Comparing V vs VI

[criZp]

They absolutely don't NEED to release the source code.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

Lol. Civilization 5 was the swimlane Civ. Stay in your lane or get slapped down hard. The very definition of playing with yourself.

Some agendas could use some tweaking but on the whole, much more interesting than the numbing sameness of Civilization 5.

I actually agree with you and prefer Civ 6 to 5 for a variety of reasons. I think it's a better game, though Civ 5 did some things better, too.

Well, if you decided to go tradition, yeah.. I played liberty in most of my games, but also some piety, honor, and my favorite tradlib with Poland. The game never forces you to play passively or to play tall. You can be strong/achieve good finish times with wide and violent strats for sure.

What I meant to say anyway, was that in Civ 5 the AI at least posed a little bit of threat. In Civ 6 you can just lock them down in friendships and the game is just over. 100 more turns of building whatever you like until you win culture/science. There are no backstabs, no surprise AI behavior, you just win. While the AI very rarely managed to win culture/science/diplo on Civ 5 deity at least sometimes they snowballed and got close to a victory. In Civ 6, that has never been the case for me. Some people report the earliest AI victory around t300..

They absolutely don't NEED to release the source code.

are you just arguing semantics or are you actually against releasing the source code? I don't understand

yes, they definitely don't "have to".. I think they should, however.

 

[Thormodr]

Well, if you decided to go tradition, yeah.. I played liberty in most of my games, but also some piety, honor, and my favorite tradlib with Poland. The game never forces you to play passively though.

What I meant to say anyway, was that in Civ 5 the AI at least posed a little bit of threat. In Civ 6 you can just lock them down in friendships and the game is just over. 100 more turns of building whatever you like until you win culture/science. There are no backstabs, no surprise AI behavior, you just win. While the AI very rarely managed to win culture/science/diplo on Civ 5 deity at least sometimes they snowballed and got close to a victory. In Civ 6, that has never been the case for me. Some people report the earliest AI victory around t300..

Sure. With the modders help, the AI improved quite a bit. I'm sure the same will hold true for Civ VI.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

Sure. With the modders help, the AI improved quite a bit. I'm sure the same will hold true for Civ VI.

I loved modded Civ 5. Spent most of my hours in AckenMod, actually. probably the best 4x experience ever to this date But I was arguing about vanilla. BNW AI was pretty decent in terms of snowballing, getting a strong empire, and they were slightly less bad in chasing their win conditions than their GS counterparts. They still pretty much never won before ~t200, and often times much later. (standard speed)

In AckenMod I once lost a game to an Egypt culture victory at t137. That was some crazy stuff.

 

[Thormodr]

I loved modded Civ 5. Spent most of my hours in AckenMod, actually. probably the best 4x experience ever to this date But I was arguing about vanilla. BNW AI was pretty decent in terms of snowballing, getting a strong empire, and they were slightly less bad in chasing their win conditions than their GS counterparts. They still pretty much never won before ~t200, and often times much later. (standard speed)

In AckenMod I once lost a game to an Egypt culture victory at t137. That was some crazy stuff.

No worries. Not a fan of Civilization 5, at all. I found it very dull. Very stiff and regimented.

The AI is here to enhance my gameplaying experience. Not try to replicate a player. I don't like that.

That being said, Civ VI does need some work in upgrading the AIs competitiveness. It'll come.

 

[PhilBowles]

Civ VI AI behavior/diplomacy is terrible, predictable and samey irrespective of Agendas, but Agendas are also mostly terrible, predictable and samey, and also those two system's don't even interact well. Civ V AI wasn't good, but at least it had some modicum of personality and could surprise you from time to time. That's really what made Civ V more of a game than VI, which is mostly just a simulation you play by yourself, against no one but time.

That's a pretty good description. I just fired up Civ VI and started a new game, and have had nothing to do but build and fight barbarians - the Indians are passively happy with me because I was far away when we first met (settling Mecca on their doorstep two friendship declarations in hasn't so far mattered), and for some reason so are the Mongols despite complaining about both my absence of cavalry and my lack of religion (I was waiting on the penultimate prophet, but it seems only four other civs went for religion). The Scots don't like me much but also aren't doing anything about it. This is a pretty typical experience where the AI civs literally don't have any impact on anything I'm doing. I don't even need to compete with them meaningfully since I lucked out with the map and am massively ahead on science thanks to finding Hattusa and Fez immediately, and having geothermal vents and a +5 campus spot for my second city. I'm the science leader before even getting access to Madrassas. No one seems to competing for Great People, Wonders are being built very slowly (it was past turn 70 when Stonehenge went), and expansion is both slow and not getting into my area (though I have my eye on Scots occasionally crossing into North Africa). No one's been even slightly aggressive even though I only have two units, and a characteristic feature of a North African start on a TSL map is that you have basically no early production so I ought to be falling behind.

All that said, this is the weirdest TSL map I've ever seen. I have Africa completely to myself (barring city-states), and Scotland is the only civ in the entirety of Europe. Asia is overcrowded, with India, Khmer, Korea and Mongolia in an 8-civ game, and I've seen reports indicating that the Maori are about. Whichever civ has the Americas to itself is presumably doing pretty well.

Nevertheless, this is on the more passive side but still pretty typical of my experience of Civ VI on Deity. None of the AIs matter unless they're actively fighting you, and luck plays too big a role in early snowballs - if you have a starting position with good CSes you find first, and perhaps a Natural Wonder or two, a game that may otherwise be challenging early feels like playing on Chieftain.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

This is a pretty typical experience where the AI civs literally don't have any impact on anything I'm doing. I don't even need to compete with them meaningfully

yeah, that is pretty much exactly what I was talking about.

 

[Gedemon]

When the third "expansion" is released, then they can release the DLL.

I don't understand why they'll have to wait after the current season pass, I mean why not before the 1st expansion like for civ4, why not before the 2nd expansion like for civ5, why not immediately like for Oldworld, why not after a 2nd season pass or why not after civ7 is released ?

 

[PhilBowles]

yeah, that is pretty much exactly what I was talking about.

One thing that does annoy me about Civ VI is the way it spams barbarians to artificially inflate the game's difficulty - when barbarians are consistently more of a threat and a relevant game concern than AI civs, you know the developers have done something wrong.

The AI is here to enhance my gameplaying experience. Not try to replicate a player. I don't like that.

That's all going to come down to how you feel the AI enhances the gameplaying experience. If you want a sandbox where the AI allows you to interact with it on your terms and otherwise doesn't really do anything to interfere with you, Civ VI is fine. Personally, I play Civ as a strategy game: I want to be challenged by an AI acting as a rival, I want to feel under pressure to find a 'lane' and I want to be punished and forced to adjust if my strategy is not well-suited to the situation I find myself in.

 

[Atlas627]

The agenda system doesn't relate to anything except whether AIs declare war.

It also relates to if the AI will trade with you, which causes you to both do better relative to the other civs. I don't see why you would want to trade with someone who is competing with you in an area you care about or is weak in an area you wish to take advantage of. It also encourages the AI to make alliances with you or against you, which is something a real player would do as well. Those parts work better than the declarations of war because the AI evaluating whether or not it should declare war is the problem, not the agenda system itself.

If the system becomes nonfunctional because the AI isn't effective, that is a problem with the system. AI and game systems are not as discrete as people want to imagine: Civ is not an independent game with mechanical players who happen not to be very good - that's how AI is often talked about, but not what it actually is. "AI" is actually a whole set of algorithms, each for a different system. Whether the system is good or bad is intrinsically linked to the AI's performance using it, and for the agenda system specifically it has no existence outside the AI's ability to use it - it's not a game mechanic the player can make use of.

Part of the system's design is related to the AI's performance, but the AI development is not necessarily up to the task of using the mechanics. The AI can in fact be considered players that are not good. I don't understand how you can say otherwise.

Civ V had bad logic for war declarations as well, but that didn't stop its personality characteristics being either detectable or relevant.

I don't see what your point is here. The AI personalities were not *unique*, but they were different from each other. I would like them to be unique.

The AI doesn't play according to its own agendas - agendas are entirely a case of how relationship modifiers are applied to other civs.

Right, they just happen to have agendas that closely align with how one should play with that civ's uniques in mind. But yeah, I don't think it does much to play to its own civ strengths, which is a flaw of the AI.

Even if it did, some of these make no sense in terms of how Civ games work. If you want to spam Wonders and fall behind, what you do not do is focus on taking other people's wonders since you need that production to build Wonders.

I don't think I've ever had Qin declare war on me even if I was pissing him off by building wonders. He keeps trying to build wonders, but denounces you and thus tries to form alliances against you so that you start losing out on trade deals and maybe someone else will declare war on you.

Kongo doesn't have any agency in whether anyone spreads religion to them so whining about it doesn't have any gameplay relevance.

Whining about it IS agency. By already starting on the negative opinion of you, he is incentivizing you to hurry up and spread your religion to him. It is an example of the agenda system actually causing a useful gameplay effect: you spreading your religion to him.

My point was that there's no logic either in flavour or in gameplay to Gitarja's obsession, not that the the gameplay should match the flavour. If you're playing on a TSL map Gitarja will be colonising small islands - if she has better options, she will be colonising those. She could get upset with people colonising coasts, but the size of the landmass isn't relevant - Indonesia's game bonuses work best on areas with a good mix of coastal and land tiles. That's not a case of Indonesia not being well-balanced to make use of one-tile islands - it's a case of Indonesia deliberately being designed not to be about one-tile islands. Indonesia wants the same coastal cities everyone else does, but gets a much bigger bonus from having them.

She isn't about 1-tile islands. Small landmasses are bigger than that. Small landmasses are the kinds of areas that (should be) perfect for her ability.

All of this is however secondary to my main point, which was:

"In past Civ games there was much more variation in how civs behave than just what sorts of things would prompt them to declare war, and even that decision was handled with more nuance."

I think this is a case of the agenda system being so prominent that you only notice the leader agenda, instead of all the other AI weights that exist. This is not a problem with the agenda system, again. If you think the agendas are worth too much, that's fine. That is not an inherent problem with the system, but with the balance of the system.

You seem resistant to the idea that the AI civs ought to have personalities, and I'm not sure why. Even if the agenda system in Civ VI were well-implemented the AI would still be lacking in meaningful personality.

I have absolutely no idea how you've come to the conclusion that I don't want the AI civs to be different from each other and have personalities. I want that, which is exactly why I am arguing the agenda system is a good idea.

 

[criZp]

are you just arguing semantics or are you actually against releasing the source code? I don't understand

Neither of these, I was saying that they don't need to release the source code and there's plenty reason to be worried. That's pretty clear IMO.

 

[Atlas627]

1) This has nothing to do with agendas
3) Having people lose their mind over stuff like "you don't build ships" when you are land locked and cannot build ships nor have any need for them anyway, is absolutely 100% nonsensical, yes. Targeting people who has undefended coastlines is very different from getting upset at how many ships you have. Just ridiculous.

The argument for 1 was that the agendas resulted in the AI playing the same way every time. I said that you have different civs in each game, so you have the AI playing in a different way each time, and encouraging you to play differently for the sake of the AI. It is absolutely related to agendas.

As for 3: yes I agree that Harald should probably only care about if you have lots of coastline AND few ships, similar to how Hojo only cares about your Faith/Culture if you have a large army in the first place. But encouraging you to get a coastline (by refusing to trade with you while landlocked) isn't a bad idea because then he can raid you if you don't build ships. And he isn't going to attack you while landlocked unless he is actually next door to you, which is just smart play.

The agendas are not nonsensical. I can make sense of them just fine. You can dislike them if you want, but that's different from being nonsensical.

 

[criZp]

You did just admit that it doesn't make sense for him to get so upset about the ships when I have no coastline for him to attack anyway, saying that the agenda could be better designed isn't my idea of making sense of it.

 

[Atlas627]

You did just admit that it doesn't make sense for him to get so upset about the ships when I have no coastline for him to attack anyway, saying that the agenda could be better designed isn't my idea of making sense of it.

If he is upset at you for not having ships when you don't have a coastline, you are encouraged to get a coastline to build some ships.

The problem with his agenda is that he might be better off trading with you so long as it helps him raid some coasts. Of course, some humans don't figure this out either... and sometimes he really should be embargoing you and making alliances against you because he can't really attack you himself. In such a case, one would hope the other AI algorithms intelligently have him decide between begrudgingly working with you or forming alliances against you, but his opinion of you doesn't need to be positive either way, so it isn't really that poor of an agenda.

It does not have to be perfect in every single instance of the current implementation for the general idea to be good.

 

[PhilBowles]

Part of the system's design is related to the AI's performance, but the AI development is not necessarily up to the task of using the mechanics. The AI can in fact be considered players that are not good. I don't understand how you can say otherwise.

They can from the perspective of discussing their in-game performance, but not if you're trying to determine whether a system is or is not good. The problem with seeing the AI as a bad player is that it tempts you to do exactly as you have: treat it as an independent entity with agency, and which can therefore be blamed for failings in the system. That's false. The AI *is* the system. If the AI is failing it's an indication that the system is a failure.

I don't see what your point is here. The AI personalities were not *unique*, but they were different from each other. I would like them to be unique.

In Civ VI they're neither. Even some of the 'unique' agendas aren't unique - in my current game (which ended prematurely because of an apparent bug that caused the screen to freeze as soon as I greeted Korea), one of the civs - Khmer, as I recall - chasitised me for not having a navy.

Right, they just happen to have agendas that closely align with how one should play with that civ's uniques in mind. But yeah, I don't think it does much to play to its own civ strengths, which is a flaw of the AI.

The AI would need to be able to behave differently for different civs for that to be the case - when all AIs behave the same way whatever their identity, obviously they can't vary their behaviour to be consistent with their agenda.

I don't think I've ever had Qin declare war on me even if I was pissing him off by building wonders. He keeps trying to build wonders, but denounces you and thus tries to form alliances against you so that you start losing out on trade deals and maybe someone else will declare war on you.

AIs don't declare war past the early game. I don't know how you can really make a distinction between them - *they all behave identically*. Qin's as likely to declare war if you start right next to him as Shaka or Alexander, and they're as unlikely to declare war as he is past about turn 100 or if you have a sizeable military.

Whining about it IS agency. By already starting on the negative opinion of you, he is incentivizing you to hurry up and spread your religion to him. It is an example of the agenda system actually causing a useful gameplay effect: you spreading your religion to him.

That assumes the player cares enough about roleplaying to accede to his wishes. An actual player knows that Kongo will benefit from their religion and will try to avoid spreading it to Kongo whatever Mvemba thinks of you - and Mvemba has no way of doing anything about it.

I think this is a case of the agenda system being so prominent that you only notice the leader agenda, instead of all the other AI weights that exist.

I used to think that myself. But, no, the agenda system doesn't seem to have substantial weighting - examples from my current game in which Chandragupta doesn't change his opinion of me at all once I settle in the closest tile I can to him, while the Mongols like me despite having two complaints against me. And, again, however the agendas are weighted wouldn't affect actual gameplay behaviour.

It remains the case that civs behave the same way in terms of chosen victory condition, military production, expansion behaviour, aggression, tendency to go for Wonders or religion (though there do seem a couple of civs that are particularly predisposed to go for religion - I've yet to see Khmer without one in particular), affinity for city states and every other behaviour that isn't mediated through the diplomacy screen. That is unrelated to how the agenda system is weighted. In Civ V the way the civs responded to your behaviour diplomatically was one of the less variable traits, and they nonetheless succeeded in generating distinct personalities.

This is not a problem with the agenda system, again. If you think the agendas are worth too much, that's fine. That is not an inherent problem with the system, but with the balance of the system.

It may rather be that weighting of all sorts is set too low. One of the very few consistent behaviours I have seen is that Gandhi will very rarely declare war even if adjacent to you at the start (unless invited by someone else), and he presumably has the strongest pacifist weighting. Certain civs also seem to favour specific victory conditions a little more often than others, but not often enough to seem to be a particular pattern (especially as civs routinely randomly reselect victory conditions midgame based on espionage reports).

I have absolutely no idea how you've come to the conclusion that I don't want the AI civs to be different from each other and have personalities.

Yet you appear to favour the Civ VI implementation, in which this isn't the case, over Civ games in which it is much more evident. Even if you like the principle of the agenda system, I'm not clear how you can want distinct AI personalities and claim that Civ VI is closer to what you want than Civ IV or Civ V.

 

[Atlas627]

They can from the perspective of discussing their in-game performance, but not if you're trying to determine whether a system is or is not good. The problem with seeing the AI as a bad player is that it tempts you to do exactly as you have: treat it as an independent entity with agency, and which can therefore be blamed for failings in the system. That's false. The AI *is* the system. If the AI is failing it's an indication that the system is a failure.

If I were talking about how agendas *play* in Civ6 rather than the *idea* of agendas, I'd agree with you here. Maybe that was the original intention of the thread. The impression I got was that this thread was about "let's talk about the best and worst parts of each game so we can combine them into a better game", in which case talking about the idea of agendas is the important part, not how the AI has or has not been programmed along with them.

In Civ VI they're neither. Even some of the 'unique' agendas aren't unique - in my current game (which ended prematurely because of an apparent bug that caused the screen to freeze as soon as I greeted Korea), one of the civs - Khmer, as I recall - chasitised me for not having a navy.

Yes, that bothered me that they put some of the unique agendas into the common pool. However, Harald will always have that agenda, so it isn't a total loss.

The AI would need to be able to behave differently for different civs for that to be the case - when all AIs behave the same way whatever their identity, obviously they can't vary their behaviour to be consistent with their agenda.

Again, this is a flaw with the implementation of the AI.

AIs don't declare war past the early game. I don't know how you can really make a distinction between them - *they all behave identically*. Qin's as likely to declare war if you start right next to him as Shaka or Alexander, and they're as unlikely to declare war as he is past about turn 100 or if you have a sizeable military.

They don't quite all behave identically. If they all had the same abilities they would, sure. But since Qin does happen to have the wonder-building ability, his Builders will get spent on those and his land will continue to go unimproved, prompting the AI to make more Builders, thus spending less time on military, thus deciding not to declare war despite disliking you.

That assumes the player cares enough about roleplaying to accede to his wishes. An actual player knows that Kongo will benefit from their religion and will try to avoid spreading it to Kongo whatever Mvemba thinks of you - and Mvemba has no way of doing anything about it.

An actual player knows that Kongo will also spread their religion by getting free Apostles from each Theater Square and Mbanza they build. You are already incentivized to spread your religion to Mvemba without the agenda. The agenda ties into the gameplay well.

I used to think that myself. But, no, the agenda system doesn't seem to have substantial weighting - examples from my current game in which Chandragupta doesn't change his opinion of me at all once I settle in the closest tile I can to him, while the Mongols like me despite having two complaints against me. And, again, however the agendas are weighted wouldn't affect actual gameplay behaviour.

I'm not talking about the agenda weights for the AI. I was talking about how *prominent* the agendas are. They are the flashiest part of the diplomacy system, the one you are most likely to notice. So any other nuances in AI personality are not noticed because the agenda system is in your face. I noticed slight personalities in the Civ5 AI because there was nothing else to notice.

It remains the case that civs behave the same way in terms of chosen victory condition, military production, expansion behaviour, aggression, tendency to go for Wonders or religion (though there do seem a couple of civs that are particularly predisposed to go for religion - I've yet to see Khmer without one in particular), affinity for city states and every other behaviour that isn't mediated through the diplomacy screen. That is unrelated to how the agenda system is weighted. In Civ V the way the civs responded to your behaviour diplomatically was one of the less variable traits, and they nonetheless succeeded in generating distinct personalities.

I think this is looking at Civ5 with rose-tinted glasses and extremely unfair to 6. The AIs do have different weights! They just don't tie into the agenda system that well, nor are the weights different enough to really matter.

It may rather be that weighting of all sorts is set too low. One of the very few consistent behaviours I have seen is that Gandhi will very rarely declare war even if adjacent to you at the start (unless invited by someone else), and he presumably has the strongest pacifist weighting. Certain civs also seem to favour specific victory conditions a little more often than others, but not often enough to seem to be a particular pattern (especially as civs routinely randomly reselect victory conditions midgame based on espionage reports).

I think this is more accurate.

Yet you appear to favour the Civ VI implementation, in which this isn't the case, over Civ games in which it is much more evident. Even if you like the principle of the agenda system, I'm not clear how you can want distinct AI personalities and claim that Civ VI is closer to what you want than Civ IV or Civ V.

I disagree that the other games had more evident AI personalities. I didn't notice them having distinct personalities in any of the games, but the agenda system is the closest to making playing with each AI different.

I think I must have misworded my original claim because everyone is jumping down my throat here, because I did not mean that the Civ6 AI actually *plays* differently, but that *you play differently vs each AI*. I don't really know if the Civ6 AI plays differently or if I am just seeing things, and that in itself is a problem. I would like the agenda system to be included in the next game, or something that takes the best parts of it.

 

[Thormodr]

One thing that does annoy me about Civ VI is the way it spams barbarians to artificially inflate the game's difficulty - when barbarians are consistently more of a threat and a relevant game concern than AI civs, you know the developers have done something wrong.



That's all going to come down to how you feel the AI enhances the gameplaying experience. If you want a sandbox where the AI allows you to interact with it on your terms and otherwise doesn't really do anything to interfere with you, Civ VI is fine. Personally, I play Civ as a strategy game: I want to be challenged by an AI acting as a rival, I want to feel under pressure to find a 'lane' and I want to be punished and forced to adjust if my strategy is not well-suited to the situation I find myself in.

Yes, you and I have different game philosophies. I think Civilization 5 caters more to (though not perfectly) yours and Civ VI, mine.

Different strokes for different folks.

 

[Dotsworthy]

Although I could never see myself going back to V as I enjoy VI so much, the things I really miss from V are:

- Diplomacy. Civ V was really good at keeping the player on their toes. the AI will quite happily reject renewing a friendship if they feel a strong reason to and it meant ensuring you had a sufficient army just in case a friend turned on you. I got stung pretty bad by Queen Elizabeth sending her troops to take my science victory city.

There was also more options: gift units to a city state, ask civs to stop war with a city state. You would have AI asking for luxuries or gold to help out their nations.

With Civ Vi, I like agendas and the use of city states is far better than V with interesting bonuses and the use of envoys, but with the AI designed to be locked into friendship all game it basically allows you free reign to ignore them. I barely interact with the AI on Vi, which is a real shame.

- Social Policies and Ideology: while I think I generally prefer the government system of Civ vi which feels a bit more strategic, I agree with an earlier post about how V has these significant decisions which change the course of the game. Social policies feel like significant moments in a civs history or journey, so it would be nice to combine the too.

Ideological pressure would tie really nicely into loyalty and diplomacy in Vi

- Happiness. I know a lot of people didnt like how brutal it was, I liked the tension it brought to building an empire.

In Vi, unless I'm playing a civ that is build around amenities, I often forget about it. and there is such an abundance of them in the late game it doesn't require much management.

- World Congress. I think the diplomatic victory is a sound idea in Vi, but could do with incorporating some of the mechanics from V. Glad to hear they are planning changes.

There are still lots of things I enjoy more in Vi. The placement of districts and wonders, exploring the map, natural disasters, agency bonuses.

 

[Furycrab]

One thing that does annoy me about Civ VI is the way it spams barbarians to artificially inflate the game's difficulty - when barbarians are consistently more of a threat and a relevant game concern than AI civs, you know the developers have done something wrong.

I kinda turned around on thinking of barbs like this on Immortal or Deity around the time where I learned to break some really bad habits regarding how I handled them like avoiding settling on most hills, and better management of my early units to block Horse and Iron spawn locations. Still sometimes get a random game where there wasn't a realistic "good" decision I could have made, but it's cut down on the number of games where I feel barbs are the massive issue. Have Victoria from here to thank for that. Like I'll still sometimes consider Plain hills if the spot is too good to pass up or if playing Gorgo, but I've learned to hide my cities a bit better.

Settling on any hill can double or triple the range a scout sees your city, which is all that really matters when it comes to activating camps.

If you did know that but still think it's a major issue in 6, I'll just politely disagree.

 

[Thormodr]

Thst is another thing I like about Civ VI. I absolutely hated the emasculated barbs in Civilization 5.