AI and difficulty levels

[Dawnfire82]

Civilization AI levels have been remarkably consistent for me from Civilization I to Civilization IV, with Prince being an interesting way to pass the time and King being a challenge. That seems to be over.

I loaded up Civ V yesterday and, being a 20 year Civ veteran, plopped right into Prince (Huge map, Marathon length, as I usually do) to give it a trial run before ramping it up. And there's a problem.

I'm stomping this game into the dirt. Seriously. I'm in the middle of the Renaissance with a burgeoning gunpowder army and some other poor sap just entered the Classical era. I started on a large continent and now control 70% of it, counting City States that owe me allegiance. I've destroyed 2 other civilizations so far and thanks to the vast differences in empire size and technology my other two neighbors continue to live only at my mercy (I'm still digesting the last empire I ate; unhappiness levels and all). It's actually getting kind of boring.

I'm just concerned that this is an AI problem and not a difficulty level adjustment. Because if it's the latter, I can just move up the difficulty and all will be well. But if there is a more serious AI problem underlying it, there is no easy solution and no real challenge.

Has anyone else had similar experiences on higher difficulty levels, or do things seem alright?

 

[Yakk]

What did you play Civ4 at?

 

[Shiggs713]

Yes, first game on King (+1 to normal), way way way too easy. OMG after all the talk of how good the AI was going to be, it is simply ********. I was attacking an AI city, I move 3 catapults up into position, and 1 horseman, I think I had a longbow back there too but he was out of range. The AI city on the first turn of being in reach, attacks catapult #1 we'll call it. Then next time, attacks #2, then #3, basically it did minimal damange to 3 units, instead of focusing on 1 unit and killing it. Absolutely terrible that the AI can't even focus in on a weak unit and kill it.

As far as I'm concerned this is worse than civ4 AI, its pathetic really. That and all the AI's prefer spearmen as their main infantry unit for millennium. My next game is gonna be on emperor or immortal just to see how incompentent the AI really is. I'll bet I'll be winning games on immortal within months. It took me 5 years to win a game on immortal on civ4.

 

[slowjames]

I did think Prince was too easy, but I was playing as Japan, who are OP. I'm going to give it another go tonight with one of the races I consider to be weaker and see where it stands.

If it is an AI problem, it should be fixable via modding. Look at the example of Empire: Total War! We have some programmers in our midst (I am one), so if we can identify the AI's weaknesses, presumably we can fix them -- provided that the modability is as advertised. OR it might be something the developers themselves fix or improve on via patches. Blizzard improved the SCII SP AI via patches during the beta.

 

[Gath]

The problem I see is that with stacked combat, the AI always uses his best unit to defend automatically.

With 1 unit per square, I always out manuever and massacre his ranged units, while smashing his melee units with my own ranged units, that he never gets to engage. Only war I had trouble with so far was in my first game where I didn't build enough troops, and even then he never took my city, just pissed me off and slowed me down.

 

[J-man]

Not to happy about all of these reports about the stupidity of the AI....
I don't know how many posts I read about this in the last hour.

 

[wapamingo]

agreed; AI on prince was just too easy.

But the AI does not get smarter from that difficulty and onwards, it just gets bonuses.

 

[InterAl]

agreed; AI on prince was just too easy.

But the AI does not get smarter from that difficulty and onwards, it just gets bonuses.

And even with those bonuses it sucks. Just too stupid to play this game.

 

[ReusableGore]

I am crushing my opponents in my first game on Prince as the Romans.

I don't even need to use siege units, I can roll up to a city and take it over with just three infantry units. The second strongest military on my continent has maybe two units, I have over twenty.

This feels easier than the easiest difficulty setting in Civ IV. Having no challenge takes the fun out of it. I hope on the harder settings the AI offer more of a fight.