A cogent explanation on the shortfalls of Civ V

[Doctor Phibes]

Doctor Phibes:

I didn't say it behaved cleverly. I said that it wasn't random. It follows a pattern. I feel like I've been repeating myself a lot here.

I'd be very surprised if there wasn't a pattern of some sort, even if that were simply emergent behaviour, so I will concede that using 'random' in that light is incorrect. What I'm alluding to is that diplomacy where it exists is so opaque that the player is quite, in my opinion, justified in considering the AI to be effectively acting semi-randomly with a strong bias towards bloodlust at all times. And that little can be achieved in attempting to influence that behaviour. And you've simply handwaved away any examples to the contrary.

And one very important point. Perhaps players should be straining hard to distil out some sort of pattern from the AI's conduct. But, you know, this is a game. And that just isn't fun, like so much of Civ5.

 

[Roxlimn]

I dunno. I found it fun. Like I said, I found Napoleon much more accepting of me warring. That doesn't mean he doesn't mind - just that he doesn't mind quite as much as Gandhi does. He'll happily declare war on me, get his nose bruised, then be back to trading partners. Alex is the same way.

Gandhi takes things much more personally, and he doesn't like any violence, even ones you do at his request.

Sadly, I think players who've played the Civ IV "diplomacy" to an abusive extent simply no longer have the sense to figure out what other players might be thinking - they've lost social sense. I mean, you expand like crazy and you wonder that everyone is looking at you with worried faces? You beat face at war and you don't know why that guy next to you is suddenly minding that your forces are near his cities? I mean, that all just makes sense to me.

 

[Doctor Phibes]

I dunno. I found it fun. Like I said, I found Napoleon much more accepting of me warring. That doesn't mean he doesn't mind - just that he doesn't mind quite as much as Gandhi does. He'll happily declare war on me, get his nose bruised, then be back to trading partners. Alex is the same way.

Gandhi takes things much more personally, and he doesn't like any violence, even ones you do at his request.

Sadly, I think players who've played the Civ IV "diplomacy" to an abusive extent simply no longer have the sense to figure out what other players might be thinking - they've lost social sense. I mean, you expand like crazy and you wonder that everyone is looking at you with worried faces? You beat face at war and you don't know why that guy next to you is suddenly minding that your forces are near his cities? I mean, that all just makes sense to me.

I hardly ever go to war, except for precisely defined goals. In that context they behave like crazy people. But that's not the point, you're still ignoring any counter-examples to what you perceive as rationality. As for 'social sense' - what, that consists of interpreting a few simple animations that only have maybe three states at best? I don't think so.

 

[Roxlimn]

Doctor Phibes:

See? That's what I mean. I interpret AI action depending on what I would be doing in their shoes, and how they're currently behaving. Napoleon is mad that you went to war? Why? Maybe it's because you kicked butt and took all the cities he had planned were going to be his. That's a pretty reasonable rationale, and a human player wouldn't even have the decency to tell you that. He'll just stab you in the back while smiling in your face, pretty much all the time.

Crazy people don't all have rational thought or behavioral patterns, so no, the AI doesn't act like it was crazy. As I said, it follows a pattern.

Counter-examples presented did not present anything unreasonable. Napoleon invited you to war, which you accepted, but he did not like the outcome. There may be several reasons for why that is, but just you being willing to engage in war that readily is not without its inherent warnings.

It's discernable, if you have empathy. It appears that many players no longer have this sense.

 

[Jediron]

Gold exists. Use it to buy those buildings. You don't need a stables in every single city.

Building don't grow on trees. Faulty game design mechanics, if you ask me. Heck, why give a building option of 70 to 100 turn to begin with,
when you easely can BUY the stuff, instantly popping up.

Wonders are weaker in this Civ than in any other. While it’s true that every civ game has had its fair share of useless wonders, this one seems to have even weaker ones. Coupled with longer building times, this change makes even less sense.

Examples please.

As if that matters; on Deity the player is Wonderless...hahaha

City states? They are way overpowered, in the beginning and later also; alway funny to see a lousy city state, which muster quite some army around his city. Historic "city"-state" Venice would be jealouse, seeing all those goodies.

Oh for the love of... the game has been out for less then a month and already every single strategy has been discovered! OK everyone, you can stop playing now!

Why should we bother keep playing this game; while it's obvious there are so many balancing issue's and battle-Ai issue's ?
To experiment ? To have a good time ?
Give me a break , please. The game should have challenged me, right out of the box. Don't mind me saying: i start playing again when alot of the issue's are ironed out and even then; i want more spears and more archers and more cats and more of everthing on the pre 0 BC map. I want to fight continental, coast to coast WARS instead of puny handfull unit action. OW look! A Horse! A horse! , Cleo sends her whole "army" *kuch* after us.

Can we please stop it with these stupid threads that talk about how flawed Civ5 is while giving NO ACTUAL POINTS. How many times have I seen this, "I won't go into detail of how badly designed this game is because it's well tread." The reason you're not going into it is because you can't.

Ow please. it's spelled out by many. How much more detail do you need ? Are you blindfolded ?

For me:
1)1 upt s*ck, how good the AI should get, it doesn't matter. 1 UPt s*ck.
2)less units s*ck, because it doesn't feel massive anymore, no more massive, epic battles.
3)Barbarians s&ck, they hardly threaten your city anymore, they die too easely and the rewards are too great (is this detailed enough for ya?)
4)City-states s*ck, the AI doesn't handle them properly and for the player they are way overpowered.
5) buying your buildings out s*ck, didn't builded that building in time ? No worries, collect/gain some gold and buy it, instant ready.
6) Sling-shot "policies" s*ck , you can call it a feature, i call it a legalized exploit that ruins the game balance.

Need more ?

You know what would be funny, and unexpected and suprising ? A (random?) Ai civ, you can twist a arm and a leg for some goodies instead of most of them acting in same manner. Or what about leaving out the fiddling and handshaking all together, or make it harder; like after a third offer, they don't wanna speak to you for a while. It's too easy now, keep fiddling with the numbers till they ready to comply. Not that it matter to me, it is one of the annoying things about Civ, all Civ's. I don't like to play "marketmen". Give a price, deal. done. On with the real action. OW, wait, there's hardly any action. With so few units running around, we must let them do something else. Yeah, lets give them policies; that will keep them busy.

 

[JudgeDeath]

Sheesh.

QFT. I'm amazed at all these "geniuses" who purport know everything about a game after LESS THAN 3 WEEKS.

 

[Phinaeus]

Excellent read, op. This is exactly why I regret putting 50 dollars on the guarantee that the Civ name would be good enough to justify a preorder. Hindsight is 20/20.

 

[Lord Parkin]

See? That's what I mean. I interpret AI action depending on what I would be doing in their shoes, and how they're currently behaving. Napoleon is mad that you went to war? Why? Maybe it's because you kicked butt and took all the cities he had planned were going to be his. That's a pretty reasonable rationale, and a human player wouldn't even have the decency to tell you that. He'll just stab you in the back while smiling in your face, pretty much all the time.

Actually, most human players will discuss with you beforehand and make it clear to you which cities they want.

Anyway, this is all moot, because it doesn't matter whether you take all the cities yourself or let the AI take all the spoils. It still gets pissed at you regardless. That's the crux of the problem: the AI gets pissed if you don't help it, it gets pissed if you don't help it enough, and it gets pissed if you help it too much. There's no way to win in that situation. It's broken in its current state, and trying to justify it to yourself doesn't avoid that fact.

Crazy people don't all have rational thought or behavioral patterns, so no, the AI doesn't act like it was crazy. As I said, it follows a pattern.

Yes, the AI follows a pattern. Get pissed if you refuse requests. Get pissed if you accept requests. Get pissed if you sit there doing nothing while it settles cities on your borders. Get pissed if it notices troops in YOUR territory with ITS visiting unit.

Every single AI follows the same pattern in every game: you can guarantee it will get pissed at you and attempt a backstab at some point. It's such a predictable pattern that it's bland and boring. At least SOME of the AI need to be cooperative and friendly. I'm not against having a Monty or two in the game, but there should be some diversity. Not EVERY AI should be Monty.

Counter-examples presented did not present anything unreasonable. Napoleon invited you to war, which you accepted, but he did not like the outcome. There may be several reasons for why that is, but just you being willing to engage in war that readily is not without its inherent warnings.

You're trying to justify insanity to yourself, dude. There is presently no rhyme or reason to the AI's decisions. As mentioned above, they get pissed at you regardless what happens.

It's discernable, if you have empathy. It appears that many players no longer have this sense.

That's a joke, right? Asking us to have empathy for this universally cold, heartless, selfish, uncooperative, backstabbing AI? Very funny.

 

[DrewBledsoe]

Been checking in from time to time, as I still haven't got Civ V. It's not a decision I've taken lightly, as I'm such a dedicated Civver; I even found myself feeling obliged to get it, but happened to be on Holidays at release time. Following Civ V through development, had alarm bells ringing for me, an ever growing "i'm not sure I'm going to like this" feeling growing over the months.

Thank you to the OP, probably the final nail in it's coffin for me. A well written assessment. Someone else said that "Civ 1-4 were God games, where you just played for the fun of it, and Civ 5 is a board game that you play to win", or something more eloquently along those lines.

So the ai now plays even more like adolescent MP teenagers? Sheesh. How can 4 or 5 cities even be considered a country, never mind an empire? Where's all the wonderful micromanagement gone, that kept the attention in times of peace? Why are the graphics considered an upgrade in any possible way of thinking? The map looks like a giant cartoon now...(graphics aren't a huge priority for Civ games, but the map is the basis for that immersion. You HAVE to get the maps right.)

And there's a new combat system, yet the ai is clueless on how to use it. Ho hum.
And when I hear folks praising Civ IV's diplomacy over Civ V's, that's finally it. I didn't think you could GET any worse diplomacy than in Civ IV.

Civ IV diplomacy is a shining light compared to Civ V? To parahrase Jim Mora "Are you kidding me???".

For once, I won't make the mistake of purchasing the latest update in a series that I love playing, then spend hrs whining, and months trying to Mod it into something acceptable.

So thanks again to the Op and others for saving me a little cash, and months of mental anguish

I'll go away again now.......

 

[user746383]

Oh for the love of... the game has been out for less then a month and already every single strategy has been discovered! OK everyone, you can stop playing now! A random person on the internet has declared that every possible strategy imaginable has been discovered within a three week period! Throw the game away, there's no point to carry on, because in THREE WEEKS every possible thing that we CAN know about a game HAS BEEN KNOWN!

Well, to be fair it's not so much that every possible strategy has been identified, it's that Diety was beaten on the day the game came out. There's no need to continue looking for strategies because you don't even really need a strategy at all to beat the hardest difficulty level. Make sense?

 

[Asylumer]

For once, I won't make the mistake of purchasing the latest update in a series that I love playing, then spend hrs whining, and months trying to Mod it into something acceptable.

Much better to wait for things to improve and buy the Expansion's package deal. Well, unless you plan to do some modding yourself, in which case getting the game now allows you to begin working properly.

 

[Roxlimn]

Lord Parkin:

I think the problem you're having is that you're not engaging with the AI enough on positive terms. As mentioned before, I have had games where I had an AI be friends with me for long periods of time, never backstabbing, and games where I never actually had to use a military unit for combat.

It's doable.

Just because you can't do it doesn't mean that it can't be done. The AI's behavior is predictable, and it isn't the warmongering psychopath you think it is. Well, Monty is, and the usual suspects are more prone to war, but Gandhi? He's quite manageable.

 

[Jediron]

The battlesystem is flawed, so i hardly do care how well the diplomcy is.

Another example; you know exactly what you need to take a city, all the time, every time.
First knock his wondering forces, then you need a handfull of archers and some warriors/spears to finish him off. Or are you telling me, that i miss something here too ?
Hell, i don't even name "the horsemen" exploit.

 

[Lord Parkin]

Lord Parkin:

I think the problem you're having is that you're not engaging with the AI enough on positive terms. As mentioned before, I have had games where I had an AI be friends with me for long periods of time, never backstabbing, and games where I never actually had to use a military unit for combat.

It's doable.

Sure, you can occasionally keep the AI neutral towards you for longer periods, if you abstain from any warring and get lucky enough that it doesn't settle on your borders or notice your troops and start getting hostile. The problem is most of the time, it's not going to work (at least on the higher levels). I miss the ability to make reliable friends and allies like I could in Civ4. I especially miss the screens where I could keep track of who had what agreements with who, and how the leaders roughly felt towards one another. Without that you're kind of playing blind, unless you keep a notepad next to you which seems stupid.

Case in point: even in team games where you are perma-allied to an AI, it still hates you. The AI is simply missing an ability to concieve of genuine friendship - at best it only ever remains neutral out of self-interest. It acts rather autistically in that sense.

 

[mrt144]

Sure, you can occasionally keep the AI neutral towards you for longer periods, if you abstain from any warring and get lucky enough that it doesn't settle on your borders or notice your troops and start getting hostile. The problem is most of the time, it's not going to work (at least on the higher levels). I miss the ability to make reliable friends and allies like I could in Civ4. I especially miss the screens where I could keep track of who had what agreements with who, and how the leaders roughly felt towards one another. Without that you're kind of playing blind, unless you keep a notepad next to you which seems stupid.

Case in point: even in team games where you are perma-allied to an AI, it still hates you. The AI is simply missing an ability to concieve of genuine friendship - at best it only ever remains neutral out of self-interest. It acts rather autistically in that sense.

Classic and on point.

 

[DrewBledsoe]

Sure, you can occasionally keep the AI neutral towards you for longer periods, if you abstain from any warring and get lucky enough that it doesn't settle on your borders or notice your troops and start getting hostile. The problem is most of the time, it's not going to work (at least on the higher levels). I miss the ability to make reliable friends and allies like I could in Civ4. I especially miss the screens where I could keep track of who had what agreements with who, and how the leaders roughly felt towards one another. Without that you're kind of playing blind, unless you keep a notepad next to you which seems stupid.

Case in point: even in team games where you are perma-allied to an AI, it still hates you. The AI is simply missing an ability to concieve of genuine friendship - at best it only ever remains neutral out of self-interest. It acts rather autistically in that sense.

I won't mention a certain "Bla**", who if you remember was hired to make the Civ Iv ai "better"....The problem was, he didn't seem to have any real understanding of what the Civ series was actually about. He (and others) has this idea that all ais should always play "to win", whether this meant any coherent behaviour at all. They seemed to want to turn it into some adolescent MP stabfest, where it didn't really matter who you backstabbed, whether you honoured pacts, or anything else, as you could just log in as another player next time, and who'd know or care how you'd behaved last game? Oh , as long as you tried to win at all costs. Well yahoo...

AS IF Civ was ever about anything like that. It's not freakin Counterstrike. Sid Meier would be turning in his grave (what he's not dead? ...wow ...even Madden had to step in a few years back and say that if they wanted to keep using his name, then stop dumbing the game down).

It seems that this ai MP behaviour ;how was it put earlier; oh right, Autistic Sociopath, has become the standard to be aimed for..Autistic Sociopath isn't quite right either, let's call it "Cartman" ai. Does playing against 9 ai Cartmans sound like fun?

EDIT: Actually an ai Montezuma telling me to "respect his authoritiiii" in that whiny voice would be amusing for a while

 

[r_rolo1]

For those that have doubts that the AI of civ V was coded to have light finger on the trigger , please give a look to the AI diplo modifiers in GlobalDiplomacyAIDefines.xml ( or ,if you are lazy , a small thread discussing that , that, by some reason, most people skipped out ).

In resume, the AI has a modifier of almost two hundreds to make them predisposed to attack someone that it perceives as weak ... while the modifiers for anything related to them to be pissed with anyone that is menacing their desired win ( their grand strategy ) never passes 20 in module ( in other words, if everything else is equal, they will prefer to attack someone that is weak than attacking someone that is menacing their win. This is playing to win by firaxis standarts ) and where most of the things that make the Ai pleased with you are around that area as well. The modifiers for settling close of them are also quite high in module compared with pretty much everything that has the potential of increasing the AI friendship towards you

In other words, the AI will get extremely interested in killing you with ease ,especially in high levels where the blob of death is king .

P.S I do think that this values were thought to force the AI to do early wars unlike civ IV AI ( where the original coder decided to sacrifice early attacks to be able to teach the Ai to make minimally coherent stacks ), but they do seem quite out scale even there ... not mentioning the rest of the game eras.

 

[Tyrael]

I especially miss the screens where I could keep track of who had what agreements with who, and how the leaders roughly felt towards one another. Without that you're kind of playing blind, unless you keep a notepad next to you which seems stupid.

This. As the leader of a major empire, I should have access to rough information about the following basic information:

- Who likes/hates me and why
- What behaviors will be most effective in getting leader X to like me
- Who likes/hates who
- How much would leader X care if I broke this promise or went back on my word

It doesn't have to be a list of numbers like in IV. But realistically I would have a foreign adviser for each major world power that could give me at least some indication of my current standing with that country, why they feel how they feel about me, and what the ramifications of certain actions would be. There needs to be a game mechanism (name it foreign adviser to country X) that keeps track of my actions and their effects and aggregates them into something short and simple I can reference so that I can make intelligent, guided decisions in my strategy game. They don't have to be exactly accurate to every last +1/-1 modifier, since real diplomacy has room for error (and non-exactness in diplo seems to be a focus of this game). I just want a simple way to access useful, accurate information about the diplomatic landscape without having to record every interaction out of game, then referring to it constantly- or worse, taking a one week break from the game and coming back and having no recollection of the nuances of what has been going on.

 

[TheBlackAdderBG]

For those that have doubts that the AI of civ V was coded to have light finger on the trigger , please give a look to the AI diplo modifiers in GlobalDiplomacyAIDefines.xml ( or ,if you are lazy , a small thread discussing that , that, by some reason, most people skipped out ).

In resume, the AI has a modifier of almost two hundreds to make them predisposed to attack someone that it perceives as weak ... while the modifiers for anything related to them to be pissed with anyone that is menacing their desired win ( their grand strategy ) never passes 20 in module ( in other words, if everything else is equal, they will prefer to attack someone that is weak than attacking someone that is menacing their win. This is playing to win by firaxis standarts ) and where most of the things that make the Ai pleased with you are around that area as well. The modifiers for settling close of them are also quite high in module compared with pretty much everything that has the potential of increasing the AI friendship towards you

In other words, the AI will get extremely interested in killing you with ease ,especially in high levels where the blob of death is king .

P.S I do think that this values were thought to force the AI to do early wars unlike civ IV AI ( where the original coder decided to sacrifice early attacks to be able to teach the Ai to make minimally coherent stacks ), but they do seem quite out scale even there ... not mentioning the rest of the game eras.

On Emperor level the AI starts with twice the size of our army on turn 1,so you are the weakest Civ in the game,plus he has happiness and gold bonus to maintain the larger army,so he almost always think you are the weakest Civ.

 

[Jediron]

Another thing, that is missing and actually was missing in the older CIV's too:

When asked for a Alliance or other contract, you never could/can see what effect this have on other treaties, you might have. That's plain silly. That info should be there too, to see. No, you only option is to sign it "blindfolly" and hope it doesn't conflict with other treaties or you are the exeption; that writes everything. Both are silly and not acceptable.