Chess with a monkey?

[godotnut]

I agree based on my experience so far. I just don't understand why they couldn't implement what they learned improving Civ4. No doubt this is dumbed down, and even worse, the player no longer has access to the information needed to make important strategic decisions. Heck, the game doesn't even have "automated workers leave old improvements" as an option! That is just one of many buzzkills in the game.

But I still enjoy high level GOTMs for Civ4, and that is what I will continue to focus on until (if?) this game can be made into a worthwhile strategy game.

Not as big of a disappointment as Spore, for sure--I'm sure I will log some hours in to this game--but there are a lot of problems here. A lot.

 

[Elkad]

Playing my first game (on Monarch). Attacking a city-state on a peninsula. It loads it's only unit on a boat and tries to sail around my siege weapons, rather than leaving it in the city to help defend. Sank the unit the next turn with siege.

If the unit was abandoning the city to help another city, it might make sense to flee. But even then, it should know the unit is defenseless in the water.

 

[Crezth]

If Civ V is playing chess with a monkey, then Civ IV is banging yourself in the head with a frying pan.

 

[Shackel]

If Civ V is playing chess with a monkey, then Civ IV is banging yourself in the head with a frying pan.

You may stop trolling now.

 

[zomg]

You may stop trolling now.

I hope youre being ironic.

 

[cembandit]

Actually prince is not even normal level...it's 1 lower right?

 

[moopoo]

i'm pretty sure prince is the 'all-equal' level now, except that developers have stated before that the AI hones its decisions more based on the difficulty you're playing on. So i'm therefore going to have to join the chorus of 'up the difficulty, then complain'.

 

[remconius]

Well, it is clear the game is not perfect out of the box....

Glad this OP has uncovered some strange AI actions. I would suggest to send the savegame (where you declared to 3 advanced civs) to firaxis to be fixed in the Update.

Btw, I remember the huge number of posts about Civ 4 AI. With the new rules (hexes, 1upt, emabarking) they are back to square 1 (or hex 1 )

 

[digitalcraft]

Ok, peep this:

http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b36/gravity999/misc/WTH.jpg


A little explanation. I'm playing as Japan. I have this northeast area with land bridges to the south and to the west. Far to the west are three civilizations, and two more to the south.

The civilizations to the south are Egypt and the Ottomans, you can see the northern edge of the ottoman civilization far to the south.

Well, I had made a city a bit to the west on the edge of the land bridge, just to make sure the edge of my empire, and I had planned and was making a settler to come settle the space inbetween. Well , mister Suleiman has marched a settler ALL THE WAY UP, through my civilization, and plops his city right inbetween my cities, immediately contacting me to complain that I'm settling in HIS area. RAEG

So I switch to swordsmen, this sucker is going to pay. the NEXT TURN he declares war on me. Thanks for the free city, derpy!

 

[Quetz]

It's a clever trick to bait you into wasting time on that city while he marches his main force up to for the attack!

Well, probably not, but Settlers really are damn cheap enough in this game to be used like that...

 

[digitalcraft]

He marched a couple units up after a while, but I already had plenty marching down towards him and splattered them. He definitely didn't have any coordinated strategy going on. He's just an idiotic UI.

 

[Venereus]

He marched a couple units up after a while, but I already had plenty marching down towards him and splattered them. He definitely didn't have any coordinated strategy going on. He's just an idiotic UI.

Looks like you shocked the monkey.

 

[CrimsonEdge]

Here are the in game descriptions of the difficulties.

Settler - For learning the game.
Chieftain - Beginner
Warlord - Easy
Prince - Normal Difficulty
King - Hard. The AI players receive small advantages to improve their play.
Emperor - Very Hard. The AI players receive advantages to improve their play.
Immortal - Extremely Difficult. The AI players receive large advantages to improve their play.
Deity -Only the best players in the world will beat this level.

When you complain about the game being easy, where are you playing?

 

[Gath]

Here are the in game descriptions of the difficulties.

Settler - For learning the game.
Chieftain - Beginner
Warlord - Easy
Prince - Normal Difficulty
King - Hard. The AI players receive small advantages to improve their play.
Emperor - Very Hard. The AI players receive advantages to improve their play.
Immortal - Extremely Difficult. The AI players receive large advantages to improve their play.
Deity -Only the best players in the world will beat this level.

When you complain about the game being easy, where are you playing?

He's not complaining about the game being easy, he's complaining the AI is stupid. There's a world of difference.

I can have a challenge playing a 5 year old at chess if I give him all my pieces but my king, but that doesn't make him any better at chess. Nor is it much fun.

 

[jpinard]

Well that's what different difficulty settings are for!

I shouldn't have to let the AI cheat like crazy to offer a challenge. That's lazy programming. Maybe they should have taken some of the advertising budget and put it into hiring an additional programmer.

 

[CrimsonEdge]

He's not complaining about the game being easy, he's complaining the AI is stupid. There's a world of difference.

I can have a challenge playing a 5 year old at chess if I give him all my pieces but my king, but that doesn't make him any better at chess. Nor is it much fun.

No, it's not.

The AI functions based on a set of criteria. It then picks from this list based on the difficulty you are playing on.

The AI is being stupid? Crank up the difficulty. The AI will eliminate many of the stupid choices and will have a much more narrow list of choices it can make.

Play on Deity and see if it still reproduces the things you consider stupid.

Also, turn on Random Personalities.

 

[Venereus]

He's not complaining about the game being easy, he's complaining the AI is stupid. There's a world of difference.

I can have a challenge playing a 5 year old at chess if I give him all my pieces but my king, but that doesn't make him any better at chess. Nor is it much fun.

More importantly, the dumb AI shamelessly asking the modders to do Firaxis' job.

No, it's not.

The AI functions based on a set of criteria. It then picks from this list based on the difficulty you are playing on.

The AI is being stupid? Crank up the difficulty. The AI will eliminate many of the stupid choices and will have a much more narrow list of choices it can make.

Play on Deity and see if it still reproduces the things you consider stupid.

Also, turn on Random Personalities.

I hope the AI smartness reaches it's top tier at Prince, and from there up the AI improves only because of the advantages. I want the best AI without the cheating.

 

[digitalcraft]

I agree. The AI is fairly stupid. I was able to hold off Catherine's entire army with one crossbowman and a city. They'd just wander around coming forward single file and get punked. Didn't damage my city once. There was even a huge wide open area south of the city should could have built an actual army type force and taken me from, but instead she just kept sending single file units through the forests because it was a shorter path. Her army was way bigger than mine too, and I had to shift all my units back from the south, so she had like 10 turns of free attacking. She was doing this dumb thing there where she'd hold her units outside the range of my city and try to go way around through the forest, towards the crossbowman set in the forest behind the city. This however meant her units basically went single file around the city and towards the archer, giving me 4 turns per unit to hit them with the city and 2 per unit with the archer.

I now own half her empire she gave me after she lost her whole army to my crossbowman and city.

This was on prince btw.

 

[PotatoOverdose]

I shouldn't have to let the AI cheat like crazy to offer a challenge. That's lazy programming. Maybe they should have taken some of the advertising budget and put it into hiring an additional programmer.

The Civ IV AI is just as bad on noble.

Tech Bronze. If copper in BFC, connect and chop/whip axemen and conquer neighbors. If Copper outside BFC, chop settler, and then do the above. You are now in a very favorable position after conquering 1-3 neighbors and are pretty much guaranteed the win because you have 3 excellent capital city location cities without building a single settler.

Alternatively: Spam Wonders in 1 city. Settle all great people in that city. Use your super specialist city to get massive tech lead. Win.

The Noble AI cant stop either of these stupidly simple strategies in civ IV. With some variation depending on traits and uu these approaches worked on deity as well (of course on deity you actually needed to use diplo to pull out the win).

 

[CrimsonEdge]

I hope the AI smartness reaches it's top tier at Prince, and from there up the AI improves only because of the advantages. I want the best AI without the cheating.

Yeah, I couldn't tell you. However, consider this.

In Starcraft 2 (yes, I know it's an RTS but this is actually a fairly similar comparison) the AI functions based on a few criteria:

1. The number of strategies it knows increases as the difficulty raises (essentially 3, but I digress).

2. The actions per minute increases as the difficulty raises (from some 10 to something like 500).

3. The AI only has an economic advantage on the highest difficulty (where it has 500 or so APM).

On the easiest setting, the AI has no economic advantage, has a very very low APM, and exists primarily as a means to learn to play the game.

On medium, the AI knows two strategies (that's two above the easiest), has about 120 APM or so, and, while still incredibly easy to anybody who has played an RTS before, can pose a challenge to those who aren't familiar with Starcraft 2.

On Very Hard (the second highest), the AI knows all three strategies, has about 300 or so APM, and can pose a challenge to those who aren't diamond level players.

On Insane (the highest difficulty), the AI has 500 APM and has an economic boost.

Essentially I see it as being very similar here. It's a very unrealistic expectation to expect an AI to be able to beat an experienced player. This is why we have to allow the AI to cheat in order to have a challenge.

I used to be the same as you. You could try forcing the AI to ally through the custom game options as an alternaitve to a cheating AI like I used to do in games like Warcraft, but I've gotten over it.