Trias
Donkey with three behinds
- Joined
- Oct 1, 2008
- Messages
- 594
This is not as much a problem with the civ5 AI, but with the general game design of the civilization series. The rational thing to do in civilization games is to be a bastard. There is very little incentive to cooperate with other players, and even less incentive to be loyal about it.I just wish there was hope that one day we could have meaningful relations with other civs. I understand the argument that the cIV diplomacy was easily gamed, yet I don't feel like the inherently hostile CiV diplomacy has made the game better.
The root of this issue lies with the "winner takes all" victory conditions. If you do not win the game, you lose. Consequently, it is hardly ever rational to be friendly to the players on the leaderboard. Since the human player is typically on top of the leaderboard (or near), there is typically no rational reason for the AI to be friendly to the human player.
Previous, incarnations of the civ series got around this by having the AI base its diplomatic decisions on some arbitrary set of conditions that had nothing to do with its actual interests. Consequently, diplomacy ended up being just a way for the human to get a leg up on the AI.
In civ5 they decided to let the AI make its decisions based on its best estimate of its best interests. I think this is, in principle, is step in the right direction. The problem with it is that it exposes the more fundamental problem with the overall game design. The next step, should be to address that issue. This would require some fundamental changes in what the goals of the game are.
On the whole, people sure don't seem to be having a hard time beating CiV in spite of the "human/mp-style" AI's, but a lot of people miss real alliances and psychologically stable (if easily befriended) partners in diplomacy. Seems just as "gameable" as cIV diplomacy.[/QUOTE]