lets crack this fallacy

[teks]

When the irrational behavior of the civ 5 AI is brought up they say the new AI is in it to win it. I really want to break down how the AI is absolutely not in it to win it.

Difficulty not difficult
first off. If they are hinting that the AI is now in it to win it we can assume the AI was not before, yet in civ 5 the difficulty levels are far easier then the difficulties in civ 4. You can blame it all on the new combat system, but lets be honest, was the civ 4 ai any good at the old system? ( I honestly think the new combat AI has improved in leaps and bounds)

Diplomatic Dogpile
Lets look at how the AI uses diplomacy to its advantage to support a play strategy. Before the AI would try to act like a legit nation, but now it uses this as a tool to support its specific game goals, or so we would like to think, but how is a civ going for a peaceful victory doing himself any good by denouncing all the military civs for being war mongers. Wouldn't these peaceful civs go out of their way to seek positive relations. You know, like the player does when hes not trying to get his butt kicked while getting a culture win.
In reality this new AI always breaks diplomacy down into total anarchy where the peaceful civs actually pick fights with the warlick civs, because they are warlike!. Then they fight each other for trying to achieve the same goal. In the end most of this drives them away from their goal, except for the military civs. They love it.
IT would seem more logical for the peaceful civs to band together in defense pacts to discourage war mongers, and until they accomplish that they should be gifting warmongers to keep their hides.

Philisophical phallacy
Alright so in civ5 we have computers pretending to be players pretending to be civilizations. Since we already went this far why don't we do the full monty with it and let the AI know that it is AI, and base its strategy around the fact that the player is not AI. The AI should know better then to mess with the player if it wants to win. It should think to itself "If I attack the player early either I'm going to get knocked out of the game, or the player is gonna reroll, but if I ride on his success maybe I can steal the win behind his back." I mean hell if the AI isn't going to pretend that the game is real it might as well go all the way with it.
Just imagine you hover your mouse over 'friendly' and it says "The AI is afraid you will reroll the map if it declares war on you"

Conclusion
I enjoy civ5, and I think it will beat civ 4 when they finally release all the stuff they snuck away for expansions, but I'm not sure if they can bring back that feel of being a real nation like civ 4 did. I try to get into my great greek civilization. I rename my science center athens, and my unit producer sparta, and then the AI comes and ruins it for me when they say that they think I'm playing the game the same way they are (this is hilarious because half the time I don't know my own strategy). Darnit AI your not supposed to know this is a game! your supposed to be Ghandi, and gangis khan, and act the part. Get back in character I say for all of our sakes!

Right, what do you think about the AI who thinks its a human playing a game? I fear that if it becomes perfected the ai will crash my game when they are losing.

 

[The_Quasar]

When the irrational behavior of the civ 5 AI is brought up they say the new AI is in it to win it. I really want to break down how the AI is absolutely not in it to win it.

Difficulty not difficult
first off. If they are hinting that the AI is now in it to win it we can assume the AI was not before, yet in civ 5 the difficulty levels are far easier then the difficulties in civ 4. You can blame it all on the new combat system, but lets be honest, was the civ 4 ai any good at the old system? ( I honestly think the new combat AI has improved in leaps and bounds)

While I agree with you about better AI (still with plenty of room for improvement), I dispute the levels bit. I think that Fraxis have deliberately made the whole thing easier, by a level or two... so that more folk find it easier, aiming for a wider player-base.

Diplomatic Dogpile
Lets look at how the AI uses diplomacy to its advantage to support a play strategy. Before the AI would try to act like a legit nation, but now it uses this as a tool to support its specific game goals, or so we would like to think, but how is a civ going for a peaceful victory doing himself any good by denouncing all the military civs for being war mongers. Wouldn't these peaceful civs go out of their way to seek positive relations. You know, like the player does when hes not trying to get his butt kicked while getting a culture win.
In reality this new AI always breaks diplomacy down into total anarchy where the peaceful civs actually pick fights with the warlick civs, because they are warlike!. Then they fight each other for trying to achieve the same goal. In the end most of this drives them away from their goal, except for the military civs. They love it.
IT would seem more logical for the peaceful civs to band together in defense pacts to discourage war mongers, and until they accomplish that they should be gifting warmongers to keep their hides.

Good point about the military civs.

Philisophical phallacy
Alright so in civ5 we have computers pretending to be players pretending to be civilizations. Since we already went this far why don't we do the full monty with it and let the AI know that it is AI, and base its strategy around the fact that the player is not AI. The AI should know better then to mess with the player if it wants to win. It should think to itself "If I attack the player early either I'm going to get knocked out of the game, or the player is gonna reroll, but if I ride on his success maybe I can steal the win behind his back." I mean hell if the AI isn't going to pretend that the game is real it might as well go all the way with it.
Just imagine you hover your mouse over 'friendly' and it says "The AI is afraid you will reroll the map if it declares war on you"

ROFL, good point, however, imho, even if that is the REAL reason, the AI don't need to say that. Like the AI doesn't need to say it doesn't like that you're trying to win in the same way... it could, for example, say that, your aims are incompatible with ours.

Conclusion
I enjoy civ5, and I think it will beat civ 4 when they finally release all the stuff they snuck away for expansions, but I'm not sure if they can bring back that feel of being a real nation like civ 4 did. I try to get into my great greek civilization. I rename my science center athens, and my unit producer sparta, and then the AI comes and ruins it for me when they say that they think I'm playing the game the same way they are (this is hilarious because half the time I don't know my own strategy). Darnit AI your not supposed to know this is a game! your supposed to be Ghandi, and gangis khan, and act the part. Get back in character I say for all of our sakes!

Agreed, and Ghandi being so out of character by throwing nukes around doesn't help either.

Right, what do you think about the AI who thinks its a human playing a game? I fear that if it becomes perfected the ai will crash my game when they are losing.

LOL I think it's more likely to rage quit when the player gets ahead!

 

[Securion]

In their quest to make the AI more competitive, they made it act less smart (?!). They made the AI so aggressive and so dumb you never know whats going to happen.

It kills diplomacy, and its really sad.

I wish they could take the leap to dedicate a core to the AI and have it run constantly, analyzing and "thinking" in the background, preparing moves, comparing databases, etc.
Sure the minimum reqs would be a three core computer instead of a dual core, but who dosnt have a quad core these days anyway?

 

[The_Quasar]

I wish they could take the leap to dedicate a core to the AI and have it run constantly, analyzing and "thinking" in the background, preparing moves, comparing databases, etc.
Sure the minimum reqs would be a three core computer instead of a dual core, but who dosnt have a quad core these days anyway?

An excellent idea or at the very least make it an option if you have a quad or more core machine.

 

[gps]

... but I'm not sure if they can bring back that feel of being a real nation like civ 4 did.

Well, ... but isn't that the single most important point of a historic strategy game? To feel like playing something like real world alternate history??? The great thing even in Civ I as the most basic version of the whole franchise was how close to real world history events and politics some of the scenarios the game generated at random often where? So many times you sat there in wonder and though: this is just like WWII or just like US and USSR or lust like Rome and Carthago. Take that away and it fails - at least for me...

 

[Uncle Anton]

Well, ... but isn't that the single most important point of a historic strategy game? To feel like playing something like real world alternate history??? The great thing even in Civ I as the most basic version of the whole franchise was how close to real world history events and politics some of the scenarios the game generated at random often where? So many times you sat there in wonder and though: this is just like WWII or just like US and USSR or lust like Rome and Carthago. Take that away and it fails - at least for me...

Actually, no. Not ever.

In fact, I think Civ 5 is, in numerous ways, about as far away as being representative of an alternate reality as it can get without completely departing from the franchise. If you think otherwise I'd invite you to either play the game more, or study history a tad closer.

And just quietly, every single apologist on CFC for this game who's ever tried entering into an argument with someone with a shred of historic, political or military knowledge gets trumped in 3 posts or less.

Civ 5 is a lot of great things. It's pretty, it's fun, it's a great time waster. And really that's all a game needs to be; I'll still be playing it in years to come. But as representative of "experiencing your own representative historical reality" as the other games in the franchise it is most certainly not. In fact, in that regard, it's just above appalling.... some of the design decisions made in the game are similar to ones that were last seen in Civ 2.

 

[gps]

...

Whoops, forget it, totally missread your post...

 

[smallfish]

Civilization is a fantasy game with historical flavors.

There.

 

[warlordtheft]

Hmm, played I, II, skipped III, played 4, and am now playing CIV V.

I think this is an issue with alot of the latest strategy based games. The fact of the matter is AI's for these kinds of games has not really kept pace with the complexity of the games.

OT--I almost always beat the AI. FOr me the challenge is not if, but how soon and by how many points.

 

[BigChiefLizzy]

One thing that amazes me with the current diplomatic AI is it's suicidal tendencies that crop up fairly frequently.

Current game I'm Rome, Emporer level, Pangea map. Askia declares war on me; no big deal I was expecting it (again!). He has longswordsmen and cannon against my prepared defensive line of riflemen and artillery, so he gets destroyed. I wait for him to make a peace offer, but he has a better idea - he declares war on egypt as well

Ramesses like me has riflemen, in fact his army of riflemen, cannon and cavalry is four times the size of mine!

 

[Disgustipated]

I wouldn't say the difficulty levels are easier than Civ4's. Prince in Civ5 is more difficult than Prince in Civ4 for me. That is the level I normally play at in both games. The thing is in Civ4 I can beat the game with a higher point margin than in Civ5.

 

[Heerlo]

I wouldn't say the difficulty levels are easier than Civ4's. Prince in Civ5 is more difficult than Prince in Civ4 for me. That is the level I normally play at in both games. The thing is in Civ4 I can beat the game with a higher point margin than in Civ5.

I think prince in Civ5 is supposed to be equivalent to noble in Civ 4.To me, noble on Civ4 was harder than Prince on Civ5.It may be different for you, though.

I've played alot of Civ4 and 5 not even trying to win.Maybe it should be that the AIs act like regular nations instead of just trying to win.I'm not saying that victories should be excluded from the game altogether, but maybe they place too much importance on it?

 

[teks]

I am enjoying my civ 5 game. The AI just cracks me up so bad. Every nation hates my guts except the recently discovered mongols. They didn't say it but I could hear the words behid his smile " I see you hate everyone, so do I. Lets be friends"

I can't wait until they backstab me, so I can shout at the top of my lungs KHAN!!!

 

[Hormagaunt]

I wouldn't say the difficulty levels are easier than Civ4's.

I would. I've never beaten Civ4 at Deity level. I beat Civ5 on my 4th try.

 

[Disgustipated]

I just find Civ5 more difficult than Civ4. It's more difficult to maintain happiness and positive gold flow. Although I do admit I have found it easier since I switched to random maps instead of the Earth map. I had a lot of trouble maintaining happiness and gold on the Earth map for some reason.

Yes combat is very easy in Civ5, and you can defend yourself with just a few units. But building and maintaining an army was easier in Civ4, so it evens out imho.

Oh and I mean Prince in Civ5 to Noble in Civ 4 btw. I forgot they use different names. But those are the levels where the AI supposedly doesn't cheat and it's even for both the AI and the player in both Civ4 and Civ5. So that's the level I prefer.

 

[The QC]

teks, you stated some things that I've been thinking for a while myself.

I don't believe that the AI acts like a human would in those circumstances.

- A human who is weaker than a neighbor (and would want to continue playing instead of rage quitting ) would try to appease that guy and be friends with them, paying tribute if necessary. My days of playing Travian have made this clear to me. In Civ V, they act angry and give me poor deals, forcing me to attack them.

- In a match with several players that are not split in teams, humans will trade with opponents, unless there's a very specific danger involved (you want to attack the guy or he's close to winning). Trading with one guy out of 4 means that you and that guy gain an advantage over the other 2. I've watched a lot of games of Civilization the Boardgame on the Boardgamegeek forums (I have it at home, but I only play with my wife, while on that forum they play with 4 players). The players there rarely pass up an opportunity to trade, even though the matches are always quite close. Yet in Civ V everyone gets snotty because I'm doing well and stops interacting with me.

Going back to Travian, human diplomacy in a game like this, with long play times and high stakes is FASCINATING. It was the only reason why I liked the game, which otherwise was an infernal neverending grind. I'd love to see a single player game try to simulate this, but it would be immensely complicated and it's certainly not what Civ V achieves.

 

[Hail]

the ai needs to plan more and roll the dice less

 

[Forsaken]

Even with the common attitude of the AI wanting to all gang up and kill you for simply trying to get ahead in the game just like they do, I've never seen them all gang up on another AI's civ like they do the player. Even with all of that the game is too easy, you didnt have to try nearly as hard as you did in civ 4.
No matter what you do short of crippling your self to appease the AI they almost always gang up on you but all that is mute when it's too easy to kick the AI's military ASS cause the AI's incompetent.
In CIV 4 i've actully lost games in civ 5 i've yet to lose a game completly.

 

[PhilBowles]

Hmm, played I, II, skipped III, played 4, and am now playing CIV V.

I think this is an issue with alot of the latest strategy based games. The fact of the matter is AI's for these kinds of games has not really kept pace with the complexity of the games.

OT--I almost always beat the AI. FOr me the challenge is not if, but how soon and by how many points.

In Civ games this has always been a conscious design feature - it's why the series has always had its iconic scoreboard with named ranks. It never has been about simply beating the AI.

As for the original poster, he's taking the "in it to win it" idea (which is most often raised as a complaint about the Civ V AI, not in its defence) too literally. The AI does try to win the game (particularly close to the end, when they'll try to stop you achieving your victory condition by whatever means they can, or racing to their own if you seem to be getting too far ahead) - but then as he points out, it probably always did. So if anything the "not in it to win it" idea that the previous Civs' AIs were about enhancing the experience rather than winning the game is an excuse for older AIs that weren't capable of winning the game either.

What is normally meant by the new complaint is that the modifiers civs act on are those that a player would consider when trying to win the game - they stole my Wonder! They're a warmonger and need to be stamped out to improve my chances! But they're enacted without the understanding of context a player has, since an AI can never have that. So the AI makes individual decisions on a "play to win" basis, but doesn't play to a winning strategy - and as the original poster noted in the warmonger case, this can often be self-defeating (although not always in that specific instance - disliking warmongers makes a civ more likely to denounce them, which in turn may bring their own more aggressive friends into the fight to keep the warmongers occupied while they do their thing).

I can dislike someone for taking the Great Library, for example, but it's not in my interests to try and capture it since it achieves nothing for me (other than a city with a library and a couple of extra GS points) and will pit me against a civ with a technology bonus. The AI will hate someone for taking the GL as much as they will someone who takes the Hagia Sophia, which it would be in their interests to capture, preferably before it gives too much of a bonus to their enemy. But if they then go to war, lacking an overall strategy, they can't decide that the city with the HS is a good target for their attack, so they may end up in a war that gains them nothing.

 

[PhilBowles]

Even with the common attitude of the AI wanting to all gang up and kill you for simply trying to get ahead in the game just like they do, I've never seen them all gang up on another AI's civ like they do the player.

It happens - conversely I've very rarely had them all gang up on me unless I'm going for a domination victory. In one of my games, the Spanish, Chinese, Germans and I were all out to get the Ottomans, who ended up crippled in a very short time - this seems to have been prompted by them settling in a desirable spot. Not very sure what the Germans got out of it; they were on the other side of the continent.

In CIV 4 i've actully lost games in civ 5 i've yet to lose a game completly.

I've lost a few - some, when starting in Civ V, to early aggression, but more often in the late game. In one memorable game, Russia completed the spaceship shortly before I completed the Utopia Project - in another I was only a turn or two away from losing when my own spaceship took off, due to a concerted Ottoman/Songhai attack that simply overwhelmed through sheer numbers (I eventually quit a game with a long war against Germany on the same basis).