Is Chieftain technically the "normal" difficulty?

B

blackchimes

Chieftain
Joined
Apr 24, 2014
Messages
25
Prince claims to be the normal difficulty and it would seem like it is from the applied modifiers, hovewer the civfanatics difficulty rundown states that AI always plays on Chieftain no matter what difficulty you pick, which means that playing on Prince is actually handicapping yourself.

Is AI in this game really so hopeless it cannot even play its own game on standard settings?
 
Yes, the AI plays on chieftain. It's failing are a common complaint.

It's incredibly difficult to write a good ai while keeping it from being too good. Firaxis has taken the side of making it stupid, rather than brutally efficient.

Would you rather get comp rushed every game you start on prince+?
 
That Other Guy said:
Firaxis has taken the side of making it stupid
Click to expand...

I don’t think that is fair. Presumably, they have made it play as well as they could. That said, apparently some modders have come up with better algorithms than what the game currently uses.

The current handicap approach goes back and through II/SMAC/III/IV. IMHO it is much, much better balanced in V than III and IV. (The difficulty levels in II and SMAC worked well for me, but that was before there was an active community sharing strategies.)

Would you rather get comp rushed every game you start on prince+?
Click to expand...

The popular CB rush strategy shook out in play, the developers did not come up with that! Were any such strategy hard coded, human players would have an easy time coming up with a way to exploit it.
 
The AI is the AI. It doesn't get smarter or dumber at varying difficulties. It simply gets bonuses and hinders you accordingly at higher difficulties.
 
i'd always thought Prince was "normal" difficulty due to if you "reset" a game setting it defaults to Prince.
 
beetle said:
I don’t think that is fair. Presumably, they have made it play as well as they could. That said, apparently some modders have come up with better algorithms than what the game currently uses.

The current handicap approach goes back and through II/SMAC/III/IV. IMHO it is much, much better balanced in V than III and IV. (The difficulty levels in II and SMAC worked well for me, but that was before there was an active community sharing strategies.)



The popular CB rush strategy shook out in play, the developers did not come up with that! Were any such strategy hard coded, human players would have an easy time coming up with a way to exploit it.
Click to expand...

The problem is that the AI isn't really evolving anymore.

To make the game more challenging, and the AI better, the game needs 2 things:
-Some AI tweaks
-Some rebalance.

The first is obvious. But in my opinion balancing the game is very important to make the AI perform better. Currently there are some strategies that are just way better. For example Tradition is a vastly superior tree to honor and Rationalism is just a must have.
But the AI doesn't know that and will pick other trees, therefore due to imbalance it will perform less well only due to it's flavor making it pick sub-optimal trees.

While it's impossible to achieve a perfect balance, the current one isn't good and sadly Firaxis has probably moved on to their next game.
 
Nope.

AI has its own difficulty level since BNW. It is very close to Prince, in most parameters.
 
I'd have too many quoted responses if I tried to quote them all:

On Vanilla and G&K: AI indeed plays on Chieftain handicap level. However, it gets a combat bonus against the barbs that's larger than the human gets. (Not that even if Human is on settler, while on many things the human would get a bigger handicap, with regard to combat vs the barbs, the AI would still have a bigger handicap)

BNW: AI now plays on AI handicap level; however for the most important thing (happiness); it gets a slightly bigger handicap than a human does on Warlord.
In addition, the AI also gets a new science handicap with BNW; and it's a bigger one than a human would get on Settler.

Note that this is moddable; if you really wanted to you could "promote" the AI to Prince with one line in XML, but it would make a very boring game.
 
joncnunn said:
BNW: AI now plays on AI handicap level; however for the most important thing (happiness); it gets a slightly bigger handicap than a human does on Warlord.
In addition, the AI also gets a new science handicap with BNW; and it's a bigger one than a human would get on Settler.
Click to expand...

Interesting. Where in the files are the difficulty settings located?
 
It was a long time since I played it, but I want to remember that the AI was able to do quite fine on prince difficulty in Civ 4. (Though I mostly played Fall From Heaven, which the AI handled absolutely miserably xD ) It's weird that it is so weak in this game. My sad impression is that it may be because the makers (who tell the AI what to do) suck at their own game. Poor balance in the social policies and religions as well as weird stuff like early science bulbing, unguarded settlers and overaggressive spreading of religions certainly point in that direction.
 
blackchimes said:
Interesting. Where in the files are the difficulty settings located?
Click to expand...

CivVHandicapInfos.xml is where most of the handicap related stuff is located

Bottom of GlobalAIDefines.xml is where the AI's handicap level is set.

Note that both G&K and BNW got their own copies of these directories, so if playing BNW you need to be within the dlc expansion 2 subfolder to have any effect. (If you modified the one that's not even wihtin a dlc folder, you'd modify vanilla)
 
Hemul said:
It was a long time since I played it, but I want to remember that the AI was able to do quite fine on prince difficulty in Civ 4. (Though I mostly played Fall From Heaven, which the AI handled absolutely miserably xD ) It's weird that it is so weak in this game. My sad impression is that it may be because the makers (who tell the AI what to do) suck at their own game. Poor balance in the social policies and religions as well as weird stuff like early science bulbing, unguarded settlers and overaggressive spreading of religions certainly point in that direction.
Click to expand...

I'm afraid that even in Civ IV, Prince AI had a couple of large handicaps that the human wouldn't get even if the human played on Chieftain:

1. AI got a massive unit upgrade bonus compared to the human (it still does in Civ V)

2. AI got a massive "inflation" bonus compared to the human

3. In additions, the AIs got some trade discounts for already known techs with the other AIs.
 
soldier2975 said:
I thought Chieftain was just settler with less annoying tips.
Click to expand...

Nope; the handicap bonuses are even bigger for players on Settler than Chieftain.
In case of happiness though, the difference between the two is a flat additional 3 starting happiness.
 
Hemul said:
It was a long time since I played it, but I want to remember that the AI was able to do quite fine on prince difficulty in Civ 4.
Click to expand...

That is my recollection as well. The problem with IV (and III) is that the difficulty increments as one tried to progress were too much. One level I won easily, the next level up I was crushed. It is a tricky thing to balance, but given that they are just adjusting the handicap, and not making the AI smarter, it is the kind of thing they should have been able to get right. I remember reading sometime after III came out that they did not play test any levels beyond the default! Releasing unfinished games worked out well for them back then, and they continued the practice with IV and V. But I keep purchasing it...
 
joncnunn said:
CivVHandicapInfos.xml is where most of the handicap related stuff is located

Bottom of GlobalAIDefines.xml is where the AI's handicap level is set.

Note that both G&K and BNW got their own copies of these directories, so if playing BNW you need to be within the dlc expansion 2 subfolder to have any effect. (If you modified the one that's not even wihtin a dlc folder, you'd modify vanilla)
Click to expand...

Thanks, I'll check it out.
 
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