AI intelligence, is it better?

[jellysd]

I haven't played the game since it came out, due to the AI's intelligence (or lack thereof), and I'm just wondering what people think of the AI now. What especially bothered me were the workers, and how they constantly built trading post! Gahhhhhhhhhhhhhh, haha. Anyhow, any input would be nice, as I'm thinking of playing again.

[Zdarg]

Civ AI keeps being on the exactly same level of stupidity for twenty years, why anybody would expect this to change suddenly?

[premier69]

Naive hope in humanity?

But in all seriousness, is it really that hard to program some AI or is it laziness? Is this issue in any likelihood due to change anytime soon?

[bryanw1995]

ai is much better post-patch. ai no longer suicides his musketman against your hill-fortified with 3 blitz promo rifleman. ai no longer uses his ranged units to get a paltry flanking bonus for his attack against your one exposed unit. ai now correctly concentrates ranged fire on a single attacking enemy unit rather than splitting it up amongst 3-4 units and causing little to no damage. it's nowhere close to perfect, I still (rarely) see siege units unescorted moving into my territory, but it's enormously better than it was pre-patch.

btw, tp spam is quite possibly the best plan for humans as well as an ai. maybe not quite as much post-maritime nerf but still generally quite effective at turbocharging your economy.

[kattana]

they have at least added the option to prevent workers overriding existing improvements

[cman2010]

I have not played since the last big patch( I think it came out mid december) as far as worker improvments I dont know but the diplo improvements seemed to dumb the ai down even more.

[elthrasher]

Originally Posted by bryanw1995

ai is much better post-patch. ai no longer suicides his musketman against your hill-fortified with 3 blitz promo rifleman. ai no longer uses his ranged units to get a paltry flanking bonus for his attack against your one exposed unit. ai now correctly concentrates ranged fire on a single attacking enemy unit rather than splitting it up amongst 3-4 units and causing little to no damage. it's nowhere close to perfect, I still (rarely) see siege units unescorted moving into my territory, but it's enormously better than it was pre-patch.

btw, tp spam is quite possibly the best plan for humans as well as an ai. maybe not quite as much post-maritime nerf but still generally quite effective at turbocharging your economy.

Agreed on both counts. However just because the AI is improved doesn't mean it is good. It's easy to game the system. Now the AI will focus fire on my weakest unit, so when I go to war I bring along some garbage unit (maybe a spearman with my longswords, for example). Garbage unit takes a few for the team and I win the war. You couldn't do this before when the AI was basically firing randomly.

Well, it's probably still an improvement.

[wurstburst]

It's better at war tactics, but still not good at it. The focus firing is a huge improvement and you'll lose units now, where pre-patch you could go a long time without losing a single unit. The AI is also a bit more patient and won't throw units into your fortified units as often (although they do sometimes, still).

But even when it has a pretty good tech lead and more/stronger military, the AI still loses a lot of the time to a good human player.

The AI still doesn't know how to bring in a massive force, backed up by seige units to take a city.

It also still doesn't use massive reserves of cash to rush buy units (playing a game now where I'm in a long war with a runaway civ - I have the military edge now by about 2-1 in strength - the civ is sitting on over 45,000 gold and could buy enough units/nukes to overrun my entire army - but they don't). I also think they don't always use their cash to upgrade units.

[cman2010]

Originally Posted by wurstburst

It's better at war tactics, but still not good at it. The focus firing is a huge improvement and you'll lose units now, where pre-patch you could go a long time without losing a single unit. The AI is also a bit more patient and won't throw units into your fortified units as often (although they do sometimes, still).

But even when it has a pretty good tech lead and more/stronger military, the AI still loses a lot of the time to a good human player.

The AI still doesn't know how to bring in a massive force, backed up by seige units to take a city.

It also still doesn't use massive reserves of cash to rush buy units (playing a game now where I'm in a long war with a runaway civ - I have the military edge now by about 2-1 in strength - the civ is sitting on over 45,000 gold and could buy enough units/nukes to overrun my entire army - but they don't). I also think they don't always use their cash to upgrade units.

Thats one of the things that has needed to be fixed since day one I have been in several games where I was slightly ahead of the ai but the ai still could have put up a decent fight if they had simply bothered to upgrade there units but no they still had knights running around with rifles, and inflatry, and yes the ai was siting on plently of gold.

[Zdarg]

Originally Posted by premier69

But in all seriousness, is it really that hard to program some AI or is it laziness?

I am a programmer myself. Believe me, it's really hard.
In fact, you are unable at all to program anything deserving a name "intelligence" - at best, you can write some code which does what you want it to do.
Well, try to write step-by-step what you want "AI" to do. Not general "I want it to fight well", but concrete directions for each and every different combat situation "AI" might need to deal with.

[Zechnophobe]

Originally Posted by jellysd

I haven't played the game since it came out, due to the AI's intelligence (or lack thereof), and I'm just wondering what people think of the AI now. What especially bothered me were the workers, and how they constantly built trading post! Gahhhhhhhhhhhhhh, haha. Anyhow, any input would be nice, as I'm thinking of playing again.

AI Intelligence? Man, you are KILLING me over here. Try typing that out, but without acronyming AI.

[cman2010]

Originally Posted by Zdarg

I am a programmer myself. Believe me, it's really hard.
In fact, you are unable at all to program anything deserving a name "intelligence" - at best, you can write some code which does what you want it to do.
Well, try to write step-by-step what you want "AI" to do. Not general "I want it to fight well", but concrete directions for each and every different combat situation "AI" might need to deal with.

so when you program it just sets a list of prioritys ex

1. closest unit
2. unit with vularbilitys ex unit you get a bonus aginst or is at a dissadvatage due to terain
3. unit that is damaged

ext

I as because this seems to be what your saying and seems like a paid team could pull off a good ai and I have seen good ai in some games.

[JBConquests]

Originally Posted by Zdarg

I am a programmer myself. Believe me, it's really hard.
In fact, you are unable at all to program anything deserving a name "intelligence" - at best, you can write some code which does what you want it to do.
Well, try to write step-by-step what you want "AI" to do. Not general "I want it to fight well", but concrete directions for each and every different combat situation "AI" might need to deal with.

Being a programmer I completely agree. I will just add that you can't just get any programmer off the street to do this. They need a really bright, talented, experienced programmer to write a "decent" AI.

Having written AI once for a monopoly game (nothing that was sold) which is considerably simpler than Civ, I will also say it takes allot of time.

[Zdarg]

Originally Posted by cman2010

so when you program it just sets a list of prioritys ex

Generally yes. But in order to make it good, you need a list of 1000 points, not 3.

I have seen good ai in some games.

:shrug: I haven't.
In fact, I even haven't seen any decent AI for a bridge game, which is definitely much more shallow than any computer strategy.

[cman2010]

thanks for your quick response, I can see how it would be alot of work to put together a great ai, and also see why the human will always outclass the ai.

[jacyp]

Originally Posted by Zdarg

:shrug: I haven't.
In fact, I even haven't seen any decent AI for a bridge game, which is definitely much more shallow than any computer strategy.

Then go play Galactic Civilizations 2. The first surprise you'll have is that you can chose the AI's level of complexity, not the amount of cheating it receives.

Yes, the incompetent AI of Civilization 5 is a matter of incompetence of the programmers. If it were only a matter of simplistic AI, waiting between turns wouldn't be so long.

[Aristos]

Originally Posted by jacyp

Then go play Galactic Civilizations 2. The first surprise you'll have is that you can chose the AI's level of complexity, not the amount of cheating it receives.

Yes, the incompetent AI of Civilization 5 is a matter of incompetence of the programmers. If it were only a matter of simplistic AI, waiting between turns wouldn't be so long.

This. Meu irmao brasileiro is right on spot...

[Busta400]

Originally Posted by cman2010

Thats one of the things that has needed to be fixed since day one I have been in several games where I was slightly ahead of the ai but the ai still could have put up a decent fight if they had simply bothered to upgrade there units but no they still had knights running around with rifles, and inflatry, and yes the ai was siting on plently of gold.

not so sure about that. Last game I played, eygpt spent 30k in one turn to upgrade all of it's units.

[JBConquests]

Originally Posted by jacyp

Then go play Galactic Civilizations 2. The first surprise you'll have is that you can chose the AI's level of complexity, not the amount of cheating it receives.

Yes, the incompetent AI of Civilization 5 is a matter of incompetence of the programmers. If it were only a matter of simplistic AI, waiting between turns wouldn't be so long.

The other possible cause of incompetent AI could be management not giving the programmer enough time to make a decent AI. Obviously I don't know if this is the case or not.

Did I hear that some of the programmers were laid off at Firaxis? I don't remember. If so then it could be incompetent programmers.

[cman2010]

Originally Posted by Busta400

not so sure about that. Last game I played, eygpt spent 30k in one turn to upgrade all of it's units.

thats great if they worked that out I have only played one game since the big patch at the begining of december.