On the AI side, is Civ V nothing compared to EU IV?

[Sharples]

A comparison of AI between Civilization V and Europa Universalis IV.

I've been playing both a lot, and in diplomacy on Europa Universalis the AI is just incredible, even on hard difficulties the AI doesn't cheat as much compared to the massive bonuses with Civilization V.

In my opinion, Europa Universals IV excels in AI play. But would you compare it to Civ V's AI?

 

[Plasmawolf55]

I wouldn't, the AI in civilization is just horrible without bonuses, and with? Still pretty bad. In EU IV, there's more AI and they each get little missions, telling them what to do. The EU IV ai also love to roll good with the random number generator...

Anyway, I think civfanatics should have a section for EU IV, as it seems a large portion of civ players play it.

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[DemonicAppleGuY]

The EUIV AI has much less complicated things to do I think so it has the appearance of being more sophisticated.

Civilization V combat especially is significantly more complex.

 

[Securion]

The EUIV AI has much less complicated things to do I think so it has the appearance of being more sophisticated.

The only thing I can think of is buildings, citizen management and wonders. But at the same time, the AI in EU must think about manpower and other things... so I think it evens out pretty well.

Civilization V combat especially is significantly more complex.

In what way? EU has attrition, manpower, etc. In Civ you just build a unit and its there forever.

 

[Mesix]

The diplomacy in EU4 is a lot more developed. This is a system which could be adapted to the civilization series to good effect. The current CIV diplomacy lacks any amount of depth. Getting permanent war monger penalties for early conquests is not a very compelling game design. With the addition of city states in CIV, there was a missed opportunity for the developers to incorporate a more dynamic diplomacy system. Perhaps in Civilization 6 they will improve this aspect of the game.

I don't necessarily think that the AI is better. The EU4 AI has its limitations as well (for example it will attack the player across a river in mountains and fail to anticipate that the armies in adjacent territories will reinforce and wipe them out...the scorched earth mechanic also causes problems with the AI behavior). I also think that the lucky nations and no fog of war handicaps which the AI receive in EU4 are comparable to the handicaps that CIV AI receives in games.

The bottom line is that building a competent AI is a difficult task. A human player can almost always figure out how to anticipate what the AI will do and adapt their play accordingly.

 

[victorpras]

The number 1 thing that Civ can and should learn from EU4 is how quickly they can process the AI's turns

 

[zukenft]

nah, eu4 AI isn't that good. they usually get into one superstack and let their troops die in attrition. then when the siege is almost over, they left it to deal with my ally at the other side of the map.

 

[otaman1]

The number 1 thing that Civ can and should learn from EU4 is how quickly they can process the AI's turns

That's Civ IV you're talking about. EUIV is a grand strategy game.

 

[seanflokstra7]

EU4 has better AI, definitely, but I don't think one game is better than the other

 

[MantaRevan]

EU4's AI probably does a better job overall of doing what it needs to do, but it has it's own problems, such as landing easily intercepted small stacks at a time during naval invasions.
But Civ5's AI has 99 problems and most of them are diplomacy related. If the diplomacy wasn't completely screwed up in this iteration of the series then the bulk to 'bad AI' problems wouldn't matter.

 

[Magma_Dragoon]

Anyway, I think civfanatics should have a section for EU IV, as it seems a large portion of civ players play it.

Then we need a pokemon section too

 

[cairnsy44]

The diplomacy in EU4 is a lot more developed. This is a system which could be adapted to the civilization series to good effect. The current CIV diplomacy lacks any amount of depth. Getting permanent war monger penalties for early conquests is not a very compelling game design. With the addition of city states in CIV, there was a missed opportunity for the developers to incorporate a more dynamic diplomacy system. Perhaps in Civilization 6 they will improve this aspect of the game.

I definitely agree that the diplomacy in EU4 is a model upon which Civ6 should be based. Though I have not been able to keep up my attempts at playing EU4. I found a lot of that game difficult to understand and "clunky" compared to Civ. Though the casus belli and diplomacy (marriages,etc.) would fit in fantastically into the Civ series.

 

[Browd]

Anyway, I think civfanatics should have a section for EU IV, as it seems a large portion of civ players play it.

The CFC All Other Games forum (http://forums.civfanatics.com/forumdisplay.php?f=23) has existing threads for Paradox games generally (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=180885) and EUIV specifically (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=471987).

 

[Camikaze]

I know very little about AI, but I'm curious as to how different it is to create one for a set map, like in Chess or Paradox games, as compared to creating one for a randomised map.

 

[civ54lyfe]

it's probably a significant factor (as in easier to do so in only one map). one thing about EU though is that you kinda know about a quarter through the game if you're on a realistic track to actually win or not. encourages me to abandon a lot of games, unless i'm curious enough to see how big Russia or France ai can possibly get by the end of a close game.

oh and EU has its own share of ai exploits too.

 

[otaman1]

I know very little about AI, but I'm curious as to how different it is to create one for a set map, like in Chess or Paradox games, as compared to creating one for a randomised map.

The Conquest of Paradise DLC does feature a random generated New World.

 

[MantaRevan]

EU also doesn't have win conditions, meaning that the AI doesn't have to push for and be adaptable to a bunch of requirements that Civ AIs need to account for.

 

[gps]

That's Civ IV you're talking about. EUIV is a grand strategy game.

And the Civ-series isn't? Not sure why you think Civ does not qualify as "Grand Strategy". From my point of view it does.

I know very little about AI, but I'm curious as to how different it is to create one for a set map, like in Chess or Paradox games, as compared to creating one for a randomised map.

I don't think randomized map does make that much of a difference. And Chess is a totally different beast compared to both Paradox and Civ games. A Chess programm basically calculates every possible move for every available piece many turns in advance and choses the best one. There are things like opening libraries and stuff that effectively narrow down that process so that not each obviously silly and hopeless branch and combination has to be calculated - but generally speaking a chess programm goes through every possible move, evaluates it and choses the best one possible. And this is only possible because a chess board has a very limited number of tiles (64), there are only 32 pieces to consider and the game also deals in absolutes (black/white, beat/don't beat, win/loose). Civ maps are much bigger, there is not a single opponent but many, there are a lot more different units to consider that do totally different things, there are different victory conditions to weigh against each other - and conditions aren't absolute but involve conditions and random elements, there's no clear good/bad, sometimes it's just slightly better/worse - and sometimes not even this is clear. So forget about really calculating all available moves - totally impossible! Random maps or not in that context is - as far as I can judge - just another paramter that has to be taken into account. (But compared to the other challenges, this should be a rather minor issue.) So a Civ AI (and also EU) generally follows behaviour patterns the programmer has to define in the code (rather than calculating through everyl possible move) - which makes it much more stupid and much more exploitable than a chess AI. For a chess AI hardware processing power ist the only limit. A chess AI that calculates and knows every possible move has a clear advantage even over experienced and creative human players. That's why supercomputers today are able to beat chess grand masters. In Civ however human experience, creativity and adaptibility has a clear advantage over pre-programmed behaviour patterns.