1861

Agreed completely. I want competent AI at all levels from normal up (heck, I’d prefer it across the board, but to help out players on lower difficulties I suppose bad AI is OK). But going from bad AI + no economic AI bonus to good AI + economic AI bonus is a quantum jump in difficulty that seems too extreme.

1862

I’m not even concerned with the AI. I just expect a working AI to play a game (I generally play 4x games closer to a city builder experience). I’m still more concerned with crash/performance issues.

1863

I did not read this, but since the bonuses are numeric, I would think that they could be elminated through modding, maybe even with the xml, but I didn’t see that in the thread. Unfortunately I saw that thread in my IPad which doesn’t keep an easily accessible history. I’ll try to find it again.

1864

Here is how the devs have put it:

On lower difficulties, when the AI is given a choice, it has a list of good choices and bad choices. It can make any of them.

On higher difficulties, the AI is given a list of good and better choices, with few or no bad choices.

So, the harder the difficulty, the better choices the AI makes.

In addition to that, on the higher difficulties, the AI also gets bonuses, and the human gets penalties.

That is what I read. Apparently it came from a podcast done. The link fo rthe thread is [here..

Maybe someone from Firaxis can confirm.

1865

I was told there would not be math. =(

1866

I’ll take an AI that gets good and better choices while not having bonuses, please and thank you.

1867

From the preview I got to play, I would rate the AI better than Civ4 vanilla release AI, but not as good as Civ4 BtS AI. It’s in the middle somewhere.

But patches will hopefully fix this (as they did in Civ4). So my concerns for the AI are nil. :)

1868

I always like an AI to play to the best of its ability without any bonuses, so I hope that becomes an option at some point.

1869

You can’t tantalize us with an asterisk and then not follow up on it!

1870

I have no concerns at all with how the AI builds its empire. It can be savvy management or straight up cheating for all I care, as long as the challenge of going up against them feels right.

1871

Do we know how is Civ 5 is for modding? I’m wondering if we can remove the resource bonus ourselves.

1872

But it is what the Civ series is renowned for. Huge jumps in difficulty were basically a feature in Civ4.

1873

The Civ 4 AI is usually considered some of the best in the genre, and even there it was easy to crush the computer on an even footing. Grab a choke point, or even just really strong defensive position, you defeat forces much stronger then yours. Choke points just murdered the AI. In order to make the game challenging you had to fight against ridiculous odds, just like in the Total War series and most other games.

It did improve it over time, and some of the AI mods made it even better eventually.

Then again, the tactical AI should be a pretty simple search through the space of possible moves, like Chess. At least for parts not in the fog of war. Should be simple to get that right? Maybe they are dumbing it down intentionally at the lower levels so the player can feel like a brilliant commander.

1874

Whaa I wanted to start playing at 9pm (that is Midnight EST) but so far no luck.

Guess I’ll go to sleep. Consarnit.

1875

The countdown timer on the product page will tell you the earliest you can expect to play. It’s not tonight.

1876

Heh, this iteration of Civ is forging new ground which the series has yet to tread, it would be a little premature to say the AI is broken. In fact, saying so takes Tom’s comments out of context I believe, yet, that is the impression some people seem to have by me reading this thread. If I am mistaken, then sorry, just the way I’ve perceived things. If reviews/opinions can expand on the AI and indicate that the AI is still building cities in worthwhile areas, developing them smartly, and teching in a suitable way, and handling their neighbours in proper diplomatic ways, then I will be happy. That is the guts of Civ to me, to help shape and mould, and benchmark a successful empire against. If I’m getting out-teched, former friends are sending muskets and gunships my way, or my economy is down the shithole by comparison to the AI, then I know I’ve screwed up, and the AI bested me.

I mostly played Civ II and Civ IV. Considering in Civ II the AI was mostly geared towards beating the player to space race, and in Civ IV, the AI would again aim for space or culture, then it should come as no suprise that the combat side of the AI was weak.

The real challenges in Civ IV came from the peaceful Civ’s who could tech away quite happily, trade, build wonders, develop a strong economy and sneak in either a cultural win, or lend themselves to be miles ahead where they can leverage their tech lead to build more advanced units and declare war, or alternately, go for space race.

Finally, I thought the diplomacy was beefier in Civ V, notably with the city states and the limited resource model to expand diplomacy likewise (ie: iron might only supply 5 swordsmen). Certainly, I’ll be interested in that facet of Civ V and how it expands out.

1877

I see plenty of XML files in the Civ5 directory so I expect that AI bonuses can be changed in Civ5 just like in Civ4. And if you need to play at higher levels to get good AI decisions, modding out those bonuses is the first thing I’ll do when I get the game!

1878

Since I was forewarned of the new Steam download I took a directory snapshot just before starting Steam. The 17.3 MB I got are mostly for the PDF manual which wasn’t part of the earlier preload, but the rest is indeed a zero-day patch – lots of files changed all over the place. I hope that goes some way to fix the AI issues Tom observed.

1879

Signed.

It’s funny how game devs can design a complex game as this doing a great job in almost all the areas and then botch it in choosing what type of difficulties to pick for the game.

1880

Firaxis botched the difficulty settings?

I thought they improved on it based on the interviews I read…

What happened?

Damn…

:(