Observations from a new Civ 5 player

[PieceOfMind]

^The AI logic treated them as stacks, but they moved them all one-by-one. You can even see this in my earth challenge let's play, because I can literally see individual units moving from tile to tile in cathy's "stack" late game...with "show moves" turned off! Whatever the AI logic may be, it does NOT group units in a stack and stack move in the traditional sense the human does.

What I'm saying is that if the AI "logic" treats them as stacks, that's all that matters. Actually moving the units is not a complex task and can be processed pretty much instantly by comparison. However if your point is that watching the animations takes longer because you see every unit move, then then makes sense.

Also very annoying is that the AI uses different algorithms for its own workers compared to human auto-workers -----> Firaxis DELIBERATELY made human auto workers worse ! I'm not sure if that's true in V but it definitely is in IV. Why have in-game features if you make them deliberately terrible ! It's almost as bad as their BTS space elevator travesty (making it placed such that it will virtually always slow down space wins, a deliberate red herring. Not cool. Why have USELESS game options?!).

I'm not exactly sure what you're talking about re the difference between AI workers and human-owned automated workers. I can definitely think of some reasons why they should behave differently.

As for space elevator, honestly I suspect it comes down to the designers not being of the same level in their strategy game experience as you and others. Unless you're extremely familiar with the game, it's not all that obvious that space elevator is a detrimental path. And let's be honest, you're a lot more familiar with the game than the typical player, probably including a lot of the devs.

 

[Camikaze]

You're still looking at perception vs reality. As I pointed out, the longer you take to play one game, the less 2+ hours is going to represent. However, those 2 hours are always there and for quite a few players (and virtually the entire MP community that plays with a timer) they are significant.

Interestingly, the other thread started about reducing turn times by playing in strategic view is accurate. I ran a test game played solely in strat view and an immortal war turn took 5-6 seconds, instead of well over 20 seconds, in the late BCs. Very significant! This suggests that firaxis decided that players wanted to spend over 2 hours on unit animations, most of which they can't physically see.......pretty hard to defend that choice.

I'd be happy if they just give an option to turn animations off and then streamlined the code a bit. 5-6 seconds is still on the long side, but far less outrageous than 40.

But why is this an issue at all? Priority in a STRATEGY game is very messed up when the AI spends six times as long moving units as it does deciding which movements to make...why are offscreen movements taking perceivable time at all?!

Again though, I don't think you're wrong about there being two hours disappearing when you're playing a game, I'm just not personally convinced that that's a big issue, largely because I personally haven't noticed or really cared. And I doubt I'd notice greatly if it were changed. For me it's very much of a hidden issue. This doesn't make it any more defensible in terms of good design, and the difference with strategic view would perhaps indicate mislaid priorities, but it does mean that it isn't really a 'massive' issue. That's not really disagreement with your point, actually, just saying that it's not my biggest concern. As with a lot of things, YMMV, as will everyone's. I don't think it's a matter of people saying that it's not an issue being 'wrong' and people who are saying it is an issue being 'right', because it's simply a matter of where you notice or care about it. I, personally, don't.

 

[Agamemnus]

It's a big issue if your turns take a long time.

I'm waiting 2 minutes per turn (edit: ok, maybe 1 minute) in the largest map with about 15 remaining civs and 16 remaining city-states.

I have win 7 64-bit, i7-2630QM @ 2GHZ. That's 4 cores at 2GHZ each.

The city-states have no real plan; they just shuffle units around for no reason and attack Barbarians. The AI civs just war each other endlessly for no good reason, and they all have on average about 2-3 cities each.

What could they be calculating for so long? 2 minutes for the AIs to decide what to do with their 50 or so cities??

 

[dexters]

RAM and the programs you have open you may be hogging a lot of resources also have a big impact on performance. My turns always last under 10 seconds.

This game pretty much needs 4 GB of ram all to itself if you're on high settings.

I play on large map with CS.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

What I'm saying is that if the AI "logic" treats them as stacks, that's all that matters. Actually moving the units is not a complex task and can be processed pretty much instantly by comparison.

Maybe it's not the lions share of the turn times, but when 6 immortal AI have stacks like that it can be 10 seconds alone. That does not amount to an insignificant part of the 40-50 second between turn times I clocked. Granted, most AI don't field forces that large, but on a huge map with 18 civs around 6 isn't unreasonable. Maybe I'm being tricked though, and it's doing other calculations while moving them. The point is kind of moot; I'm not sure what could even be changed there at this point in IV.

I'm not exactly sure what you're talking about re the difference between AI workers and human-owned automated workers. I can definitely think of some reasons why they should behave differently.

I'm talking about how human auto workers are willing to move adjacent to enemy borders at war time and burn movement points, and occasionally willing to move adjacent to an enemy unit currently in plain sight and commit the rest of its movement points to an improvement. The AI does neither of these things virtually ever (excepting odd terrain movement bonuses not being factored, etc). I know AI workers aren't efficient either, but they do NOT suicide when on auto routinely. It's very bad; if I have a set of 10 workers and a long border I often finish the war with 2 or 3. At this point, I call it cheating on the part of the AI/designers and add the workers back via world builder. Of course, that trick doesn't work in XOTM or HoF...or for players who consider using the WB cheating (I used to until I learned the game itself cheats incessantly, and will now use it to correct misclicks and ludicrous suicide). Again, this feature is SO CRAPPY that it isn't usable in serious games. If a day 1 rookie can out-play auto workers, why were they even added...and why are they doing this when AI workers do NOT do it?!

As for space elevator, honestly I suspect it comes down to the designers not being of the same level in their strategy game experience as you and others. Unless you're extremely familiar with the game, it's not all that obvious that space elevator is a detrimental path. And let's be honest, you're a lot more familiar with the game than the typical player, probably including a lot of the devs.

Maybe, but didn't they playtest it? Wait, maybe I shouldn't ask this...

Actually it's more a #'s issue. Because it comes on a tech not required for the space path in any way, you have to be able to get that tech faster than the amount of turns building the thing would save you and then some; I'm not saying this is a trivial consideration, but for a team that played a huge part in picking unit strength values, balancing unit bonuses against each other, balancing tech, etc it shouldn't be a large reach. I'd also like to point out that it was originally worthwhile pre-BTS, but then changed to be worthless. When moving it like that, it should AT LEAST have gotten a sniff test! BTS is a major expansion! Then again, they didn't playtest AP or vassal states either I guess.

As with a lot of things, YMMV, as will everyone's. I don't think it's a matter of people saying that it's not an issue being 'wrong' and people who are saying it is an issue being 'right', because it's simply a matter of where you notice or care about it. I, personally, don't.

Part of me is now curious how many are aware of it, and what % of players are aware of an exact time sink care vs not. There are obviously recent threads by people other than me on this matter, so it is probably significant to at least a chunk of the player base. How much is questionable. How many people who never even sign in here or think of cfc quit the game because it's too slow? How many on here are not aware of it but would care if they were (I know someone like this ------> his complaint was that civ V's "pacing" was too slow. I pointed out that you can actually do things timed pretty closely with civ IV timings in terms of game pacing, and he still insisted it was slow. When I pointed out the between turns discrepancy, it started to make sense...just an example). I'd be tempted to make a poll, but...

This game pretty much needs 4 GB of ram all to itself if you're on high settings.

Which settings eat RAM, as opposed to graphics card power vs processing cycles? Civ always seems processor bottlenecked rather than anything else honestly, though maybe these phantom off-screen animations have changed that.

 

[Agamemnus]

RAM and the programs you have open you may be hogging a lot of resources also have a big impact on performance. My turns always last under 10 seconds.

This game pretty much needs 4 GB of ram all to itself if you're on high settings.

I play on large map with CS.

Maybe the pathfinding is an issue. (even though it shouldn't be.. the AI in total has maybe a couple of hundred units) I play on Huge, and there is a lot of ocean.

How many civs/city-states?

RAM is not an issue for me. I have 12 gigabytes of DDR3 133Mhz RAM.

Perhaps it just doesn't use the other 3 cores -- my CPU usage in between turns is 15% -- , which would be a great shame.

 

[nokmirt]

I bought this game about 3 weeks ago and I like it. I like it because I'm a huge fan of strategy games, not because of the features of the game.

Before I purchased the game I was excited about the 'enhanced diplomacy' of Civ 5. Sadly, this game only provides the illusion of diplomacy. The only 'diplomacy' (which isn't even dipolmacy, its just bartar) that I can find in this game is... I have this luxury resource, how much money will you give me for it? But what about declaring friendship you say. Well its not really friendship if your 'friend', the AI, will declare war on you if you do anything that will irritate them.

Will developers ever find a way to balance the AI in games? As we stand now, the progression for any game from 'easy to hard' basically has the AI just spam out more units and declare war on your quicker. If I wanted to go to war quick. I'd just go play online (well thats my assumption since I haven't played this game online).

Also, does the AI automatically feel the need to go to war with you if you are close to them? That has happened to me in every game so far.

I also like the introduction of city states. Maybe the 'friendship' with other AI civs should act like it does with city states?

I've had fun with the diplo, but that Siam pic is just ridiculous. What was the reason Good Samaritan? Are there still no red points after the next turn? (I think sometimes red points are hidden when cpu is deceptive, but they should reappear after declaration).

The Siam pic is proof that the games diplomacy is badly programmed. I am going to give Firaxis until next patch to fix the issue (I mean come on, they have had since September 2010 to do that!) or no more CiV for me. It is time for them to get this game right, there is no excuse for it anymore.

Overall I like the game. Its just really unfortunate that developers have failed once again on the AI.

This is a very very important post for Firaxis to look at. I and many others have been preaching this for about a year now. The diplomacy system needs a complete overhaul.

The answer to your question is yes, the AI does that and just acts weird. It does not know how to function with any real intelligence.

 

[Roxlimn]

nokmirt:

No Civ AI ever has, you know. The CiV AI is predictable, it just looks crazy when you don't know anything about how they behave (and refuse to learn).

 

[Tatran]

This is a very very important post for Firaxis to look at. I and many others have been preaching this for about a year now. The diplomacy system needs a complete overhaul.

Forget about that. It has no priority.
All resources go towards CivWorld and that game is in a horrid state.

 

[Hail]

Civ V has one undeniable and crushing flaw: You do nothing while playing it.

For over two hours per game. Probably much more than that.

so true!
it's one of the reasons i do not enjoy civ4 as much as i could have. during long turn times, my mind starts to wander off and i lose focus. when i lose focus i make stupid mistakes and get all pissed about 'em.

as i have heard, this issue is even more serious in civ5. therefore buying/playing civ5 is out of the question. as one gets older, he/she tends to value time more

There's no longer the RNG element that was used to stand in for real diplomacy in previous Civs. Most Civs will start out neutral and then turn to friendly. It will be things you do in the game that determines the course of their actions.

The most common reason AI goes to war in the early game is over land.
The most common reason AI goes to war in the late game is over threats.

no RNG? seriously?
as to reasons to DoW, what about "you [player] are pursing the same victory condition as i [AI] am" (yep, on turn 14)?

The AI doesn't really usually "need" what it asks for, it doesn't use it well once it receives the favor, and it's not coded to generally ask for things that support its overall strategy. In other words, it's not a human. It never was, it never will be. It's an AI code.

won't be surprised if AI's "needs" are guided by the wise RNG God

don't agree about the last statement though. allow me to introduce
Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach (3rd Edition)

incorporating at least 10% of knowledge of this book in civ AI will insanely increase it's "intelligence". trust me

I'd argue that it is. You'd be hard pushed to find a game in the 90s that has Civ 5s capabilities, unpolished as they are.

try Call to Power (release March 1999)

Spoiler :

no, seriously try it

However, as a professional I know from experience that a comment such as "chunky code" gets the point across without alienating anyone.

To detail however, each turn requires the AI to make building decisions, city management choices, unit movements, winning scenario decisions, exploration, worker maintainance, diplomatic relations with other civs, assesments of your relative positon and perceived strategy, defensive and offensive military build\action choices, graphics, scoring, barbarian movements....the list can go on and on and on and is done for each civilisation in turn, so on a standard map it's running that 7 times....all of that = some fairly chunky code to run inside a 30 second window.

u kidding bro?

some suggestions right off the top of my head: take the AI out of server space into a separate process(e.g. a separate executable). this way each AI will(can) have a separate world state it can play with. now the AI can "think" on other players' turns

some division of decision logic is needed as well. i won't go into this because no one cares anyway, but i will provide an example:

AI goal? offensive war on a neighbor -> set all "high" production cities to produce offensive units -> set Rome to produce warriors/swordsmen/whatever

the trick is that until the goal changes, Rome should produce warriors!

no need to check each city, no need to pointlessly move units around. all should be goal-centric. a SoD entered our territory! is it a threat? would i [AI] alter my goal(s) to deal with it(a new threat)?

The entire problem here is that it's subjective time. You're losing it, others are not. I'm not losing any time playing, I'm making good use of my time and am still struggling to understand why you're holding onto those 30 second periods as if you were going to invent free limitless energy with the time.

losing time waiting for your turn is objectively time lost. it's time spend not playing. you can choose to ignore the issue and/or spend the waiting time doing something else, but still... anyway a lame analogy is playing a shooter with 20 fps. is it playable? sure, but not so fun

That doesn't make sense. I wouldn't hire a programming team to develop an AI engine and then set them to basically setting up new civs. You can get extremely junior programmers to incorporate new civs, the fundamental AI engine underlying the game shouldn't care what Civ it's working with. So new additions are blinking coloured lights, they're not the tree.

providing a mediocre AI and a crippled multiplayer is the decision that should not make sense.
next up is the boy genius saying somewhere a long time ago that firaxis values universal programmers. yep, this means that firaxis prefers to simply shuffle people around instead of specializing
last, but not least is say firaxis did have a decent AI engine. juniors would only cut it, if the newly added civs have generic traits (aka civ3/civ4 style). where juniors will horribly fail is adding civs with a unique terrain improvement(s), totally unique traits, traits that grant some units and/or unit types unique promotions, etc.

 

[Glassmage]

yea my sandy bridge only use around 15% for all 4 cores. o.O But the game runs fast though.

 

[HalfBadger]

As for diplomacy I find how other Civilizations act less annoying than the City States. Most of of the time the majority of City States want me to take out another City State. However if you take a couple, they start going to war with you. It's weird they are scared of me, when I'm doing what they ask in ways.

One time (I can't remember the names), one CS I'd say Tyre wanted me to take out Quebec City. I believe I had already taken 1-2 other CS, however because of Geography I took out Tyre and Quebec City declared war on me. Maybe they didn't know they were in a feud with Tyre and that Tyre wanted me to take Quebec City out.

It's annoying not being able to gain favour with most CS, since they mainly want you to take out other CS. But when you do they declare war on you, instead of getting favour with them.

 

[svett89]

Don't know if this discussion is still going on, but regarding the time between turns:

I've seen loading times faaaaar worse than those in Civ V (Mass Effect 2, Portal 2, OH TEH HORRORZ). That's the main problem with modern games in my opinion, remember the good old cartridge games during the NES-N64 era? Loading times were like 2 seconds long.

 

[Agamemnus]

Loading times are surprisingly long, too. Especially considering I'm using an SSD. :\

 

[Roxlimn]

Hail:

I have and have played CtP 1 and 2. Civ 5 is better in many respects.

Also, if you can make an AI mod that could incorporate the principles of the book you referred to, you would support your point quite immensely. Otherwise, I'm not inclined to believe what you say just because you posted a link to a book I haven't read.

 

[Hail]

Hail:

I have and have played CtP 1 and 2. Civ 5 is better in many respects.

Also, if you can make an AI mod that could incorporate the principles of the book you referred to, you would support your point quite immensely. Otherwise, I'm not inclined to believe what you say just because you posted a link to a book I haven't read.

as to CtP, to each their own

an AI mod for civ4? hmm..... maybe i will someday

i hope that you do not believe that a rule-based AI is the best there is. oh well

 

[Camikaze]

How many on here are not aware of it but would care if they were (I know someone like this ------> his complaint was that civ V's "pacing" was too slow. I pointed out that you can actually do things timed pretty closely with civ IV timings in terms of game pacing, and he still insisted it was slow. When I pointed out the between turns discrepancy, it started to make sense...just an example).

This is a good point. I guess it may be detracting from my enjoyment of the game unwittingly. It might be one of those things that you don't really notice, but would able to sense improvement in.

 

[galahadba]

one thing i noticed is that in the strategy view the turns go MUCH faster. i think the problem is not the processing only, but the way animations are done. If you repair on you turn, if you atack someone and don't want to wait the animation and get you screen to another place to do another thing... nothing is processed until you get back to the place the atacks was going and waits the animation finish.
On other thread (in thal's mod session i think) it is said that much of the events in the game are fired by animations and don't work in strategy screen.

I think anumations are bad implemented, you have to wait for it to finish to the computer continues its processing... in latter game (if the AI get's fighters, etc) if you turn to strategy view before ending each turn, you pass from 40-50 seconds to a < 1 second turn pretty easy.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Adding new civs is probably not a programming bottleneck, but a design one. You have to come up with images, ideas, and try to balance the civ. However, the ornaments-on-tree analogy is a good one; ornaments don't rescue a damaged tree!

And yes, the animations are a very significant part of turn times.

 

[galahadba]

And yes, the animations are a very significant part of turn times.

And that's what is wrong, animations should not be part of the processing, the coumputer shold process the battle, get the results, queue the animations for other process to do and go on, not wait until the animation is done to continue processing.

And you should get the option to skip animations, if my memory is not falling on older civ games if you get space pressed during AI's turn you skipped animations. That's is a very simple solution to get the turn faster.. the simply fact of not having to wait for animations that are not even on you screen should make the game MUCH faster.
Right now the only option you have to make turns faster is remember to change to strategic view, if you forgot it, press enter and have aeroplanes battling... just go take a coffe watch some tv and come back to the game latter...