AI difficulty

[acebelder]

I played on King level difficulty, and witnessed this absurdity:

An english warrior and archerer parked outside of an emeny iroquois town next to my borders(so I seen this all go down). The warrior and archerer sat there fortified just to get bombarded each turn by the city.. They did not attack, nor did they leave.. Eventually the city just bombarded them until they died.

Is this attributed to the AI or the difficulty level, does anyone know?

 

[Alsark]

Certainly the AI. At King difficulty the AI shouldn't be making dumb decisions like that on purpose, I wouldn't think.

 

[Auncien]

But guys what you're forgetting is that the AI has four levels of indecision, each with branching neural net blah blah blah blah blah

The AI simply does not know how to properly use its units.

 

[InterAl]

But guys what you're forgetting is that the AI has four levels of indecision, each with branching neural net blah blah blah blah blah

The AI simply does not know how to properly use its units.

Not just its units. It also fails at expanding, building his cities too far away from each other and without a solid military protection. It's just bad on so many levels, from combat to city building to stupid diplo decisions to teching to ignoring the early wonders (and all that is on Immortal).

 

[Auncien]

Not just its units. It also fails at expanding, building his cities too far away from each other and without a solid military protection. It's just bad on so many levels, from combat to city building to stupid diplo decisions to teching to ignoring the early wonders (and all that is on Immortal).

You clearly don't understand its masterplan. You see there are four levels, so the AI is constantly thinking about how it can fail tactically, locally, militarily and at the grand strategy layer. It's all very organic you see (and lush).



How did that guy lose to France in that promotional video preview demonstration?

 

[cdcuase]

My first ever Civ5 game was on Prince (the normal difficulty) and I was shocked at how easily I rolled over every other civ both militarily and economically on my first game with no real idea of what I was doing. I was even beating civs that, according to my military advisor, had stronger armies. Their military tactics were just plain awful.

In Civ4 I peaked at around Noble/Monarch (Prince=Noble in civ5), so I'm not like an Deity expert civ player or anything. I don't recall Noble civ4 to be so easy the first time I tried it.

 

[Alsark]

How did that guy lose to France in that promotional video preview demonstration?

Well in his defense, it was deity difficulty. Although even then people were pointing out how Greg was able to hold off a much more technology-advanced deity-difficulty aggressive Napoleon with just a handful of units. So we all saw how bad the AI was (even at deity difficulty), we were just being hopeful. And our hopes were crushed.

 

[Onionsoilder]

It seems to me that the AI doesn't play any worse on Settler or any better on Deity. It employs the exact same strategy and tactics on all difficulty levels. Rather, the difficulty level only changed what handicaps the various players get(Settler = huge player handicap, Deity = huge AI handicap, Prince = No handicap for either player).

The poor combat AI is probably the biggest problem with the game, since it is possible to steamroll an AI with a vastly superior army just by employing some minor tactics.

 

[Dhaeman]

I love everything about this game except anywhere the AI is involved. Tactics is the biggest fail but wait there's more! I find the AI has issues utilizing strategic resources effectively. And of course the puppet state AI is just crap as it will try to make you lose the game due to building maintenance. Puppet state AI is so bad I'm wondering if that's how the other AI civs play too. Of course diplomacy is pretty much a fail too.

I have so much fun playing but without the tactical challenge it is a bit unfulfilling.

 

[DalekDavros]

I played on King level difficulty, and witnessed this absurdity:

An english warrior and archerer parked outside of an emeny iroquois town next to my borders(so I seen this all go down). The warrior and archerer sat there fortified just to get bombarded each turn by the city.. They did not attack, nor did they leave.. Eventually the city just bombarded them until they died.

Is this attributed to the AI or the difficulty level, does anyone know?

I haven't tried this and don't plan to, but I think that this actually can be a tolerable strategy (if the city has no units defending it). Early city attacks usually do 1 damage to fortified units on a tile with a good defensive bonus and you can heal 1 damage per turn, so you can park a unit outside a hostile city and rack up XP.

 

[durindana]

My first ever Civ5 game was on Prince (the normal difficulty) and I was shocked at how easily I rolled over every other civ both militarily and economically on my first game with no real idea of what I was doing.

Just finished my first game at Prince (that's supposed to be "normal," right?) and it was just stupid. I'm terrible at Civ IV - no patience, hate micromanagement, don't know WTH I'm doing with civics and wonders... but apparently those aren't handicaps in Civ 5.

It's not much fun to just curbstomp the entire rest of the world, all at once, on a difficulty setting that should be at least entertaining. WTH Firaxis?

 

[Meneer Popken]

I've also seen an AI putting an archer outside an enemy city and another unit nearby, I think the AI is designed to first batter down a city's defenses with ranged units and once it's weak bring in the melee units. Unfortunately that doesn't work too well when you're doing 1 damage per turn and the city heals 2. It will probably work okay once tech has advanced to catapults or better.