Civilization V

[Miramon]

The whole point of the difficulty levels is to let you choose the ideal challenge.

But it’s infinitely more pleasing to play a game where the AI is strong, but you can dial it down to your level, than to play a game where the AI is weak, so it needs ludicrous massive handicaps to the point that it’s not playing the same game any more.

In vanilla Civ V at high difficulty, civilizations hardly ever develop more than 1 of a luxury resource until the late game, and even then they often let many valuable hexes go undeveloped. Why? Because they don’t give a damn about happiness, and they have plenty of production and gold anyway, so why waste time and effort actually playing the game? Sure, they could develop that gold mine and get an extra production and gold per turn, but they’re already making 87 gold a turn in the year 3000 BC through some dark magic, and they already have built 5 units per city without even thinking twice. I just played a game where I conquered Rome in 1000 AD and none of their cities had any buildings. Rome’s bonus power is constructing buildings. Come on, guys, at least pretend you are playing the same game as me.

Wouldn’t it be much more fun if the AI was better than the average player under the same rules? Then you could observe what it does to learn from it, keeping it dialed down to the point that the game is still fun. Instead, any novice player is better than this stupid Civ AI, and the only challenge comes from overwhelming handicaps. It’s like a USCF 1200 (novice) player giving a simultaneous chess exhibition against a nursery school. Wonderful, but it’s not like you’ll learn anything.

[KevinC]

An AI not really playing with the same ruleset and/or having massive handicaps also limits strategic and tactical options for the player. You can’t do a surgical strike to knock out an over-extended Civ’s luxury resources to slow them down if they get a massive flat happiness bonus, for instance (not saying that is the case, just using it for illustration). Having an intelligent/competent AI is definitely a bonus to those who want a challenging game, as massive handicaps just get silly. Having an AI roll a panzer up to your city in 3600AD would be difficult to beat, but it certainly wouldn’t be challenging in an interesting way.

[rezaf]

Having an AI that can play a complex game such as Civ better than the average human player is a pretty tall order, though.

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rezaf

[wilykat]

In vanilla Civ V at high difficulty, civilizations hardly ever develop more than 1 of a luxury resource until the late game, and even then they often let many valuable hexes go undeveloped. Why? Because they don’t give a damn about happiness, and they have plenty of production and gold anyway, so why waste time and effort actually playing the game? Sure, they could develop that gold mine and get an extra production and gold per turn, but they’re already making 87 gold a turn in the year 3000 BC through some dark magic, and they already have built 5 units per city without even thinking twice. I just played a game where I conquered Rome in 1000 AD and none of their cities had any buildings. Rome’s bonus power is constructing buildings. Come on, guys, at least pretend you are playing the same game as me.

Thank you! It all makes sense now. I could never figure out why when I took enemy cities they never seemed to have any infrastructure. I assumed there was something that destroyed buildings when you took the city even though I couldn’t find that in the rules, but this makes a lot more sense.

[KevinC]

Having an AI that can play a complex game such as Civ better than the average human player is a pretty tall order, though.

Oh, absolutely, but I don’t think that’s what anyone would realistically expect. That doesn’t mean there’s not a whole lot of room for improvement, though!

[Miramon]

Thank you! It all makes sense now. I could never figure out why when I took enemy cities they never seemed to have any infrastructure. I assumed there was something that destroyed buildings when you took the city even though I couldn’t find that in the rules, but this makes a lot more sense.

Well, I presume conquest destroys buildings, too, but usually not all of them, especially in the capital. In my last game, Rome had the usual improbably large capital, but didn’t have a single building left when I entered.

[Mysterio]

Well, I presume conquest destroys buildings, too, but usually not all of them, especially in the capital. In my last game, Rome had the usual improbably large capital, but didn’t have a single building left when I entered.

In vanilla Civ V, when a city’s captured, certain building types are always destroyed, certain others always survive, and the remainder have a chance of being destroyed. Details here.

[Dan_Theman]

Just a point of clarification - conquest does indeed destroy many buildings in a city. There’s a base chance for any given building to survive found in the game files.
edit - what mysterio said

[rezaf]

I think there’s a bug there. Even if you take a city by a peace deal (thus, no population loss) most buildings are destroyed.

This bug or whatever you want to call it has been there right from the start.
I remember almost never capturing any building - wonders aside - intact in the first game I actually played to the end.
The probability of a building to be destroyed defined in the XMLs doesn’t remotely cover what I saw.
Shame on Firaxis for not fixing this to this very day.

@KevinC: Don’t get me wrong, I strongly dislike the design school Civ5 follows and think the AI, if you even want to call it that, leaves a lot to be desired, I’d just say asking for an AI that can play the game better than the average Joe is an unrealistic expectation.

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rezaf

[Strollen]

Thanks to espionage you can look at AI cities. I mostly have targeted capitals, but it appears the AI is constructing plenty of buildings along with a few wonders.

[Byrdman]

The whole point of the difficulty levels is to let you choose the ideal challenge.
In vanilla Civ V at high difficulty, civilizations hardly ever develop more than 1 of a luxury resource until the late game, and even then they often let many valuable hexes go undeveloped. Why? Because they don’t give a damn about happiness, and they have plenty of production and gold anyway, so why waste time and effort actually playing the game? Sure, they could develop that gold mine and get an extra production and gold per turn, but they’re already making 87 gold a turn in the year 3000 BC through some dark magic, and they already have built 5 units per city without even thinking twice. I just played a game where I conquered Rome in 1000 AD and none of their cities had any buildings. Rome’s bonus power is constructing buildings. Come on, guys, at least pretend you are playing the same game as me.

I totally agree with this sentiment, but I also think that this reflects poor decisions on the designers part on how to create handicaps on the higher difficulty. Instead of just giving the AI flat happiness bonuses that make luxury resources completely meaningless, give AI bonus happiness from each resource. Instead of a flat production bonus, give the AI extra hammers from each mine. That way, although the AI has some significant advantages which make the game more difficult for the player, the AI is still playing within the same rules as the player and this opens up more tactical options than simply outsmarting the AI’s armies. Want to try and cripple a stronger opponent? Why not sneak in with some fast units and muck up their resources. Of course, it might require a stronger AI to be able to implement the handicap in that way.

This actually reminds me a lot of the total war franchise and how Shogun 2 was leaps and bounds better than the ones before it due to the AI improvements and how that allowed them to alter the way the AI plays. In previous entries the playing field was leveled by allowing the AI to simply spawn massive armies out of thin air. The only way to win a war was to crush the AI with overwhelming force. In Shogun 2, I’ve actually won wars by using agents behind enemy lines to destroy their production facilities until the AI’s economy was so crippled they had to ask for peace. Opening up those kinds of options makes the game WAY more fun to play.

[Leinad]

Having an AI that can play a complex game such as Civ better than the average human player is a pretty tall order, though.

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rezaf

I don’t know why that argument is always used in strategy games and this for like 20 years.
Achieving today’s graphics would have been called a “pretty tall order” 20 years ago and yet it has been done.
AI development in games is still where it was years or even decades ago. People are giving developers a free pass for bad AIs and that’s why we keep getting them.
Noone expects an AI that would play as good as a human player. The problem is most AIs aren’t even as good as very bad human players and often don’t even use the same “rules” or aren’t able to use important game mechanics.
I don’t want/need an AI that plays like a human player or is as competent as one but I demand one that is competent enough to play the game and is able to interact with the player in a way that makes sense and at least creates the illusion of being competent.
But as long as replies like “good AI is hard to do” is the standard response to AI complaints players will never get a better one because a lot of people are obviously content enough with the bad quality of AI in games.
We need to stop to accept that a very important part of strategy games is always so flawed because if we don’t then developers will continue to treat AI development as a secondary thing which only gets a minor part of a game’s bugdet.
There is a reason why we have plenty of graphic engines while devs keep on creating AI for AI from scratch and never get anywhere.

[Telefrog]

Wow. The Civfanatics really did not like Tom’s review.

Which is odd because his AI complaint has been backed up by many people there.

[rezaf]

I don’t know why that argument is always used in strategy games and this for like 20 years.
Achieving today’s graphics would have been called a “pretty tall order” 20 years ago and yet it has been done.
AI development in games is still where it was years or even decades ago. People are giving developers a free pass for bad AIs and that’s why we keep getting them.

Wait, first you write this, and then …

Noone expects an AI that would play as good as a human player. The problem is most AIs aren’t even as good as very bad human players and often don’t even use the same “rules” or aren’t able to use important game mechanics.
I don’t want/need an AI that plays like a human player or is as competent as one but I demand one that is competent enough to play the game and is able to interact with the player in a way that makes sense and at least creates the illusion of being competent.

… you write that?

That’s exactly what I was referring to, you just used more words.
OF COURSE it’s nice to have a decent AI that plays by the same rules and acts halfway reasonable.
I just wrote that expecting an AI that can play a complex game as Civ BETTER than an average human player is a tall order.

To me, the Civ5 AI is almost a throwback to the 8bit era arcade games.
The AI competitors in Civ5 are like the Ghosts in PacMan or the cars in Frogger, they are roadblocks you have to overcome. What they do might have passing similarities to what you do (the PacMan ghosts had to follow the same corridors), but they only partially follow the same ruleset and act uncoordinated.
And yes, many people played Civ5 for hundreds of hours and loved it, so having a “strong” AI is obviously not on everyone’s list of priorities.

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rezaf

[Wolff]

Correct me if I’m wrong but I get the feeling a lot of people think civ 4 ai was fine - I constantly saw the 4 ai do stupid shit so I don’t get this yearning for 4. Personally I can never go back to city spam stack of doom snore fest civ 4 was.

[Fifth_Fret]

Wow. The Civfanatics really did not like Tom’s review.

Which is odd because his AI complaint has been backed up by many people there.

It’s a rather split community. Or rather, the Civ V group is a splinter of the community. Check out the Game of the Month entries for comparison of how much people are actually playing Civ V compared to IV, for example.

[Miramon]

Correct me if I’m wrong but I get the feeling a lot of people think civ 4 ai was fine - I constantly saw the 4 ai do stupid shit so I don’t get this yearning for 4. Personally I can never go back to city spam stack of doom snore fest civ 4 was.

I agree, it’s not good.

Civ IV AI started off extremely bad, but was patched and/or modded to merely be very bad.

However, Civ V AI is worse, and is playing within a game system that punishes bad choices with considerably more vigor. I mean, at least the stack of doom can eventually take a weak city in Civ IV, but the Civ V swarm of gyrating hex traffic can hardly accomplish anything except by some kind of fluke, or over dozens of turns of slow painful attrition. And god forbid there are mountains around the target city creating any kind of chokepoint. That could spell thousands of years of imbecilic queuing and unit swapping.

[Matthew_Bramblet]

Civ IV started off with AI nearly as bad as Civ V, tactically speaking.

Civ IV had AI work from the developers over many patches and expansions, but more importantly, it had a fan community who could get inside it, to tweak and fix it far more than the official developers. This was only possible once the game SDK was released, and players could get in and muck around with the DLL. There were many Civ IV official patches that were primarily just making official the work done over thousands of hours, by crack coders in the community.

Those development tools for Civ V haven’t yet been put out for public consumption, although they’ve been promised since before the game was released. Until/unless they are, it will stumble around in a brain-dead fashion and make a lot of stupid AI mistakes, unless Firaxis suddenly decides to pour a lot of money into having their own coders fix it.

[tomchick]

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.

I appreciate that you’re trying to be respectful, but this is pretty insulting, especially given how you’ve shut the door on any sort of response I can make by suggesting that I’m only interested in winning an argument. What argument is that, rob? That the AI in Civ 5 is bad? Or that I’m not a hypocrite for not complaining to your liking about the AI in a completely separate game?

Whatever the case, I’ve frequently complained about bad AI in a number of games. And contrary to your and Turin’s insinuation, I’ve even said my piece about the AI in Conquest of Elysium. Let me know if you’d like me to link to an entire article I wrote about the subject when I was doing my coverage of that game.

I’ve seen plenty of people not mind bad AI. But what I’ve never seen is so many people get so defensive about a game with bad AI. And this ridiculous “Hey, you didn’t complain about that game over there! Look!” response is absurd.

-Tom

[robc04]

I appreciate that you’re trying to be respectful, but this is pretty insulting, especially given how you’ve shut the door on any sort of response I can make by suggesting that I’m only interested in winning an argument. What argument is that, rob? That the AI in Civ 5 is bad? Or that I’m not a hypocrite for not complaining to your liking about the AI in a completely separate game?

Whatever the case, I’ve frequently complained about bad AI in a number of games. And contrary to your and Turin’s insinuation, I’ve even said my piece about the AI in Conquest of Elysium. Let me know if you’d like me to link to an entire article I wrote about the subject when I was doing my coverage of that game.

I’ve seen plenty of people not mind bad AI. But what I’ve never seen is so many people get so defensive about a game with bad AI. And this ridiculous “Hey, you didn’t complain about that game over there! Look!” response is absurd.

-Tom

First Tom, I was / am trying to be respectful and it sounds like I failed, so for that I apologize. I wasn’t accusing you of being a hypocrite. I know that I have been guilty of defending my position and digging in when sometimes I should be stepping back. I wasn’t suggesting there was a conscious decision on your part to ‘try and win the argument’. I only suggested to take a step back and make sure this wasn’t the case since I have done it myself. If you came back and said, ‘yeah, I’m convinced I’m being fair’ I would have said cool and believed you.

I agree with many of your complaints, but perhaps not to the same degree. I’ve vaporized many a Great General that wasn’t protected by the AI, scooped up the passing settler that it decided to move through my territory, etc. I didn’t like the mysterious and often explainable diplomacy either. In my opinion, playing at King difficulty level provides a ‘good enough’ challenge to make Civ V a good, but not great game. I understand that is only an opinion. I don’t like playing at a higher level because the AI then takes too many of my wonders - and I love wonders.

I like the fact that you follow your own path when reviewing games. We need more uncensored reviews, specially of big-budget games. So again, I apologize for offending you and hopefully this response didn’t just piss you off more.

Rob