Surprise war gives you this huge splash screen and character animation saying a Surprise War was declared. All wars are declared. It’s just there is no obvious casus belli for a surprise.
No. Do any old random thing with your cities, it doesn’t matter, you win all wars anyway unless you are deliberately trying to lose.
Game of the year! Game of the year! Game of–
Wait, why are my fingers bleeding? Why are they wrapped around my throat? I can’t bre–
Perhaps I should rephrase: in any strategy game that includes an economy, the person who best optimizes the economic aspect (= resources, structures, etc.) tends to win the game (since he/she can maximize production, including training units). You’re saying it doesn’t matter what you build in your cities in Civ6, since you’ll win anyway (against the AI)? Does that also apply if, for example, you start building wonders in all of your cities instead of training some military units and building granaries, barracks, etc.?
They took months and three patches to “minimize” (sic) the infamous alien teleporting bug which ruined two or three of my ironman attempts. By then I had grown tired of the canned missions and canned gameplay. And then XCOM2 and timers, haha. No more Firaxis for me either unless they change hands or rethink their design philosophy.
Which is not likely to happen in the foreseeable future. I’m curious, disappointed Civ VI buyers-- Civ V’s AI was widely panned and still the game sold like gangbusters while garnering the usual praise from the mainstream gaming press. What exactly was the incentive for Firaxis to put more effort on the core systems and buck the trend of the latest AAA strategy offerings? I personally would’ve been shocked if the game had shipped with a decent AI.
You appear to be enjoying the hate you’ve got going for firaxis, don’t let me stand in your way.
But before we leave you to it, let’s see if we can turn you around to your happy place, name a couple games you think have brilliant AI.
I said if you deliberately try to lose you can.
So obviously if you don’t build any military units you can’t win a war. But if you play casually without any planning whatsoever you can get an easy win against the AIs. Just putting mines on hills and farms on flats and building out all the luxury and bonus locations as usual, while not worrying at all about where districts go is enough. No wonders are required at all, and you can totally ignore radiating effects of district buildings. Any time a gear comes up for a city you can just build the obvious most currently useful thing without worrying about the future and you’ll be fine.
[quote=“easytarget, post:2583, topic:78555, full:true”]
You appear to be enjoying the hate you’ve got going for firaxis[/quote]
Oh brother…
How could you possibly get in my way if you’re busy sulking in the corner and building that strawman?
I was expecting decent AI because even Civs tend to be good Civs, but that pattern was broken with VI. To me the series is now no longer worth it.
[quote=“Khelavaster, post:2585, topic:78555, full:true”]
It’s been my experience in internet discussions that failing to have an answer by “intelligent” people has a high correlation to resorting to logical fallacy policing, it’s one step up from the grammar police. In either example it usually just means when you boil it down they don’t have an answer.
So, back to the question, what strategy games have good AI in your experience? I’ll give you an example from mine, I consider the AI in AOW3 pretty competent.
As I said, don’t let me stand in your way of hating on Firaxis, I’m right there with you when it comes to the AI of Civ VI. Not so much xcom or xcom2.
There are few if any complex strategy games with good AI. SMAC had the best of the Civ series and it was mediocre. But there’s a difference between poor and abysmal. On a scale of 1-10 Civ 4 was way up there around 3 or 4. Civ 5 is a 1 and Civ 6 is off the charts, laughably bad, with the ugly-stupid tactical AI multiplied in pathos by the totally insane strategic AI.
That’s basically my point. I’m not playing apologist for Firaxis, more just saying this apparently is a pretty hard thing to do. I find the AI in Civ VI so bad I played one campaign and put it down. Wish it was better like everyone.
Civilization, the Hilary Clinton of gaming, held to a standard nothing else is.
But that wasn’t the question. You asked for examples of brilliant AI, hence the strawman.
I can go with “Liar liar pants on fire” just to meet you at the level of your accusations of “hating”.
Tactical AI is always hard. But I do think the strategic AI would be easy and even fun to implement using utterly conventional programming techniques within the reach of any game programmer. It’s just they didn’t bother to allocate enough time and resources for it.
Come on, just to begin with, don’t declare war if you can’t even comprehend the enemy’s technology. Don’t bring a club to a boom-stick fight. And how about, I don’t know, not pissing off a stronger, neighboring power by trying to convert their cities? You bully people who are weaker than you are, not stronger. This isn’t rocket science. And if the casus-belli war-penalty system is supposed to be a big deal, how about not letting all the AIs declare surprise war on you all the time?
Then there’s the stupidity of national-trait policies like denouncing and even declaring war because the player doesn’t have enough spies in 2,000 BC. Come on; if you are big on espionage you want all the other countries not to have spies. And of course Catherine’s denouncing you for your weak espionage in ancient and classical times thousands of years before she herself learns Diplomacy and builds her first spy. Same thing for the Japanese guy denouncing you for not having the right district before either you or he could possibly have had time to build it yet, or the Congo guy denouncing you for not spreading your religion on the very first turn of your new religion’s existence.
It’s just plain bad design and worse implementation. No project or product manager worth a pinch of salt could let a product with these features go to market if they gave the slightest damn about quality or conformance of implementation to specifications.
Fair enough, how about even just OK AI in your opinion, mind you we’re talking strategy games here. I’ll keep lowering the bar till you can cough up some examples of what meets even this modest standard for you. I’ve even charitably given you an example of my own already in AOW3.
P.S. I’m waiting for them to go on deeper discount, so I’ve not played them yet, but from what I hear these are a couple more good examples of good AI in strategy games: Sengoku Jidai: Shadow of the Shogun and Pike and Shot: Campaigns.
That’s nonsense. Plenty of AI complaints in other games, it’s just egregiously bad here.
I love tactical/strategy games but I’m not particularly good at them, so it’s not hard for me to find a challenge. I think it’s easier and more useful to define what counts as an un-acceptable AI in my book-- and that’s basically one that does not know how to play its own game.
Note I’m not talking about the AI not being smart enough to use some abilities or fight without bonuses (as long as they’re properly disclosed and do not disrupt the base mechanics). I’ve harped enough on these boards about the HOMM series, partly because I know it well and partly because HOMM IV remains one of the best examples of a strategic AI so inept that it didn’t know how to even navigate a map, let alone put up any kind of proper defense or stage an attack.
To make an analogy with an FPS-- the original Doom’s enemies simply charged you on sight, F.E.A.R.'s enemies were capable of sophisticated behavior. To me, both were fine for what they intended to achieve and their context. An example of an unacceptable AI in this analogy would be if Doom’s enemies kept running in circles around you without attacking, or huddled together in corners waiting for you to mow them down.
To answer your question more directly, through the years I’ve enjoyed the first three Five Star General games (and the improved Panzer General Forever), M.A.X., the AOW & Disciples series (bar the third one), Galactic Civilizations (esp. II), Imperialism 2, and of course Civ I-IV. I haven’t yet tried AOW3 though what I heard is encouraging; I’ve also been waiting to pull the trigger on Endless Legend, but I hear combat sucks so that’s held me back.
That’s it off the top of my head - Merry Christmas by the way!
Games with great AI
Pretty much any chess program made in the last 20 years.
Games with good AI
Civ IV
Offworld trading company.
I don’t think it is a coincidence that Soren made them both.
Games with fair AI
SMAC
Endless legend
Sword of Stars
GalCiv 2
EU IV
Both Xcoms
Imperialism II
Hearts of Iron IV (after the latest patch)
Civ III (but my memory could be faulty here)
Vietnam 65