Has Civilization become a game for the pokemon go crowd (aka AI is immersion breaking bad,it hurts)

[ThERat]

From my AW game under stories section.

Guess what happens next? (I am the owner of Kyoto, no it doesn't have any walls, no units insides, no units nearby. Yes, there are three English knights that sneaked in).

After pressing enter, I want to cry. Is the AI programmed to NOT ever take a city. Did the testers actually ever play a game where the AI attacked them? This is civ-sim it seems.

 

[redwings1340]

Pokemon Go had a lot of awful and nothing particularly good in terms of game design. The only thing it had for it was pokemon and awesome technology.

Civ has a lot of awful and a lot of amazing, and hopefully the awful will be fixed to workable in time.

That's kind of how I see the difference.

 

[Securion]

The lower the settings the less chance they actually attack a city. On Prince they just sit outside the city and look dumb. Emperor they attack most of the time and Deity they attack all the time. From my experience at least.

 

[ThERat]

My friend, this is Emperor difficulty. There is NO excuse. It did not attack for 3 turns until my units finally arrived. At which point, the AI waited for me to take them on.

 

[Takfloyd]

The lower the settings the less chance they actually attack a city. On Prince they just sit outside the city and look dumb. Emperor they attack most of the time and Deity they attack all the time. From my experience at least.

That has nothing to do with AI differences. I bet they simply attack more often on Deity because their combat boosts give them the numerical advantage even with a single unit. The AI is probably so poorly programmed that it will refuse to attack a target that requires multiple attacks to beat, such as a city, because it sees the first attack as a loss.

 

[redwings1340]

The AI is probably so poorly programmed that it will refuse to attack a target that requires multiple attacks to beat, such as a city, because it sees the first attack as a loss.

Oh, that could potentially explain it, actually. It masses up warriors, then refuses to use the warriors because city defense is high.

 

[ThERat]

What are actually the defenses in an empty city without walls? Does anyone know?

 

[rastak]

What are actually the defenses in an empty city without walls? Does anyone know?

Umm, 51 in your case?

 

[ThERat]

Umm, 51 in your case?

duh. My fault. However, with 3 knights and no counter attacks, they could easy take the city.

And if someone comes and tells me 1001 reasons why not, then the whole concept is flawed and we can stop playing the game.

 

[TrailblazingScot]

I lost a city to the AI. I underestimated Mvemba a Nzinga despite all the warning signs. Why did this happen? I read posts saying the AI can't take cities...

Kyoto has a high defensive value. The knights would have to cross the river and I think knights suffer a penalty when attacking cities. No wonder the AI had a hard time deciding what to do. It is a shame that they didn't just pillage what they could if the odds weren't in their favour.

 

[TruthfulCake]

I lost a city to the AI. I underestimated Mvemba a Nzinga despite all the warning signs. Why did this happen? I read posts saying the AI can't take cities...

I think the AI refuses to attack if they are injured by your counterattacks. They shuffle out and became rather incompetent at taking cities. But if you offer no resistance, the AI can and will take your city. It happened to me once when my city was totally undefended due to settler and exploration rush.

Which means that if you offer even the slightest bit of resistance, the AI will most likely fail.

 

[Cao Cao Mengde]

Exactly. It's much less that the AI is "broken," it's just that it seems the way it is programmed now, the AI is EXTREMELY conservative with it's units, refusing to throw their lives away. Which I guess is kind of nice, but means we get these extremely bizarre situations of the AI just being terrified to attack...

Maybe it's General McClellan who's leading the AI armies :3. (Cookies for those who get that joke~)

 

[lordhaw]

Exactly. It's much less that the AI is "broken," it's just that it seems the way it is programmed now, the AI is EXTREMELY conservative with it's units, refusing to throw their lives away. Which I guess is kind of nice, but means we get these extremely bizarre situations of the AI just being terrified to attack...

Maybe it's General McClellan who's leading the AI armies :3. (Cookies for those who get that joke~)

Ha! McClellan...that's a good one, and rather true. Little Napoleon my butt!

The AI is very timid. I would guess that is the way it's programmed but not sure. Damage their units and they hightail it out of Dodge. Another thing I find is put a ship into the midst of a fleet of units and they will stop and mill around while you destroy them

 

[Menzies]

The AI in later eras appear to not want the warmonger penalties.

Civ IV was criticised for being designed to be a Civ game for the casuals. It's one of the most common, yet least reasoned complaints that comes up each version; a fallback complaint when someone can't articulate a proper one.

 

[Camikaze]

I'm having difficulty parsing the OP. Who is the 'pokemon go crowd'? How does that relate to 'immersion breaking' AI?

 

[lordhaw]

I should have added the caveat to my earlier post, that the AI is very timid to the player. It's not at all timid to itself. In all my games so far, the AI takes out city states and other civs quite regularly but when it attacks me, it's not very robust, quite timid on the attack. I was amused in my last one where Teddy is all happy that I'm keeping the peace on the continent while he's picking off city states one by one and taking out Spain.

 

[teakbois]

I'm having difficulty parsing the OP. Who is the 'pokemon go crowd'? How does that relate to 'immersion breaking' AI?

Exactly.

Plus people need to relax. Obviously the AI needs some tweaking. A lot of it is fairly simple (I'm thinking anyway) fixes. Yes, some of this could/should have been caught in internal testing. but the overall product is pretty high, and this game has by far the most features of any Civ game on launch. Its not like IV and V that started fairly bare bones then added a lot with patches. So there is a LOT of AI work to be done overall compared to those two games.

I am a little frustrated with the immersion breaking stuff too. Carpets of Horsemen in the modern age is no bueno. But to imply that they are dumbing down the game for the masses (I think thats what you are saying?) is pretty ridiculous.

 

[Lord Shadow]

The Knight has a base Strength of 48, so it's already at a slight disadvantage against a 51-strength city. And that's not even considering the river crossing and that as cavalry, Knights likely suffer a malus against cities.

I agree that the AI needs to be more willing to attack despite losses, but this seems like a tricky scenario.

 

[ThERat]

I'm having difficulty parsing the OP. Who is the 'pokemon go crowd'? How does that relate to 'immersion breaking' AI?

Look, if the AI is so timid and useless at posing a challenge, it would obviously not be a challenging experience hardcore civers are looking for. However, the AI as it presents itself is pleasing the crowd that just wants to roleplay and have a little fun while being at it. Image their disappointment if the AI would actually pose a threat

 

[Camikaze]

Look, if the AI is so timid and useless at posing a challenge, it would obviously not be a challenging experience hardcore civers are looking for. However, the AI as it presents itself is pleasing the crowd that just wants to roleplay and have a little fun while being at it. Image their disappointment if the AI would actually pose a threat

Presumably it would be those who like the game for roleplaying who would be least thrilled with immersion breaking AI. And if they're not looking for a challenge, surely they'd play on lower difficulties rather than wishing the AI was inept. I don't understand which part of a poor AI would be pleasing this crowd. I'm also still not seeing how this relates to pokemon go in any sense.