@Firaxis & 2k - Good AI & Netcode is KEY to an enjoyable Beyond Earth experience!!

[KrikkitTwo]

Sure, some of rawrkitty's complaints are valid. I would never oppose a better AI, but it's unrealistic to expect something revolutionary from Beyond Earth. As for the automation, frankly, I like it where it is. Firstly, you no longer have to maintain 30+ cities, and secondly, you don't apply the exact same build order to every city you found anymore. Sure, there are some common things, but they're neither extensive nor tedious to deal with.

As for GalCiv2, well, I haven't played in ages, but as a game it has it a lot easier: no geography, no movement restrictions, and barely any "terrain" improvements which aren't a no-brainer. Easy expansion, tech race, build ships and attack, or shift planetary development looking towards the other victory types: it doesn't have much in the way of challenges for a decent AI.

And regarding praise to Stardock... I shouldn't have to bring up Elemental, and the fact its two expansions haven't really elevated it to anything more than a playable game. Rather bland and generic, Legendary Heroes could never hold me for long. It's funny how some despite Firaxis' decent track record dread CivBE, but after Stardock's trainwreck and blandness are most optimistic about GalCiv3. GalCiv2 was the last really good thing they did, but that was 8 years ago and had its fair share of issues for a while.

One thing that Should make queuing easier, the lack of a tech tree means buildings probably Don't have other buildings as prerequisites... so (depending on the length of the queue) you could put every building into it for a city founded/captured on turn 350 ie you could put a 'university' in the build queue even though you haven't built the 'library' yet.

 

[Thormodr]

Sure, some of rawrkitty's complaints are valid. I would never oppose a better AI, but it's unrealistic to expect something revolutionary from Beyond Earth. As for the automation, frankly, I like it where it is. Firstly, you no longer have to maintain 30+ cities, and secondly, you don't apply the exact same build order to every city you found anymore. Sure, there are some common things, but they're neither extensive nor tedious to deal with.

As for GalCiv2, well, I haven't played in ages, but as a game it has it a lot easier: no geography, no movement restrictions, and barely any "terrain" improvements which aren't a no-brainer. Easy expansion, tech race, build ships and attack, or shift planetary development looking towards the other victory types: it doesn't have much in the way of challenges for a decent AI.

And regarding praise to Stardock... I shouldn't have to bring up Elemental, and the fact its two expansions haven't really elevated it to anything more than a playable game. Rather bland and generic, Legendary Heroes could never hold me for long. It's funny how some despite Firaxis' decent track record dread CivBE, but after Stardock's trainwreck and blandness are most optimistic about GalCiv3. GalCiv2 was the last really good thing they did, but that was 8 years ago and had its fair share of issues for a while.

Stardock, while far from perfect is on the right track. They've been networking and hiring people and establishing relationships that make me quite optimistic for the future. Their AI is slowly getting better and I expect great things from them.

I do wish that a Great Person "AI programmer" would appear on the scene and help all 4X strategy games, though. Lol.

 

[zgort]

Little late champ. Game will be released next month. Product is practically done.

 

[Nashoa]

Sadly, I have no real expectations of significantly improved AI in BE and it has no impact on my decision to buy it. However, unless there is a improvement I won't be buying Civ VI. At least not until the complete versions is 4$ in a steam sale.

I do think they need to massively improve the automated features because the better optimized that is the easier it should be to make a viable AI. Take the workers examples used so far in this thread. Automated workers make truly horrible decisions, walking 10+ turns to build a farm, then back 10 turns to build something else. There is really no reason the worker AI should be so bad at this and it is a huge issue hurting the AI.

The main issue is that as the difficultly level rises the AI should become more and more efficient compared to a human. Much like how a chess AI starts seeing larger and larger possible move branches and becomes hard to beat. In Civ this does not seem to be the case. On higher difficultly levels the AI's should be making optimized decisions on things like citizen mtg, worker queue, great person points, science beakers, etc Until such time that it far surpasses human ability or dedication. I don't redo every city's citizens, ever single turn but the AI should on higher levels.

At least thats how I see it, but I don't program AI's for a living.