Civ BE wont be that great of a game.

I don't know why people act as if there has ever been a strategy game with significantly better AI. Sure it's a nuisance, but AI's are extremely limited, it's never been better and probably won't change anytime soon.

Our brain is better than any computer constructed so far, and we think about complex moves or about founding a city for several seconds. The AI has less than a second per turn for all actions.

Making the AI more competitive would also mean sacrificing a lot of gameplay elements they simply have trouble understanding.
people are not complaining because AI is not on genius levels. People complain because AI in sequels is worse than in previous intallmets.
Hell, I still remember that CivV could not manage citizen allocation until G&K, while CivIV and Alpha Centaury had it working without problems in 1999. Even in 1999 AI would not place city on starvation just because you clicked production focus, which was a common thing in CivV.
When things get worse, then people start to complain.
 
Right, but all those things are the same as in Civ 5, so how is this game dumbed down compared to Civ 5? I agree that those things are dumb, but they can't make BE more dumb if they're in both games!


Don't you know "dumbed down" is just a generic insult people use to make themselves feel smart ?

You can't expect people to actually back up what they're saying, that would be crazy.

Civ : BE will be a game that appeals to people who liked CiV, and not to people who liked CiV. Simple as that.
 
Judging by recent streams CivBE is a dumbed down and reskinned version of CivV with same idiotic AI we have in CivV.
SMAC was just a reskinned Civ II.
Victoria II was just a reskinned EUIII.
Wasteland 2 is just a Kerbal Space Program reskin.
It has the same engine =/= it's a reskin.
 
He definitely has a point about the AI though - it looks like it hasn't had any of its basic problems fixed at all.
 
Uh-huh


Practically exactly the same game.

Yep.
It has cities and stuff. Clearly a terrible reskin.
I could also make the argument that Age of Wonders III is a civ V reskin, or that any of Paradox's Warlock games are reskins of Civ V. But are they?
 
people are not complaining because AI is not on genius levels. People complain because AI in sequels is worse than in previous intallmets.
Hell, I still remember that CivV could not manage citizen allocation until G&K, while CivIV and Alpha Centaury had it working without problems in 1999. Even in 1999 AI would not place city on starvation just because you clicked production focus, which was a common thing in CivV.
When things get worse, then people start to complain.

Actually, the AI putting a city into starvation because you want to focus on production makes perfect sense. You told it to focus on production at the cost of other things, like food. It is akin to people playing turns while in a negative income; you don't need to make money (or food) every turn... you just need to not drop to 0 gold / population.
 
From watching MadDjinn's stream I have a few worries about the game as it stands:

1. Trade routes are really strong. You can get a dozen production and half-a-dozen food per route no problem - it looks like trade depots are the #1 thing to build in every city, and keeping your internal routes filled up is essential to playing at all well. Trouble is, I don't think the AI knows this.

2. The AI still can't move units and shoot with them, which is a massive disadvantage in stuff like naval warfare.

3. The AI still doesn't know that it can't take a city without melee units, so it'll just bombard them over and over.

4. Ships use their (horrible) melee strength to defend against ranged attacks. This means a ship shooting an identical ship will result in a dead ship every time. Stupid, hopefully a bug they'll fix though.

5. The covert op "coup" seems way better than anything an affinity gives you - the others are really cool and flavourful, but "halve the city's population", "destroy the city's tile improvements" and "attack the city with siege worms" are all mechanically weaker than "steal the city". Once you own the city you can do whatever you want with it - sell it to another Civ, burn it down, whatever. Maybe the affinity covert ops need to require less intrigue, maybe level 4 instead of level 5?

6. The AI is still horrible wherever water is involved.

I've still got it preordered, because I know I'm going to play the heck out of it.

Agree with all this, but I'd add: even at the highest difficulty, it seems *way* too easy to play without any real military well into the midgame. The AI's just seem incapable of recognizing a militarily weak player and crushing them.

And that the weak penalties from low health mean there is really no meaningful check on expansion.

And that using the Civ5 local happiness system for health is very strange once there are no longer luxuries that can be used to provide national level happiness and cover up weak spots.
 
From watching MadDjinn's stream I have a few worries about the game as it stands:

1. Trade routes are really strong. You can get a dozen production and half-a-dozen food per route no problem - it looks like trade depots are the #1 thing to build in every city, and keeping your internal routes filled up is essential to playing at all well. Trouble is, I don't think the AI knows this.

2. The AI still can't move units and shoot with them, which is a massive disadvantage in stuff like naval warfare.

3. The AI still doesn't know that it can't take a city without melee units, so it'll just bombard them over and over.

4. Ships use their (horrible) melee strength to defend against ranged attacks. This means a ship shooting an identical ship will result in a dead ship every time. Stupid, hopefully a bug they'll fix though.

5. The covert op "coup" seems way better than anything an affinity gives you - the others are really cool and flavourful, but "halve the city's population", "destroy the city's tile improvements" and "attack the city with siege worms" are all mechanically weaker than "steal the city". Once you own the city you can do whatever you want with it - sell it to another Civ, burn it down, whatever. Maybe the affinity covert ops need to require less intrigue, maybe level 4 instead of level 5?

6. The AI is still horrible wherever water is involved.

I've still got it preordered, because I know I'm going to play the heck out of it.

This.

Pretty much exactly what i wrote in another thread.

From what i see from the let's play, BE seems that it will be a very fun iteration of CIV V. And that's all it will be, mainly because what this game needs most at the moment is to improve its AI. That and only that.

Now, regarding the mecanics, i'm not surprised to still anticipate OP stuff and cheap tricks already. Those games have almost zero chance to be perfectly balance until thousands of players tear it apart and find all of the little thing that need changes. Just like CIV V. And as no one has any doubt about whether or not we will get DLC, well BE will suffer the same ill as CIV V aka "i'm no good till i'm fully DLCed"

Despite all this, not cancelling my preorder, need my new CIV fix. :goodjob:


EDIT :

but I'd add: even at the highest difficulty, it seems *way* too easy to play without any real military well into the midgame. The AI's just seem incapable of recognizing a militarily weak player and crushing them.

And that the weak penalties from low health mean there is really no meaningful check on expansion.

And that using the Civ5 local happiness system for health is very strange once there are no longer luxuries that can be used to provide national level happiness and cover up weak spots.

I have the same feeling that BE is a LOT easier than CIV V. Just taking LPs from Maddjin you see no AI run away in a specific department. And Mad doesnt optimize as much as he does on CIV V still he ranks second in points. Even in number of military units, the AI seem way weaker than in CIV V where they would compensate poor (and i'm gentle) strategy with unit spamming.

Hell, MAD doesnt even micro manage anything in his cities, and still, no real problem competing with the AIs. I think CIV V vet will just mass murder the appollo AIs after 1 or 2 warm up game.
 
Uh-huh

(snip)

Practically exactly the same game.
Please tell me you're kidding. Is a graphical makeover all that matters to convince you a spin-off is significantly different from its "base" game? You must've been thrilled about StarCraft II being radically different from its 1998 predecessor.

SMAC is about as different from Civ2 as CivBE is from Civ5. Beneath all that fancy fluff, select few dissimilar mechanics and renamed terms, it's the exact same game.
 
I think some people are missing the point of the abysmal civ5 AI... while it's true that any AI has limits and it's never going to be comparable to a human, a well designed game tries to ensure that its mechanics are understandeable by the AI.

For example, many mechanics in fall from heaven 2 are impossible for the AI to comprehend. When Sephi decided that he wanted to address this issue and started work on master of mana, he knew that he would have to rewrite many mechanics from the ground up. He did, and in fact the result is a very competent AI. But he had to change the mod so much that it has become a brand new game.

This is very important! If you want a decent AI, you have to think about it right from stage 1 of game development. When you come up with ideas for game mechanics, one of the first questions asked should be "Can the AI be taught how to handle this?" and if the answer is NO, then that idea should get scrapped.

What Fireaxis did with civ5 is the exact opposite of this: they started with the civ4 AI, changed a fundamental aspect of the game ( UPT ) and didn't care at all about the repercussions. It's really not surprising that the AI sucks, it's essentially the civ4 AI with a couple tweaks trying to play a completely different game.

THIS is the issue with civ5 AI. So please don't say that all AIs suck equally and it's unrealistic to expect anything better. People know that AI coding is difficult. That's why it should be addressed seriously, and not ignored like happened with civ5 ( and BE, let's face it ) .
 
[to_xp]Gekko;13508209 said:
I think some people are missing the point of the abysmal civ5 AI... while it's true that any AI has limits and it's never going to be comparable to a human, a well designed game tries to ensure that its mechanics are understandeable by the AI.

This is very important! If you want a decent AI, you have to think about it right from stage 1 of game development. When you come up with ideas for game mechanics, one of the first questions asked should be "Can the AI be taught how to handle this?" and if the answer is NO, then that idea should get scrapped.

This is very true. However, the Civ 5 AI could be made a lot better with a couple of fairly simple changes. Ninakoru has a mod called Smart AI that fixes the "AI can't move and shoot" issue with ranged units, and the AI would be greatly improved if it was possible to take a 0 HP city with ranged units like you can in the Warlock games.
 
I wish it had better writing. Don't just tell me a leader has 4 PhDs. Show me.
 
So what if the AI is the same as Civ V! Not any reason to wait to play the most advanced strategy game ever made.
 
Really guys lol? Same thing for any games when it is soon coming out people start to complain about the game and I bet you if you look it is always the same ones doing it.

If you don't like it like anything else don't buy it.

No game is perfect. Don't pick one thing out of a game and complain about it as if it makes the game not good at all.

The overall game should be look at.

Funny there was a QA WITH Maddjinn a couple days ago and I did not see those type of question about the game.

So lets all be positive and hope if there is some problems it will be fix.

If you have a concern well come to the QA with guys from CIVBE and ask them those questions. The session is October 21st.
 
Right, but all those things are the same as in Civ 5, so how is this game dumbed down compared to Civ 5? I agree that those things are dumb, but they can't make BE more dumb if they're in both games!

I think you can sum up Pyramid Head's concerns as : This is not enough like Civ 4, and too much like Civ 5 (which should have been more like Civ 4.)
 
- EUIV
- Functional AI
Pick one.
Yeah, pretty much all Paradox games have had considerable AI issues, particularly the sandboxy ones like EU4. And computer players don't always have the same mechanical limitations as humans, to make up for their deficiency.
 
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