This is absolutely true in Civ V’s case. You can even check it in the Steam achievements.
The most common difficulty with a victory is Chieftain with 22.2% of owners achieving it. Domination is the most common victory type with 23%.
Prince difficulty is only 15%.
I agree that Civ5 is proof that you can make millions and not bother than an AI, but I don’t get what those victory stats are supposed to say. To me that just means that, like most of the genre, late-game Civ is a slog and that easier difficulties are a little easier.
As long as I can play a strategy game that has an option for no AI cheats and it gives me a reasonable challenge, I’m satisfied. It’s when no such option exists that I get upset.
I am excited about Civ VI but that art style looks terrible for a Civ game. I really do not understand why they went that route and I obviously a lot of people are going to feel the same way. Those static screens really do look like a crappy ftp game.
I hope they didn’t change art style to make it easier to port to mobile <shudders>
Not just easy. Chieftan is nearly brain-dead.
All games have low rates of completion be they strategy games like Civ or shooters like Borderlands 2. The victory stat topping out at 22% of all players isn’t surprising. (That jibes with the rest of the industry at 20%-30% of all players finishing any game.) The stunning part of that stat is that apparently most players are content to play Civ V at Chieftain level and never move beyond that. Simple AI doesn’t bother most people.
That’s because most of us quit when it’s obvious we’ve won. 95% of my Civ games ended this way and I’m not about to spend 20 more hours hitting the <end turn> button just to see a foregone conclusion.
I’m too old to like AI that constantly beats my ass into submission. I like to win games. I like Civ V, I’ll probably like 6. So there.
Right. I’m not talking about the low stat for victory. (See above) I’m talking about how Chieftain is far and away the most popular difficulty to win on.
I’d be happy for a non-cheating AI.
Isn’t it possible that’s because that specific majority of individuals got Civ V in a fire-sale or nearly free and played on a level with no AI to learn? I honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever known a person who actually played Chiefton level except my nephew when he was 8 and was staying here over Christmas Break. Using Steam stats to determine your crowds core competency and desires is a dangerous thing. Use it as a learning tool most definitely, but to lead your game design? Eek! It will inevitably lead you down a road of bad conclusions.
InB4 Civ AI haters
Dammit!
-Todd
:) Well that’s what the easier levels are for.
What people dream of (at least I do), is that as the difficulty goes up, the game gets smarter instead of just giving the AI more crap to use poorly.
Now that we have established what developers see as profitable, and identified developers that actually care about a smart opponent, it doesn’t look good for CIV VI…but I can always hope.
I actually know a great many people who played it on Chieftain. I don’t, but it’s not that rare. On the flipside, I literally have thousands of hours in the game, and you know what achievement I don’t believe I have? Winning the game on ANY level. Why, you ask? I only ever play with mods - no achievements for “weird” people like me.
I’m not a fan of the new look either. The colours are too garish for a Civ game.
The art style inspired by “The Tower of Babel” painting, the one used for Civ 3, is still my favorite. But Civ 5 is a close second place for its art style. This new one seems okay to me, functional but not pretty. Which could be just fine.
Honestly I think such answers as “it’s not cost-effective” are an excuse to deflect the honest answer “we don’t know how to write good tactical AI.” Since no one apparently does.
After all if you can implement conventional wargamelike tactical AI decently once on a hexmap you have a hundred more games in which you can reuse the code or even sell it as a “tactics engine”. Same holds for other board and gamespace formalisms.
Just for fun I brought up Civ V recently. My 4-archer empire was attacked by around 15 units on Immortal difficulty level, including axemen, spearmen and a bunch of bowmen. I killed 12 of them or so and suffered no unit losses. This is not just “not good AI”. This is horrible AI. No one is asking for brilliancy here. Just something that’s not totally imbecilic.
I think it’s both. I do think it’s probably not economical to pour resources into AI, but I also think that it’s a devilishly difficult task no matter how much money you throw at it. If you’re shooting for a computer opponent that sort of mimics a human, in that it plays by the same rules, punishes your mistakes, isn’t perfect, and follows similar doctrinal/historical/logical frameworks as a human might–you’re asking for a lot. It’s tons easier to just give the AI more stuff, or better die rolls, or whatever, but that only satisfies the players who view the game as purely a competitive if often abstract exercise. It doesn’t do much when there’s even a modicum of reality or simulation involved, where the players want an opponent like I described above.
Exactly. ‘Good AI’ is very subjective. After all, Game AI isn’t just about playing perfectly, its also about player fun.
For some people, it means as strong as possible for the toughest challenge. For others, it means one that is beatable, makes mistakes. For others still, it means having varied ‘personality’ ie diplomatic/aggressive/defensive/whatever.
Its damned hard to build AIs that will satisfy everyone. Add on top of this that the game is constantly changing, being tweaked/patched etc, and keeping all these different types of AI in sync can be a lot of work.
But I’m not asking for anything so fancy as that. I’m asking for the basics, like:
None of this is IMO devilishly difficult. But I bet that the Civ AI doesn’t even know what it wants to do in a turn. I bet each unit makes up its own mind independently of all others, with the simplest and most basic rules you can imagine. This is presumably why the units all seem to be chaotically jiggling around when not in combat, and why in combat they all seem to shoot at random targets.
We understand what you’re wanting. However, the game sold quite well without it. From a purely business perspective, what more could they get out of working on fixing up the AI? Whatever gains they foresaw, they decided it was more economical to focus resources elsewhere - like working on Civ VI. That makes sense, even though it certainly doesn’t mean you have to like it, of course.