Problems still remain

[lorrydriverjr]

Quill18 just lost his second city after an American blitzkrieg (immortal difficulty).

 

[ProMeTheus112]

why AI quality matters a lot is because if it plays really bad you will not be rewarded for being good with strategy because you can ignore all the things that the AI is unable to do properly, and that becomes the most effective way to play
so for a game like CIV it is really important to push AI to be quite good even if it will never be great (which is why we'll always want it to gain advantages in higher difficulties for sure), it needs to be like, a good AI better than usual not worse than usual, for the game to be rly good to play, the bonuses of higher difficulties don't rly change that, you'll just be playing strategically what constitutes the weakness of the AI so it better not have crucial weaknesses

basically, if the AI is weak you can give it more bonuses in higher difficulties, but that will produce a very straightforward game of exploiting the weakness of the AI by playing kind of always the same specific way that counterbalances the huge bonuses
if the AI is nice, you can lower the bonuses for the higher difficulties and it will still be rly hard, and the game will be much more interesting to play because you will have less weaknesses to (over)exploit and can actually do plenty more different strategies, playing a more adaptative game (strategic) instead of pure knowledge/management. You won't be pushed by the numbers to play an exact certain way to catch up, and you'll need to take many more eventualities into account, because the AI is capable of these eventualities, therefore you are playing more of a strategy game.

rly important for civ since it is mostly a single player game by design, it is a quality that can hardly be overlooked

 

[Lyoncet]

Quill18 just lost his second city after an American blitzkrieg (immortal difficulty).

I'm still trying at King difficulty, and honestly I have no idea what's happening but after turn 45, there are 3 reports that someone has been defeated. I would suspect they actually attacking each others or something. Wonder if I can save a replay and rewatch it after finishing.

This lady says it all. (Caution: volume)

 

[Sansa_Stark]

Okay I am off to sleep, couple of observation:
Played as Greece, on King difficulty, Pangea, standard speed

Rome declared surprise war against me on turn 20, attacked with a slinger and 4-5 warriors, I had 2 slingers and my warrior was quite far away scouting, Trajan got my capital down until the red before I fend off his army

then few turns later Gandhi (!!) and Pedro declared formal war together, and they did sent troops towards my cities

I feel like the harder difficulty you play, the easier you will trigger the AI's negative agenda towards you, therefore expect loads of hostility from the get go

Quill18 just lost his second city after an American blitzkrieg (immortal difficulty).

These both sound like a good news, don't they?

 

[historix69]

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

Maybe it is time to discard the BoardGame style of military units and ressource requirements and realign with the real world. Military units consists of soldiers and specific equipment. If you upgrade a unit, you replace old equipment with new one. You can develop and manufacture military equipment on your own, but usually military equipment is also available on the world market/black market or from friendly nations, e.g. many nations do not manufacture military equipment but instead buy equipment manufactured in Russia, China, USA, GB, Germany, ... Research and production of military equipment like tanks and planes is usually very expensive and the demand per nation is rather small (hundreds to thousands) compared with numbers of cars produced/sold per year (hundredthousands to millions). Military equipment is very expensive but without production for the international market, it would be even more expensive to maintain a national military-industrial infrastructure.
When military units are upgraded, the old equipment is often sold on international market. Access to resources like iron/steel might be a requirement for manufacturing certain weapons but should not be a requirement to possess/use such weapons.

Plain infantry should be cheap to set up. Today a rifle may cost about 1.000 $ but a soldier may cost 50-100.000 $ per year (in western world professional standing army). If a nation has not the means to upgrade outdated units, it might be cheaper to retire them or change them to plain infantry with rifles from market. There are many hundred millions (maybe even a billion) of small arms available on our planet these days.

In a true simulation game, you could only buy stuff from market which has been produced in the game, e.g. by your own or other players' cities. In Civ games (if you have enough money) it is possible to research a new military unit and buy it in all your cities in the same turn, even if the city was founded in the same turn and is isolated on the other side of the planet. Even when your strongest city would need 10 turns to produce a single unit and you are the only nation having discovered the tech for it so far in the game. Civ games are very inconsistent regarding production. It is possible to set up a gold economy where all cities in the game specialize on making money and do not produce any stuff like buildings or units and players are still be able to buy these things from an invisible market. Since all cities specialize on gold (consumer goods), they cannot have produced the buildings and weapons so where does it come from?

It is a different matter with energy resources like coal or oil used as fuel for modern units like ships, trains, tanks, cars, planes .... These resources limit mobility of armies / fleets. Therefore it would be a good thing to be able to buy fuel from market and stockpile a reserve for war if you do not own the resource tile yourself. Lack of oil however should not prohibit you from manufacturing modern weapons, the units are simply less mobile or immobile until you get some more oil from market/conquest ...

 

[nokmirt]

No. The AI is the best I've seen in civ games. But the game (not AI) still have some problems.

Complains often come from not understanding. "Oh no, so many warriors, everything is lost".

Fine play with warriors in the Atomic Era if that fits your preference. Me I am modding this SOB from the outset.

 

[MadDjinn]

I'll post this here as well.

Ai doesn't upgrade units due to not getting the techs in the renaissance to atomic era. Rather it goes for the economy techs instead.