Acken
Deity
Problem arise when even there it doesn't take much work to win because of balance and AI issues.
Rising Tide - First Impressions
- Thread starter Ryika
- Start date
Honestly I've only played Soyuz in RT, which is supposed to be the 2nd hardest difficulty, and I've had zero issues winning 4 games in a row. I've never won on anything higher than King in CiV so it's not like I'm some uber-player here. I've been playing since Civ II admittedly so I understand how the game works. And RT just lets you break the game more than BE (post release-patch that is. Release BE was pretty damn broken).
In BE on higher difficulties if you expanded quickly, you were more or less guaranteed to be attacked, which necessitated rushing something Rocket Batteries or Defense Perimeters. Before the release-patch I lost a couple of games to Battlesuit rushing AI's. In RT I've been attacked exactly once over the course of 4 games, by Brasilia, and I did expanded aggressively right next to him. The new diplomacy just makes it very easy for Civs to like you, because they like you doing things like trade routes, food, technology and production, all things that you are going to focus on anyway. I have gotten into wars in 3 of my 4 games mind you, but that was entirely my fault because I made alliances. Now I avoid that and can just peacefully tech right to victory.
Barathor
Emperor
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Yeah, it's the 2nd hardest difficulty, but Apollo is a large leap from Soyuz. You'll most likely still be able to win on it, but at least it'll be more interesting than Soyuz, if you enjoy playing this way.
On Apollo, all the sponsors will pretty much disrespect you at the beginning because they all start with big advantages over you and your snowball hasn't had a chance to gain momentum yet and grow. After my first game, I now try to avoid making contact with them at the very beginning while I'm exploring. Usually, their explorer eventually bumps into my own or they find my city first when we finally make contact.
Also, wars are pretty often between the sponsors and yourself; I really like that. With the new alliance system, teams often form too and it's a lot of fun. If Firaxis just gave the AI a nice kick in the ass to wake it up and build formidable armies and defenses, it would be great.
I also play with all 12 sponsors active on a Standard map and it makes things much more lively.
Amrunril
Emperor
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With regards to difficulty level, I think it's harder to make the AI competitive in BE than in Civ V because the game is so much more open ended. Civ V is a relatively linear game (tech tree instead of web, lots of buildings with prerequisites), so you can count on the AI to eventually research most of the key techs and construct most of the key buildings. In BE, on the other hand, you'll only research a fraction of the techs or construct a fraction of the buildings in any given game, and planning a strategy of which ones to take and which to ignore is something a human can do a lot better than the AI. On top of that, the current version of the game has an abundance of imbalanced mechanics that a human player can recognize and exploit, while the AI is not programmed to do so.
Acken
Deity
Actually the research part is rather easy to do.
Overall the economy in Civ5 is the easiest part to program the AI and I don't see anything in CivBE that would make me believe the economy AI is harder to program. The hard part is the whole military/units AI. Where civBERT is harder is that there is now that there is both land and sea to manage, making the whole unit management part probably twice as hard.
While it's true the tech web is non linear, it is really easy to tell the AI what to research based on a goal. Also there are not a lot of techs in civBE that you must get. If we look at how a player plays, he will research a few techs around the center and then chose an ideology and then beeline the associated leafs. Telling the AI to play the same way is really not that complicated. The most likely scenario is simply that the AI is not programmed to get tech this way and instead uses a less focused algorithm based on flavors rather than trying to get the most affinity points.
Overall the economy in Civ5 is the easiest part to program the AI and I don't see anything in CivBE that would make me believe the economy AI is harder to program. The hard part is the whole military/units AI. Where civBERT is harder is that there is now that there is both land and sea to manage, making the whole unit management part probably twice as hard.
While it's true the tech web is non linear, it is really easy to tell the AI what to research based on a goal. Also there are not a lot of techs in civBE that you must get. If we look at how a player plays, he will research a few techs around the center and then chose an ideology and then beeline the associated leafs. Telling the AI to play the same way is really not that complicated. The most likely scenario is simply that the AI is not programmed to get tech this way and instead uses a less focused algorithm based on flavors rather than trying to get the most affinity points.
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Almost certainly; that has been the basis for the AI decision making for a good long while. If the flavor weights are strong/adaptable enough it should still do a decent job of collecting affinity.
The problem with making it play like a decent human is that 70% of the tech web and 90% of the wonders get routinely ignored. Hmmm.
Yeah, it's the 2nd hardest difficulty, but Apollo is a large leap from Soyuz. You'll most likely still be able to win on it, but at least it'll be more interesting than Soyuz, if you enjoy playing this way.
On Apollo, all the sponsors will pretty much disrespect you at the beginning because they all start with big advantages over you and your snowball hasn't had a chance to gain momentum yet and grow. After my first game, I now try to avoid making contact with them at the very beginning while I'm exploring. Usually, their explorer eventually bumps into my own or they find my city first when we finally make contact.
Also, wars are pretty often between the sponsors and yourself; I really like that. With the new alliance system, teams often form too and it's a lot of fun. If Firaxis just gave the AI a nice kick in the ass to wake it up and build formidable armies and defenses, it would be great.
I also play with all 12 sponsors active on a Standard map and it makes things much more lively.
Interesting! I'll make the jump to Apollo then; maybe I'll ease myself into it by playing Hutama first.
Also I thought you couldn't get all 12 sponsors on a map? Does it involve editing some files?
hevans900
Chieftain
Has anyone noticed an issue with the AIs and victory conditions in RT?
I've played about 10 games on Apollo now (5 standard, 5 quick I think) and in none of them have any of the AI got even close to obtaining the victories. They seem to randomly pick up affinity and never focus on the victory techs.
In one game AI Chungsu got to 14 Purity because I was messing around, then turtled for another 30 turns and never even launched a lasercom satellite, or got to 15 Purity.
Has anyone actually seen the AI build a victory wonder in Rising Tide?
I've played about 10 games on Apollo now (5 standard, 5 quick I think) and in none of them have any of the AI got even close to obtaining the victories. They seem to randomly pick up affinity and never focus on the victory techs.
In one game AI Chungsu got to 14 Purity because I was messing around, then turtled for another 30 turns and never even launched a lasercom satellite, or got to 15 Purity.
Has anyone actually seen the AI build a victory wonder in Rising Tide?
Greasy Dave
Prince
- Joined
- Oct 30, 2010
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- 376
First Soyuz game I played, 2 AI's decoded the signal around turn 200 - can't remember the exact number... I was messing around and was way behind. They both started building beacons immediately and I had to go and take them down.
Since then I've played an Apollo game that I finished turn 213 - the AI decoded the signal around 190 - again, can't remember the turn. Don't know if they started to build the beacon.
I don't know what difficulty you're playing on. you might be going so fast they're eating your dust.
On the other hand, as has been mentioned elsewhere on the forum, the AI isn't exactly smart at winning.
Since then I've played an Apollo game that I finished turn 213 - the AI decoded the signal around 190 - again, can't remember the turn. Don't know if they started to build the beacon.
I don't know what difficulty you're playing on. you might be going so fast they're eating your dust.
On the other hand, as has been mentioned elsewhere on the forum, the AI isn't exactly smart at winning.
hevans900
Chieftain
I'm sorry I should've mentioned that I don't play with contact victory (I hate it) - just the other four win conditions. I also only play on Apollo.
poom3619
Ping Pang Poom!
Regarding "AI can't play the game" I say someone should make a quick mod to give even more bonus to AI, while waiting for other someone make a mod that make AI play smarter.
Anything that better than what we have now.
Anything that better than what we have now.
Barathor
Emperor
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I've created a mod which lets you play with all 12 on the map:
Max Sponsors Increase
It's a lot of fun.
Since this mod doesn't do anything during gameplay: just generate the map, save the game on the first turn, exit to the main menu, and then load it again under the Singleplayer menu (not the Mods one). You'll be able to continue earning achievements too, which is always a fun little thing on the side.
Just maybe set the sea level to "Low" since you'll be squeezing 10 sponsors onto land; it'll reduce the chances of any capitals on top of each other. Or you can use this one too, Aquatic Polystralia, and you don't have to worry about it. Also, you can still load the game under singleplayer with that mod as well and it'll be fine.
Lord Tirian
Erratic Poster
I started to play with Contact disabled and it really improves the game by changing the implicit clock ticking away at somebody being randomly lucky at making contact. It's a much better game, especially with the increased affinity levels and the lure of hybridising. The victories are still not as engaging as in Civ5 but at least they stopped being actively terrible.
Greasy Dave
Prince
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- Oct 30, 2010
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- 376
Then the answer is no, I've not seen it build anything........ and even though I've only had time for 4 games I suspect your assertion will prove to be correct for most games
Alkaid
Warlord
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- Oct 29, 2014
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- 208
I've only had the AI build a beacon once in all the RT games I've done so far. I was pretty surprised, as Elodie finished it around turn 165 or so. But I was well on my way to building my Emancipation Gate and I won the game on turn 188. I could have blown up her beacon that was right on the coast of a little island if I really needed to, but I knew the 45 turn timer would leave me plenty of time to win first so I left her alone.
The player can outpace the Apollo AI a lot easier in RT than base BE, so I'm not anywhere near as worried about surprisingly early beacons or mindflowers coming out like they sometimes used to.
Cosmic Fox
Civ 6 Addict - TB Mod Collaborator
Not sure it is interesting, looks like dumb ass coders again, If you can lease aliens then fix it to work properly, why would you want ability to lease them and destroy your tiles?
Yea they should have 2 difficulties above Apollo, so people new to the series can work their way up. Regarding the AI tech, they either need a MASSIVE research bonus (x2?) to allow their willy nilly tech picking or pre scripted paths or both. The trouble is their early game is acceptable, but they have no late game. We need something to boost the late game primarily. (I view late game as starting around turn 70.) I did notice on Apollo the AI actually expands off the bat, but then they stop. Why is the AI programmed to stop snowballing? I spied on them and they had positive health and open land. I like having low difficulty settings but both Civ BE and Civ 5 have been a joke. I beat the hardest difficulty first try and this expansion is no different. In Civ 1 the AI got free wonders, and huge production bonuses, hard to beat, in Civ 2 it was towned down a bit but they added a harder difficulty, I couldn't beat it every time. I just played Civ 3 once and didn't like it. Civ 4 was AWESOME, I never beat on hardest. I got Civ 5 played one game, saw how to massively exploit one unit per tile, switched to hardest and won but slightly struggled. On a bad start I might have lost. BE has the same issue, plus a massively improved tech tree. I love the tech tree and virtues, but the comp just can't compete against players.
Acken
Deity
Two more levels wouldn't be that interesting. AI improvement and balance changes are the way to make Apollo a fun challenge. The Apollo AI has enough bonuses as is.
If you want a civ5 immortal/deity challenge though, try the mod below
If you want a civ5 immortal/deity challenge though, try the mod below
poom3619
Ping Pang Poom!
Well, my opinion, again. is that someone should make AI to be a challenge while other someone make AI to fun to play and act like they're intelligent being.
