Let's discuss AI

Kordanor posted a great podcast with the developers on the topic of aggressive AI.

http://www.idlethumbs.net/3ma/episodes/firaxis-revisionists (start at 15 mins)


They basically said that they did nerf the early game aggressiveness from the AI because of the new economic system. They proposed that the early rushes would cripple the AI. They used the term "throttled down" when it comes to aggressiveness. Thoughts?

That isn't a nerf. Stopping the AI from doing stupid things that would cripple it from the start is an improvement.
 
That isn't a nerf. Stopping the AI from doing stupid things that would cripple it from the start is an improvement.

But, when you think about it, it works like one.

Ex. CIV IV. Early game.- You have a resource heavy start and you look to get the jump on a really helpful wonder at the start of the game. You figure you can skip out on Archery, when all of a sudden you see the yellow borders of Shaka or brown ones of the Khans. Well, you know they are typically very early aggressors (as they are built to be). So do you try to skate by with lackluster early defense? Or bypass one the better techs to grab Archey to defend against the impending invasion?

And this is where some of the dynamic gameplay has dissipated. There really isn't a early invasion anymore. Those early game decisions no longer exist.( and Early game is my favorite part lol) While I agree that the early wars against the player may have crippled the AI, throttling it down to almost non existence is not the answer.
 
Before we get too sidetracked arguing someone's Age of Empires AI fanfic; I want to point out this great discussion on AI by former Civ lead designer Soren Johnson. That I think is all we really need.

"Playing to Lose: AI and "Civilization". It can be found here on youtube for people who are interested. It's an hour long though, but really interesting.
 
Well I'm probably in the minority, but I have dozens of wins on immortal and deity, yet I don't have this achievement. I've simply never played on king.

I'm sure a lot of civ 4 veterans went straight to the higher levels since civ 5 is pretty easy in comparison.

See my earlier post deriving the actual percentages of people who've played and won higher difficulties as well. Looking at the numbers for difficulties higher than King, the point still stands.
 
But, when you think about it, it works like one.
If the AI skips out on doomed early rushes in favor of strategies that actually help it beat you later on, then no, it isn't a nerf.

It may make for a less exciting game for you, but that's orthogonal to the question of whether it's better or worse.
 
If the AI skips out on doomed early rushes in favor of strategies that actually help it beat you later on, then no, it isn't a nerf.

It may make for a less exciting game for you, but that's orthogonal to the question of whether it's better or worse.


But where is the organic early game without threat of war? I am not disagreeing that it would cripple the AI in the long term, but to make it very predictable and almost non existent is the answer? I'm just asking for better balance is all. Like others said, there is an issue when you're surrounded by warmongers, you have a weak defense, and there is no threat. Really? Even if they are not warmongers, the AI should see the opportunity to snatch a city or two if it favors them.

EDIT.- Your first ten words of that post is where the issue lies. Why is it predictable that the early rushes are always doomed? A balance is needed to where they can field an imposing threat in the early game and not going bankrupt and crippling themselves.
 
But where is the organic early game without threat of war? I am not disagreeing that it would cripple the AI in the long term, but to make it very predictable and almost non existent is the answer? I'm just asking for better balance is all. Like others said, there is an issue when you're surrounded by warmongers, you have a weak defense, and there is no threat. Really? Even if they are not warmongers, the AI should see the opportunity to snatch a city or two if it favors them.

I tend to agree with you here, but you're making an absolutist statement here. The threat of war is significantly less in the early game due to the tweak to how gold is earned (no more gold on river tiles), this is further moderated by trade route income making AI check for it before they DoW (as Aristos pointed out); and there may well have been other code changes made, but there is certainly some threat of war.

Full disclosure. I am fine with these changes, but understand some people may not be, so I hope they find a compromise. I certainly don't think taking away trade route bonuses to diplomacy is the right solution. It's actually a feature a lot of other people not currently complaining have asked for and now they have it.
 
I tend to agree with you here, but you're making an absolutist statement here. The threat of war is significantly less in the early game due to the tweak to how gold is earned (no more gold on river tiles), this is further moderated by trade route income making AI check for it before they DoW (as Aristos pointed out); and there may well have been other code changes made, but there is certainly some threat of war.

Full disclosure. I am fine with these changes, but understand some people may not be, so I hope they find a compromise. I certainly don't think taking away trade route bonuses to diplomacy is the right solution.


Pre BNW- players hated the ineffective suicidal rushes of the AI.

Now-They made it to where even those occur a lot less frequently.

So before, there were plenty of wars. But according to many, they were self crippling and ineffective. Not really considered a threat. Like you said in another thread, it is a balancing act. And imo if definitely needs a bit of fine tuning.

My two issues are mainly
1.Early warmongers not using their abilities to their strengths
2.Even keeled Civs not taking advantage of lack of defense when it favors them

I agree with you that some folks may not welcome a change, but at the very least give us an aggressive AI option. I feel as if every early game plays out the exact same way. The organic feel has been lost.
 
But where is the organic early game without threat of war? I am not disagreeing that it would cripple the AI in the long term, but to make it very predictable and almost non existent is the answer? I'm just asking for better balance is all. Like others said, there is an issue when you're surrounded by warmongers, you have a weak defense, and there is no threat. Really? Even if they are not warmongers, the AI should see the opportunity to snatch a city or two if it favors them.

EDIT.- Your first ten words of that post is where the issue lies. Why is it predictable that the early rushes are always doomed? A balance is needed to where they can field an imposing threat in the early game and not going bankrupt and crippling themselves.

Balance is good, as far as I am concerned BNW has brought more balance. Civs don't just attack other civs because they can. I am not saying it doesn't happen but to have another lazy AI element that does a simple strength calculation and attack based on simple numbers would make this game JUST like Civ Revolution. I play on prince because I HATE the way civs get bonuses to make up for poor AI. I want to be able to make a wonder or 2 early and not have to restart due to a setback or two with variables that are out of game setup controls. As I stated in my first post in the forums in the AI Aggression thread. The AI needs to be more in depth.
Diplomacy has gotten better but it is still very wonky. There are just not enough considerations and far too many lazy triggers for AI attitude. Like going to war when asked to, then being denounced for being a warmonger by the civ that asked you to go to war.
They need to add more depth to forming alliances and add more ways to agitate those you hate...like covert operations or a way to stop those damn prophets/missionaries (at great cost for balance of course). Interaction is what really drives me to finish games. I love prince level because I get a feel for opponents and often can't do much about it early but boy does it feel good to steam roll those who were jerks late game.
 
I just finished an Emperor level game as Morocco and beat Sejong in a Space Victory by turn 350s with 0 battles or wars against any major Civs because of my extremely high diplo status.

I had DoFs with India / Songhai / Sweden / USA / Korea / Brazil throughout the entire game and everyone hated the Huns.

Askia wanted to backstab me numerous times but I'm guessing he didn't want to face the diplomatic consequences. I had trade links with basically everyone and the USA / Brazil were following my religion. I didn't even build up a large army because I was too concerned with building enough Tourism to fend off Brazil's influence.

I won by 1 spaceship part in the end because pretty much everyone friended another and traded RAs. So there was some diplomacy going on in my game but the AI didn't play to win. I thought ideological differences would create some hostility, but it never materialized :confused:

In a sense there is diplomacy, but it was a very passive, boring game and I'm looking forward to the fall patch.

I think the game often heads down this path now if the block of AI civs comes out non-combative focused. It gets this way even if there's only 1-2 combative, and they lose their early wars and head into stagnation. Everyone starts trading, nobody's looking for domination, DoFs start flying, and it's a happy love-in race to the spaceship/tourism/diplomacy finish line.

I'm thinking about start games now where I force feed a few combat civs every time, like Shaka/Genghis/Alex or something.
 
That may be true for some games. It was true in my first couple of games that I played on an easier setting to get a hang of the mechanics which I ended dominating so thoroughly that it was peaceful.

But in my current games, as a world power in roughly equal footing with several others, there's clearly an inflection point when ideologies hit. My old time tripartite alliance blew apart along ideological lines and the world is split between freedom and order with the two power blocs constantly scheming against each other in the WC and no less than 5 wars over it. All post industrial. It's actually an an amazing proof of concept of how bloc system should work In civilization
 
Before we get too sidetracked arguing someone's Age of Empires AI fanfic; I want to point out this great discussion on AI by former Civ lead designer Soren Johnson. That I think is all we really need.

He kinda lost me when he claimed World Editor unit creation and reloading save games are legit options available to the player, so he as the AI designer has to counter with AI cheating.

That line was complete and he never gave another example where the player would have an inherent advantage over the computer.

If the AI skips out on doomed early rushes in favor of strategies that actually help it beat you later on, then no, it isn't a nerf.

It may make for a less exciting game for you, but that's orthogonal to the question of whether it's better or worse.

How is it doomed? When you capture a capital, preferably with a wonder or two in it, that rush is a great success.

Why even have so many ancient and classical era military units? Barbarians?
 
He kinda lost me when he claimed World Editor unit creation and reloading save games are legit options available to the player, so he as the AI designer has to counter with AI cheating.

That line was complete and he never gave another example where the player would have an inherent advantage over the computer.

How is it doomed? When you capture a capital, preferably with a wonder or two in it, that rush is a great success.

Why even have so many ancient and classical era military units? Barbarians?

FYI Soren is the AI designer for Civ4. The pertinent bit is his thoughts on AI as its coming from an informed place as someone who has to grapple with making an AI fun as well as appear to be smart.
 
FYI Soren is the AI designer for Civ4.

Do you think I missed that after having watched the video? It's still a completely ridiculous notion that the AI needs to be balanced through cheating against the player cheat generating units through the world builder, because that is just impossible.
 
Do you think I missed that after having watched the video? It's still a completely ridiculous notion that the AI needs to be balanced through cheating against the player cheat generating units through the world builder, because that is just impossible.

Just making it clear as you critiqued a specific gameplay/AI point that has no direct link to Civ5, as he was discussing AI cheats in Civ4 context and he left Firaxis before Civ5 even launched. This is the Civ5 discussion board about Civ5 AI.

The point is, his meta concepts on AI is what's important, you're focusing on something almost insignificant and not relevant to this game in particular.
 
I think the game often heads down this path now if the block of AI civs comes out non-combative focused. It gets this way even if there's only 1-2 combative, and they lose their early wars and head into stagnation. Everyone starts trading, nobody's looking for domination, DoFs start flying, and it's a happy love-in race to the spaceship/tourism/diplomacy finish line.

I'm thinking about start games now where I force feed a few combat civs every time, like Shaka/Genghis/Alex or something.

This, I think, would be a great addition. Create a third option between 'completely random Civ!' and 'choose your enemies'. Most Civs could probably be given a primary and secondary focus, and then create 'Science Civ' or 'Culture Civ' as an option for an opposing Civ.

Or just 'Peaceful' and 'Warlike'.
 
I plan to start a game tonight after work with some different settings.

Map-Continents plus
Size-Standard
Speed-Epic
Difficulty-Emperor
*Raging Barbarians on
*Random Personalities on
*Adding two Civs. (Total of 10) Reducing City states to 12

Maybe this will shake things up a bit.
 
Just making it clear as you critiqued a specific gameplay/AI point that has no direct link to Civ5, as he was discussing AI cheats in Civ4 context and he left Firaxis before Civ5 even launched. This is the Civ5 discussion board about Civ5 AI.

The point is, his meta concepts on AI is what's important, you're focusing on something almost insignificant and not relevant to this game in particular.

He also mentioned reloading save games. There is an option in the Civ 5 game set up (random seed) that actually makes it possible to reload over and over until a battle goes your way.
I find it odd you bring this video up, then say these contents are irrelevant because some (not all) of what I quoted are related to Civ 4, not 5. The first half of that video is not even about civ games at all.

Does that mean that's a tactic the AI needs help against? I'd be surprised if people ever resorted to that kind of cheese.

His idea that the AI needs to be a "fun" AI certainly carried over into Civ 5, especially since the AI now no longer attempts to disrupt a players victory. I don't know if you're happy with that, I think it's cheap and makes it less of an achievement to win through non-domination when I know I only won because nobody tried to stop me. For easy games with no competition, there's lower difficulty settings. They can put the aggressive playstyle of the AI back in and that would be a lot more fun to me to play against an AI that tries to win and prevent me from winning than what we have now. Instead if you want a challenging game, you now have to give the AI massive advantages and at the same time pray that it doesn't blow these advantages away due to their unwillingness to use them.

It begs the question what kind of audience Civ 5 seeks to attract with a "fun" AI over a "good" AI.
 
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