Xiao Xiong
Prince
- Joined
- Oct 15, 2009
- Messages
- 480
If you are too please speak up. Consider it a petition!
I am waiting for a patch that fixes the AI before I buy the game
- Thread starter Xiao Xiong
- Start date
Triplanetary
Chieftain
- Joined
- Mar 17, 2008
- Messages
- 20
Okay, fair enough. But I don't know why we need another thread about the AI. Even fans of Civ5 (such as myself) agree that the AI is busted.
Xiao Xiong
Prince
- Joined
- Oct 15, 2009
- Messages
- 480
This one's a petition. Not meant to contain debate.
TheDanish
Prince
I'm doing the same thing. If CiV had been better received at launch, I'd probably have set aside money and would have it already. As it is, though, I'm waiting until patches.
I'd argue that point.
I'm recommending to my girlfriend that she wait until it's more stable before she buy. She's more involved with Civ than I am (I'm a "design a map that's got a perfect starting area" type; she's a "put it on 'always peace' and build" type), and she's drooling over the game.
Even as bugged as it is, it's still a fun building game. So I'll keep playing.
Triplanetary
Chieftain
- Joined
- Mar 17, 2008
- Messages
- 20
Better received? At least one poll on this forum has 90% of users liking Civ5. The other 10% just happens to be really, really loud.
Beardy Dan
Warlord
- Joined
- Aug 4, 2009
- Messages
- 150
How do you REALLY know how the AI plays without having the game?
Pirate?
Or are you trusting "random internet person"?
Pirate?
Or are you trusting "random internet person"?
Its been received very well, not sure exactly where you get your information.
Liking is such a flimsy turn, I LOVED Civ 4, even in its infancy. i can hardly say the same about Civ 5, my problem is that there seems to be far less replay value given the awful implementation of certain critical game mechanics. Namely: combat, diplomacy and well... the stream lining of nearly everything else. Patching this game literally means patching every aspect of it to bring it up to a suitable level where I could feel good about recommending it for anything besides a cheap thrill.
So yea I would wait, unless you absolutely need it. Its a week and I'm bored of it... that might say all I need to say.
Edit: Unless, and I forgot this, unless you absolutely love strategic RTS's where you are killing off computer units every turn. Its pretty much 90% combat fixated now, so you have almost nothing to do in between wars. If that tickles your fancy then get it right away, you wont be disapointed.
So yea I would wait, unless you absolutely need it. Its a week and I'm bored of it... that might say all I need to say.
Edit: Unless, and I forgot this, unless you absolutely love strategic RTS's where you are killing off computer units every turn. Its pretty much 90% combat fixated now, so you have almost nothing to do in between wars. If that tickles your fancy then get it right away, you wont be disapointed.
Topics without debate get closed, so for this one to stay open, I would encourage debate and discussion.
Usually I would work on focusing my economy, spreading religion, optimizing tiles with the plethora of improvements, trading with my non psychotic neighbors, and of course deciding which branch of the tech tree I was going for.
Do you notice how none of those things are now possible in Civ 5? Save focusing on your economy, which means spamming trade posts on any non occupied square to pay for buildings so I can semi sorta specialize my cities.
Civ 5 isn't builder friendly at the moment, way to simple, not enough options, and if your not at war... the computer is gobbling... always with the gobbling.
Do you notice how none of those things are now possible in Civ 5? Save focusing on your economy, which means spamming trade posts on any non occupied square to pay for buildings so I can semi sorta specialize my cities.
Civ 5 isn't builder friendly at the moment, way to simple, not enough options, and if your not at war... the computer is gobbling... always with the gobbling.
All of that is possible with the exception of "Spreading religion" which I, for one, am glad is gone. Spamming missionaries and spies was not enjoyable to me in any sense of the word. On the other hand, I do everything else that I did in Civ 4 with the exception of tech trading.
And, funnily enough, I get by just fine without spamming trade posts. I also dont' build needless buildings and spam massive armies any more either.
To me, it just means more planning is required. I honestly don't get all the negativity...I play Civ 5 just like I played Civ 4 only now I have to put more thought into my actions and plan ahead...which to me is a good thing.
LoneWolf5050
Warlord
What I can't understand is how a flagship game like this was released with such an obviously broken AI. When the AI is central to the single player experience. It's clearly unfinished, needed a lot more time. Did 2K just get greedy?
What's even more worrisome is the complete lack of official acknowledgment of this plain-as-day fact. I would have a much better feeling about Civ V being worth a purchase if Firaxis or someone from 2K said straight out that, yes, the AI is not working right, and yes, it is going to be brought up to at least Civ IV levels.
Civ IV may have had many patches for many things, including AI, but at least the AI could play the game out of the box. Civ V is SimCiv, not a Civilization game.
--Julian
What's even more worrisome is the complete lack of official acknowledgment of this plain-as-day fact. I would have a much better feeling about Civ V being worth a purchase if Firaxis or someone from 2K said straight out that, yes, the AI is not working right, and yes, it is going to be brought up to at least Civ IV levels.
Civ IV may have had many patches for many things, including AI, but at least the AI could play the game out of the box. Civ V is SimCiv, not a Civilization game.
--Julian
Man what game are you playing, and what do you mean by planning ahead?
Sure you can build specialist cities, it falls into 2 categories
1. Production
2. Commerce
I will neglect the mention of specialist cities as well, you just dont ever seem to need them. The case here would be a city thats all farms, but I found the benefits of such a city in Civ 5 useless due to the way great people add improvements to tiles. Although I guess you could actually have a "science" city whose only job would be to grow massive.
1. Production cities spam buildings and units, obviously the mine and sawmill are the choice here.
2. Commerce cities... trade post.
That about covers the stupendous 3/3 improvements we have at our disposal. Farm is a given, and all city types will require it to grow. Alot of the buildings such as watermill, and windmill's which used to be an improvement are now not enough worth their cost. Also the only improvement that gets benefits from science is the bloody farm, neato gang!
Now lets look at Civ 4.
Here specialist cities actually mattered because science wasn't based on freaking population, you also had a huge amount of tile improvements you could select from and I'm not going to do an exhaustive list for the purpose of this argument.
Now by plan ahead I am assuming you mean, dont build buildings you dont need, and select your civics wisely. Well I would argue that's not really innovative, its actually rather restrictive. I HATE the fact that the new civics are 100 percent inflexible. I find it boring that I can be ETERNALLY at war and my population has furs so its cool with that, hell I dont EVEN HAVE A GOVERNMENT I can alter. Religion is hit or miss, but something was very entertaining about the viral way it spread.
Combat was about the only change I enjoyed about Civ 5, too bad its going to need a patch to fix (hopefully) if that happens It might become palatable again.
The last point I'll make is in regards to the culture generation and science vs the aquisition of cities. I made this point in another thread, but here it is again.
You are against Monty (this is my last game). You control 10 cities in North America, all upgraded tech wise and culture wise, with an average populus of say 10 -12 people. Monty has devoured all of Eurasia and sits on close to 40 or 50 cities, his population is probably lower, say: an average of 6-10 per city. You are paying an astounding amount for the higher tier science/culture improvements, while his sprawling empire only allows him to purchase the basest of upgrades.
So who wins?
Monty does EVERY GODDAMN TIME.
Why?
Science = population
No penalties for empire sprawl
Happiness and luxury aquisition = win, more territory = more luxuries.
Thats the basic scientific formula for Civ 5. Cities trump improvements. So while you might have 10 really really nice cities, his 40 mediocre cities will CRUSH you in every way. More income, more culture, more science, and unless you get on the warband your lost. A fix for this "might" be to get rid of the puppet city concept.
That about sums up my philisophical disagreement with Civ 5's changes, you'll notice its not careless ranting about change, its specific disagreement with change that has resulted in oversimplification, and mandated war as the only means to victory.
Phew.
Sure you can build specialist cities, it falls into 2 categories
1. Production
2. Commerce
I will neglect the mention of specialist cities as well, you just dont ever seem to need them. The case here would be a city thats all farms, but I found the benefits of such a city in Civ 5 useless due to the way great people add improvements to tiles. Although I guess you could actually have a "science" city whose only job would be to grow massive.
1. Production cities spam buildings and units, obviously the mine and sawmill are the choice here.
2. Commerce cities... trade post.
That about covers the stupendous 3/3 improvements we have at our disposal. Farm is a given, and all city types will require it to grow. Alot of the buildings such as watermill, and windmill's which used to be an improvement are now not enough worth their cost. Also the only improvement that gets benefits from science is the bloody farm, neato gang!
Now lets look at Civ 4.
Here specialist cities actually mattered because science wasn't based on freaking population, you also had a huge amount of tile improvements you could select from and I'm not going to do an exhaustive list for the purpose of this argument.
Now by plan ahead I am assuming you mean, dont build buildings you dont need, and select your civics wisely. Well I would argue that's not really innovative, its actually rather restrictive. I HATE the fact that the new civics are 100 percent inflexible. I find it boring that I can be ETERNALLY at war and my population has furs so its cool with that, hell I dont EVEN HAVE A GOVERNMENT I can alter. Religion is hit or miss, but something was very entertaining about the viral way it spread.
Combat was about the only change I enjoyed about Civ 5, too bad its going to need a patch to fix (hopefully) if that happens It might become palatable again.
The last point I'll make is in regards to the culture generation and science vs the aquisition of cities. I made this point in another thread, but here it is again.
You are against Monty (this is my last game). You control 10 cities in North America, all upgraded tech wise and culture wise, with an average populus of say 10 -12 people. Monty has devoured all of Eurasia and sits on close to 40 or 50 cities, his population is probably lower, say: an average of 6-10 per city. You are paying an astounding amount for the higher tier science/culture improvements, while his sprawling empire only allows him to purchase the basest of upgrades.
So who wins?
Monty does EVERY GODDAMN TIME.
Why?
Science = population
No penalties for empire sprawl
Happiness and luxury aquisition = win, more territory = more luxuries.
Thats the basic scientific formula for Civ 5. Cities trump improvements. So while you might have 10 really really nice cities, his 40 mediocre cities will CRUSH you in every way. More income, more culture, more science, and unless you get on the warband your lost. A fix for this "might" be to get rid of the puppet city concept.
That about sums up my philisophical disagreement with Civ 5's changes, you'll notice its not careless ranting about change, its specific disagreement with change that has resulted in oversimplification, and mandated war as the only means to victory.
Phew.
Wow, that was a lot
I actually enjoy specializing cities in Civ 5, something I didn't like in Civ 4, not sure why. I also have little to no problem whatsoever running a 4-5 city empire that's vastly more powerful than 10+ city empires while holding a respectable tech lead, so I guess I don't follow your concern here. You're saying that 5 powerhouse cities will fall short to 10-20 mediocre cities in tech and commerce generation? I haven't seen that at all. Or maybe i'm just misreading your post.
I actually enjoy specializing cities in Civ 5, something I didn't like in Civ 4, not sure why. I also have little to no problem whatsoever running a 4-5 city empire that's vastly more powerful than 10+ city empires while holding a respectable tech lead, so I guess I don't follow your concern here. You're saying that 5 powerhouse cities will fall short to 10-20 mediocre cities in tech and commerce generation? I haven't seen that at all. Or maybe i'm just misreading your post.
I bought it regardless. It's a lot less fun than Civ 4, but there is a lot of room for improvement. However, I will agree that the AI is bad. I didn't realize it until this morning when I played Civ 4. I found Shaka 8 turns in and knew I had to build an army pretty fast. With Civ 5, there isn't the same level of threat there. The AI is randomly aggressive, but it doesn't attack in the same way that the AI did in Civ 4. They send one or two units at you, YEARS after actually declaring war, and they will often sit 2 tiles from your city so you can bombard them to death. Without defense and offense, there isn't a whole lot of strategy involved. In Civ 4, you could be happily building a factory, get a quick pop up where "So be it" flashes, and BOOM, you lost a city. It startles me every time.
If they fix the AI, patch in a speed increase on all production, and fix those trading post spamming workers, the game will be amazing. (Hopefully, they will also fix the severe mood swings of the population, but that is far less irritating than the aforementioned).
Overall, it might be worth buying now to get some play out of it. There really aren't many good titles that have come out recently.
If they fix the AI, patch in a speed increase on all production, and fix those trading post spamming workers, the game will be amazing. (Hopefully, they will also fix the severe mood swings of the population, but that is far less irritating than the aforementioned).
Overall, it might be worth buying now to get some play out of it. There really aren't many good titles that have come out recently.
Tylerryan79
Emperor
Knowing what I know now, I still would have preordered the game. I enjoy it a lot, and it's not iv, which I was getting tired of. That said, I'm 100% behind patching up the many flaws asap. This game is definetly a diamond in the rough, and just needs a lot of polish. I'm excited and glad that I'll be playing through it too, then I'll appreciate it that much more.
I'm agreeing here, although I love the game, the AI seems a bit weak.
I'm playing on Emperor, and it's nowhere near the challenge it was in civ4, they just don't seem to build enough units, and throw away the few they build too easily.
I mean I had Greece controlling more than 50% of the planet, outnumbering my cities about 4-1 and yet when he finally went to war with me with a whole era's tech lead over me, it was me who fought him off, then took 5 cities including his capital..! I simply killed off his initial wave of about 6-7 units, then a 'most pointy stick' ranking popped up and put me above him with only a handful of units!
I'm playing on Emperor, and it's nowhere near the challenge it was in civ4, they just don't seem to build enough units, and throw away the few they build too easily.
I mean I had Greece controlling more than 50% of the planet, outnumbering my cities about 4-1 and yet when he finally went to war with me with a whole era's tech lead over me, it was me who fought him off, then took 5 cities including his capital..! I simply killed off his initial wave of about 6-7 units, then a 'most pointy stick' ranking popped up and put me above him with only a handful of units!
