Artificial Intelligence

My recollection was that Firaxis hired Blake from the mod community to do the AI for BTS. Does anyone know if he was retained for Civ5? If so I think that bodes well for the AI especially given that they had a new engine to work with to tailor the AI to.
 
The purpose of the AI in Civ should not be to try to win, but to provide an enjoyable experience for the player. If the AI is trying to win, then Diplomatic Victory becomes nearly impossible because none of them will ever vote for anyone, except itself. You'd have to get almost all the city-states to vote for you to win. To win culture or space would also be hard because ALL the AI should declare war on you to stop it. It may be challenging, but it would not be fun nor enjoyable.
 
The purpose of the AI in Civ should not be to try to win, but to provide an enjoyable experience for the player.

Why can't it be both? Why is there a distinction drawn between "Trying to win" and "Having an enjoyable experience"? Why does every other game on earth hold the expectation that all parties should be trying to win, except Civilization?

If the AI is trying to win, then Diplomatic Victory becomes nearly impossible because none of them will ever vote for anyone, except itself. You'd have to get almost all the city-states to vote for you to win.

No, you just need one more then the next highest guy, which will require a bit of work on your part. The reason why the City States were put in was to grease the wheels of this specific victory tactic. I assume every civilization will most certainly vote for themselves, as any sane player would. City states, however, will not.

This gives you, as the player, some interesting game play opportunities. If you see that Greece (Let's be honest here) is going to win because of a diplomatic victory due to controlling the most city states, perhaps it's in your interests to start destroying city states. You'll probably end up in a war with Greece, but that was probably going to happen anyway.

Look at all the game play that's being opened up!

To win culture or space would also be hard because ALL the AI should declare war on you to stop it.

As they should, because it's a game, that they should want to win.

It may be challenging, but it would not be fun nor enjoyable.

There's always modes of difficulty, as there has always been throughout the franchise. If you want a nice gameplay experience, without any challenge whatsoever, and simply coast to whatever victory you so choose, then put it on Settler and have fun!

P.S. Please don't take this last comment to be negative. I'm quite firm in my belief that easier difficulties and modes of play should MOST CERTAINLY be in the game, specifically for people who wish to have a nice easy experience. I myself will do it from time to time, just for a nice relaxing playthrough. However, it should also become more like a game as the difficulty ramps up.
 
Why can't it be both? Why is there a distinction drawn between "Trying to win" and "Having an enjoyable experience"?

The difference is easily detectable - will all other civs try to nuke your capital if you're close to spaceship victory :)
 
The difference is easily detectable - will all other civs try to nuke your capital if you're close to spaceship victory :)

I for one sincerely hope so. It's good to be able to lose.
 
The difference is easily detectable - will all other civs try to nuke your capital if you're close to spaceship victory :)

Well, hopefully you'll have built some anit-nuke defenses in the cities that matter. They existed in Civ 4, don't see why they wouldn't in Civ 5.

I for one sincerely hope so. It's good to be able to lose.

Hear Hear!
 
The main hope I have for better AI is a computer that doesn't have to cheat as much to provide a challenge.

That said, the Ai will only be so good. We humans are still far more creative than even the best AIs on the planet.
 
The purpose of the AI in Civ should not be to try to win, but to provide an enjoyable experience for the player. If the AI is trying to win, then Diplomatic Victory becomes nearly impossible because none of them will ever vote for anyone, except itself. You'd have to get almost all the city-states to vote for you to win. To win culture or space would also be hard because ALL the AI should declare war on you to stop it. It may be challenging, but it would not be fun nor enjoyable.

Problem in Civ4 was that the game was decided usually well before the actual victory conditions were met. It would make the late game more interesting if the AI decided to fight back.
 
Well, hopefully you'll have built some anit-nuke defenses in the cities that matter. They existed in Civ 4, don't see why they wouldn't in Civ 5.

They don't exist. However, nuke range is limited now, so just keep everything far away from capital.
 
The purpose of the AI in Civ should not be to try to win, but to provide an enjoyable experience for the player. If the AI is trying to win, then Diplomatic Victory becomes nearly impossible because none of them will ever vote for anyone, except itself. You'd have to get almost all the city-states to vote for you to win. To win culture or space would also be hard because ALL the AI should declare war on you to stop it. It may be challenging, but it would not be fun nor enjoyable.

Must respectfully disagree with you here. Anything less than challenging is no fun, for me. THAT is the most enjoyable experience it can provide (again for me).

Also if the AI is actually competent AND the diplomacy model is competent also. You should be able to "buy off" weaker Civs that recognize the no win scenario and settle for being alive in the endgame (much as a player can).

A stretch ? Maybe but not that much of one.
 
I don't think ALL the AI should declare war on you just because you are going to win. Maybe, #2 should declare and try to stop you, but #3 ought to remain neutral in hopes you and #2 destroy each other, enabling the former #3 to come out on top. That might be fun, but I doubt the AI will be that smart.
 
Everyone has different expectations from the computer opponent; for myself, I want to be challenged (hard enough that I don't always win), but one thing I really hate is when I feel the AI is obviously cheating, or the AI players are colluding and ganging up on me in unrealistic ways. Handicapping is one thing, but for me a game starts to lose its appeal when the rules don't apply equally to all the players, or when they change mid-way through the game.

For example, I think it was Civ II in which, if the player got way ahead of the other civilizations, they would start to collude and trade techs and help each other out against you. This made the late game pretty challenging, as you could eventually find yourself facing the entire world, but it felt really cheap. A game shouldn't punish the player for doing well. I think the answer for a game in which you start to snowball is to provide "mercy rule" ways to declare early victory (like Civ IV's Domination victory) and move on to the next game, not to change the rules and prop up the AI's so that they can challenge you. If you want things to get harder, then end the game early and try a harder difficulty setting on the next game.
 
1. Nice avatar PoM.

2. I hope the AI does not cheat by being able to 'see' the whole map all the time. If this happens, horse units are obsolete as the AI would prepare for such an attack they could not see. Although RtS games implement this cheat often I hope the Civ5 engine is strong enough to not require full map visibility for the AI.

3. If the AI has FoW restrictions as humans do, I would like to put money that the Lancer is one of the most powerful units in the game. With 4 movement and its good strength it should flank an army pretty well, more so if you are the one defending. Pikemen/Anti-Mount defense is required from the AI. So, forcing a move like that is sente, I believe.
 
I don't think ALL the AI should declare war on you just because you are going to win. Maybe, #2 should declare and try to stop you, but #3 ought to remain neutral in hopes you and #2 destroy each other, enabling the former #3 to come out on top. That might be fun, but I doubt the AI will be that smart.

Look at this from your position - you see one of your opponent almost finished a spaceship. You could try to stop him yourself, or rely on another player. In most cases you choose first - because you can't rely on another player so much. Of course that can mean not a full-blown war, but smart strike while others take main forces away, etc.

There're a lot of options and I hope AI will use them.
 
Also, if the computer players automatically attack you whenever you're about to win a Science or Culture victory, then all victories are really military victories.

I don't mean automatically attack, they should only do this if they could prevent you from winning and need to. That's the same way as human players do.
 
I don't want the AI to play like a human opponent. I want it to play like a civilization.

If I wanted to play human opponents, I would play human opponents.

Well, I clearly don't want to see a lot of game mechanics which works in SP, but not in MP, including victory conditions. Previous Civ versions, including Civ 4, were very weak here - i.e. you can't win Diplomatic victory in MP at all. Civ 5 seems much better.

I want to see Culture and Space victories implemented so it will be equally difficult to be reached in both SP and MP. This way, you'll need to be ready to defend yourself in SP, because in MP you'll need to.
 
"Do you want to be challenged?" is not the correct question. The question is what sort of challenge we seek.

I'm one of those who want an AI that "plays to lose" or "plays to be fun" if you want to phrase it like that. I still want a challenge. The challenge I seek is written on the box: "Build an empire to stand the test of time". I do not seek the challenge of "Beat the AI".

And I'm glad Sid Meier and the vast majority of players share my view :)
 
Why can't it be both? Why is there a distinction drawn between "Trying to win" and "Having an enjoyable experience"?

Well ... weren't you actually the one who drew that strong distinction, by labeling in-character (but strategically suboptimal) AI decisions as "stupid" and to be done away with? ;)

Personally, I believe Civ should pursue both goals (immersing the player into a rich alternative world, and providing strategically challenging gameplay) as often as possible, and strike a balance between them in the cases where it's not possible to pursue both. I'll give an example.

In Civ3, the AI was programmed to rapidly expand at the beginning of the game. This was strategically sound, since rapid expansion (REX) was the best early game strategy in Civ3. But it was also a very unnatural and historically implausible way of developing a civilization, and it felt awkward to many players to have their leaders forego everything else in favor of spreading one's civilization very thin over a very large area (you basically spammed settlers and built little else as long as there was room for cities). Unfortunately, these players were forced to adopt this style, otherwise they'd end up with a pretty huge handicap of being boxed in by the rexing AIs. This led to many complaints by the players who focus more on immersion and roleplay.

Fortunately, in this case there were solutions to that conflict which catered to both tastes. In the example above, the problem was not that the AI was "too strong" - the problem was that the game's design strongly favored a non-immersive early strategy. The AI's adaptation of this strategy was then just a consequence of this (flawed) game design. In Civ4, the designers succesfully reconciled immersion and challenge in the early game by making settlers more costly (and cities with unimproved terrain less efficient). This way, the AI's early strategy could be smart and immersive, and players weren't forced to adopt a non-immersive strategy any more.

So, in this case, and many others, the conflict between immersion and challenge can be resolved rather easily.

On other occasions though, such a solution is not possible. The reason for this is quite simply that real historical leaders didn't behave like gamers trying to win a game. Ideologically driven, strategically suboptimal decisions are quite common in history. You cannot create a believable, plausible, immersive, rich history if you make all leaders behave like "real" leaders wouldn't.

In these cases, I believe that a balance between immersion and challenge has to be struck. I also believe that Civ4 has achieved this balance quite well. In Civ4 diplomacy, you have "gaming" modifiers (e.g. friends refusing to trade technologies with you any more if you're becoming too advanced) as well as "roleplaying" modifiers (e.g. a friendly AI helping you out although it weakens their position).

What you seemed to suggest, though, was to forego the simulation approach in favor of a "pure" gaming approach. That would be a bad decision imho, because I believe that most Civ players value both approaches to some degree. (I'm not a pure roleplayer by any means. I, too, like to be challenged by a competent AI, just not in a way that destroys immersion.) So if someone (like PieceOfMind) says that he'd prefer a nudge into a specific direction, then I'm perfectly okay with that. Totally selling out to a pure gaming approach by foregoing the simulation elements won't find my appreciation though.
 
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