Civ5- A Whole New Civ
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Naokaukodem
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Even when this is pretty impossible to know without R-E?
You should not have to learn a game. It should be playable since the start with all advantages. Only your strategy making the difference.
Not exactly. I will give you an example. (simple one) AIs never rush you early, so you know what to expect from them early. That is not a human behavior, and then is exploitable.
The "good sense" expression means precisely what is shared by everybody. And you keep not understanding what I mean, despite all my efforts, using random arguments that popped in your head occasionnally, only to contradict me?
Please, next time, quote the whole reasonment and not just what suits your logic of bare contradiction.
I talked about a thing seen in Strategy and Tips forum. That was not for the dogs. Do you call logical the fact that demanding something to the AI will stop it to vassalize your enemies in your own place? No, that's not logical, there no link between the two things. That, is not logical and is not integrated to good sense.
Please, take care of the whole sentences next time and quote them appropriately.
Naokaukodem
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I don't want it to be predictable and uniform. The AI is still predictable and uniform, but needs some outside game work, because it is not logical. Stopping vassalizing civs because we asked it something, is it logical? NO. It's not about making it more predictable and uniform, but very much more logical, so one can play decently in more difficult levels. (the creators of the game rely too much on exploits and AI "tricks" to design the more difficult levels)
You're the only one asserting that this is the case. This says to me that you may be msitaking your own limitations and preferences as a player for things inherent to the game.
You do expect to have to learn a strategy based on experience, yes ?
So then, in Civ 5, give some of the AIs a strategic preference for early rushes.
That would be why all human beings agree politically and we live in a perfect uniform world that has not changed therough history at all, then ?
Please point at some example of what you think is "shared by everybody" that is relevant to the issue in question.
If you build an argument on a fallacy, and I can counter the fallacy, the rest of the argument is pointless to engage with.
So you raise one specific, self-evident example of poor AI programming. Why do you think this is not relevant to my point about what patterns should be learnable in Civ 5 ?
Gooblah
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Damn, I'm coming late to the party. My suggestions have probably been stated, so here goes:
My Civ experience has been two hours of Civ III with a zealous friend and at least 2,000 hours of Civ IV. To me, Civ IV represents the best strategy game I have ever played - it has replayability, infinite strategies, diversity ... the list goes on. However, there are a few ways it could be improved.
1) The ability to take advantage of multi-core processors. This alone would make Civ 5 far superior to Civ 4. Considering that most new computers (IME) are bringing multi-core processors in order to cope with increasing demand for processor speed, this would thrust Civilization into the next era of gaming.
2) Revamped map layout. Elevation should actually matter (there are numerous threads on the subject, so I won't digress); rivers should become navigable, etc.
3) Multiple maps. I don't mean Fractal, Continents, etc. I mean a commented-out section of code or something in a GlobalDefines.xml style that would allow mod-makers to create games that held multiple maps for the player to interact with in one savefile. For example, FFH could have Erebus, Earth, and Heaven - mods focused on specific battles or wars could have maps that ranged from different theatres to different worlds. There are endless possibilities here.
4) Modding support similar to that of Civ4. Here I mean the same XML, Python, and C++ layout. Perhaps a bit more code in the SDK.
5) More than 18 Civ Support. 18 Civs made sense in Vanilla Civ4 when 18 was the number of Civs. IMO, Firaxis shouldn't have left it to the modding community to make maps capable of playing with all 31 BTS Civs. Really, just expand the max number of Civs depending on the amount of Civs available with each expansion.
6) Improved AI. Again, this is a slightly different take. I'm perfectly comfortable with extra production and research boosts to higher-level AIs, since it would be difficult (IMO) to make each level have its own AI with its own rules. Hidden modifiers should be made visible to the player - or else deleted when it comes to interaction with the human. The AI should have specific rules about dealing with the human - which could easily be extended to AI-AI interaction. For example: "Hmm, the human has had a major power surge, and am within his power projection capabilities - perhaps I should form alliances to defend myself." instead of "Hmm, the human has had a power surge. I haven't declared war on him, have been peaceful, have built every wonder, founded every religion, and have no military. I should be safe."
Hail
Satan's minion
i agree that game mechanics should be logical and intuitive.
hmm... if it was no so, then we would have to tackle the "lost from turn 1" issue. there would have been "spawns" where the player would just loose. that would have caused frustration among civ players. this is why ai does not rush.
it is no so. "good sense" is individual.
agree
i find such statements insulting. yes? maybe discuss the topic not the people involved? yes? i may be opening your eyes, but there are people you inherently disagree with you and there is nothing you can do to convince them.
yes
no, for the reason mentioned above.
we do!
the second part about ai adaptability i agree about. ai should be able to adapt [in game]. as for the first part, it's not that simple.
So long as, and only so long as, those of us who absolutely can't afford a cutting-edge computer can still play and enjoy it on our own older machines.
I am very strongly in support of this notion; kind of neutral on your other suggestions though.
I'm all for logical, but "intuitive" is never going to happen.
There are people who find Windows intuitive; there are people who find it unusable because of how counter-intuitive it is.
There are people who find it more intuitive to be able to see most things from the main map. There are people who find it more intuitive not to clutter up the main map with junk but to access most details at the city and advisor level. Neither of these are inherently wrong - I very much favour the second myself - but which of them works better at conveying information will be different from one player to another.
Insulting was not the objective at all, and I am sorry if it read that way.
There is, I think, a subtle difference between me trying to convince Naokaukodem that he's wrong and I am right, on one hand, me being poersonally nasty to Nao, on the other hand (which I was not trying to do and hope I did not come across as), and, on this prehensile tail over here, the point I was actually trying to make, which is that Naokaukodem has been coming across here as assuming that "good sense" and "organic" and suchlike qualities of the game are equally obvious to everyone.
Trying to answer that is neither about disagreeing with Nao's personal opinions, nor about any personal animus to Nao, but about suggesting that Nao be a bit clearer in distinguishing personal opinion from "this is a universal truth", in the interests of making the discussion clearer.
I am completely not seeing where it is that the line supposedly goes between "you have to learn strategy" and "you have to become familiar with the AI players to learn their strategic strengths and weaknesses", then. The second seems to me an entirely contained subset of the first.
I agree that Civ4 is the best strategy game I've ever played (and I've played a lot of them going all the way back to the 1980s). For me the key points about a Civ5 are quite general:
(a) do not increase the micromanagement; if anything, decrease it. Increasing it any from Civ4's level would kill the game for me, and I suspect for many others who want strategy gaming not mouseclicking contests.
(b) design the game with multiplayer play first in mind (yes I'm firmly on that side of that endless debate). Meaning that all decisions about things like pace/scale/mechanics/interface should be first grounded in what works best for multiplayer play. I'm frankly indifferent to the AI, it's just a practice tool for the actually interesting gaming which is against other human beings.
(c) I'll echo the interest expressed here for deepening the terrain side of the game. Elevation should actually matter, rivers become navigable, it should be possible to alter the terrain such as sending out engineers to blow new passes through mountains, etc.
(d) don't make the game _inherently_ longer or shorter -- rather make it have decent pacing and balance at _both_ the "90-minute bloodbath" and "6-hour grand strategy" scales. (I know, easy to ask for but hard to actually design and program....this is a wish list, no question.)
(e) this is my biggie: finish the job of making drop-in action in MP really practical and fun for all concerned. Civ4 took a big step in this direction but it ain't soup yet. Figure out how we can have big long online games which players can drop into and start new civs in [not take over from an AI but rather start a new civ] with some plausible chance of being a factor despite their late start, AND players can drop out without ruining the game for everyone else, AND without compromising Civ's complexity and richness, AND....well yea, this would be hard. If it was easy some game designer would have done it by now, so again, wish list. But oh man wouldn't that be a blast!
One more thing: I could not possibly disagree more with the poster above who wanted Civ5 to have no unique units or buildings, that is, all civs play exactly the same. Yikes what a terrible idea! One of the (many) terrific things about Civ4 compared to so many other strategy titles is that it found IMHO just the sweet spot between consistency and variety in terms of how the different civs (or in other games, races or whatever) play. It's a real strength for replayability and one which the Civ designers would be quite foolish to throw away.
(a) do not increase the micromanagement; if anything, decrease it. Increasing it any from Civ4's level would kill the game for me, and I suspect for many others who want strategy gaming not mouseclicking contests.
(b) design the game with multiplayer play first in mind (yes I'm firmly on that side of that endless debate). Meaning that all decisions about things like pace/scale/mechanics/interface should be first grounded in what works best for multiplayer play. I'm frankly indifferent to the AI, it's just a practice tool for the actually interesting gaming which is against other human beings.
(c) I'll echo the interest expressed here for deepening the terrain side of the game. Elevation should actually matter, rivers become navigable, it should be possible to alter the terrain such as sending out engineers to blow new passes through mountains, etc.
(d) don't make the game _inherently_ longer or shorter -- rather make it have decent pacing and balance at _both_ the "90-minute bloodbath" and "6-hour grand strategy" scales. (I know, easy to ask for but hard to actually design and program....this is a wish list, no question.)
(e) this is my biggie: finish the job of making drop-in action in MP really practical and fun for all concerned. Civ4 took a big step in this direction but it ain't soup yet. Figure out how we can have big long online games which players can drop into and start new civs in [not take over from an AI but rather start a new civ] with some plausible chance of being a factor despite their late start, AND players can drop out without ruining the game for everyone else, AND without compromising Civ's complexity and richness, AND....well yea, this would be hard. If it was easy some game designer would have done it by now, so again, wish list. But oh man wouldn't that be a blast!
One more thing: I could not possibly disagree more with the poster above who wanted Civ5 to have no unique units or buildings, that is, all civs play exactly the same. Yikes what a terrible idea! One of the (many) terrific things about Civ4 compared to so many other strategy titles is that it found IMHO just the sweet spot between consistency and variety in terms of how the different civs (or in other games, races or whatever) play. It's a real strength for replayability and one which the Civ designers would be quite foolish to throw away.
Naokaukodem
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I'm just killing myself to explain how unlogical and uninstinctive those patterns are...
Not if the experience is to deal with "the AI makes weird associations" or the like.
Based on experience of the game mechanics, yes, based on the AI random, unlogical, and unintuitive behavior, NO!
LOL, that was only an example among others, to show how the AI does not play to win, but to simulate a civilisation which is by no means linked with the game objectives. Another of it would be that the AI vote for others for the U.N. victory. I personnally never vote, always abstain.
To not kill people is pretty much a good sense thing. Although, some people are denuded of good sense and will kill people however. It's not about good sense changing from people to people, it's about the quantity of good sense differs from one person to another. About politics, it's not good sense but opinions. But we are not giong to start a philosophical debate here, this is not the point.
That was not an argument, but a conclusion. WHERE THE FALLACY IN THAT:
Naokaukodem said:
??? Only your philosophical wincing about "good sense". That's sure, if you do not consider the example, you are far from understanding the sense of the conclusion. I was talking about the AI stopping to vassalize if you demand it something trivial... do you call it good sense? Is it a fallacy??? So, now I can't anymore ues the expression "good sense" because that means nothing, thank you rysmiel! And now, you do not understand why stopping vassalizing AIs when demanding something trivial is all but nothing like good sense? Come on,n what don't you understand in that, is that "good sense" that burned you eyes?
Thanks to you GOOD SENSE my lord!!!!!!
What? What is your point now?
Missed this one, and I think there's an important point here.
Naokaukodem points out that the AI are predictable in not doing early rushes; you say early rushes have the potential to be frustrating.
I think the game has the potential to handle both, very simply.
Give some AIs a preference for early rushes and others not. So that if, for example, you find being rushed early frustrating and no fun, you just exclude Shaka and Hannibal (or whoever) from the range of AIs you may find yourself facing. If you find the chance of being rushed early an interesting strategic challeneg, you leave Shaka and Hannibal in.
This seems to me to better address a wider range of player notions of what's actually fun.
I'm just killing myself to explain how unlogical and uninstinctive those patterns are...
Because you appear to be the only person here to whom they are, in general, not logical nor instinctive.
moscaverde posted a few posts ago saying that they find the AI patterns and personalities in Civ 4 intuitive. Argetnyx finds figuring this out intuitive as a concept, and so do I myself.
Different people think in different ways.
I'm happy for the game to make logical sense as best it can to as many people as possible, but when you start taking about what's instinctive and intuitive to you, you are not talking about a standard everyone else understands.
It would be easier to engage with your ideas if it were easier to understand them, and when you say "organic" or "good sense" in the context of the game, that is not comprehensible, because it is very visible from this thread alone that "good sense" means different things to different people.
The arguments that could arise from that are endless and irrelevant.
Can you, in the interests of better communication, suggest an example of what you wopuld mean by "good sense" in the context of game design ?
The fallacy here seems to be that you treat some things as obvious, and make arguments based on them, without establishing what on earth they are in the first place.
No. I don't understand why one example ofa specific thing the AI does being illogical is some sort of good argument for the pattern of AIs in the entire rest of the game being illogical/
What? What is your point now?
The point, that I was trying to make before we got distracted, is the following:
This is a thread about a whole new model for Civ 5. One thing I would like to see as such a model is UUs, UBs and traits gone and distinct AI personalities replacing them.
Here is an example of how I would like that to work - the sort of things I consider intuitive and good sense, though i'm not claiming anyone else should;
Suppose it is the modern age, and you and one other civilisation are sharing a reasonably-sized continent and you both have reasonably large empires.
Suppose that in that situation, if your opponent is Mao Tse-Tung, his preferred strategy will be to build large numbers of infantry, and slowly overwhelm you with numbers.
Suppose that in that situation, if your opponent is Bismarck, his preferred strategy will be to make swift decisive attacks on key parts of your empire with mobile hard-hitting tank units.
Suppose that in that situation if your opponent is Hammurabi, his preferred strategy will be to smile and nod and mantain friendly trading relations, race for the spaceship, and hit you with a rain of nukes if it becomes a close race.
Suppose that the game balance is such that each of these strategies can win, each of these strategies can be defeated, but doing so takes different reactions and strategic thought from the human player in each case.
That strikes me as an interesting game with interesting challenges which one could readily learn about from playing against particular opponents and learning their reactions.
Well, I'm vehemently opposed to both those points; I'm a builder, micromanagement is fun, and other human beings are boring because all they want to do is make war.
I do however want to make the point that if you think six hours is "grand strategy", you're entirely misreading the scale of some of the players here.
Six hours is not grand strategy. Sixty hours is a minimum for a game I'd consider grand strategy to play out in.
No, it's not.
My point is that unique units and buildings are a cheap and shallow way of giving the appearance of variety, and that if the AI civs play sufficiently distinctly differently, there's a great deal more range for difference there than UUs and UBs allow.
Gooblah
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That could easily be arranged by improving the Automation Ais and allowing humans to customize a bit - for example, a UI that includes various options for Automated Workers (not just "leave old improvements' and 'leave forests') or non-spontaneous Spy Specialist assignment, etc. That would also leave room for the crazy micromanagers who like that kind of stuff.
From a purely economic POV, I think the single player side will end up winning (no offense), but I agree that multiplayer could use some work. Right now, it's just so...slow.
I think this could be achieved if players had options to, say, limit tech advancement, or if Firaxis improved the Advanced Start AI, to some degree.
Completely agree.
Naokaukodem
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You admitted yourself that the fact that the AI to stop vassalizing when demanded something is illogical. So no, I'm not the only person who find those things illogical and uninstinctive. This is of this kind of things I am talking about, and nothing else.
In general, the AI behavior is illogical and uninstinctive. And we, poor players, have to treat with it in order to win the game in higher difficulty levels. That's what I blame, nothing else.
No need to find other examples, as it is not difficult to admit that the AI, by its very own operation, is not like humans and act somedays illogically.
That's not a complain against poor AI, because I know it can't be bypassed nowadays, but a complain against the fact that this AI operation is to be found before we can win the highest difficulty levels.
I wouldn't say for the simpliest operation parts, like it was in Civ, Civ2 and Civ3, but for the tougher parts it is just not tolerable by the majority of the players that want to win the game by themselves without seeing what happens in forums.
No it's not irrelevent, as I prooved you that good sense existed, now you have to admit that it exists anywhere, I have not to tell you where to find it in the game.
I put an example in order to you to understand what I'm talking about... and you call that fallacy? What's wrong with you...
Oh because you honestly think this is the only example? Come on, stop being so naive. You are of bad faith I never seen that before.
Isn't that already the case in Civ4, more or less? Of course, AI reactions adapt to the game, because it would not be possible to determine any reaction for any context by advance, the less by civ.
I won a Civ4 Emperor game lately when I was conquering the AIs, and the last and larger one, I don't remember which one, was researching the Infantry tech. The thing is, that I had Riflemen, trebuchets and cannons, and it had still Longbows and Muskets, because it skipped the Rifling tech... this fact allowed me to conquer it easily, when if it had search for Rifling, I could have never conquer it, or a lot more hardly.
That was I think due to the AI personnality that prefered out tech their enemies, even if this is a bit risky. That never happened to me anymore, and I think this is a very special effect of AI personnalities. But not all AIs are foulish that way, that's why it stays difficult to win in Emperor. It may be due also to the rough developpement of the game, this AI being pretty far from me at the start of the game. All in all this victory was not intended, I didn't really counted the AI to act like it did. I just rushed it, and then out-took it, but the funny thing was that it didn't change its teching when invaded. That's yet another example of invariable AI weaknesses to be exploited, but NOT in order to achieve high level difficulty, that I wouldn't like.
techathon
Member
I have my polls in my sig if you want to vote on civ5 ideas, and I can use all the help with polls I can get. The reason I don't go through here is I don't have time to read all of the arguing that goes on....
On this (@rysmiel). Unique AI personalities are already in the game. UUs, UBs and traits may limit the scope of your strategy (or direct it; you don't have to use the tools at your disposal) as a particular leader, put they broaden the scope of your strategy throughout the course of several games as different leaders.
techathon
Member
In my opinion there should be more UUs than one. It helps the stratigy, for example, if you are being attacked by Rome, in the iron age you know they will use more of their UU that replaces swordsman, so you build more axemen to combat that. Same goes with byristine and their UU, you build more pikemen. More UUs would help strategy a little more.
I also think they should change the beginning to something more like the stone age mod where you start as nomads. In real life, people would have taken a while to settle down as nomads, so why not put that in the game...
I also think they should change the beginning to something more like the stone age mod where you start as nomads. In real life, people would have taken a while to settle down as nomads, so why not put that in the game...
How does "you have this one UU and that's it" improve the variety of the game compared to "here are 30 more units that anyone can have if they develop the appropriate tech" ?
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