Poor A.I should lower the metacritic score.

[Ashbery76]

I expect high scores from the typical Angry Joe lets play for 10 hours review score but the evidence suggest the A.I is very poor and not been much of a focus for the million selling games series,again..I hope for once the gaming reviewers out there give a realistic score for where 96% player base is a single player game.Bad A.I should be punished.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

Do poor ai mean a less fun game

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

I expect high scores from the typical Angry Joe lets play for 10 hours review score but the evidence suggest the A.I is very poor and not been much of a focus for the million selling games series,again..I hope for once the gaming reviewers out there give a realistic score for where 96% player base is a single player game.Bad A.I should be punished.

Far from everyone play on deity. Far from everyone play the game competitively. Given that so many players play Civilization V I would assume that many are happy with the current ai.

 

[Morningcalm]

I frankly agree that poor AI should lower the game score. Part of the atmosphere of this game comes from fighting units appropriate for the time period, imo. So warriors in 1500 AD from an advanced AI leader just won't cut it. It's also poor game balancing as much of Civ is played single-player and since Civ V it's not as well known for its multiplayer (I miss Civ IV multiplayer's variety and diversity, the numerous fan-made multiplayer maps, etc).

 

[Lyoncet]

I'm sure it does, but given the complete lack of nuance in Steam's binary thumbs up/thumbs down system, I doubt it's going to be the tipping point for most Civ players. For the genre vets and grognards, yeah, it's often a much bigger deal, but consider that only 7.1% of players have the "Win on King difficulty level" achievement. (76.5% have "Discover an ancient ruin," so we can adjust the number of King winners up to 9.2% of people who have played at least a little tiny bit.) And unfortunately, that kind of stat is one of the major reasons most devs are happy to release lackluster AI.

[edit] Oh, we're talking Metacritic. Yeah, in that case, just lol.

 

[Cronos]

I agree the AI is a very large part of the game. Civ is primarily a single player game. It's very similar to a board game with rules and strategies and part of the charm of the game is working within those rules to solve how to win the game. The game design should also factor in the limitations of the AI behaviour and should have rules and systems in place that an AI can follow. At the moment it very much looks like firaxis have created a rubix cube with only 3 moving pieces. I like the mechanics that the developers have put in place, but it's irrelevant if you can easily win the game with your eyes closed half the time.

I also disagree that there are millions of 'casuals' out there who have no idea how to play a game and that the way to create a successful game is to appeal to the lowest common denominator. I think all the apologists out there have got it wrong and I don't understand why people would forgive or endorse poor game design. You only need to look at Blizzard and how successful their games are or even DOTA and you can see that successful games, even gaming business models are driven by deep and rewarding gameplay with continual developer support with regards balance and development. Heck even Hearthstone is a strategically deep game which rewards critical thinking. Civ has been marketed as a game with choices and decisions throughout the game to shape and mould your empire. But it's a pretty basic game if it's effectively a choose your own adventure where you win no matter what decision you make.

 

[demidyad]

Cronos your point is very muddled, because the other games you mention are primarily multiplayer, as are most of Blizzard's other games. Starcraft 2 ain't so immensely popular because of its AI.

I agree Blizzard are good at multiplayer game design, but for all we know Civ 6 could become the highlight of the series as far as multiplayer goes; the game systems as they are designed might lead to exciting and tense multiplayer. They might fall apart in single-player due to poor AI, but invoking Hearthstone and DOTA, or any other Blizzard game in that discussion is highly misguided.

 

[pietro1990]

Don't you know how youtube works? its all about making profit... quilt18 and other youtuber's get money for streaming these early built from civ 6 and they don't rant about how bad the AI is i've not seen marborzir or other youtuber's do it..

Angry joe did make a big rant video about total war rome AI so if Ai is as bad as it is now i thinx he willl say something about it he is a honest youtuber

but IGN, gamespot just give positive reviews why its marketing they get money from firaxis. Rome total war had good reviews by IGN why? it had bad AI

 

[Todd Hawks]

Do poor ai mean a less fun game

Not in general, but here it does. Why? Because the AI is not just poor, it is also extremely passive and basically doing nothing at all but building up and waiting for a culture or science victory. And that does indeed mean a less fun game.

 

[ExemplarVoss]

I expect high scores from the typical Angry Joe lets play for 10 hours review score but the evidence suggest the A.I is very poor and not been much of a focus for the million selling games series,again..I hope for once the gaming reviewers out there give a realistic score for where 96% player base is a single player game.Bad A.I should be punished.

Metacritic scores are garbage anyway- you've found something actually worse than V and VI's AI.

 

[Ryika]

The people who are looking to get Civ as their next "true strategy game" are already following the game and will likely not rely on what the Critics say. Ergo, Metacritic is used by more casual players who don't care that much about bad AI.

It would make absolutely no sense to lower the Metascore, because it's a metric from Non-Civfanatics for Non-Civfanatics.

 

[Abraxis]

I expect high scores from the typical Angry Joe lets play for 10 hours review score but the evidence suggest the A.I is very poor and not been much of a focus for the million selling games series,again..I hope for once the gaming reviewers out there give a realistic score for where 96% player base is a single player game.Bad A.I should be punished.

You are absolutely right. I'll contact the police in my area -I'm calling 911 right now.
I urge everyone reading this to do the same. Metacritic, Firaxis... they will not get away with this -not on our watch.

 

[pholtz]

Everyone complaining about the poor AI. Play your first game on Deity!

 

[darko82]

Do poor ai mean a less fun game

Yes, it does.

Everyone complaining about the poor AI. Play your first game on Deity!

Yeah, I will. I will beat them with a few units.

 

[cakes]

it's about ethics in game journalism

 

[Cronos]

Cronos your point is very muddled, because the other games you mention are primarily multiplayer, as are most of Blizzard's other games. Starcraft 2 ain't so immensely popular because of its AI.

I agree Blizzard are good at multiplayer game design, but for all we know Civ 6 could become the highlight of the series as far as multiplayer goes; the game systems as they are designed might lead to exciting and tense multiplayer. They might fall apart in single-player due to poor AI, but invoking Hearthstone and DOTA, or any other Blizzard game in that discussion is highly misguided.

Let me try to expand my thoughts. The problem with single player AI in Civ is my view is going to come down to game balance and to what the AI actually builds in its cities. It seems to be fairly OK with tactical moves and I have seen some encouraging things. I agree that in my example Blizzard produce primarily multiplayer games, but they do have some features that could address what I can see are issues with current AI in civ. SC2 fex does have a single player game and even in Skirmish the AI can be programmed to execute different build orders and can mount a threat. In previous Civ games the city governor actually could be programmed with specific build orders and could actually manage cities quite well. It seems to me, however, that the current AI design now has 'flavours' and will now just randomly build stuff according to its flavour and weightings and if it does something/anything it will just be pure luck that the flavour gods decided city x was going to build something useful. I can only assume that Civ 6 adopts the same logic. I note that in Marbs recent playthrough England had constructed an entertainment district (??) prior to declaring war on him. This is poor. Surely they could simplify things and get the ai to produce some effective build orders in their cities so as not to be left in the stone ages. Or if it's going to declare war then build some units. It would be nice if the AI made a decision to adopt a strategy.. an oracle slingshot fex and would execute a specific build order to accomplish that. I am worried though that with the inclusion of districts, the decision on which district to build will be dependent on surrounding terrain etc and will be too hard for an AI to easily prioritise as opposed to a set build order to get an empire up and running.

Secondly in terms of game balance I am fairly confident that there will be glaring game balance issues with Civ 6. Its not unexpected and part of game design and evolution. In previous Civs some paths were just better than others. In civ 5 the National college was a good priority and yet the AI never built libraries. It needed to be addressed but never was. Lazy. I like the direction of this current iteration with faith/gold/science/culture all potentially viable options. What would be nice is if Firaxis responds over time to ensure that this is the case. If it becomes obvious that a campus first district is the way to go, surely its not too hard to get the AI to build campus first and to respond to a changing meta over time and not just leave it to mods. Blizzard do this quite well with balance changes to encourage diverse playstyles, especially with regards to balancing different races/playstyles in SC2 even different heroes in HS. As a business decision its inspired as you can release extra DLC over time which keeps things fresh. Unfortunately Firaxis just seem to be lazy with this regard. civBE fex had wonders that cost 1000s of hammers to gain +5 culture or some other insignificant benefit. It was half baked and I don't think its unrealistic to expect better.

 

[treadwin]

Not sure that I agree that there is much evidence that the AI will be poor in the released version.

 

[dexters]

It should, but to be fair most 4X games are rated on a curve when it comes to AI.

Furthermore, Civ AI is almost always being worked on. I expect Civ 6 to be worked on for the next 4 years (time for 2 major expansions) and possibly longer than that if there is more content than the expected 1 vanilla 2 expansion strategy Firaxis has stuck with for the past 3 Civ cycles.

The AI needs to be a serviceable opponent to the human. Much the rancour and argument in the past six years have been between immersion vs. AI trying to win.
Only really jaded partisans actually attempted to argue the AI was objectively bad knowing full well all Civ AI are bad which is why most of us play on difficulty levels where the AI starts out with huge bonuses. And almost no one plays on cheiftain or warlord full time.

 

[Thalatta]

Everyone complaining about the poor AI. Play your first game on Deity!

No.

I want to be able to lose to an opponent because my mistakes were punished by better play, not by a handicap.

I used to play a lot of chess - and it was far more fun to lose to a better player than it was to handicap my queen away and still win against a newbie. I'd also get better faster that way.

Some implementation of handicaps is OK: for example, I don't mind the ones that encourage smart strategic play by the AI by way of making it a little easier, such as cheaper unit upgrades leading to saving highly promoted units.

But other handicaps turn into a crutch, and that sucks. An AI with a bonus to building wonders, plenty of mines, and a relevant resource shouldn't *need* a decreased cost in order to beat other civs at finishing that wonder.

The fact that Deity civs start with a free settler actually *could* make for an interesting tactical scenario (kind of like handicapping your queen in chess) without any further bonuses relative to Immortal - but that would be require an AI with the ability to leverage how absurdly strong starting with two cities is.

 

[ls612]

No.

I want to be able to lose to an opponent because my mistakes were punished by better play, not by a handicap.

I used to play a lot of chess - and it was far more fun to lose to a better player than it was to handicap my queen away and still win against a newbie. I'd also get better faster that way.

Some implementation of handicaps is OK: for example, I don't mind the ones that encourage smart strategic play by the AI by way of making it a little easier, such as cheaper unit upgrades leading to saving highly promoted units.

But other handicaps turn into a crutch, and that sucks. An AI with a bonus to building wonders, plenty of mines, and a relevant resource shouldn't *need* a decreased cost in order to beat other civs at finishing that wonder.

The fact that Deity civs start with a free settler actually *could* make for an interesting tactical scenario (kind of like handicapping your queen in chess) without any further bonuses relative to Immortal - but that would be require an AI with the ability to leverage how absurdly strong starting with two cities is.

The issue I have with this is that it isn't really possible for an AI to play at the same level as the better humans. So if you want to challenge better players you have to give the AI handicaps. For instance it is nearly impossible to teach the AI about eureka bonuses and how to use them effectively, whereas a good human will instantly understand how to benefit from the system. A handicap like giving the AI a free eureka bonus seems to me a concession to reality as opposed to a horrible crutch.