Drastic Mods - What does Firaxis need to do? Why don't they?

[Derpy Hooves]

Perhaps mods can min max out the issues of the AI playing to make you lose instead of to win and I'm sure diplomacy can be fixed by a team of capable modders, hell they might even be able to bring back religion.
What I doubt though is the ability of the modders to create a functional combat AI because creating one with this many restrictions in an environment as complex as this requires a lot of sheer hours of professional programming, I suspect that if Firaxis would have made a functioning combat AI it would have been the biggest project of the entire development (and this is not just due to the rather short amount of time that seems to have been spent on optimizing the engine, the UI, balancing, etc.).

I would absolutely love it if the modding community was able to produce a working combat AI, but I think it will be the biggest and most time consuming mod ever made for the Civ series, so I'm not holding my breath.

 

[Becephalus]

The better AI mods for 4 mainly fixed things like having the AI use bombers properly, or better build orders. Things like that. They most decidedly did not make the kind of improvements that would be needed to improve the hex based combat skill.

It would be possible for a modder to do that theoretically, but it is WAY WAY harder than you would think and takes thousands of hours of work. That is right thousands.

The Wesnoth AI which many people think is a decent hex AI has been worked on for years, and it basically just kills as many unis as possible. This makes it easy to manipulate and frankly it has a lot of the same problems as the civ AI with not taking defensive positions and not holding reserves.

I would love to buy a combat AI expansion for Civ 5, but honestly substantial improvement would probably take a handful of very smart people half a year of full time work at least. It is a very very hard behavior to code.

 

[rschissler]

The better AI mods for 4 mainly fixed things like having the AI use bombers properly, or better build orders. Things like that. They most decidedly did not make the kind of improvements that would be needed to improve the hex based combat skill.

It would be possible for a modder to do that theoretically, but it is WAY WAY harder than you would think and takes thousands of hours of work. That is right thousands.

The Wesnoth AI which many people think is a decent hex AI has been worked on for years, and it basically just kills as many unis as possible. This makes it easy to manipulate and frankly it has a lot of the same problems as the civ AI with not taking defensive positions and not holding reserves.

I would love to buy a combat AI expansion for Civ 5, but honestly substantial improvement would probably take a handful of very smart people half a year of full time work at least. It is a very very hard behavior to code.

In other words...It ain't going to happen!

 

[The_Reckoning]

Sorry, I'm still skeptical. We're talking about AI here, you know like combat between you and another civ. How the AI moves units across the battlefield and chooses which unit to strike your units, how it retreats, etc. Name one mod for CivIV that does this.

I totally agree with your point - how hardcoded are unit movements in Civ 5 and how the hell are modders going to be able to program the AI to move things more cleverly and actually beat a player?

But Civ 4 is easy for the AI to understand.

If you want a really good example of how modders have improved the AI in Civ 4 check out K-Mod - the AI has done some really intelligent moves against me, playing that.

 

[The_Reckoning]

The better AI mods for 4 mainly fixed things like having the AI use bombers properly, or better build orders. Things like that. They most decidedly did not make the kind of improvements that would be needed to improve the hex based combat skill.

It would be possible for a modder to do that theoretically, but it is WAY WAY harder than you would think and takes thousands of hours of work. That is right thousands.

The Wesnoth AI which many people think is a decent hex AI has been worked on for years, and it basically just kills as many unis as possible. This makes it easy to manipulate and frankly it has a lot of the same problems as the civ AI with not taking defensive positions and not holding reserves.

I would love to buy a combat AI expansion for Civ 5, but honestly substantial improvement would probably take a handful of very smart people half a year of full time work at least. It is a very very hard behavior to code.

Big fan of Wesnoth, and yeah this is all true. It's why 1UPT was a terribly thought out design decision, even if it made Civ a better human vs. human game as far as combat is concerned.

 

[thadian]

i only fear that "better ai" mods while possible (i saw some article a while back about a civ4 watson or something?) i don't know if it would be compatible with all the other mods, and i like mods that are compatible.

 

[Zyxpsilon]

What? Give total control of a features complete SDK (including the DLL) to modders.
Why? DLC sales potential is a business model that conflicts with outsourcing creative content produced by a community of their fanbase.

Time is running out for both the above.

 

[Thormodr]

Firaxis looks a little busy. Civilization 5 may be pushed to the back burner now.

http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/01/05/xcom-enemy-unknown-announced-new-xcom-strategy-game-from-the-creators-of-civilization/

 

[The_Reckoning]

Oh great. 2k games are like a gang of 'creation-rapists' who go around destroying my favourite game series. I have no faith that this will turn out well.

 

[Zyxpsilon]

Firaxis looks a little busy.

Nothing stops them from working on ANY titles as contracted by 2K... but if they do have a real X-Com TBS in a dev beta (surprising news, indeed!) stage that means i'll be busy with a lot more than modding (Civ5 or not) this year.

*THE* tactical combat gameplay true fans of the legendary franchise have been waiting for.
Superb marketing decision nonetheless.