Problems still remain

[stealth_nsk]

Problem: AI not upgrading units.
Reason: Some upgrades require resources, which aren't needed for original unit.

Solution 1: Encourage AI resource trade to be willing to buy them more and sometimes temporary trade away their only resource.
Pros: More active resource trade, involving human player too.
Cons: A lot of tweaks needed and potential exploits arise.

Solution 2: Give AI a cheat to be able to upgrade units without resources for additional gold, but willing to buy the resource anyway.
Pros: Easy to implement.
Cons: It's a cheat visible to players.

Solution 3: Let AI build less such units and make AI dismiss them if no upgrades expected and better units are available.
Pros: Most natural behavior.
Cons: Requires a lot of efforts to implement.

Problem: City-states spawn units.
Reason: City-states with late speciality districts or with full district have nothing else to build.

Solution: Let city-states build other districts. Focus more on projects once they have them.

Problem: AI not offensive enough to threat winning conquest.
Reason: Restraints to conquest through warmonger penalties.

Solution: AIs should be less angry over other AI warmongering on higher difficulty levels, and should ignore those penalties more.

 

[ptoss1]

So basically all the problems of CiVanilla. Firaxis has learned nothing, or rather they have learned they no longer need to make a decent game to sell it.

 

[stealth_nsk]

So basically all the problems of CiVanilla. Firaxis has learned nothing, or rather they have learned they no longer need to make a decent game to sell it.

This have nothing to do with Civ5 vanilla problems. And the problems we see so far are of much lesser scale.

 

[Magil]

Don't projects give great people points as one of their primary yields? It'd be a little weird for city-states to focus them.

I admit I don't quite understand district projects that well, they don't seem to get much focus in the various videos, but I thought in addition to converting hammers to a yield they produced great people points.

 

[stealth_nsk]

Don't projects give great people points as one of their primary yields? It'd be a little weird for city-states to focus them.

I admit I don't quite understand district projects that well, they don't seem to get much focus in the various videos, but I thought in addition to converting hammers to a yield they produced great people points.

Yes, they have no meaning for city-states, but they have to build something other than endless stream of units.

 

[UncivilizedGuy]

This have nothing to do with Civ5 vanilla problems. And the problems we see so far are of much lesser scale.

For all we know Firaxis may have made some adjustments before release.

 

[stealth_nsk]

For all we know Firaxis may have made some adjustments before release.

Yes, but considering the amount time left, I have more hopes for post-release adjustments.

 

[gunnerxtr]

For all we know Firaxis may have made some adjustments before release.

Seems unlikely that they wouldn't showcase the most up to date build for their AI tease..

 

[UncivilizedGuy]

Seems unlikely that they wouldn't showcase the most up to date build for their AI tease..

Have they showed any more videos since the Gorgo let's play? They could easily make some adjustments and release a patch on day one.

 

[ExemplarVoss]

I think a better solution for problem one is dropping strategic resource requirements altogether (and just making them bonus resources).

Unique units already ignore them (which is huge for any civ that gets to ignore the requirement)
and the units' places on the tech trees are really specific and designed according to a specific philosophy and pattern (every 2 eras, unit class, etc). Dropping strategic resources is least disruptive way of keeping the system intact.

City state unit spam. Give them a hard cap on number of units. I honestly don't care what they do with their production, it has zero game effect.
As long as they can place their district, their improvements and their builders (for both improvements and repairing). Once those things are done or unnecessary, force them to do a special project to produce gold (which they can use to upgrade units).

Warmonger penalty. Turn down the priority on this. It is blatantly obviously too high. Not necessarily the penalty, but how much the AI cares about that penalty. A lightly defended city with a resource/luxury/wonder they want should definitely overcome the warmonger penalty at least some of the time.

Have they showed any more videos since the Gorgo let's play? They could easily make some adjustments and release a patch on day one.

The one today. There is another tomorrow (which may not feature any AIs at all). But the 'not the latest version' is looking less and less likely.

 

[stealth_nsk]

Have they showed any more videos since the Gorgo let's play? They could easily make some adjustments and release a patch on day one.

Did you miss tonight stream?

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

The first problem is why they went to the Civ V method of strategic resources in the first place. It allowed them to scatter strategic resource tiles more frequently so it's more likely that a civ could manage to grab at least a few. The side effect of the Civ IV/VI strategic resource method is that the tiles are quite a bit more scarce. It's far more likely that a player could get completely shut out on necessary strategic resources. The Civ IV solution was to allow bypass upgrades, and that should be implemented here as well. It would also be nice if the AI could have a plan B in case of a failure to acquire necessary resources where it builds resourceless units instead.

And if it seems like they are back to square one with the AI, it's because they are on a new engine. They can't just copy paste the Civ V AI and program it to play with the new toys and a few new tricks. They really are starting over at square one.

Frankly, this doesn't surprise me. There's no 4X games with really good AI, and it takes a supercomputer to run AI that's good enough to play simplistic games like chess and go against competent humans. Between that and starting with a whole new engine, it was inevitable that the other shoe would drop. I feel confident that at least some improvements will be made to the AI in future patches. If this is a significant issue for anyone, they should seek a refund and await future developments.

 

[UncivilizedGuy]

Did you miss tonight stream?

I didn't know there was a stream tonight. And actually I just got home from work anyway.

 

[Mattyp9er]

These were the three things that I noticed also and I like your potential solutions. I actually thought, just let the AI not require resources I really don't care if it's a cheat. I'm hopeful they look at these but it's not the end of the world it looks pretty good actually.

 

[ptoss1]

The AI should be able to build everything in one turn. I don't care if it's a cheat anymore since the AI is too dumb to do anything anyways.

 

[AttilaTheHun]

The problem with Civ games that require resources to build units is that it is a game destroying feature for players that are missing a resource. (Civ 4-6 iirc)

To fix this, the lack of a resource should just increase production time and upgrade cost by some (low) amount, say 10-20%).

While I am at this, another problem with Civ 5 & 6 is the importance of cities. The less cities we have the more important it is if a player loses one. A sneak attack on a city could end your game, which is what humans can easily do to AI civs in 6.

 

[joncnunn]

Problem: AI not upgrading units.
Reason: Some upgrades require resources, which aren't needed for original unit.

Solution 1: Encourage AI resource trade to be willing to buy them more and sometimes temporary trade away their only resource.
Pros: More active resource trade, involving human player too.
Cons: A lot of tweaks needed and potential exploits arise.

Solution 2: Give AI a cheat to be able to upgrade units without resources for additional gold, but willing to buy the resource anyway.
Pros: Easy to implement.
Cons: It's a cheat visible to players.

Solution 3: Let AI build less such units and make AI dismiss them if no upgrades expected and better units are available.
Pros: Most natural behavior.
Cons: Requires a lot of efforts to implement.

#1: Too prone to human abuse
#2: Already stated as the con
#3: Why dismiss warriors when they cost no maintenance at all? A no maintenance unit makes the ideal fog of war buster.

Solution #4: Would be a discount to the AI for upgrading units compared to the human at all difficulty levels; which has been in Civ IV & V
Pro: It's been used before
Con: It was probably already in effect during this build.

Solution #5: Have some spots in the main line be resource free (and allow direct upgrading to it)
Pro: Was in Civ VI so it should be easy to implement.
Con: It's possible that the best unit to place it with would remove the only unit that uses this resource.

Reason #2 is that later game era units cost increased maintenance compared to earlier game units; (in particular as noted above Warriors cost absolutely no maintenance per turn)

Solution: Subject obsolete units to the same maintenance per turn as the most advanced unit within that line that you have the tech for.
Pro: It's been in all previous versions of Civ, so easy to implement.
Con: Several civilopedia entries would need changed.

Problem: AI not offensive enough to threat winning conquest.
Reason: Restraints to conquest through warmonger penalties.

Solution: AIs should be less angry over other AI warmongering on higher difficulty levels, and should ignore those penalties more.

Solution #2: Reduce later era warmongering penalties and/or make bigger Casus belli discounts. (e.g. have base penalty max out in Industrial Era instead of continuing to increase and in addition give "Wars of Colonization" & "War of Expansion" bigger discounts.

 

[Zhahz]

A big problem I see is people starting multiple threads for the same topic.

 

[Battlehelm043]

I imagine they will be working late into the night for a day 1 patch. Especially since the AI lead made mention today about how concerned he was to see that many warriors that late into the game. One thing they also need to do is slow the tech speed. That game literally flew by. Which for me sucks because now I feel the game might slip by much too fast. As for resources I am happy with limiting them due to the added importance it places on trade and politics; you either have to negotiate or fight to get those resources. We will see very soon here how it plays out though...

 

[UncivilizedGuy]

In Civ5 the AI was very persistent in attempting to trade for Luxury resources. I don't see why they can't be the same way for Strategic Resources.