpowered.

But when it comes down to the AI, I have a conflicted viewpoint. I want the AI to compete well against me without any advantages so that my experience stays consistent with that egalitarian sensibility. On the other hand, if I’m going up against nine other civs then I want to realistically win more than 10% of the time on a “normal” difficulty level. I like challenges, but I’ve never been fond of the super-ultra-tough boss fight that you need to try again and again and again until you beat him. That’s what this game would become, and given the amount of time each game takes I don’t see myself playing Civ V over and over without a decent chance of success to lead me on. I respect those who have that kind of drive, but I honestly think that’s a fairly rare quality among gamers. That’s for the grognards, a niche community which simply isn’t strong enough to feed a game with Civ’s budget.

So I think that there was quite possibly a conscious decision with the AI to not spend tons of hours in order to make it more competent. Above, I mentioned that the historic success of civilizations depended upon available resources (which are randomized n the game), opportunities (which are emergent), and decisions. It’s that last part which can be tweaked while still maintaining some sense of consistency within the game world. To raise that base 10% chance of winning a bit, the other leaders need to make poor decisions more frequently than I do. If want to win maybe a third of my games, that’s going to take a good amount of stupidty on the AI’s part. If instead I want to win half of my games, I’ll pretty much need it lobotomized.

So this theoretical decision (I speak with no authority) to make an imperfect AI gets paired with an advantage system to ratchet up the difficulty for those who want more of a challenge, but that basic AI essentially stays the same aside from chances of trading tech or declaring war. It lets us mere mortals (Warlords, Princes, etc.) mess around with strategies and different build orders while not shooting ourselves in the foot every single time.

I get it, I think - it’s the old chestnut of “an imperfect solution to an imperfect problem.” That doesn’t make it any less jarring to mind to watch a great general get left out in the open, but such is life. As for settlers, I’ve foolishly sent them on their lonesome plenty of times before so I won’t begrudge them taking that particular risk even if they do it a little more frequently.

Just my two cents.

6140

For me, there are two crucial aspects to Civilization. One is the quasi-historical progress of my civilization. It’s a theme present in the very name of the series. The other is the relationships with the other nations, basically diplomacy.

By the time Civilization V was released, I had concluded that it’s emphasis was clearly elsewhere. I prefer the highly abstracted nature of Civilization’s combat in I-IV because it puts the emphasis where I prefer it. It also makes it easier for the AI to handle combat units so more resources can be devoted to a credible AI for diplomacy.

So even if they solve the combat AI for Civ V, Civ IV will still be the pinnacle of the series for me.