What I don’t understand is how they could make such an easy game, I am playing on Insane now and its a cakewalk. I’m not sure whats going on, but its no Demon Souls of strategy games, mistakes don’t cost you, and nothing is really punished…I might loose a war early on, but later, never.
Btw paradox, I know why the AI isn’t attacking, it’s cause it knows it’s gonna loose, I’m too strong even early on, and your AI is smart enough to see it, however it’s weakness is pure economy and expansion, neither seems to be helped by higher difficulty .
KevinC
2023
I think you can look at the Sector AI for an explanation. Something isn’t right there, and I don’t just mean it needs improvement. There have to be bugs in there for the AI to first ignore the tile respect rules but then also think that it should junk the 12 mineral automated factory for a farm, when it’s not short on food. It’s one thing for your sectors to be mismanaged, but if that’s what the AI is doing that means that is what is likely taking place across the board in all the AI empires.
That kind of thing doesn’t sound like an issue where the AI needs to have some weights and preferences adjusted, that just seems flat out not working as intended. I guess we’ll see what kind of improvements there are in the patch this week.
The AI in EU4 has been very good, all things considered, so I was surprised to see the AI malfunctioning to this extent. I’m not too miffed about it right now because I have confidence it will be addressed but I hope it doesn’t take too much time. I need to have some threat and pressure from an AI to get long-term enjoyment out of a strategy game.
The wave of the future when it comes to strategy games is to move away from the board game model, where you are one of several players, each playing by the same rules.
Sorcerer King comes to mind, as do various games that are part RPG and part strategy game. Warlock, where you face other “civs” but the real struggle is against other forces. However, I see this trend going much further and going off in highly creative directions. The player faces obstacles following predictable rules – but resistance comes from forces that don’t even pretend to follow those same rules.
Stellaris has a wisp of that, but it would do better with more. Not only would it sidestep the AI problem, which, as you say, cannot be solved in any direct manner. It would also be more believable. The conceit that we would go into outer space and find species more or less like ourselves (a little less adaptable, a little more engineering oriented) but with a tradition of of diplomacy, war declarations, buildings, and scientists – it’s kind of silly.
Nesrie
2025
Warlocks AI is absolutely terrible. Last time I played it that game was unbearably awful. I’ll give you the ideas are pretty interesting but it’s certainly not an example of good AI. And if you’re saying it improved, well there is a good chance Paradox will improve Stellaris too.
Squee
2026
Well, Warlock had pretty decent tactical AI. It was fairly good about shuffling units around in reasonable formations and attacking your weaker support units behind the front lines and such, unlike Civ5. It was really awful at empire management though.
Age of Wonders 3 has probably the flat out best strategy game AI I can think of. It actually can play all the game modes fine and doesn’t shit the bed in tactical battles or empire management. Unfortunately the AI doesn’t have much personality to it (It’d be nice if you could weigh certain leaders to favor swarms, or building tall empires instead of wide, or whatever) but it handles everything pretty well.
It’s not a fix for the AI’s lack of efficiency in managing the planet resource developments but one thing that might be cool would be if you could spend influence to take control of a planet for a short period and do some micro on the tiles. Then let it go back to the sector AI (with some changes to the AI so that it wouldn’t just all be undone). Sort of like firing the planetary governor and sending Vadar over to motivate them. :)
Nesrie
2028
You must have had a different experience than I did. I had permanent war against an AI in that game that all it did was build one ship to send across the water which I constantly destroyed. It would never accept peace but couldn’t get across the water.
I’m coming to that conclusion myself, which is why I think I’m done with the genre- outside of games like Sorcerer King which are built around the flaws of the genre, and even that has a limited shelf life.
Squee
2030
That might be the difference. Not sure I ever played Warlock with maps with notable amounts of water, could absolutely fall apart if it’s not on land. IIRC Civ 5 does that (Or did that, not sure if it’s still the case) too.
Nesrie
2031
Don’t get me wrong. I enjoyed several parts of Warlock, but it seems to have a very basic calculation on when to go to war. Yes… I had fewer troops than the AI, but it would just load them up in a single ship. I would blast it with a wizard tower and I think a wizard I parked right there… rinse and repeat. Then it would calculate again that I have fewer troops, rinse and repeat. I don’t even try to exploit these kind of bugs but when your city is across the river form theirs… it was just so completely broken in that scenario.
Oghier
2032
I suspect you’re right. The Sector system likely reflects how AI players manage their own empires. And Sector AI is terrible.
Gee I wonder if the game will be better next year. Let’s flip a coin. Addons. dlc, patches. Gosh it might even be a good solid game then. Why play a game you KNOW will be better in a year or even 6 months? Wait. Wait. Wait.
I sometimes forget you all know better. I am sure I am wrong. Carry on.
Btw I may be a new contributor to messages here – but I played Master of Orion the day it came out. Guess I am showing my age. But being patronized isn’t the way to make a point.
The AI moves his ships well enough, its clear the economy is crippled, I was looking at the planets in my sector, they are a MESS, I mean, they aren’t even built much on and I’ve given him SOO much crystals …tons …tons …what has it gone too!!?
Another crippling bug: only the defensive computers are having their bonuses applied to ships. The aggressive ones (and possibly the sentient combat AI computers) simply don’t work.
This game was deeply under-cooked on release. I don’t even know why they pushed it out the door so quick. Civ VI jitters?
I know I for one would forget your stance on waiting for games to get more updates before buying them if you didn’t come hear and keep banging on that old, tired drum. I guess I’ll reply the way I have before, and point out that while the game isn’t perfect right now, it’s still quite enjoyable and it’s already been patched a few times, with the big 1.1 update (including the much maligned sector AI fixes) coming in just a week or so.
I think both Civ VI jitters and not wanting to step on HoI IV. But yeah the more I play the more I think they were rushing.
KevinC
2038
Everyone here knows that a game is likely going to be better after six months or a year of updates, content expansions, etc. I don’t know what this crusade is that you’re waging, but I don’t know of anyone here who disagrees with the assertion. Will the game get better after release? Assuredly, yes, both in terms of bug fixing and additional features. This same thing can be said for nearly every game I have ever played. The only metric that really matters to me is “am I having fun with the game now?”. The answer is yes, but that will differ from person to person. Nothing else really matters.
That better game you’ll be getting six months or a year down the line? I get that game too, just like you do. If you want to wait until that time to get the game that’s a perfectly good approach to take (especially since 1.0 had more bugs than I would have liked!). I’ve already had near 40 hours of fun with the game right now, that’s also a fine approach. Do whatever suits you, everyone else here will do the same. There’s no need to wag the finger or convince yourself or others of the One True Way to enjoy a game.
Sorry, was I patronizing? I don’t mean to be. I was just explaining why I feel like Waiting for Godot never works with strategy games, in particular, for me, since I enjoy learning the game’s rules more than mastering them, so to speak. You’re absolutely right to wait.
I feel like for me understanding the game is the same thing as completing it in strategy games. Again, for me. After that, I’m just buying into the art style, or aesthetic, or just the act of doing whatever it is I’m doing. For example a game that’s measurably a better 4X game, Endless Legend, feels…off somehow. It makes me feel uncomfortable, something about it feels clunky, restricting, paced weird, something. In pretty much every way it’s a better game than Civ V, for ex., yet Civ V feels like a comfortable pair of shoes that I don’t mind firing up. But I’m never, ever going to “lose” Civ V on King difficulty, I’m just racing the AI to settle the best spots. Once I get to 1500AD or so I’m bored and quit.
