Grade the AI

[JohnnyW]

If we are using letter grades I will give it a D-. If we are using number grades I will give it a 2.

It is seriously incompetent, but that is masked by bonuses.

Not saying I could do any better, but then again I'm not a programmer and it's not my job to make AI.

D-. 2.

 

[cman2010]

If we are using letter grades I will give it a D-. If we are using number grades I will give it a 2.

It is seriously incompetent, but that is masked by bonuses.

Not saying I could do any better, but then again I'm not a programmer and it's not my job to make AI.

D-. 2.

the thing is civ 4 had better ai.

 

[ImperialGuard]

2k Greg commented it gets smarter as the difficulty goes up,

Have we not all learned that we cannot trust anything a 2K/Frixais representative says?


http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=400860

 

[Xzylvador]

@OP
What AI?

 

[JP1]

I'd give the AI something around a B-. There's a lot of people who either expect some kind of unrealistic ideal out of the AI, or who are forgetting just how bad the AI was in Civ4. If you haven't played it in a while, start a game with a lot of civs with vassals turned on and watch the madenning war declarations and peace vassals. Or just appreciate how awful the AI is at even coming CLOSE to some desired victory conditions.

The real issues with the AI are:
1. It was given a pretty intractable problem (1UPT hex-based combat) which it has no chance of solving. To make the game acceptably difficult in higher levels, the AI had to be given insane bonuses to keep up, resulting in the occasional carpet of doom.

2. It's really not that good at taking over cities. It still marches in single units near cities and fortifies them there to watch them get destroyed. Before the latest patch came through and make cities harder to take over, it wasn't uncommon for an enemy AI (let's say Hiawatha) to roll over everyone you didn't take over, so you'd end up with yourself and one other superpower duking it out. This has become a lot less common since the patch.

3. Some of the methods the AI uses are very wonky and opaque. An AI told you not to settle too close to its borders! How close it that, and how long does that last? Who knows? The AI detected yout troops near him when they're actually at war with someone else! Do you declare war now, or risk the AI telling everyone you're a dirty liar later? This would be less of a problem if the effect wasn't totally binary... Either the AI is fine with you, or he's ratting you out to everyone he knows, with no middle ground.

(Really, this silly issue where scouts vision range counts as 'my borders' isn't given enough vitriol.)

Some good stuff:
1. People may make fun of the AI's wartime decision-making process, but they don't remember/realize how bad this was in Civ4 and how it had to be gamed at higher levels. (Let me beg one gold off Montezuma so he declares on someone else.) At least now, there's feels like there's a reason behind most wars in Civ 5, and that reason isn't, "I rolled a die and it said I had to declare war on SOMEONE."

2. The AIs do try for some victory condition, whatever it may be, and recognize what you are trying to do for yours. No more of Ghandi happily becoming a peace-vassal while you're in the middle of a game-winning romp towards domination.

 

[ArataWata11]

I gave AI over all grade of c- AI is so damn horrible in terms of diplomacy, combat, city placement, sometimes expand too aggressively sometimes just one or two cities. dont take greg words, He just marketing the game. last time, i read his posts was on the pre-release of big patch enumerating changes and AI relative improvements. it gaves me assurance and hope that after all the dissappointment playing civ, i can finally play the way I used to with competative and challenging AI. but my contentment and renew joy didnt last long after post-released of the patch, the AI behaviors remained the main issue and still in the state of insanity.

 

[Sofar Sogood]

I think what they need to do with the AI is have it recognize that it isn't human.

Really, from what I understand of pre-Civ 5 hype, they said they were going to make it act more like a human.

Well, with current technology, that's like trying to make an airplane out of concrete. Something will fail.

As far as I can understand it, they gave the AI a set of directives that roughly resembled how humans act (getting wary/angry when people settle where you really wanted to settle for instance). Problem being that the AI doesn't know how to react appropriately to those directives, understand the reasoning behind those directives, or even carry them out very well.

The human typically has problems when you start settling really prime locations near him, get a close-by border town and start building up an army there, or when you're trying to box him in. He might declare war on you, he might watch you a little more closely, he might decide that it's not worth it and go settle elsewhere. But if he knows what he's doing, he can be expected to be reasonable and intelligent about how he carries out the basic idea of "Watch the folks settling near you"

The AI doesn't do that. It mostly only understands that it must hate people who settle on what it considers "its" land.

For that matter, it tends to have really absurd definitions as to what the AI considers as belonging to it.

More or less, the AI will hate you from thereon because you settled in a reasonable spot, if not for a variety of other reasons. You're more or less waiting for when the volcano erupts.

Meanwhile, with the human, you may have had the opportunity to make some kind of lasting alliance with him, at least -- even if you committed a minor infraction like settling an area he was kind of hoping to settle and otherwise prove trustworthy.

Heck, you can't even keep an alliance with the AI because the way it acts is essentially designed to be shifty and backstabby like humans only CAN (but not necessarily will) act like.

tl;dr, there's a fundamental flaw in the AI's goals. Unless we start getting something almost self-aware, or at least significantly more powerful than today's Civ AI, trying to make it emulate a human is a losing game on all sides.

 

[Horizons]

2k Greg commented it gets smarter as the difficulty goes up, and that Napoleon even tried to embark troops but stopped doing it once he saw it was not working, which (at least for me) was a great sign of hope.

And that's why the guy gets paid to be a PR hack for Take2, because he sure ain't talking from experience of playing the game.

 

[the343danny]

the thing is civ 4 had better ai.

No they didnt, the Civ 4 AI had MASSIVE bonuses as well. Have you tried diety? In the end of the game I ended up killing something like 300 riflemen, and just as many infantry, in wars from 1 nation.

 

[Horizons]

No they didnt, the Civ 4 AI had MASSIVE bonuses as well. Have you tried diety? In the end of the game I ended up killing something like 300 riflemen, and just as many infantry, in wars from 1 nation.

Were you playing on ultra-massive maps? I played Civ4 for four years solid and very, very rarely came across AIs with 300 units.

Oh and do you think Civ5's system is better, where it takes 28 turns to build a single tank for example?

 

[Zyxpsilon]

Seeded and randomized on every start?!
No way *i* can rate these AIs accurately without miserably failing with a -F & counting.

 

[cman2010]

No they didnt, the Civ 4 AI had MASSIVE bonuses as well. Have you tried diety? In the end of the game I ended up killing something like 300 riflemen, and just as many infantry, in wars from 1 nation.

civ 4 ai was clearly better. and 300 riflemen I dont think you even played civ 4.

 

[Ricci]

I suspect that it's the smartest AI ever in a civ game.
...

You made me LOL for a couple of seconds!!

 

[Biz_]

C

considering firaxis's resources... F

 

[Sofar Sogood]

I'd argue that Civ 4's AI was better, diplomatically speaking -- largely because it not only made sense, it was actually reasonable.

Or, at the very least, you could count on only some of the AI civs you're trying to curry favor with backstabbing you.

I'm all for making the AI less predictable, but at some point, it also needs to be less insane.

 

[Polycrates]

civ 4 ai was clearly better. and 300 riflemen I dont think you even played civ 4.

If we're talking about the combat AI, Civ IV AI was mediocre at best. Pretty much enormous stacks of archers sitting in each city waiting for you to throw your SoD at them, and offensive wars consisting of vague dribbles of troops across your borders. And it wasn't so flash at other aspects either, though of course the diplomacy was still lightyears better (except for the infuriating tech trading).

BtS AI was clearly better than Civ V's, agreed. But that was years later, and mostly because 90% of it was lifted directly from a mod (Blake's fantastic Better AI mod).

And yes it was not uncommon to see stacks of 80+ infantry from someone like Shaka in the late game.

 

[Bradicus]

F

I give it a failing grade. Playing earlier renditions of Civ, I actually got into feeling like I was playing against people... or at least forgetting about the fact I was playing by myself with a computer. Simply put, I was immersed, which is exactly what a good Civ game does to you.

You know those pre-loaded games you get on computers these days? Like chess or hearts? The game isn't really all that fun because it's blatantly obvious the AI is horrible. It's like that in Civ 5.

But it's more painful. Every time I play a game I begin to get immersed and then the AI does something absolutely mind-bogglingly ******ed. It's beyond fathomable. For an AI program written to play out in a challenging vulcan-like logical fashion, it makes three-sheets-to-the-wind-captain-kirk-like decisions. And then it reminds you, like a slap to the face, that you're playing a pretty weak AI. Then all the glitz and beauty of the game kinda melts away a little bit and you're slightly depressed. You can already forecast exactly how the next 200 turns are gonna play out and you know the only challenges you might face will be logistical and that any pathetic effort made by the AI will be duly and easily quashed by you - even on the highest difficulties when it's given full advantage to obliterate you but instead fumbles around the map like a lost orphan looking for a soup kitchen.

What really breaks my heart is that the guys making this game OBVIOUSLY has vision. It's everywhere! It's like they crafted a beautiful lamborghini.... then gave it to a 4 yr old to drive.

 

[klazer]

D, to be fair the bar has been set pretty high (sins or galciv2, stardock games in general feature great ai).

Frozen is correct that the ai doesn't know how to wage war, but taking it a step further than just following the suicide line, it will continue to produce units while at war no matter what. Even when france's horrible futurama strategy ("send wave after wave of my own men to them") doesn't pan out and he changes to something equally ******ed. Even when he is -200 gpt because of his massive carpet of useless units. Makes it too easy to use economic warfare and get him to surrender half his cities after you prove you outlast him and really don't want peace unless it greatly benefits you.

Why not an F? I've seen F rated AI. This isn't an F - it's not unfixable. Fix it.

 

[AfterShafter]

civ 4 ai was clearly better. and 300 riflemen I dont think you even played civ 4.

Nah, on huge maps, high difficulty, when fighting some of the mega-empires, it was not unheard of to end up having to deal with literally hundreds of units upon a declaration of war. Leaders with high unit build properties who go runaway would have armies that just never seemed to end.

All depended on map settings. In the big games I played, having my own armies being well over a hundred units wasn't a rarity, and the AI always had more - usually significantly more. I always remembered the feeling of dismay fighting Justinian to, on the turn of DOW, have a defensive city with 50'ish heavily upgraded protective defensive units drop in one turn, and the AI still having a monster stack coming my way.

 

[Rusty Edge]

You made me LOL for a couple of seconds!!

Glad I could be of service.

I think that the incompleteness and imbalances of the game also mask the abilliites of the A.I.


What do you think? Did they simply write a dumb A.I. from scratch ? If so, why?