Long Time Player, New Poster

Think we can all agree it would be better if the AI was smarter between each difficulty level rather than getting unfair advantages. However, we also have to keep in mind that developing such a game would be vastly more complex, as you would in effect create one different AI for each difficulty level. Costs would go through the roof, especially with so many difficulty levels as in this game. It just can't be done. Almost every game do it this way, because it's easier, more cost-efficient, and more pragmatic.

Creating a very sturdy AI is actually very difficult. Just look at the mess Civ5 is, and I think they did a pretty good job with Civ4. They simply can't make plans for all possibilities, and humans, especially on this site, will try to punch holes in the AIs with an infinite number of approaches. It's only natural that some weaknesses are found, and then exploited.

I'd also argue that the game isn't exactly made for the HoF players and such that know the game inside out. The vast masses won't be playing the game at Immortal or Deity, and mostly beating the game there. Most people will probably play the game around the Noble level, and play in a fashion that the experienced players here will say is poor, inefficient, and so forth. The opposition from the AI is then probably fine.

Pangaea said:

Creating a very sturdy AI is actually very difficult. Just look at the mess Civ5 is, and I think they did a pretty good job with Civ4. They simply can't make plans for all possibilities, and humans, especially on this site, will try to punch holes in the AIs with an infinite number of approaches. It's only natural that some weaknesses are found, and then exploited.

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To add to this, one of the most important elements with Civ AI is that they all have their own personalities. This makes it impossible to make the AI competitive at equal terms. As soon as an AI is inclined to go for early religions and try to spread them, they would lose to the strong player, if the AI doesn't get some other bonuses to compensate for this suboptimal behavior. An AI capable of competing with the strongest human players on equal terms would have to always follow some kind of optimal path and any individual AI personality would have to be scrapped.

Also, it was already mentioned that the human also has unfair advantages, even on the highest levels. The human player can do whatever he wants when it comes to diplomacy. Trade with anyone he wants to trade with and declare war whenever he wants. The AI can't. If the AI could, then the whole concept of diplomacy would be lost. And you can't really deny the players these options. Would make it kind of boring if you weren't allowed to declare war on an opponent because you are pleased towards them. This is a huge advantage for the human player and it's only fair to give the AI some bonuses to compensate.

When you're playing continents you can no doubt clear your continent with a warrior rush but the game's a long way from over. Once you've wiped out the other civs on your continent you then have lots of barbarian archers and axes to contend with (and lots of room for spawning) and no-one to trade with for a long time.

edit: with regard to making the AI smart enough to beat a competent human player I reckon its easy to underestimate the challenge. Some advantages of chess: no randomness, only two opponents, a small map, a small number of units with predefined movement rules, no terrain features to manouver around, no resources, no tech choices, no diplomacy (and that's just for starters). I'm not sure how many orders of magnitude difference there are between chess and civ but enough to make the comparision fairly meaningless. AI heuristics have to improve tremendously before you can make AI opponents challenging.

Been playing this slowly (is there any way not to play slowly on marathon?) using settings as per OP and got up to 1ad. Not too bad so far, barbs have been a real pain. For the first time ever I've seen a Barbarian Horse Archer, something I previously thought was mythical.

Random techs are sure bizarre: I haven't got agriculture or archery yet but I've researched HbR (no horses) and machinery (I've got iron but not archery so no crossbows yet). The only bright spot is that I've got a GS in 6 turns which should bulb alphabet as I've researched maths already.