Max level - no AI cheat
- Thread starter YinYang86
- Start date
Actually not the case either.
At Chieftain, the human would get significant production & science bonuses.
Meanwhile, the AI would still get slightly cheaper polices than the human.
Warlord level would also feature the human having the production & science bonuses (to a lesser degree) while the AI gets happiness bonuses & cheaper polices.
At Chieftain, the human would get significant production & science bonuses.
Meanwhile, the AI would still get slightly cheaper polices than the human.
Warlord level would also feature the human having the production & science bonuses (to a lesser degree) while the AI gets happiness bonuses & cheaper polices.
eris
King
Prince is offered by the developers as the level most balanced between Human and AI. It can be argued through various definitions, interpretations, play styles and subjective opinions, and often is. If the developer's offering matters to you, then start on Prince. I suggest you get a feel for that and then adjust the level until you are playing a level that is fun for you. If the definition of what is actually a "fair" level is subjective and open to opinion, why not make it your opinion that counts?
Derpy Hooves
Grand Inquisitor
Actually, it is cheating, difficulty in a decent strategy games is almost always determined by the choices the AI makes, not by the absurd bonusses it gets.
Even if the AI is'nt technically cheating, the dev's did by, instead of making a real difficulty they just made a joke version that takes about 5 minutes to program and shows very well how much they care about their players.
Even if the AI is'nt technically cheating, the dev's did by, instead of making a real difficulty they just made a joke version that takes about 5 minutes to program and shows very well how much they care about their players.
headcase
Limit 1 Facepalm Per Turn
As said, There is no level at equal footing. On Chieftain, you cheat in some ways. On Prince, the computer cheats in some ways. On Warlord, you both cheat in different ways.
That said, what the computer cheats on is happiness, which has a huge impact (also gold).
They're all really "bonuses" instead of cheating, except AI bonuses on Warlord and Prince, which is cheating, since the game says the AI doesn't receive those bonuses.
That said, what the computer cheats on is happiness, which has a huge impact (also gold).
They're all really "bonuses" instead of cheating, except AI bonuses on Warlord and Prince, which is cheating, since the game says the AI doesn't receive those bonuses.
It takes a lot of work to make a good AI, especially when combat is tactically more complicated than in every other civ game. I wouldn't denigrate the developers.
Derpy Hooves
Grand Inquisitor
Those same dev's that ask you for 5 dollars for a single civilization? Those same dev's that did not make a working MP to compensate for it's bad AI? Those same dev's that released the game when it was in beta?
Those dev's can suck it as far as I'm concerned, my only hope lies with the modding community at this point.
to be fair: comp sci engineers have only recently written code capable of "solving" checkers optimally. the jury is still out on whether AI chess engines are better than the best human players, and the game is nowhere close to being "solved". a chess board (or chess "map") comprises only 64 total tiles, with only 6 unit types. there are no economy v. military considerations, etc. i think expecting the civ5 AI to out-think and out-adapt a human player is kinda unrealistic. bonuses are pretty much the only solution to this problem. this isn't to say the developers aren't half-assing it; it's just that their best effort is still going to fall way short.
Derpy Hooves
Grand Inquisitor
Oh I have no doubt that it would have been a lot of work to get a brilliant AI that can easily outthink a human.
There is however some middle ground, and considering all the other stuff they half-assed I find it very likely they did the same with the AI. Apart from the leaderheads, can you honestly say any part of the game felt complete upon release?
There is however some middle ground, and considering all the other stuff they half-assed I find it very likely they did the same with the AI. Apart from the leaderheads, can you honestly say any part of the game felt complete upon release?
Becephalus
King
- Joined
- Nov 30, 2005
- Messages
- 725
Derpy this game was a good 80% complete. The graphics were done, the interface was mostly done, the music was done, the engine was done. You want to see an unfinished game try something like Sword of the Stars 2. That is still worse than Civ was after release and it is almost 3 months out now.
Yes I wish the would put more effort into AI development, but that is very hard and costs a lot of money and unfortunately most gamers aren't willing to shell out more than $70 for a game so they need to nickle and dime people with expansions and DLC.
Too much of the market is teenagers and college students who don't have jobs.
Yes I wish the would put more effort into AI development, but that is very hard and costs a lot of money and unfortunately most gamers aren't willing to shell out more than $70 for a game so they need to nickle and dime people with expansions and DLC.
Too much of the market is teenagers and college students who don't have jobs.
Shurdus
Am I Napoleon?
I challenge the first statement. In both starcraft and warcraft 3, some of the finest games rts has to offer, the AI would receive bonusses in skirmish matches on the highest difficulty levels. This completely contradicts what you state.
I would assume that difficulty almost always comes from the bonus the AI gets, rather than the choices it makes. The AI cannot compete with ever changing strategy and human adaptability, and it needs different tools than decision making in order to pose a challenge.
Derpy Hooves
Grand Inquisitor
Actually the release version would crash every half our or so for me, whenever anything had to load it would take absurd amounts of time (still does, but less, thank god) and the graphics would spaz out every so often, the interface might have been done but still looks like crap, there had been absolutely no balancing done, policies, units, buildings and civs and the biggest map I could play without making the game unplayable due to wait times was standard.
I call that broken. Not sure about your Sword of the Stars thing but I've never played a game this buggy on release, and if it was even close to that it was generally fixable by scouring the internet for a bit and messing around with some .ini file or patch.
I can't find any documentation about SC1 or W3 but I know for a fact that the AI in SC2 only cheats on brutal, the highest difficulty, in contrast to CiV, where it even cheats on the lowest, if you can't provide any proof to back up your claim I'm going to disregard it as a boerish bluff.
There have been games I've played where I've known of this, HoMM for instance, the difference here being that the AI was pretty good to begin with so it knew how to make use of the extra resources in combat.
I call that broken. Not sure about your Sword of the Stars thing but I've never played a game this buggy on release, and if it was even close to that it was generally fixable by scouring the internet for a bit and messing around with some .ini file or patch.
I can't find any documentation about SC1 or W3 but I know for a fact that the AI in SC2 only cheats on brutal, the highest difficulty, in contrast to CiV, where it even cheats on the lowest, if you can't provide any proof to back up your claim I'm going to disregard it as a boerish bluff.
There have been games I've played where I've known of this, HoMM for instance, the difference here being that the AI was pretty good to begin with so it knew how to make use of the extra resources in combat.
wannabewarlord
Prince
Amen. I have been advocating this a while ago and received quite furious negative feedback. I guess nomenclature/semantics don't matter to most
wannabewarlord
Prince
It seems Derpy Hooves has had quite a bad experience with Civ5. His lashing out at the devs and the game is quite...well...disappointing. I have absolutely had none of his problems with this game. In fact, it has provided me many exciting hours of gameplay. A 50 bucks (or whatever it cost back then) well spent. I guess different people have different expectations.
However, Derpy, calling the programming cheap, the AI a "5 minute task" and the game beta and broken, when in fact you have no clue what it takes to program a game like this (this is an assumption, maybe you are the master AI programmer and can do everything better) is a pretty bold opinion that I can not agree to at all. I am not saying it is perfect, but it is far from the cheap, easy and lackluster effort you seem to think it is. Just my 2 cents, totally off-topic.
However, Derpy, calling the programming cheap, the AI a "5 minute task" and the game beta and broken, when in fact you have no clue what it takes to program a game like this (this is an assumption, maybe you are the master AI programmer and can do everything better) is a pretty bold opinion that I can not agree to at all. I am not saying it is perfect, but it is far from the cheap, easy and lackluster effort you seem to think it is. Just my 2 cents, totally off-topic.
Using a RTS like SC2 is a strange example anyway. The level of strategy involved in a human vs. computer match up in those games is so low that its not in the same league as a turn based game like CiV. The gap is well covered by the time limits on decision making and command execution inherent to RTS though.
It only cheats using the same mechanism as CiV on brutal. I think it would be reasonable to argue that when the lower level SC2 (or any RTS) AI uses reaction times and micromanagement that the human player can't replicate without a clicking speed far in excess of the skill level that difficulty setting is targetted to that constitutes cheating just as surely as the numerical bonuses in CiV. Imagine if you modified the rules of CiV so that you could take the amount of time the computer spends on their moves (with quick combat, of course), divide it by the number of civs and when that amount of time (I'm guessing 10-15 seconds) had passed your turn ended no matter where you were. Surely that would lower your beatable difficulty quite a bit. Would you conclude that the AI had been greatly improved?
Also, for what it's worth, I can say from experience that the SC2 skirmish AI tops out pretty early. I'm terrible at RTS games (never had any interest in learning the level of clicking speed/precision those games require) and I can pretty consistently beat the highest difficulty. I can only imagine people who take that game somewhat seriously think of it as a total joke. Obviously nobody really cares though, since single player skirmishes are not usually a significant part of what those games offer.
Speaking for the current state of the game I still haven't seen anything that makes me think the AI is particularly bad. I'm sure there are games out there I haven't tried, but I haven't seen any yet that make me think "this game is putting similar intelligence demands on the computer, but coming up with noticeably better results than CiV." Any games I've seen where the AI seems much stronger than CiV are also either significantly simpler or, like SC2, contain an additional element to gameplay that is more important than strategy.
P.S. Unless you actually meant boerish in the sense of "south african hillbilly" you probably meant boorish. It really kills the effect of using a fancy word like that to put someone down when you misspell it.
It only cheats using the same mechanism as CiV on brutal. I think it would be reasonable to argue that when the lower level SC2 (or any RTS) AI uses reaction times and micromanagement that the human player can't replicate without a clicking speed far in excess of the skill level that difficulty setting is targetted to that constitutes cheating just as surely as the numerical bonuses in CiV. Imagine if you modified the rules of CiV so that you could take the amount of time the computer spends on their moves (with quick combat, of course), divide it by the number of civs and when that amount of time (I'm guessing 10-15 seconds) had passed your turn ended no matter where you were. Surely that would lower your beatable difficulty quite a bit. Would you conclude that the AI had been greatly improved?
Also, for what it's worth, I can say from experience that the SC2 skirmish AI tops out pretty early. I'm terrible at RTS games (never had any interest in learning the level of clicking speed/precision those games require) and I can pretty consistently beat the highest difficulty. I can only imagine people who take that game somewhat seriously think of it as a total joke. Obviously nobody really cares though, since single player skirmishes are not usually a significant part of what those games offer.
Speaking for the current state of the game I still haven't seen anything that makes me think the AI is particularly bad. I'm sure there are games out there I haven't tried, but I haven't seen any yet that make me think "this game is putting similar intelligence demands on the computer, but coming up with noticeably better results than CiV." Any games I've seen where the AI seems much stronger than CiV are also either significantly simpler or, like SC2, contain an additional element to gameplay that is more important than strategy.
P.S. Unless you actually meant boerish in the sense of "south african hillbilly" you probably meant boorish. It really kills the effect of using a fancy word like that to put someone down when you misspell it.
