Worrying review: Tom Chick says AI and Diplomacy are dumb. Has "Serious Problems"

Given that the AI has always been dubious in the Civ series (or any strategy game of commensurate complexity), I fail to see how this is cause for alarm.

-V
 
I think Greg would like to speak to you, something about getting slaughtered by the French.:king:
 
Volstag said:
Given that the AI has always been dubious in the Civ series (or any strategy game of commensurate complexity), I fail to see how this is cause for alarm.

-V
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You are correct about the AI always being dubious (at best) but I think some flags might be raise about Civ5 because there is more emphasis on tactical decisions, esp. in military and diplomacy. That's where the AI seems to do more poorly at.
 
kittenOFchaos said:
The Poles have had a harsh history. For you, a brussel sprout it like heaven. For us decadent westerners, it is abit nasty and causes bad wind :D
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Funny... I think there a brainiac episode about this ... :D
 
Multiball said:
Actually thats wrong. Napoleon was a much better game. It got a lower score for 4 reasons, 1. Reviewers were mad they were made to look stupid when empire was so unstable after sega said bugs would be fixed 2. It was so simillar to empire but priced like a full new game. 3. It is popular to slag off total war after empire even though napoleons probably one of the best games theyve released. And 4 the most important reason empire scored well above what it should have 80 is what i rank empire and 90 napoleon.
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QFT. Speaking of Total War, I recall Tom Chick being that guy from GameSpy who wrote a travesty which he called a "review" (which was essentially one huge rant about AI... as though that's the only thing that matters in the game, and that he didn't apparently gave the new multiplayer features a try), giving Napoleon: Total War a 2.0 out of 5, which is most unfair considering Empire: Total War is a far worse game... and that same site gave it... a what, oh yes... a perfect score! I recall someone said here that Chick was one of the best strategy game critics... well that really didn't show in his Napoleon review. It looked like as though he was actually reviewing Empire instead of Napoleon.
 
OK, guys, let's not rant on the reviewer. If what he says may have merit - if the AI may not be all that strong (and, hey, historically the Civ AI doesn't war well, so that's a probablility) then he could have a point.

I'll tell you for certain if he has a point or not tomorrow... ;)
 
Competent AI will be DLC. On sale for $8.99US this week only!
 
jeffreyac said:
OK, guys, let's not rant on the reviewer. If what he says may have merit - if the AI may not be all that strong (and, hey, historically the Civ AI doesn't war well, so that's a probablility) then he could have a point.

I'll tell you for certain if he has a point or not tomorrow... ;)
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It will take longer than that. AI weaknesses and stupidity really manifest itself about a week after release, when more players get deeper in games. That's why most reviews aren't worth much beyond cosmetics and mechanics since rarely do they take the time to play deep and analytically.
 
sosueme said:
Keep in mind that the developers are also designing their AI to run at consumer levels of processing power. Deep Blue needed to be able to handle a trillion operations per second to be able to beat Kasparov at chess -- a game that has one winning condition, six different units, and a 64 tile map that is the same for every game. Designing an AI that can beat the best humans at civ might require years of additional development time and hardware requirements that exceed what most customers would be willing to pay for.
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The approach that chess programs use to beat humans is not possible at all with a game so complex as Civ. It would need literally infinite (a number so big it can't be even imagined) times more computing power than Deep Blue had.
 
So, we'd need to harness the bistromatics used to create the improbaility drive?
 
http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/sid-meiers-civilization-v

The metacritic score is 96 with 9 reviews being tracked. :)

The number is, of course, not the be all end all factor in whether or not a game is good, but it means that the general consensus of those 9 reviews are very positive about the game.

EDIT: Mental image of napoleon and his army at this guys house, arms crossed and angry look on his face.
 
Skwink Caesar said:
Or maybe just until Civ VI come out. ;)
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Well Civ 6 probably won't come out til 2015, and the world is going to end in December of 2012, so I'm not sure that is the way to go.
 
Reviewer doesn't like something : Check
I only buy games that interest me : Check
Civ has never let me down(many an hour spent since Civ I on my Amiga): Check

Around 16 hours until I can play and review becomes moot : Sadly, check.
 
Civ 5 doesn't need religion. For some it is one.

I'm looking forward to the game but not putting it on a pedestal. Yes I'm looking at you, Empire: Total War, you heart breaker.
 
Multiball said:
Just like civ they have good and bad releases, like i hated civ 3, which most people love. (im a big tw fan if you didnt guess)
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I disagree. I do not think Civ 3 was "loved" by most people... I think it was simply the first Civ game that many people had played. If you played Civ I or Civ II... I don't know how you could "love" Civ III. I thought it was very poorly done, period. It had some nice innovations, but my brand new computer couldn't handle it, and I think many people were in a similar position. "Finishing" a game was a nightmare, and the replay-ability was quite low.

Civ I, II, and IV were all far superior products in my opinion.
 
Zen Blade said:
I disagree. I do not think Civ 3 was "loved" by most people... I think it was simply the first Civ game that many people had played. If you played Civ I or Civ II... I don't know how you could "love" Civ III. I thought it was very poorly done, period. It had some nice innovations, but my brand new computer couldn't handle it, and I think many people were in a similar position. "Finishing" a game was a nightmare, and the replay-ability was quite low.

Civ I, II, and IV were all far superior products in my opinion.
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Completely agree (except that I didn't play Civ1). I would also add that there were mechanics and elements that were very poorly implemented (like resources). I don't expect Civ5 to have those issues since a lot of Civ5 is based on Civ4.
 
JakeCourtney said:
:king:

If you knew more about the predication you would know the world doesn't just end completely. It's more just a change of times. Typical mistake.
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Well, it was a joke, so my burden of proof is low. If I really thought the world was going to end in 2012 I wouldn't have had kids.
 
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