How weak is the AI?

Frankly, it doesn't matter how well the AI is able to manage little groups of troops. The AI needs to be able to lead an army and fight sieges, which is the most essential criteria. If the AI cannot accomplish this, then it's as good as dead, and will probably be on the same level of Civ5 Vanilla.

 

Is he actually any good at the game? I remember watching the Beyond Earth streams and the guys on there were terrible. (EG: Leave a worker in miasma until it dies)

 

No, if you had to base how good he was on the game on today's stream, you'd have to say he's quite bad at it.

 

Now I have to wonder if they keep the camera away from the guys who are good at the game, or if they simply have nobody who is good at the game.

 

That was Pete. Ed wasn't involved in BE. He was too busy working on this.

 

i got the impression from civ5 expansions/patches that he had no actual idea how civ is played

 

Devs are usually not very good at their games cause they work so hard they got no time to play much.

 

Also, playing while casting is very difficult. Even professional livestreamers perform under their level while doing it. I doubt Ed trying to explain things through while rushing to fit as much into his hour as possible is going to be a top performer even if he's a decent player.

 

With the possible exception of MadDjinn, I have yet to see any streamer play very well, regardless of their reputation as a Civ player. I'm starting to think trying to play and talk at the same time and trying to keep up a fast enough pace to keep things interesting has something to do with it.

Edit: Lyoncet beat me to it.

 

This is not the AI game your looking for...

While I hope we will end up with a interesting level of gameplay, I'm not sure civ's computer controlled elements is AI.

 

It does make you wonder how they expect to balance their game effectively if they can't play it well.

 

1. Testers. They have several levels and playtesters include the team of some of the strongest Civ players.
2. Lead developers surely play their game.
3. It's a bit untrue what developers have no life. They have their free time and many of them play games.

 

There are people who specialized in balancing the game, they could also be a developer, but not all developer could perform proper balancing testing

 

From what i have seen so far. I`m not that worried about the intelligence of the battle AI. It has exceeded my expectations for a civ game. At least for a vanilla game.

What i`m worried about is if the AI builds enough of them and upgrades their units when they get obsolete. (warriors into swordman etc)

 

I am quite happy after seeing the stream yesterday.

Rome AI had 3 cities pretty quick with walls in them and had a number of units early even when it was not at war yet. It probably builds even more units when it is actually at war with a Civ. And then we have two more difficulty levels above.
Sure peoples who beat Deity in Civ5 will probably be able to beat Deity in 6 again probably even directly at release or after a few days of learning. But I don't think that we want it any other way the game shouldn't only be able to be defeated when Christmas falls on a Sunday.

The AI not upgrading units might still be a thing but the stream was over too soon to say that for sure.

 

Right, but those achievements — three cities and 6-7 warriors by t20 — were only possible because the AI gets huge bonuses, even on Emperor. Those same bonuses could also make it impossible to build early wonders or reliably found a religion on higher difficulties, much like in civ 5.

I'm glad we saw a competent AI, but I'm also worried it's very reliant on bonuses, even at Emperor difficulty.

 

I share your optimism.

More so: it was, in fact, only prince. And when you limit your AI (f.example) to a certain value (i.e. "reflections/turn") I cannot decide how the AI's behaving in the higher difficulties. It should be an exponential curve.
But that would seriously increase turn-time. Perhaps that's the issue here. Marbozir's turn time was like 5 seconds. That's pretty low for 11 or 12 AIs (actually not sure how many AIs he was playing against).

 

You are probably right on wonders. But also they increased requirements for them so you need certain tiles or buildings as prerequisites which might make the AI less inclined to build them as it chooses its builds more random and less planned than a player. Also maybe even on very high diff someone like China with beelining Eurekas and pushing construction through chops and such could still be able to build a few.

As for AI requiring bonuses I don't think that any experienced strategy gamer expected anything different. I am just happy if the AI does not fail horribly to play the game at all like in other games. Games like Endless legend or Endless space or Stellaris for example I never played more than two weeks because the game was unable to provide ANY challenge even at the highest difficulty. Something you definitely can't say about Civ5 Deity.

@AinEiken Did not mean Marbozir I meant the Firaxis stream that was on EMPEROR here is the replay https://www.twitch.tv/firaxisgames/v/94731272

 

Emperor? Thanks - will watch it.

 

No matter how hard I try that just doesn't bother me in the least. Clever play by AI would be best but I really don't care how they get it done at the end of the day. If I have a somewhat competitive game that's interesting to play I'll be completely satisfied.

When Rome declares war on me my first instinct isn't to decompile the code to review it. My first instinct is to swear at the screen and vow to destroy him.