The AI is booooring

Ontolog

Chieftain
Joined
Oct 2, 2008
Messages
13
The AI is just plain boring to play against. Things I dislike about the AI:

  • Pointless attacks on your cities. Even though the AI is sure to lose a particular battle it will go ahead with it anyway, not just once but repeatedly. All this does is level up your own defensive units.
  • The constant shuffling around of units within your territory. It's not using them to attack, they just keep moving around, why?? Makes the AI less human and generally annoying.
  • No cohesive strategy. No major coordinated attacks. Just randomly tosses units at your cities. I wish the AI actually tried strategizing or at least calculated the usefulness of a certain attack before commiting to it.
  • Erratic diplomacy. Really gives you the feeling that the AI is just rolling dice.

In fact, the "AI" shouldn't even be called AI. It is just simple set of heuristics that fails the Turing test miserably.
 
Sure. The AI isn´t really an AI. What I find the most appauling about the AI is the lack of personality but also the lack of intelligence.

Sometimes a lack of intelligence can be countered with a great personality (speaking about girlfriends) but in this game there is nothing. ;-)
 
The AI is just plain boring to play against. Things I dislike about the AI:

  • Pointless attacks on your cities. Even though the AI is sure to lose a particular battle it will go ahead with it anyway, not just once but repeatedly. All this does is level up your own defensive units.
  • The constant shuffling around of units within your territory. It's not using them to attack, they just keep moving around, why?? Makes the AI less human and generally annoying.
  • No cohesive strategy. No major coordinated attacks. Just randomly tosses units at your cities. I wish the AI actually tried strategizing or at least calculated the usefulness of a certain attack before commiting to it.
  • Erratic diplomacy. Really gives you the feeling that the AI is just rolling dice.

In fact, the "AI" shouldn't even be called AI. It is just simple set of heuristics that fails the Turing test miserably.

I agree with most of this, except for one point. the constant shuffling of units is used to stop your city using a certain tile. When an enemy unit is placed in one of your cities tiles, that tile doesn't work. That's why it's always good to send galleys out while playing in Multiplayer online to make sure none of your competitors get any science!
 
The AI may have been doing what Kadazzle suggested, but I have seen the AI gather up forces before an assualt, like 2-3 armies.
 
The AI may have been doing what Kadazzle suggested, but I have seen the AI gather up forces before an assualt, like 2-3 armies.

Sure, I can see the point about holding resources to stop production and it's actually a strategy I should use more.

They do amass the armies but they only use one at a time. Often they will move an entire army in, attack with one at a time (once per turn) and even after losing, retreat the rest of their armies. There is just no rhyme or reason to their attacks. Being a software engineer myself, I don't think it should be too hard to give the AI just a little bit more intelligence than this.
 
If the AI was smarter, with its Deity's 40% production bonus it would be nearly impossible to beat it. I believe Sid Meier chosed quantity over quality. Also don't forget that we have 4 AI players all against us. So, on my experience if Gandhi is dedicated to harrass us, others focus on Science (China, Arabs), culture (Romans, English) or money (Aztec, Americans?).
 
If the AI was smarter, with its Deity's 40% production bonus it would be nearly impossible to beat it. I believe Sid Meier chosed quantity over quality. Also don't forget that we have 4 AI players all against us. So, on my experience if Gandhi is dedicated to harrass us, others focus on Science (China, Arabs), culture (Romans, English) or money (Aztec, Americans?).

Well if the AI were smarter it wouldn't need the production bonus and it would be much more fun to play. The game developers chose to basically give you a handicap when you increase the difficulty setting because it is much much easier to implement... but that's exactly where the cop-out is that I'm complaining about. If the AI actually *learned* and improved upon itself during the game, then CivRev would be truly awesome.
 
Well if the AI were smarter it wouldn't need the production bonus and it would be much more fun to play. The game developers chose to basically give you a handicap when you increase the difficulty setting because it is much much easier to implement... but that's exactly where the cop-out is that I'm complaining about. If the AI actually *learned* and improved upon itself during the game, then CivRev would be truly awesome.

Yep, there you go. That is the key point. Handicap is a cheating way of making the game harder.

What if they had developed Chess simulators in the same way... Instead of intelligence they had two extra Queens... :lol:
 
2K can't even make the MP working, do you really believe they would have the skills to give a "real" brain to the AI? :D

Which is not a trivial task anyhow. That must be said.
 
Looks like an opportunity guys, go and develop this Civ playing AI, pitch it to Firaxis, or better yet build a different game using it. I'm sure it will be a big hit! I'll buy it.

The AI gets production bonuses because its the only real challenge that can be given to a human player (that is, other than a human player, I do wish they spent less on AI and more on fixing MP functionality).

At any rate, no comparison to chess is valid, chess is 100% mathematics and looking deeper into moves. This is the only reason its able to beat humans. Its not AI either, its just a superfast number cruncher with a vast memory of move strategies and the ability to play out many alternatives.


My only gripe about the AI has always been pure and simple cheating. Knowing a certain city is empty without the means in-game to do so for example. This could be easily hidden if they just opened up intelligence gathering to be more realistic or useful.
 
Looks like an opportunity guys, go and develop this Civ playing AI, pitch it to Firaxis, or better yet build a different game using it. I'm sure it will be a big hit! I'll buy it.

The AI gets production bonuses because its the only real challenge that can be given to a human player (that is, other than a human player, I do wish they spent less on AI and more on fixing MP functionality).

At any rate, no comparison to chess is valid, chess is 100% mathematics and looking deeper into moves. This is the only reason its able to beat humans. Its not AI either, its just a superfast number cruncher with a vast memory of move strategies and the ability to play out many alternatives.


My only gripe about the AI has always been pure and simple cheating. Knowing a certain city is empty without the means in-game to do so for example. This could be easily hidden if they just opened up intelligence gathering to be more realistic or useful.

What is MP?
 
At any rate, no comparison to chess is valid, chess is 100% mathematics and looking deeper into moves. This is the only reason its able to beat humans. Its not AI either, its just a superfast number cruncher with a vast memory of move strategies and the ability to play out many alternatives.

In contradiction to what you say, it is valid to compare with Chess.

1) Chess is 100% logic, decision optimization, not mathematics.
2) All programming is 100% logic, especially in a board game, and Civ games are virtual board games. Given any action I do, there is a counteraction to do. The AI has the benefit of "knowing" all I do and thus can optimize its decisions based on that. That is AI, and that is 100% logic. It is a very valid comparison.

I give you that Chess is easier to optimize because of the pure size of the game board and the limited choices, but Civ Rev is nothing different, but for the size and options.
 
But couldn't the AI be programmed with different successful strategies despite the many options available? :(
 
But couldn't the AI be programmed with different successful strategies despite the many options available? :(

Yes!

2K/Firaxis is just plain lazy, and believe that console players will satisfy with less than PC players.
 
Yes!

2K/Firaxis is just plain lazy, and believe that console players will satisfy with less than PC players.

I couldn't agree more. I just bought the new Simcity Creator for the DS. Currently I'm 20 hours into my first game, and loving it. I think the CivRev single player could have been expanded to encompass larger maps and more Civs.

In my opinion this game is just too fast, and too simplified and lacking in options.
 
I couldn't agree more. I just bought the new Simcity Creator for the DS. Currently I'm 20 hours into my first game, and loving it. I think the CivRev single player could have been expanded to encompass larger maps and more Civs.

In my opinion this game is just too fast, and too simplified and lacking in options.

That's one of the reasons I enjoy the game. I can spend an afternoon playing a game of civ instead of a week with the other civ games.
 
That's one of the reasons I enjoy the game. I can spend an afternoon playing a game of civ instead of a week with the other civ games.

I can appreciate this. I myself was not a great fan of the Marathon game. I am referring more to the Standard map in Civ4.

Civ4 also has an option for tiny maps and limited number of Civs if thats what you desire. However it also has options for longer games. That's my beef with this game, you have no choices and limited options.
 
civ is not chess - because there is no random property in a game of chess. in chess, an attacking unit always takes the defensive unit - there is no chance of defense. since there is absolutely no aspect of chess that is not controlled by the players, it is nothing like civ.
 
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