Red Pearl
Warlord
Your right I am a gamist. @Hammer Rabbi and The Pilgrim do you actually crunch numbers when you play?
Conflict between RPG players and numbercrunshers
- Thread starter BSPollux
- Start date
I guess I respectfully disagree. I think the AI civs do try to 4X, but each with their strong preference for SP and other personality quirks (not unlike human players). Short of improving AI battle tatics, I don't see how to make the AIs stronger players without flattening their flavors.
This may be OT, but I think the AI personalities in Civ5 is a big improvement over Civ3 or 4. (Alpha Centauri had even stronger AI personalities than Civ5 does now.)
Agreed. In the best of all worlds, the AI would have much stronger play as the difficulty level increased. That seems to be hard to implement!
Again, maybe OT, but I think Firaxis did a nice job balancing the difficulty levels this time around. Huge improvement in this regard as compared to Civ3 and Civ4. The difficulty levels worked well with Civ II and Alpha Centauri, so it seems odd that Firaxis needed three more tries to get it correct!
I think finding an ideal or perfect balance between RPGers and numbercrunchers is unrealistic.
-An RPGer won't care about the numbers at heart, but rather want to play a role as a character.
-A numbercruncher won't care about the role, its just a hinderance to their goal of winning with the highest score or in the quickest time etc
Ofcourse both should be able to play this game (most games as a matter of fact) with their respective goals in mind. The problem really only exists for people who desire to do both simultaneously. They want to play a certain role in a game, win that game (especially at a challenging difficulty), yet are unwilling to do the things necessary to ensure a victory because of the conditions they put on themselves.
For instance, a player who wants to win on immortal/deity while being a peace loving, kind and honest leader. Will uphold all their commitments to the AI, won't steal workers, will declare friendships and try to maintain them, only go to war if the opposition declares it etc - then finds out half way through the game that they have no shot at winning and everyone still hates them anyways.
The problem isn't that one can't do one or the other, its that they can't do both. If one wants to role play and win, you may have to accept that a lower difficulty is necessary or that the AI doesn't care about your role. If one wants to win on a higher difficulty, than you can't box yourself into a specific role, and rather need the flexibility of doing anything achieve your win.
Just my two cents.
I do think however, this game could give a little more flavour to the role players (maybe even the numbercruchers) by having more effective diplomacy. Being able to form alliances especially those that can stand for the better part of a game, being able to do to the AI what it does to you (any reason why I can't request gold or luxuries from the AI like they can from me, but rather need to demand it and immediately get turned down and piss off my buddy? Or why can't I go to Alex and tell him he's weak and stupid just to piss him off? Or let them know you've noticed their forces on your border and force them to either declare war or take a diplo hit if they lie to me? etc) Its been my experience that the best diplomacy in this game is as little diplomacy as possible or the lesser of two evils diplomacy (don't declare friendship, tell the AI you'll settle where you please because if you don't and you settle (even if you don't think its in their area) you'll piss everyone off etc).
Maybe it stands true to real life in some fashion, but it does take what should/could be an important element to the game almost completely out of it.
-An RPGer won't care about the numbers at heart, but rather want to play a role as a character.
-A numbercruncher won't care about the role, its just a hinderance to their goal of winning with the highest score or in the quickest time etc
Ofcourse both should be able to play this game (most games as a matter of fact) with their respective goals in mind. The problem really only exists for people who desire to do both simultaneously. They want to play a certain role in a game, win that game (especially at a challenging difficulty), yet are unwilling to do the things necessary to ensure a victory because of the conditions they put on themselves.
For instance, a player who wants to win on immortal/deity while being a peace loving, kind and honest leader. Will uphold all their commitments to the AI, won't steal workers, will declare friendships and try to maintain them, only go to war if the opposition declares it etc - then finds out half way through the game that they have no shot at winning and everyone still hates them anyways.
The problem isn't that one can't do one or the other, its that they can't do both. If one wants to role play and win, you may have to accept that a lower difficulty is necessary or that the AI doesn't care about your role. If one wants to win on a higher difficulty, than you can't box yourself into a specific role, and rather need the flexibility of doing anything achieve your win.
Just my two cents.
I do think however, this game could give a little more flavour to the role players (maybe even the numbercruchers) by having more effective diplomacy. Being able to form alliances especially those that can stand for the better part of a game, being able to do to the AI what it does to you (any reason why I can't request gold or luxuries from the AI like they can from me, but rather need to demand it and immediately get turned down and piss off my buddy? Or why can't I go to Alex and tell him he's weak and stupid just to piss him off? Or let them know you've noticed their forces on your border and force them to either declare war or take a diplo hit if they lie to me? etc) Its been my experience that the best diplomacy in this game is as little diplomacy as possible or the lesser of two evils diplomacy (don't declare friendship, tell the AI you'll settle where you please because if you don't and you settle (even if you don't think its in their area) you'll piss everyone off etc).
Maybe it stands true to real life in some fashion, but it does take what should/could be an important element to the game almost completely out of it.
I think that might only be true for the numbercrunshers! I have lost to the AI by culture and diplomacy victories, not just science. I stop playing in the cases where I have lost my capital, but mentally I chalk those up to a domination loss.
what about:
- using special slots.
- Using GP useful (like not planinting an academy late)
- Choosing useful religion stuff, not random ones
- worker and settler protection (its a bit there on deity)
- trading based on their needs
- beelining science techs
- actually concentrating on some winning condition when close to it
- choosing situation dependent sp
....
It always makes me wonder, if the AI was near player level efficient with their resources at Immortal and especially Deity levels, would the game even be winnable?
Heck, what if the AI refused to trade with a player or would only trade their excess luxuries/strategic resources at inflated prices, and never gold (or if they did only at a reduced price). To me thats one of their greatest inefficiencies. What use is that ivory to them when they are already at 40+ happiness?
I imagine that there are a number of folk who play the role they've set out for their civ and attempt to win at the same time. I can't see the problem with that, though if they start saying that the game is flawed because it isn't matching with what they want to do that's a different kettle of fish.
Hopefully BNW will add enough of a viable diplomatic side to things that it'll satisfy role players. It looks like it will but probably best not to get our hopes up.
@ Different AIs for different style of gamers: Not sure how this came up but they already do that, have done for years - they're called difficulty levels and Civ flavours. Of course, nobody could object to improvements in this area. It's been a weak spot of Civ 5 since it came out and of the Civ series in general.
The Pilgrim
Deity
Well, I really wouldn't mind to lose if AI put up a good fight and beat me down. Unfortunately all my loses are not caused by that, but by of my own mistakes. Which is very bad.Basically, for number crunchers, winning isn't everything, it's the only thing.
It should not, but it does. Trading system is absolutely one sided.Regarding an AI trying to win, it should not cooperate with the human player unless its own interests are also advanced. I think the Civ 5 AI does a reasonable job at this. I would even say it's a little extreme the way the AI acts friendly to you and then betrays you the very next turn.
I'll speak for myself - sometimes, but not really. I don't consider myself as a number cruncher because I'm not trying to play 100% optimal. However, the volume of non optimal decisions you can make on immortal or deity without jeopardizing your victory is limited and jeopardizing it is not something I'll ever do intentionally.
As long as number crunching goes, Civ 5 doesn't require a lot of number crunching per se even on deity. Although I micromanage all my cities and units, check demographics, calculate when GP are born, time SP with technologies etc.
The problem is their preferences for SP and such interfere with 4x. Kirbdog is currently developing a 'smarter' AI mod. IIRC, he hard coded a reasonable building order (something that human would do) and SP choice of straight Tradition/Liberty instead of random mix of the two and Honor AI loves so much. The improvement was very noticeable.
Actually, 'teaching' them how to capitalize on their perks won't hurt. Babylon, duh...
That's not true. You can win peacefully on immortal or deity. I'd even say it's the easiest way to win. Turtle, grow your cities, do some RA's and win through diplo/science. Not gonna happen in every game, but my success rate at this kind of play on deity is pretty high and I'm not that good of a player.
Agree with everything else.
There are rare cases when AI is able to pull off a diplo win, but I really don't understand how this is happening apart from being overlooked by a player. It takes a minimal effort to prevent somebody's diplo win. And after 1500 hours of playing I've only seen one game where AI was focusing on culture with a decent chance to get there eventually. Both cases are very marginal in my opinion. Unfortunately.
The Pilgrim
Deity
It's not different. It's the same AI with huge bonuses that it's unable to use effectively. I was talking about a completely separate engines. Totally unrealistic, of course. But a man can dream.
I also don't think there is a problem with role playing and trying to win, its the bolded part I'm referring to.
I'm not necessarily talking about just being peaceful. I'm talking the Ned Flanders/Mr Rogers, Kumbaya style peaceful. Try to make and maintain friends or high diplo status, give in to their requests and try to live up to them peaceful role.
whyidie
Emperor
- Joined
- Dec 10, 2003
- Messages
- 1,187
It's a 4x game that greatly penalizes you for one of the Xs (expand). So really a 3.5x game at best
Depends on the roll. Above King, AI expands and brings war. I can't focus on happy so I'll usually have limited expansion. Below Emperor I can usually get religion, wonder, SP, and buildings lined up to enable expansion.
Granted, I have only been playing a couple of months, and have not tried a Deity game, but at Immortal and below I disagree strongly with these characterizations. Sure, I can be all Ned Flanders and Monty or Kathy will still DoW me out of the blue, but how is that a knock to my (or the AI) role playing? I can win a peaceful victory without nuking my closest rival (even though that might make things lots easier). You can win and feel good about yourself, just maybe not every game.
Yes and no. I crunch them early when its easy and convenient but then later less so. crunching combat numbers will take precedent over city micromanagement numbers often causing me to lose focus on an optimal build plan. i can generally stay on top of CS relations but I also forget about good AI trades when I'm in a war. it's the 'total package' kind of number crunching that i fail to do.
More the AI needs less bonuses, more he's counsiderated as a ''smart'' AI, thus counsiderating him more like a human player.
More the AI will be ''smart'' more the balance between sim. and gameplay can be unified.
Of course, if the game itself doesn't represent well the mankind history we can have the best AI possible and we can still feel like playing a bad game in term of historic accuracy.
3 questions remains :
1)Does CiV respect the mankind history in a whole?(simulations)
2)Does the AI acts like it should in term of interactions with the player?(interactions)
3)Does the AI is ''smart'' enough to have a good feel of playing respectable opponents?(performances)
My thoughts :
1)Really depends of speed of game and map size. I think the CiV series does a great job in this domain. You can adjust the right pace to get a good sim. feeling.
2)Absolutely not. That's the major problem. The AI does not interact with the human like it should. They accept things that nobody would accept in real life. Some features aren't shaped well enough and this department can be ameliorated grantly...and somewhat easily. Major flaw here.
3)Again, no. Huge bonuses given to the AI is the best proof that there is some major improvements needed. But it's more like a technological barrier. No games on earth have reached a perfect level of competitiveness. Only humans vs humans games can give these performances. But the actual AI is sub par compared to many other games and it's unacceptable for a company like Firaxis(well everyone knows that!).
Not to
but try a 20 man WoW raid for some impressive AI in my humble opinion.mitsukaikira
Chieftain
- Joined
- Oct 11, 2011
- Messages
- 30
"I find pathetic to start a game and restart it just because "I have a crappy start". it," - I find it pathetic to call people pathetic who play the game the way they want to.
"make it work." - No.
"make it work." - No.
civvver
Deity
- Joined
- Apr 24, 2007
- Messages
- 5,855
Ok I'll reiterate with different phrasing.
Civ5 has no story, no narrative except that which you assign it in your head. Civ5 is not a historically accurate game or meant to be a historical simulation. It's a building strategy game with war/tactical elements. You can rpg it if you really want to but it's my take that it was never designed to be played this way, thus you can see why there's gameplay issues if you try to roleplay only a peaceful leader or only warlike.
So this whole discussion of why can't I rpg civ better seems pointless when the answer is civ is not an rpg and has very, very few rpg elements.
The ai discussion, that I can get on board with. The ai doesn't have to be antagonistic in the narrative sense, but they have to be there to provide a challenge to the player. We can simply discuss ai design but it's a separate issue from rpg elements.
Civ5 has no story, no narrative except that which you assign it in your head. Civ5 is not a historically accurate game or meant to be a historical simulation. It's a building strategy game with war/tactical elements. You can rpg it if you really want to but it's my take that it was never designed to be played this way, thus you can see why there's gameplay issues if you try to roleplay only a peaceful leader or only warlike.
So this whole discussion of why can't I rpg civ better seems pointless when the answer is civ is not an rpg and has very, very few rpg elements.
The ai discussion, that I can get on board with. The ai doesn't have to be antagonistic in the narrative sense, but they have to be there to provide a challenge to the player. We can simply discuss ai design but it's a separate issue from rpg elements.
RPG is a vague and broad term for this and the OP already acknowledged that since English isn't his native tongue. Role playing games used to be done on table tops with pencil and paper and before that it was something psychiatrists did to help with patients and what couples did in the bedroom
.There is a minority that enjoys Civ for it's narrative aspects and I agree that it is largely a strategy game first and anything else second but try not to take RPG to mean a more current definition as it applies to video games. I do see narratives in each of my games but it isnt because i put them there. Any game with a beginning and an end has a narrative and each game I play tells a tale of history because the game is a strategy path through history, even as a number cruncher. It might not be the most interesting narrative (more like a boring history book) but it's still a narrative.
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