BNW: AI just isn't right yet

/rant on

Ok I'm a newb and lurker but I've just finished several BNW starts and I'm just annoyed by the same old crap as always. These things do not destroy the game, rather they put a bad taste in my mouth that takes away the fun of playing the game.

Examples:

AI players build cities b-lined towards the player no matter how much room there is to expand in other directions.

Barbarian and AI Players avoid combat, but AI players who will be utterly ignored by the barbarians will be happy to loot defenseless or nearly defenses camps.

Barbarians avoid AI players property and troops walking past their cities to attack the player.

The reason for this is the AI sucks in so many other ways they need to do it.

Hopefully within the next twenty or so years they can make a decent and believable simulation that somewhat resembles realism.

BNW has a ton of new weird AI quirks (like no wars for the first 4000 years) different from other incarnations but the above seem to pretty standard in all of them. Making a game ever more complex does not necessarily make it better.



/rant off

Have a nice day guys

1upt

Well, its a lot harder to code than a moving a single unit stack in straight lines from one city to another.

I know I shouldn't answer post like this but

My question would be: Why do you buy the game. If you didn't like Civ 5 Vanilla, fine, bad purchase, but still you buy Civ 5 G&K, you find that, the worst game ever, and then you buy Civ 5 BNW and you still can't do anything but rant. Your rant is very much about the core game and the core game hasn't change.

Also most of the things you say isn't simply true, just pure

There is rant thread where people can rant, so all rant are in one place.

I've personally witnessed Japan go nuts on a series of Barbarian camps that I'd neglected due to a religious war with the Ottomans. Their trade routes either do get plunderd by them or they simply wont bother sending them through barb infested territory either, though I suspect that last more than I'm sure of it.


I've seen settlers be ignored, but normal troops are almost certainly engaged when they're spotted.

Going to have to disagree with a few points as some are simply wrong.

The AIs specifically sends out groups of units to clear barbarian camps, especially more so if they've been targeted by CSs with quests. I've also seen plenty of occasions where my Scout will explore other AIs capitals only to see half their improvements pillaged. AIs and barbarians definitely do not ignore one another. This should be especially noticable when you see barb camps stacked with captured workers and settlers.

Wars aren't as common as they used to be in G&K but that's because they were mostly brainless wars that just crippled other aspects of their play. Any civilization was basically guaranteed to attack anyone else who shared borders with them. It was completely unfun as you'd think: "Ok, I met Civ A and B within 3 turns of the game starting which means they're all going to DoW me sooner or later". BNW AI are a lot less psychotic. However, I've seen plenty of messages of wars and AIs losing capital before the Renaissance. It's not as common as in G&K but it certainly isn't to level that wars never happen. In my last 3 games there's always been one civ that was eliminated before I managed to meet them by the time I had caravels.

dragonalumni said:

AI players build cities b-lined towards the player no matter how much room there is to expand in other directions.

Click to expand...

This used to slightly bother me, until I realized that I (and most if not all human players) do this exact same thing. If there are good settlement positions between me and an AI, I sure as heck go to settle those first. It hurts the AI when I snag those spots, and I want to get the spot before it's taken from me. That's a valid strategy in my mind, and I can't blame the AI for doing it.

I don't think the AI always settles toward the player on every occasion - that's probably a bit of selection bias - but if that is the case, I do agree it shouldn't ALWAYS settle toward the player.

dragonalumni said:

Barbarian and AI Players avoid combat, but AI players who will be utterly ignored by the barbarians will be happy to loot defenseless or nearly defenses camps.

Barbarians avoid AI players property and troops walking past their cities to attack the player.

Click to expand...

If you're talking about Barbs avoiding AI civilian units, the devs have acknowledged that's a bug. There's likely a hotfix on the way already. If you have a save, though, which shows that happening, it would be helpful for you to post it.

All that stuff already happened in GK.

If you see a sweet spot to settle that you know your rival is going to want, why wouldn't you try to get it first?

Sounds like smart play to me.

I don't buy this theory that says the AI isn't being as aggressive because it is "playing smart". I've tried to provoke the AI while playing badly (no army, no walls, settling multiple cities the minimum distance from their capital, denouncing them, etc.) just to see if it would DoW and while sometimes it does, often it doesn't.

The AI is bad at the moment and needs to be patched ASAP.

It seems to manage its units as well or better than G&K though once you actually do get into a war. (Almost always by me DoWing them.) So their combat tactics AI seems adequate (it still needs a military advantage like in G&K) so I don't buy the "1upt" excuse either. It's the strategic AI that seems off.

Cymsdale said:

If you see a sweet spot to settle that you know your rival is going to want, why wouldn't you try to get it first?

Sounds like smart play to me.

Click to expand...

If it was in fact to "get a sweet spot" yes I would agree, but that is not usually the case. The simply build in your direction no matter what. Also I do not build towards the AI myself usually unless it's to shore up my borders or get a resource. This is not what the AI is doing though.

Bump the difficulty to Immortal/Diety and the AI WILL DoW you. A lot. There's one particular G&K LP from Light Cleric iirc with literally dozens of AI DoWs.

I've only played immortal difficulty since the expansion so far and have seen very little AI's DoWing me.

Fom my experiance it all depends on how powerfull you are. if your city is without any defence and just workers then the barbarians will attack it from all side's. also if you have a weaker unit (scout level 1-5) the barbarians will attack them if they are close enough. If you have a stronger unit then the barbarians wont attack you unless there are 3-4 groups of them and the unit is alone.

Same applies to other civs, if you have a weaker civ the ai will start to advance towards you and the city states around you. But if you have a strang presence then they are more likely to go the other way. But of course there are factors like luxery ressources and other civ's.

The only problem i have with the AI is that its very peacefull towards me. It wasnt a problem when i went for the cultural win, but now im want to be more aggresive by destroying most of the civ's that surround my territory. But i dont want the other leaders to see me as a warmonger so i want the other civ's to go to war with me.

And it's annoying that with the Zulu's when you hover over them in diplomacy youll see a whole red list of i denounced them,they denounced me,the want my terretory,the want my wonders.i asked them to stop spying the refused, i demanded stuff from them, im spreading my religion while they have there own etc. And yet they dont want to go to war against me.

Blazekingz said:

The only problem i have with the AI is that its very peacefull towards me. It wasnt a problem when i went for the cultural win, but now im want to be more aggresive by destroying most of the civ's that surround my territory. But i dont want the other leaders to see me as a warmonger so i want the other civ's to go to war with me.

And it's annoying that with the Zulu's when you hover over them in diplomacy youll see a whole red list of i denounced them,they denounced me,the want my terretory,the want my wonders.i asked them to stop spying the refused, i demanded stuff from them, im spreading my religion while they have there own etc. And yet they dont want to go to war against me.

Click to expand...

Er, so basically, you want to game the system to avoid a warmonger penalty, and you're upset it's not working so well? I don't even think the penalty for declaring war is that big anymore, it's more tied to taking cities. Unless you declare war on someone you DoF'd, of course.

Did you have a stronger military than the Zulus? I find the AI very unlikely to DoW someone stronger than them militarily, unless they can bring in an ally.

I've seen the ai not build cities right at me lately. It might be because they are expanding slower, but before they'd go out of their way. In my latest game Carthage and the Denmark were building right at each other (and I convinced them to fight pretty cheaply, like 1 gold per turn and a luxury.)

I've noticed the AI is less likely to declare war unless it can win. By that, I mean I've seen the AI basically dogpile me if I am doing too well. I usually get a double declaration of war after being labeled a warmonger and then a few turns later a third AI declares. The weirdest part was one of the rather late game wars (well it was industrial era), was how tenacious the ai was. Even after killing their capitols or capturing most of their cities, they continued to fight on. (Especially when I only had two enemy capitols left to capture.) Normally, after losing a city or two, they'd give up. So I've found the new resolve on the AI's part to be disheartening.

The other thing is the AI seems to be more careful about when attacking. In that same game, when they all declared, each one had a massive army. I was a run away civ by that point, basically eliminating 2 outright, crippling 3, and 2 were left alone. The 2 I hadn't finished off (I was rushing before they teched up) and the two that were left alone, all threw everything they had at me. Babylon nearly over powered my defenders and retook their capitol.

I was pretty impressed about how epic the battle had gone. I was burning cities left and right and my early artillery won the day, but it was a different experience than the glacial pace before. It makes me feel like the AI has gotten alot better what learning when to declare and when to build up for war.

Blazekingz said:

The only problem i have with the AI is that its very peacefull towards me. It wasnt a problem when i went for the cultural win, but now im want to be more aggresive by destroying most of the civ's that surround my territory. But i dont want the other leaders to see me as a warmonger so i want the other civ's to go to war with me.

Click to expand...

You're playing with G&K rules that is no longer true in BNW, warmongering points is from taking cities, not declaring war in BNW.

In my most memorable game, Greece and I started more or less next to each other. I roll my eyes, and go 'oh great, DoW'. And yes, Greece was very belligerent... and then Pachacuti settled a city (on a good city location) right next to both Greece and myself.

Greece declared war on the INCA within 10 turns and razed the city to the ground.

I then settled a city very near that point. Alexander then declared war on me. (Like, 2 turns or less.) Unfortunately for him, that war turned out very differently.