(Rising Tides) Still too easy...?

[Beastfeast]

Beyond Earth is too easy; ramping up the difficulty is not an adequate solution for me. Watching the rising tide preview streams this doesn't seem to have changed much. Streamers seemed quite excited about the new mechanics and features, but clearly had some niggling doubts. e.g. Quill and Mahorabazir (sorry if spelt wrong) relating to the diplomatic AI's passivity. Quill was just spamming the end turn button waiting for his inevitable victory in his latest BERT stream. Might have to wait for the final dlc :/ as per other civ titles.

The AI definitely needs to ramp up its aggression in the later stages if the player is winning. Diplomacy seems too easy to manipulate in your favour (in fact the devs discussed diplomacy as a tool that the player can use to manipulate the AI!). It worries me that the AI will be exploited by this new mechanic, making the game even easier. If you've played total war games there are typically penalties for the player when he gets too powerful, but I don't see any in the pre-release version.

Also, there should be a big diplomatic capital penalty for larger empires. I noticed how easily you can ramp up diplo. capital by expanding and then building all the diplomacy structures. This leaves smaller empires less politically advanced, which plainly makes no sense. Historically it is usually smaller nations that become more politically developed, but the opposite seems true in BERT.

Lastly, AI has a hard time taking time taking cities in BE. Why not lower the strength of land cities to alleviate this? From a game-play balance point of view it doesn't make sense that land cities are about twice as tough to attack. It will discourage most players from colonising the sea, especially in multi-player games. I'm sure some won't agree with me on this point. I maintain that it makes sense, especially when you compare the relative strength of units to cities in Civ 5 and BE. Civ 5 cities are easier to attack, with cities in BE having roughly equivalent strength to Civ 5 cities with a castle. Civ 5 AI often has trouble attacking cities as it is, without defensive buffs introduced in BE. Cities in Civ 4 had no city strength and had to rely on garrisoned units for defence. This made it easier for AI to attack the player, although it could make it tough to defend a large empire.

 

[Westwall]

I think they really missed an opportunity to implement new hybrid victory conditions, or otherwise make the old ones less samey.

For example, having some kind of "last stand" situation where aliens just start spawning everywhere and pouring out from the oceans and attacking your units and cities as you try to complete the Transcendence victory would probably make the endgame more interesting, requiring you to have at least enough units protecting the Mind Flower.

Yes, they mentioned new victory movies, but to me those were never really that big deal. I would rather they took the time to make the existing victories more interesting and show more information at the end, with a deeper retrospective look on how my game went.

Did I do well? I'm never exactly sure since they don't have a "Warren G. Harding to Augustus Caesar" type ranking system.

 

[swordoflight86]

The passivity might have been a function of the difficulty Quill was playing on. He said he was playing on Normal. I know that when I did contact victory on Gemini, I think it was, when I turned on the beacon I got hammered and I lost almost every city, and if not for deep cash reserves I wouldn't have been able to hold.

Also, the Total War series is the last game series anyone should be taking pages from. Realm Divide was a travesty.

 

[GenEngineer]

As far as passivity goes, the point about difficulty was a good one, but the part about quill being passive and just spamming 'End Turn' is a result of the peace deal bug - he seemed uninterested in any action that might result in a war (even canceling a capital coup 1 turn from completing) because of it. I do think that the victories need to have a more activ component though - although I'd go the other way than Westwall's - rather than having all fo the aliens get incredibly mad at you, I'd have you start to champion them - you have to start punishing other players that were mean to the aliens. Makes it harder to finish without dealing with other players, and also introduces a way to 'block' the victory - just murder enough aliens, and you can keep transcendance from going off.

I do think you have a point about the diplomatic game being too easy to run away with - the fact that Quill was playing on quick and a low game difficulty didn't help, but if the costs of agreements scaled with empire size, it would prevent the runaway problem nicely (bigger civs pay more, smaller civs get more paid to them).

 

[aguliondew]

The final 3 difficulties should be the ones were it is possible for the AI to win. Ever since I started to play BE it has never really felt that way. Apollo has increased in difficulty since release but it is still easy. Either I am better at civ games or the AI is worst. My first deity win in civ 5 took a handful of tries with me losing with 4-6turns left to win (even with a cultural victory pre-BNW).

 

[ptoss1]

CiV expansions have never made the game harder, just more complex, which is the goal here. The difficulty has always come from unfair advantages given to the AI. My problem with BEVanilla is that it's just not fun, something I hope RT will fix. I have no expectations for the RT AI other than it shouldn't be worse than what we already have. Can't say the same thing for Rome 2 compared to Shogun 2.

 

[Acken]

Well I'll probably just play BERT for a game or two, beat it on Apollo, make a video then go back to getting my ass kicked on my civ5 mod (shameless advertising)

 

[Westwall]

People keep talking about the CBP.

I still have no idea how to install the thing since it's not on the Steam Workshop page.

If it's anything like other major mods though, it'll probably take like 5 minutes to load every time I want to start a new game.

There should be a way to just keep mods on auto-load until you disable them.

 

[Ryika]

Pffft. If mods count I'll just make a 1000% AI mod and everything will be fine.

 

[Beastfeast]

SwordofFlight86: I wasn't saying that realm divide was a good feature; in fact I made a mod that removes it from the game entirely. Nonetheless something needs to happen in the later stages of play as the player draws closer to victory. I would suggest diplomatic penalties with a less harsh and sudden effect than Shogun 2 realm divide, applying to all other AI interactions with the player.

For example some possible diplomatic penalties:
- Player has highest score: minor diplomatic penalty.
- Player has 50% higher score than nearest player: moderate penalty to diplomacy.
- Player has double nearest AI score: major penalty. Some players may declare war/sanction player at this point.
- Player completes a quest that brings him halfway towards a victory condition: moderate penalty.
- Player starts final quest required for victory: major penalty. Many players DOW player.
- Player occupies a city (like civ 5) minor penalty, increases as player takes more.
- Player destroys a player: minor to major as player destroys each player.
- To even this out enable city liberations like civ 5. Also lessen warmongering penalties over time. Also add buffs for staying loyal to an allied civ.

the whole idea would be to give the player something to do on the way to victory and to have a realistic chance of failure. Jake Solomon's design philosophy is good ''give the player a sense of loss.'' This adds to the player's sense of achievement when he/she wins.

 

[Acken]

People keep talking about the CBP.

I still have no idea how to install the thing since it's not on the Steam Workshop page.

If it's anything like other major mods though, it'll probably take like 5 minutes to load every time I want to start a new game.

There should be a way to just keep mods on auto-load until you disable them.

CBP is more of an overhaul. There's very good ideas and it's definitely a refresher but I did not find it challenging and the late game turn time were unbearable on deity (5+ minutes per turns). It's still a beta though so I think it will get better.

Pffft. If mods count I'll just make a 1000% AI mod and everything will be fine.

Boosting bonuses doesn't count. Although the problem with CivBE is that you cannot yet edit the DLL so your ability to make something interesting with the AI is limited.

 

[Bandobras Took]

SwordofFlight86: I wasn't saying that realm divide was a good feature; in fact I made a mod that removes it from the game entirely. Nonetheless something needs to happen in the later stages of play as the player draws closer to victory.

This may be revolutionary concept, but how about the player wins?

More seriously, I seem to recall that those who valued challenge in previous Civs went for time victories -- not only did you have to prevent the AI from getting a tech/diplomacy/economic/culture/diplomatic/domination victory, but you had to do it in a way that didn't result in you actually winning.

I'd still prefer that the AI actually get smarter as the difficulty level goes up. It's a vain dream.

Failing that, though, the main thing I'd like to see is a human player be unable to piggyback in any way, shape, or form on the bonuses they give the AI on harder difficulties. Diplomacy/trade should get progressively (and possibly drastically) less fair with each difficulty level.

I don't really think that there should be any special "sudden difficulty" when approaching a victory, as all it really does is add one more item to the checklist, and most often it's the same one: have I got my army ready?

I'd think it better to have to be thinking that question throughout the entire game rather than just at the end.

 

[x2Madda]

This may be revolutionary concept, but how about the player wins?

More seriously, I seem to recall that those who valued challenge in previous Civs went for time victories -- not only did you have to prevent the AI from getting a tech/diplomacy/economic/culture/diplomatic/domination victory, but you had to do it in a way that didn't result in you actually winning.

I'd still prefer that the AI actually get smarter as the difficulty level goes up. It's a vain dream.

Failing that, though, the main thing I'd like to see is a human player be unable to piggyback in any way, shape, or form on the bonuses they give the AI on harder difficulties. Diplomacy/trade should get progressively (and possibly drastically) less fair with each difficulty level.

I don't really think that there should be any special "sudden difficulty" when approaching a victory, as all it really does is add one more item to the checklist, and most often it's the same one: have I got my army ready?

I'd think it better to have to be thinking that question throughout the entire game rather than just at the end.

Completely agree. The arguments that the AI should dogpile the player because the player is winning wouldn't make the game more compelling or "fun". You would just either kill everyone in advance until your continent was empty or you would guard your borders with a massive army while the turns tick down.

Civ5:BNW tried hard to tackle the middle game and while it ultimately failed, it added a lot of features that made mid game better than just 'end turn' over & over.

Civ:BE simply removed middle game. There is early game, academy spam, victory condition is triggered.

I don't think Civ:BE can be "fixed". The military and war aspect is very exciting and clearly a lot of time went into it but its a shame that the rest of the game suffers as a result. Rising tide brings nothing that will make victory take longer and infact might even just make victory even faster than before now.

 

[Gali]

The only way to get a good AI is to release the dll or source. Civ 4 BTS had an AI that was taken from a mod I believe. If it wasn't the modders did at least as much if not more work on the Ai as the developers. The CBP is a total overhaul. Just working on the AI would really reduce load times and would be much more viable. Given how hard and time consuming AI in the more complex systems of nowadays is getting community help is probably best. the ROI on AI work is far too bad for a company to really solve it.

 

[Acken]

Completely agree. The arguments that the AI should dogpile the player because the player is winning wouldn't make the game more compelling or "fun". You would just either kill everyone in advance until your continent was empty or you would guard your borders with a massive army while the turns tick down.

What makes no sense is not that the leader is being stopped its that all AI gang on it. While they should work against you they should still try to win on their side. That's why realm divide in shogun 2 is bad. It doesn't make sense for a far away AI to hate you when they should try to exploit their neighbours.

The problem is not that the AI tries to win, it is that the AI is using a pure anti human approach.

There is a problem in civ when a neighbour let you alone in peace with your 1 archer while you race through the tech tree for an unharmed science victory.

 

[Gamewizard]

People keep talking about the CBP.

I still have no idea how to install the thing since it's not on the Steam Workshop page.

If it's anything like other major mods though, it'll probably take like 5 minutes to load every time I want to start a new game.

There should be a way to just keep mods on auto-load until you disable them.

Gazebo, the mod's creator, just created an express install option: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=528034

I highly recommend to anyone looking for better AI in a Civ V game. Still a work in progress of course, but if you spent half the time that you spend insulting the Civ BE team/Gorb and instead gave input on the CBP mod it would probably be in a better state.

Sorry to derail, but couldn't resist the opportunity for advertising.

PS - I also recommend using a solid state hard drive with Civ V in general. Everything loads way, way quicker.

 

[Westwall]

CBP is more of an overhaul. There's very good ideas and it's definitely a refresher but I did not find it challenging and the late game turn time were unbearable on deity (5+ minutes per turns). It's still a beta though so I think it will get better.

Cool, thanks for the head's up.

That's why realm divide in shogun 2 is bad. It doesn't make sense for a far away AI to hate you when they should try to exploit their neighbours.

It's things like this that can take me out of the game sometimes.

Though to be fair it can have its benefits, like in Civ 5 when you're asked to declare war on a nation that's nowhere near you. The war is likely to be resolved with some moderate gain without your units ever even running into whoever you were asked to declare war on. And you get the diplomatic boost of having been at war with the same civ as whoever you wanted to garner favor from.

I think this somewhat mirrors actual wars where countries will get dragged in mostly to provide moral support and not much else.

 

[Acken]

PS - I also recommend using a solid state hard drive with Civ V in general. Everything loads way, way quicker.

You don't spend that much time loading stuff in Civ5. The biggest bottleneck of that game is the fact that all the AI computations are limited to a single core.

 

[Halbbruder]

I am mainly annoyed that transcendence victory has not changed. I put it in spoiler tags just in case in quill's thread. The victory is still ridiculously easy so I expect to see AIs winning in harmony in SP and players winning in harmony in MP.

As for AI difficulty, on Apollo, the affinity headstart does seem to increase AI difficulty and aggression against you. Conversely with CivBERT, it's easier to gain an affinity if your strategy is rapid exploring and since some AIs will be aiming for hybrid approach (in which there's no victory condition), you can just grind away at either peace or domination victory and take as much time as you need.

I seem to have made up my mind and I'll wait for a sale and preferably a patch to change the following:
- hybrid planes, subs, artilleries and carriers
- add more plane types (bomber, troop transport as early game supplementary approach to using phasal transporters)
- add anti-air units
- Fix UP Brazilia
- Fix broken war score
- Increase AI aggression during final stages of completing victories. Add reasons for aggression such as spoiling planet (harmony), diluting humanity with unwanted humans from earth (harmony/purity, harmony/supremacy) and attempts to take control over everyone else through this population excess (anyone).
- Change transcendence victory to something more active and maybe add one more non-affinity related victory condition.

 

[Gamewizard]

You don't spend that much time loading stuff in Civ5. The biggest bottleneck of that game is the fact that all the AI computations are limited to a single core.

He complained that loading up a new game took too much time. SSDs fix that problem.