Anyone else think that AI has been toned down for the release?

Hello. No, I'm not a raving lunatic, please read on:


Sorry, I couldn't resist and I have to consult with you folks.

...Does anyone else reckon that the AI is mentally impaired in terms of warfare?

- Last night I've finished my first game in Civ5. King, Egyptians. Despite other AI declaring war on me, they were not even a slightiest problem, and I was building wonders, not units.
When Darius declared on me, he had bazillion of Immortals (that he could upgrade to Pikemen at least), despite having Crossbowmen and Catapults he never used them, prefering to move them around, and in couple of turns I've massacred his entire army (roughly 10 Immortals, 4 Crossbowmen, 3 Catapults and 3 Musketmen, despite having Horses he had NO mounted units) with sth like 2 Pikemen, 1 Canon, 2 Musketmen and 3 Knights. I mean ok, it's definitely doable, but except for one Pikemen unit I had no other losses!

I mean this is King, first game except for demo, and I clearly recall that I couldn't win Civ4 on Prince for quite a while. What gives?


In many preview builds we can read how challenging and smart Ai is, Azazell has lost several games due to crafty combat tactics of his opponents. Now he himself admits that there's something wrong with the final build, that with couple of Horsemen and one Spearmen he can smash the AI, where before it was unimaginable.

Also, lets not forget that the barbs as a threat are... Simply non existanstant. It's a free XP that wonders dazily around your city only to be sniped and killed, if it's lucky it'll manage to pillage your farm or mine. In 1950 barbarian encampments still had Brutes and Spearmen, where in preview builds we all saw screenshots of Barbarian Paratroopers etc.


All of the above hints me that to prevent cries of kiddy outrage on how "omg the game is stupid I can't win I want my money back" the AI has been deliberately toned down for the release, in order to let everyone win (like in this lame saying that you give to little kids that there are only winners, even if you're last on the run then you're a "last winner" ).

I understand that tactic - it draws more customers in. But it still leaves a bad distaste in my throat, since huge amount of Civ fans are adults, and are primarily looking for a challenge. That's not there.

Anyway, I'm off to play on Emperor, and you folks let me know whether it's plausible or the problem exist only in my head

I totally agree.
With few things from the honor-branch I can completly smash any cvilization in reach, because the Great General and the 15% from standing next to each other feel like cheating to the AI.
I have currently more problems keeping my empire happy than expanding it.

I think we have to wait and see.

I HOPE they did tone it down (either deliberately or by accident), because that means, it can easily be fixed by an early patch.

I mentioned a couple of days ago in a thread that I wouldn't be surprised if they have toned down the AI for the release so that new players can be competitive on higher levels.

I played my first full game yesterday and eradicated the three civilizations on my contintent using six units, not losing a single one of them, on the difficulty above the balanced difficulty. All they had was warriors and archers way into the AD's.

I consistently humiliate the AI with no more than 4-5 units on Emperor level. My score is higher than the next highest civ by like 300 points. This game is just so pathetic and broken on so many levels, and I don't mean just the AI. Simply a fail of a game, and I'm certain no one is going to play it a year from now.

InterAl said:

I consistently humiliate the AI with no more than 4-5 units on Emperor level. My score is higher than the next highest civ by like 300 points. This game is just so pathetic and broken on so many levels, and I don't mean just the AI. Simply a fail of a game, and I'm certain no one is going to play it a year from now.

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Wow, wow, wow, no raving and rumbling here, please do not derail the thread.

The game is great, but all I'm hoping for is fast improvement, like in the very first patch AI no longer gives away all its cities for peace etc.

...If Firaxis is so afraid of losing "challenge handicapped" players then why not release a mod like "Scary AI"? That way the name itself will stop kids from reaching for it, while others can finally get their arses kicked

Yeah of course I am also totally dominating the AI in all areas on the demographics screen. I have double or triple the AI on everything. In my first game ever, on the difficulty above balanced.

Azazell has lost several games due to crafty combat tactics of his opponents. Now he himself admits that there's something wrong with the final build

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could you plz link this? I'm more inclined to think they introduced some last-minute bug because reading some of the post on AI behavior in diplomacy it seems to behave absurdly strange occasionally, not merely stupid. Which would be great news!

Computer opponents have sucked at warfare in every single Civ game thus far. Microprose/Firaxis never managed to get a handle on combat and i don't blame them - it's probably the most difficult part of the "AI" to write.
I find it very unlikely that, after making warfare even more complex, they finally got around to writing a decent AI, and then deliberately crippled it.

aryah said:

could you plz link this? I'm more inclined to think they introduced some last-minute bug because reading some of the post on AI behavior in diplomacy it seems to behave absurdly strange occasionally, not merely stupid. Which would be great news!

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Enjoy, it's like 19-page thread in Polish, the first post is preview, so you might want to skip that

In there you can read how he was regularly losing with the AI on Prince, and at the end how surprised he is that in the final build there's no threat from the AI whatsoever and barbs are not a threat either.

Till said:

Computer opponents have sucked at warfare in every single Civ game thus far. Microprose/Firaxis never managed to get a handle on combat and i don't blame them - it's probably the most difficult part of the "AI" to write.
I find it very unlikely that, after making warfare even more complex, they finally got around to writing a decent AI, and then deliberately crippled it.

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All nice and fine, but like I said, in Civ4 (made years ago) or Civ3 there was no chance in hell that I'd easily win my very first game on King. I struggled with Prince for a while.

what I find odd, is the really huge difference in gameplay experience by some of the stories I read.

Some people have barbarians that never attack, some other report of really raging barbarians.

Some people report the AI doesnt use water for transportation, others report they got invaded by sea.

Some people get attacked by a huge numer of units, other win the game with 5 units.

Sometimes the AI builds only one city and just sits there, other times they conquer half the map (see the picture story thread from lemmy. China won the game with a huge lead)

So something is definately wrong.

MonorailCat said:

what I find odd, is the really huge difference in gameplay experience by some of the stories I read.
[..]
Sometimes the AI builds only one city and just sits there, other times they conquer half the map (see the picture story thread from lemmy. China won the game with a huge lead)

So something is definately wrong.

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On that note, in my game Darius did found several cities, but they were right next to my borders, and in the end the city had like 8 workable tiles, no fresh water, no resources. Another suicide tactic...

Guardian_PL said:

All nice and fine, but like I said, in Civ4 (made years ago) or Civ3 there was no chance in hell that I'd easily win my very first game on King. I struggled with Prince for a while.

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Yes, because earlier Civ games had primitive combat models that made it possible to beef up computer opponents by giving them lots of free units. With SODs gone, this crutch is a lot less effective. The new combat model also requires careful movement and positioning of units, something which the AI has never been good at.
It's not so much that the AI has become dumber, than that the game mechanics are no longer designed to hide its limitations.

This is all a bit off topic, however, since it doesn't deal with the question posed in the OT.

It's not that bad. Yes the AI is weak but it's only one or two fixes away from being good.

Generals are too good for the player, it's like free 25% bonus the AI never has. Citadels are too good at blocking for the player also right now. The AI is pretty bad with melee units.

The AI is decent with ranged units and cavalry I find. One or two tweaks and it'll be amazing.

The AI definitely has trouble with smart warfare. I just played a one-city challenge as the Greeks. Because of unit support costs, it's hard to have many units with just one city in the late game, since I had so many high maintenance happyness/culture buildings. Anyway, the Egyptians literally conquered the entire world (Pangea) except me and one city state -- it would have qualified as a domination victory I imagine, except I guess the AI can't win that way? Anyway I knew the way he was acting, I was eventually going to be attacked. I had a very fortunate start location, on a strip of land between the ocean and a huge inland sea, and on the side facing Egypt was a string of mountiains -- the only over-land routes to Athens went through a pair of two-hex gaps of hills between the mountains, and by the time he attacked, I had built citadels on all four of those hills, and all four were manned with mechanized infantry, and each pair had a single artillery behind them, as well as a third artillery in the middle right behind the mountains.

It was an extremely defendable position, but given that he had the entire planet except me to build units, it would only be a matter of time before he could get through. But for some reason he never hit me as hard as I knew he could have. He hit with helicopter gunships, mechanized infantry and anti-tank guns. I KNOW he had modern armor, rocket artillery and all that. I spent like 30-40 turns slaughtering dozens and dozens of units the approached the citadels, mostly with the three artillery pieces (which ended up being FULLY promoted eventually, +1 range, two shots per turn, all the strength bonuses).

Eventually the units slowly stopped coming. Also for some reason he would place anti-aircraft and mobile-SAM units on the border (I had no aircraft -- no oil, uranium or aluminium) which were easy picking for the artillery.

Held on long enough for a cultural victory.

One other thing I noticed is that in a one-city challenge, obviously you cannot occupy or even puppetize other cities, so if you capture them they are instantly destroyed -- unfortunately this also includes occupied city-states. Egypt occupied two maratime city-states that were right next to me, and after throwing back his inital attack I pushed back into his territory intent on liberating them, but there was no option for that, they were just destroyed.

Favorite combat AI moment:

Prince difficulty. China only has one city left. A tiny, worthless puppet city (why was she keeping her only city as a puppet?) with no units at all. Its back is to the ocean, but other than that, there's just open space with no chokepoints. The Ottomans, who wiped out the rest of China's cities, move in for the final blow.

The Ottomans park a spearman 2 tiles away from the city, with an out of range archer right behind. The rest of his army is dicking around 3-4 tiles away from them for no particular reason.

He just sits there and slowly, slowly, SLOWLY loses his spearman to the city's ranged defenses. None of his units actually ever attack. Once the spearman dies, he replaces it with another and continues to do the exact same thing. This goes on for 30+ turns before he finally wins somehow (I had long since stopped watching).

The tactical genius behind that maneuver needs a raise.

Guardian_PL said:

Enjoy, it's like 19-page thread in Polish, the first post is preview, so you might want to skip that

In there you can read how he was regularly losing with the AI on Prince, and at the end how surprised he is that in the final build there's no threat from the AI whatsoever and barbs are not a threat either.

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hm, I couldn't find it there, but this seems like a thread where the same guy is apparently absolutely shocked how 1.0.0.x AI is so terribly worse than his preview 0.3.x.x

http://forums.civ.org.pl/viewtopic.php?TopicID=8365&page=1

in google translate's emulation of english:



but is he saying later on that he is trying to port AI files from 0.3.xx to final build:

"Na razie wpakowałem pliki AI do nowej wersji "tej finalnej" obadam ale sam nie wiem czy te pliki stykną.

Kto jest chętny do testów? "

I would imagine this cannot be legal, right?
...

If google translate + noticing a few words similar to my language was enough to grasp this, he was quite insistent in the review that the AI was a significant improvement, though not brilliant of course; still competent.
...

Its quite interesting, wish some of the people who had the preview versions would comment here about these contrasts.

aryah said:

...hm, I couldn't find it there, but this seems like a thread
If google translate + noticing a few words similar to my language was enough to grasp this, he was quite insistent in the review that the AI was a significant improvement, though not brilliant of course; still competent.
...

Its quite interesting, wish some of the people who had the preview versions would comment here about these contrasts.

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It would be really weird if that was true.

when do u guys think the first patch comes out? Not much fun playing if the AI just sticks to 2/4 citys the whole game. Hiawatha just wanders around in my territory with his settler in immortal difficulty. After 100 turns or so he finally settles somewhere. This is even worse than not losing a single unit in combat.

@aryah
From quick check in that thread:
"

Azazell wrote:
I kolejna porażka .. Nie mogę coś przyzwyczaić się do nowego systemu w Civ 5 I ciągle gram bardziej pokojowo, czyli do takiego stylu jaki przyzwyczaił mnie Civka 4. Grecy mnie zaatakowali i ostro zdobywali moje miasta . Irokezi również zaatakowali mnie, bo widzieli że warto zdobyć moje dwa miasta blisko ich terenów, gdy moje wojska ostro walczą z Grekami .

Komputer bardzo mądrze atakuje. Starannie używa trebuszety i działa. Jeśli mam jednostkę konną to atakują mnie wpierw tymi dystansowymi jednostkami a dobija pikinierami i innymi jednostkami, które walcza bronią białą.)

1520AD: Moja Civka kaput. Pozostało 5 civek czy tam 4

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"
Translation:

And yet another failure I can't get used to new mechanics in Civ And I still play more peacefully - in the style Civ4 taught me. Greeks attacked me and steadily were taking my cities Then Iroquis joined in, because they noticed how easy it would be to conquer two of my cities lying close to their borders, while all my forces were busy dealing with the Greeks

AI is attacking very wisely. Meticulously using trebuchets and cannons. If I have a knight or a cavalry it uses those ranged units first and then finishes off with Pikemen or other melee combatants.

1520AD - my civilization kaput. There's 5 more civs remaining or 4

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That was his preview build, and as you've found he's not having same fun with the final build.

It just feels wrong to me, that despite preordering and waiting for so long now I have to wait again a year or two before the AI will be challenging

But hey, the only consolation is that if it's too easy, I can always go on Deity - that should keep me going for a while