Ed Beach's quote / future expansions

[Aaron90495]

T think everybody agrees there, but it's not going to happen anytime soon, because it is just not technically possible yet.

The only way would be to add scripted behaviors for the AI, making it more consistent but also far more abusable...

This. I too want better AI, like everyone else, but some don't realize the sheer difficulty of making a competent AI, especially in a complex game like Civ.

 

[JtW]

This. I too want better AI, like everyone else, but some don't realize the sheer difficulty of making a competent AI, especially in a complex game like Civ.

Exactly. Think about chess. Only in recent years have computers learned to play better than the humans. And you still have to give them plenty of time to think and/or a powerful machine for that. And then chess is a zero-sum game, which Civ isn't. Compare the 32 pieces on the chess board with the complex microcosm of a Civ game. It sure is a daunting task to program a competent AI for Civ - after all, it has to be available to most modern PCs, and not only to supercomputers. And while a chess player might use an overnight computer analysis for a game, I don't think any of us are prepared to wait an hour between every turn.

 

[SamBC]

A really huge difference people don't realise between Chess and almost any modern played-for-fun game is that Chess is a perfect-knowledge game. All the facts of the game are known to both players. Civ is so, so very not!

 

[Aristos]

I'm saying that it's easy to forget that there's a whole team at Firaxis that deserves credit; there wasn't just one guy working on G&K, or even just one guy working on its design. But I guess the corollary of that is that when people say Shafer's design was bad, they should probably remember that Ed Beach was a part of that team too, and that design was even less likely the product of a single mind. When you say "Ed is clearly trying to return to the game what was stripped by Shafer", it's probably more accurate to parse that as "the design team of Ed Beach, Scott Lewis and Anton Strenger (G&K) is clearly trying to return to the game what was stripped by Ed Beach, Scott Lewis and Jon Shafer (Vanilla)". It would be a stretch to suggest, as your post might, that the godlike G&K design team is the yin to the satanic Vanilla design team's yang, seeing as 2/3 of the people on those teams were exactly the same. With Dennis Shirk being in the same position for both too. Of course, the lead designer is the most important role, and I'm not saying Ed Beach hasn't brought something new to that role. Rather, I'm of the opinion that the differences might have more to do with factors other than the personnel involved (e.g. more time, more to work with), and that it's easy to overplay the significance of one person, when the game was made by a whole team.

All true, but you are minimizing the role of leadership. It may be the case that Ed Beach and others were trying to convince Shafer to see "better lights" during vanilla development, but he was too stubborn (a typical trait of mediocrity) to accept anything different from his grand vision... now that Ed Beach is the lead, we suddenly see better design decisions? That should at least make you suspicious...

 

[JtW]

A really huge difference people don't realise between Chess and almost any modern played-for-fun game is that Chess is a perfect-knowledge game. All the facts of the game are known to both players. Civ is so, so very not!

My point exactly. Programming a competent AI for Civ would probably require programming of neural networks of some form, which the average PC simply couldn't handle.

@Aristos: this is all conjectures. It might be that Jon botched Vanilla, or it might be a joint effort to "start fresh" because they decided there is no way they could improve on CivIV in the same format. We will never know. I understand the human need for a scapegoat, and Jon fits in nicely, I guess. But I kind of think it is really difficult to get things right the first time - and Civ V was more or less a reinvention of the franchise. I am glad it happened. Vanilla was "meh", GnK is really good, BNW is going to be better, and if they build on that, Civ6 might be a real hit. What's not to like?

 

[Avatan]

All true, but you are minimizing the role of leadership. It may be the case that Ed Beach and others were trying to convince Shafer to see "better lights" during vanilla development, but he was too stubborn (a typical trait of mediocrity) to accept anything different from his grand vision... now that Ed Beach is the lead, we suddenly see better design decisions? That should at least make you suspicious...

Wow I'm always surprised by how much you guys hate Schaefer. Sure vanilla was unplayable, but it did have some brave and well inspired idea in it (hex, 1upt, dynamic diplo, no sliders) that completely redefined the franchise.

Just because GnK saved it once Schaefer quitted doesn't mean that every single design flaw was his fault. CiV games aren't that interesting if you strip them of the multitude of options, but that's what such a reboot does.

For me he always will be the game designer that allowed civ to be what it is now, a near perfect game, and the only game I ever play.

 

[Buccaneer]

What some of you are missing is all of the core elements of vanilla are still there, in subsequent patches, g&k and BNW. G&K added minor elements that did not change the way vanilla was played. So while the initial release of vanilla was flawed (but very playable), don't go revisionist and overestimate the changes brought by the needed patches and expansions.

 

[JimmyAAA]

Perhaps Brian Reynolds could come back and him and Ed could team up for possible the GREATEST GAME EVER.

Alpha Centauri II

 

[Xger]

Exactly. Think about chess. Only in recent years have computers learned to play better than the humans. And you still have to give them plenty of time to think and/or a powerful machine for that. And then chess is a zero-sum game, which Civ isn't. Compare the 32 pieces on the chess board with the complex microcosm of a Civ game. It sure is a daunting task to program a competent AI for Civ - after all, it has to be available to most modern PCs, and not only to supercomputers. And while a chess player might use an overnight computer analysis for a game, I don't think any of us are prepared to wait an hour between every turn.

Even this is misleading. Computers haven't learned to "play" chess actively. They simply analyze tens of thousands of known games and various factors and apply probability. When Deep Blue beat the grandmaster, Blue lost the first game. When presented with a board that had no discernable statistically best play, it just picked a random one. And this is essentially what the current AI is, a set of parameters that lead to different things. Getting better AI would either require a massive amount of data and analytics or an entirely new approach to AI programming.

 

[Avatan]

Even this is misleading. Computers haven't learned to "play" chess actively. They simply analyze tens of thousands of known games and various factors and apply probability. When Deep Blue beat the grandmaster, Blue lost the first game. When presented with a board that had no discernable statistically best play, it just picked a random one. And this is essentially what the current AI is, a set of parameters that lead to different things. Getting better AI would either require a massive amount of data and analytics or an entirely new approach to AI programming.

Expert systems did quite a good on on Starcraft, and any kind of good reinforcement learning/statistical learning would have do ok I think.

But civ is so exponentially combinatorial it have to use scripts and a bunch of heuristics, which can fail sometimes too.

 

[Securion]

You people need to read up on AI Game Development... http://aigamedev.com/
There are literally hundreds of games using super advanced neural nets and expert-systems in their AI code already, and if you read about what other game devs think about the Civ 5 AI, most agree it could have been way more better than it is today.

Also, neural nets are not something new or "technically impossible". Even kids games have had advanced neural nets since the 1990s.

 

[Avatan]

You people need to read up on AI Game Development... http://aigamedev.com/
There are literally hundreds of games using super advanced neural nets and expert-systems in their AI code already, and if you read about what other game devs think about the Civ 5 AI, most agree it could have been way more better than it is today.

Also, neural nets are not something new or "technically impossible". Even kids games have had advanced neural nets since the 1990s.

While I agree in general, neural networks are nowhere near capable of playing chess alone, they need a choke full of heuristics and other search algorithms to function (Alpha beta pruning for example).

Could be the same for civ.
What I have learn in statistical learning is that just because the problem seem simple for a human mind doesn't mean at all that it is computationally tractable.

Of course there are room for improvement - to say the least. Better heuristics (protect siege, city taking) might go a long way.

 

[Jatta Pake]

I could see Firaxis continuing to release content for Civ5 at the same time as releasing Civ6. Think about it - Civ4 wasn't abandoned by the masses when 5 came out. It's likely to hold true that Civ5 will continue to maintain fans. Why cut off a revenue stream to risk it all for a whole new game? Keep grinding out DLC.

Rather, I could see Civ6 incorporating a radical new gameplay format and design. The problem with the franchise has been that consumers expect more value out of each new game. Schafer understood that in many respects gameplay must be lean to be fun for new and casual gamers. However, longtime fans couldn't help but feel this minimalism approach with Civ5 provided less game value and opted to stay with the more robust Civ4. However, Schafer likely expected fan modding to create this unofficial depth over time in Civ5. The discovery though was that Firaxis could make more money doing it themselves as DLC and expansions. Thus they reneged on their promise to open the source code for modding.

I believe Civ6, when released, will be the greatest departure in gameplay in the franchise. And Civ5 expansions and DLC will continue far into the future. They will be two very different games that do not "compete" with each other.

 

[Buccaneer]

I could see Firaxis continuing to release content for Civ5 at the same time as releasing Civ6. Think about it - Civ4 wasn't abandoned by the masses when 5 came out. It's likely to hold true that Civ5 will continue to maintain fans. Why cut off a revenue stream to risk it all for a whole new game? Keep grinding out DLC.

Rather, I could see Civ6 incorporating a radical new gameplay format and design. The problem with the franchise has been that consumers expect more value out of each new game. Schafer understood that in many respects gameplay must be lean to be fun for new and casual gamers. However, longtime fans couldn't help but feel this minimalism approach with Civ5 provided less game value and opted to stay with the more robust Civ4. However, Schafer likely expected fan modding to create this unofficial depth over time in Civ5. The discovery though was that Firaxis could make more money doing it themselves as DLC and expansions. Thus they reneged on their promise to open the source code for modding.

I believe Civ6, when released, will be the greatest departure in gameplay in the franchise. And Civ5 expansions and DLC will continue far into the future. They will be two very different games that do not "compete" with each other.

Not true at all. There has not been a single patch, expansion or DLC for any previous versions (going back to at least Civ2) once the new version had come out. User-created stuff, absolutely, but never anything official.

 

[SamBC]

Um, they did release the gamecore DLL source for modding.

 

[Bisqit]

Some notable things that I feel that would still be missing from the game are racial/ethnic issues, colonies and decolonization issues, and pre-agriculture play. I think Civ needs to cover, in some manner, the darker side of humanity and civilization. You know, to show that civilizations aren't always composed of civilized people.

For example, as Assyria, perhaps you could play politics and blame recent economic troubles on Babylonians in your country. Bonus points if you went Autocracy. More bonus points if you forcibly deported these people from your country, or "whipped" them to scare your cities into producing more.
.

I completely agree. I love civ 5 don't get me wrong but i'd like to be a ruthless tyrant. I want to have the option to whip slaves to make a burst of production yet risk slave revolts that could spawn into a massive mob. It'd be fun to mess around with.

 

[poom3619]

...
Seriously, one thing I've noticed that is missing beyond the features from IV (at least for me) is the lack of feeling like you're in the modern era. I'm not sure if it was the music or what, but with IV I got a sense of actually being in modern times and almost having a different feel to the game there, but with V it's very similar (with the only changes in warfare). Maybe the World Congress and all that will change it, I don't know. I'm not even sure what I'm on about

Absolutely agree with you. I thinks they could add some old music to add some Victorian taste in "Modern" era - pop, rock and kind of in Atomic era, and Trance (and not dubstep) in Information and Future era. It would give some modern feeling better than hundreds-years-old musics. (But I still like it)

I also wish the Dev reads some futuristic or sci-fi books or plays SMAC again to being more creative about future. As future era as it is now practically do nothing to any aspect of civ's but science victory and military (GDR and XCOM squad). I thinks everyone agrees that 2 last tier of tech-tree doing much less than the name suggest. IMO, They should add Hydroponics, Advanced Robotic, Space Mining or Space Colonization and make Future Tech actually do something more than score.

 

[toft]

Im not sure if I want new expansions for civ V. Not that I think its a bad game, Im just concerned about how much time will take to us to see Civ VI. Usually Firafix takes what, two, three years to create a new civ game? So, we are already talking about 2015, 2016. Thats a long wait...

The last thing I want is new sloppy civ games released often. I would gladly wait 10 years between civ games, if they released sufficient XP packs.

In my opinion civ5 is just starting to get enjoyable, so it would be sad to see them work on civ6 now. Wait a few years and continue to improve civ5.

 

[Mudrac]

Hm...More than 2 expansions for civ 5 to improve it further?Interesting idea.I am looking at civ 5 this way,simply it was very different(new) compared to it's predecessors.What they are currently doing is not just "getting back" the features we saw in previous civs but they are reintroducing them.Making them fell fresh and different and to be somehow connected to civ 5 and it's ideas.Civ 5 brought a lot of changes and I think that it's incredible UI and presentation is the biggest change and addition.In vannila Civ 5 they simply had to focus on all those important things about gameplay and make them new and different(and in a way better).Religion wasn't so important, civ 3 didn't have it,so what? We didn't all die because of that.Now thanks to these expansions they had time to think how they could rework things from previous civs,and now they are slowly making them part of the game.So when civ 6 comes out it will have tons of these features and at the same time the stellar UI and presentation of V(maybe even better).

 

[Avatan]

The last thing I want is new sloppy civ games released often. I would gladly wait 10 years between civ games, if they released sufficient XP packs.

In my opinion civ5 is just starting to get enjoyable, so it would be sad to see them work on civ6 now. Wait a few years and continue to improve civ5.

I agree. CiV just reach its original potential with GnK and now the devs are exploring new options, with a daring and fresh approach that got us excited here.

The game is getting more and more complex to the point that ciVI will need to strip most of the feature down to make it appealing to newcomers, so unless they have an unforeseen revolutionary idea they might jut stick to V for a while.

Maybe reboot SMAC?