Battle Royale exposes the weakness of AI.

[Acken]

Or just make strategics more available.

 

[ExemplarVoss]

I haven't had time to watch second half, had to tune out after turn 180, but it looked like Japan managed to get Samurai which would have defended quite nicely against the Legions. Looked like Rome missed it's timing window because it didn't manage to expand enough before hand.

Yes it did. But it missed its timing window because when it declared war on Japan (the second time) when it had ~15 legions (and Japan and 0 samurai and very few other units) it... didn't attack. The legions just hung around Antium like a cloud, and didn't advance into Japanese territory. Nor did their 1 or 2 catapults lurking in the legion mass.

Rome declared war, nothing happened, and then peace was declared. Because... reasons.

And in joint wars, these are apparently known reasons- neither AI wants to lose units first, so both AIs wait for the other to attack (and neither do). So both peace out when they have the option to do so.

This won't happen. But it's easy enough to have enough resourceless units that lacking a certain resource just makes you have to scramble. If warriors upgraded to spearmen, and so on, all the way up, there'd be no problem.

Eh. It already partially happened, and it makes the problem worse. Some civs can just use their unique unit advantage to get around at least part of the problem.

I actually find the idea that they'll decide to scrap the classification system (or let units jump between unit classifications) less likely than just acknowledge that they've already started to abandon strategic resources. It affects so few units in Civ 6 that it really doesn't matter anymore. The only problem is they are key units.

 

[King Jason]

Or just make strategics more available.

Which, again, makes them meaningless. Both civ4 and civ5 tried to get strategics right. Both civ4 and civ5 ended up revamping them to be numerous to the point of meaningless.

Civ6 is once again trying a new approach, and once again it's going to be patched so that iron and horses and such are all over the place - so once again strategics will be pointless.

They should really just stop trying. It's almost impossible to balance between having too many such that there's no point in having them in the first place Vs having too few such that the gameboard offers lopsided advantages (that the A.I. can't handle).

It's a lovely idea - but really, just give everyone access to every unit and design a proper R/P/S format so that they're all necessary. Remove archers while you're at it. The only ranged units should be the siege line. The A.I. is too inept to use them.

 

[Furycrab]

~15 legions

It looked more like 7-8 with a few support units, terrain issues, and we're not sure who was Suzerain of the CS that was sorta in between. I'm also not sure we could see the city strength of the cities. AFAIK swordsmen, even Legion, a Classical unit, shouldn't be very good against a Medieval wall.

Not saying Rome played perfect or anything., but it didn't look that bad. At least at that point in the game...

I find hilarious people that criticize the settling choices when we couldn't even see resources.

 

[dexters]

Firstly, comparing BtW Civ4 AI with vanilla pre-release AI is ... I don't know. That's 'skewed' perspectives if I ever saw one.

Besides, no stacking means much of it is moot and just value judgements which is subject to biases.

I haven't watched the AI battle royale myself but intended on running on own battle royales in Civ6 with just the AI.

That said I'm pretty excited that AI only play is going to be much easier to do in Civ6 than in 5, so we should get a lot of let's plays and people picking apart AI shortcomings before the 1st expansion is even announced.

I'm not really concerned about any of this at this point. The tools are there and the community will be much better position to diagnose the AI this time.

 

[CaiusDrewart]

Which, again, makes them meaningless. Both civ4 and civ5 tried to get strategics right. Both civ4 and civ5 ended up revamping them to be numerous to the point of meaningless.

Civ6 is once again trying a new approach, and once again it's going to be patched so that iron and horses and such are all over the place - so once again strategics will be pointless.

They should really just stop trying. It's almost impossible to balance between having too many such that there's no point in having them in the first place Vs having too few such that the gameboard offers lopsided advantages (that the A.I. can't handle).

It's a lovely idea - but really, just give everyone access to every unit and design a proper R/P/S format so that they're all necessary. Remove archers while you're at it. The only ranged units should be the siege line. The A.I. is too inept to use them.

Yeah, it feels like Civ 6 is moving in the direction of getting rid of strategic resources. Uniques don't require them, and plenty of units that should obviously require certain resources, don't. (Knights don't require Horses, Bombards and Field Cannons don't require Iron). The developers clearly don't want strategic resources to be that important. But at that point, why have them at all?

The real-world historical basis for strategic resources is pretty poor anyway. Iron is plentiful pretty much all across the globe. Horses aren't confined to specific spots but rapidly spread wherever humans introduce them.

Coal, Oil, and Uranium probably have better justifications.

 

[Jaybe]

Dexters, it was a special build with a custom interface so the game could be observed. Not in the game, though they may provide it later.

----
Regarding strategic resources and the fact that unit upgrades only occur in alternate eras, perhaps making subsequent units not require the resource would be better (more resources discovered, whatever). Also, remember that newer units cost more, +1 gold per era; so your typical apgrade (at 2 eras per upgrade) would add +2 gold.

 

[spfun]

An easy fix is to remove the need for strategic resources to the AI, make it a player only requirement.

 

[dexters]

Dexters, it was a special build with a custom interface so the game could be observed. Not in the game, though they may provide it later.

I expect it. It might even be available day 1 from a mod on workshop someone cooks up.
The point I was making is Civ6 was tested in large part with this feature and discussed extensively by Ed himself, so most of the code is already there and if it is not available as a feature in the base game, modding it in would be much easier than say in Civ5, where AI vs AI is huge on Youtube for Civ5 streamers and the feature is also non-standard.

 

[Dearmad]

It isn't just bad AI handling strategics- good lord, if someone designed that into a boardgame these days they would get crucified for it. It is BAD DESIGN. Any mechanism that can be manipulated somewhat easily into denying player's abilities to participate in the game is not going to fly. It's your own fault if you lag behind over time is OK, but not your fault all the uranium is by player X and not you...

 

[Atwork]

How many players are you putting on one map?

Either way... Isn't that kinda a testament to bad AI? Sure one guy was successful at beating up a bunch of other people, but it means the other AIs were just as horsehockey at defending their own stuff.

Max number of civs for C5, so 22 civs I think and 24 city states. On a huge map. It's been the best game of C5 I've played as far as lots going on and very challenging throughout the game (I had to claw my way up the standings), which is great because it means I'll be leaving C5 on a high note.

But, yeah, there are four super powers: France, Greece, China and me all with about 12-15 cities, four 2nd tier civs, one of which is the cultural powerhouse (Brazil) and one of which is a religious powerhouse (Ethiopia) and Russia which is exploding and may challenge the superpowers soon with the huge navy they've been building.

So, great game, I doubt I'll finish the game before tomorrow morning, but it's been real fun C5. It's amazing how far the game came from it's initial release.

Ready for C6!

 

[CaiusDrewart]

It isn't just bad AI handling strategics- good lord, if someone designed that into a boardgame these days they would get crucified for it. It is BAD DESIGN. Any mechanism that can be manipulated somewhat easily into denying player's abilities to participate in the game is not going to fly. It's your own fault if you lag behind over time is OK, but not your fault all the uranium is by player X and not you...

Why not switch to a model where strategic resources increase the effectiveness or reduce the cost of certain units, rather than being requirements for them? Like imagine that you could build Knights no matter what, but if you have access to Iron or Horses your Knights have +5 strength. If you have access to both, +10 strength. If you have access to Uranium your nukes cost 20% less. That kind of thing.

 

[Vaclac]

And of course, even culture or science games lose a lot of tension and fun if the AI poses no credible invasion threat. Ever since they implemented 1UPT, it never has. Cities are just too tough for the AI to crack. Back when stacks were a thing, though, a larger and more advanced AI would crush you if it declared war on you. In my opinion, that was a good thing.

You're not even at risk of them competing strongly with you for a science victory it seems. I'm fine with an AI that doesn't actively pursue victory throughout the whole game, but once it gets to the end game and starts the science victory process it should go after it hard. In the Battle Royale, they built parts of it and then just sat around even though they could continue pursuing it further. It seems you could be out-scienced by the AI and still win just because the AI doesn't bother actually trying to achieve the victory even when it's right in its sights.

 

[Jaybe]

You're not even at risk of them competing strongly with you for a science victory it seems. I'm fine with an AI that doesn't actively pursue victory throughout the whole game, but once it gets to the end game and starts the science victory process it should go after it hard. In the Battle Royale, they built parts of it and then just sat around even though they could continue pursuing it further. It seems you could be out-scienced by the AI and still win just because the AI doesn't bother actually trying to achieve the victory even when it's right in its sights.

Oh, you mean like the Aztecs, perhaps, who won one way and were about to also win in another? And also had a very powerful military.

 

[Gamewizard]

I watched most of the stream. The AI performed better than my expectations. They teched well and expanded well (except for Russia, whoopsie there). I would have liked to see some more aggression...an Aztec v Brazil war would have been interesting to watch, but I'm not sure if it would have helped either one in the long run. Felt bad for Spain not being able to handle the barbarians, but would have liked to see them improve their land once the problem was finally taken care of.

Anyways, it looks way better than Civ V did on launch, so that is promising.

 

[treadwin]

Whether the AI goes for a Domination Victory or not, doesn't impact its ability to stop you going for a Domination Victory, or reflect on its ability to provide an entertaining experience for you while you go for your Domination Victory.

In fact having another Civ going for a Domination Victory makes a player Domination Victory easier as you don't have to take the capitals of any Civ that has lost its Capital to the Warmongering AI Civ. If that is true, a "Smart" AI would not take even one capital once they sense that a player may be going for a DOM Victory.

I understand the upgrading Unit issue, but I'd need to see quite a few play-throughs at higher levels, before I would rule out special circumstance. I'm not questioning the opinion, just the certainty with which the opinion is delivered.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

The AI focuses on agendas a lot. And in today's AI battle, Anton and Pete said that the AI no longer looks at who is close to a victory condition when determining who to attack. So, I get the impression that the devs purposely designed the AI to role-play rather than win.

 

[Slayan]

Because its supposed to be a STRATEGY game.

Strategy game doesn't mean that all the AI players have to take over all the city's

 

[rpgalon]

The AI just looked like it didn't want to win AND did nothing to avoid losing, it was just there with no interaction between them.

Actually the only part of the game that looks to have AI interaction is Religion, maybe they wasted too much lines of code making the AI play that stuff.

 

[Magil]

Notice how the Aztecs had tons of builder sitting around for basically the whole game? Imagine if they were a Civ with a unique ability to utilize builders in a way no other Civ could, giving them a way to easily make use of any extra builders they had lying around...

Firstly, comparing BtW Civ4 AI with vanilla pre-release AI is ... I don't know. That's 'skewed' perspectives if I ever saw one.

The AI doesn't have to play a substantially different game in VI than V. One of the main selling points of VI is that it isn't releasing being gutted of the features of its predecessor, as V was (remember how vanilla V launched with no religion, no espionage...)--so is it so much to expect the AI to be able to play the game a little?

More to the point, they made the stream very uninteresting because the AI just sat on its hands for most of it. The only things it did worth talking about are the blatantly stupid plays. Otherwise, it was just generally passive and non-interactive. I'm honestly confused how this could be considered acceptable by the developers of the game.

I don't care about the AI wanting to win/not wanting to win. That's irrelevant. But I would like to see the AI try to accomplish various goals. Conquest is absolutely one of those goals. Why are leaders like Gorgo and Montezuma so passive? They should be some of the biggest warmongers out there.