Status of Civ 6 AI

[HF22]

You can retire it all you like, but I had different expectations.
I didn't care what state the game was in when released. I would have
bought it in an even rougher state if it was available 6 months earlier.

I'm happy your happy. But it doesn't change that it increasingly appears the issue isn't that the game is rough & unfinished, but that this is the level of quality the Developers have to offer.

So we need to like it as is, or not, rather than expect massive changes.

You clearly like it as is, which is fine.

 

[Mechazawa]

You can only make the same game so many times. I would honestly be happy with companies not making a 2 or 3 or 4 and rather just continuously building upon the same product like blizzard does with WoW and like most indie games do. Do a separate update for graphics. If you own the engine then you can easily update it without smashing compatibility with older gameplay systems. Did people really need a Civ 6?

There will never be a Factorio 2 or a Minecraft 2 or a WoW 2, what would be the point? I feel like Civ, in my limited experience with the franchise, can fall into the same boat.

Also how is it the AI is worse, do they literally rewrite the AI from scratch every iteration of the game? How is that efficient?

 

[Morgawr]

I think the "its only been out for x months / years!" excuse needs to be retired. The game, by DLC6, will be pretty much a year old and a long way from vanilla. While expansions will undoubtedly add extra stuff to the game, I think the basic strengths and weakness of the game are pretty much set in stone by this point (i.e. the AI is always going to be below par etc).

And based on its patch history, even for unfinished mechanics which I expect will get a lot of work in the expansions (like diplomacy), it is pretty clear those expansions will bring with them all entire new set of bugs.

When Civ 6 was released, I thought it was an unfinished game with lots of potential. Sadly, at this point, I think we are finding it doesn't really have that much potential at all. If you don't enjoy it now, its unlikely future changes are going to turn that around.

This is so depressing. I hope you are wrong. I really want to believe that some day in the near or distant future the game will finally be challenging on Deity at least.. And the AI will no longer be handing over their empire and treasury to you on turn 20 to declare a meaningless joint war on another AI halfway across the map..

 

[HF22]

@oedali

Always possible I'm wrong. Past performance doesn't guarantee future performance after all.

 

[Victoria]

I just wonder if the developers are more generic and spread their skills across games rather than just working on one. This seems to make sense based on the output being provided in patches.

 

[earlc]

They're good cartoons, sure, but that's still a poor fit for the sort of game this is. Granted Civ has had cartoonish graphics in the past and Civ VI has an overly-bright colour palette, but those are details your attention mostly isn't drawn to. Peter in a huff is a fine comic stance, but it's not what a Civ game ought to be drawing attention to. It's not that the Civ VI leaders are bad - they're simply in the wrong game,

Why? Why is it the wrong game, why ought they be doing something different? That's not given, and I think it'd be a pretty hard sell to establish this is the case. Maybe you'd just rather they be more like Civ V because you like that game more.

Many are offset from centre, which is exactly where they should be - the human eye is drawn more to the sides of an image than the centre. This is why photographs with subjects dead-centre look somewhat flat and are less engaging than those with the subject to the left or right, and why game interfaces tend to put the most immediately relevant information panels towards the left or right of the screen. It's also why every Civ VI leader is right of centre, incidentally. Some of the ones who end up in the centre move in from the left, such as Alexander and Genghis. I'll grant that the execution wasn't perfect in every case - screens like Elizabeth's or Gandhi's were uninspired - but that's not a strike against the overall approach any more than Hojo's attempt to escape off the righthand side of the screen is a mark against Civ VI.

Ok, sure, but that's a big stretch if you're trying to apply it to V. I sincerely doubt they considered that at all. There really isn't any room for debate here, there's simply no consistency, not even on this matter. Some are slightly off to one side, but many are way off on one side (no consistency on which side either), like Pachacutie pie, Enrico, Atilla, Theodora... Then several ARE more or less dead-center: Sulie, Wu, Ghandi, Casimir, Ashur, Darius, etc.

Not a single Civ V leader comes to mind whose body isn't wholly onscreen (save the feet of a couple who are right upfront).

There are, but that alone is bad enough when a quarter of the others are floating somewhere halfway up the screen. And then there's guys like Otto and Aksia who are waist-down, and then guys like Alexander, Sulieman and Nebuchadnezzar who are up on stilts above you.

So they're definitely inconsistent, and that's just part of the reason they fail.

Maybe you had lower-quality settings, but the Civ V leaders did exactly that on first meeting at least at the high graphical settings - Genghis and Alexander rode in, for instance, Gajah Madah and Harold strode forwards, William looked up from his scroll, and so on and so forth.

I recall that, though that's not really what I'm saying. You'd have that cinematic intro like in V, but then it'd fade out to something more like VI, with the leaders in the same range of vision, in the same location, and close enough to the screen that you can clearly make out all of their features. The cinematic intros would still get annoying on the 500th hour, so they'd have to have an on/off toggle in the settings.

 

[Krajzen]

Honestly, I have lost hope at this point.

Firaxis is either completely incompetent regarding AI/diplomacy, deluded and oblivious to the problems of their own game, or cynically doesn't care about those aspects.

I am so ****** tired of this stupid excuse "the game is only x months and years old, they will suddenly make its core features much better, just keep believing" - this attitude is what allows companies like Firaxis on getting away with garbage like this.

Terrible AI and bad diplomacy is not the issue of only Civ6. It has been an issue since release of Civ5. It's seven years and Firaxis still shows no will regarding improving those aspects. SEVEN YEARS!

On civ5 release back in 2010 (!!!) AI was unbelievably bad and later patches and expansions merely managed to desperately patch it to ordinarily bad state, and it took modders working on .dll code of the game to make its AI decent (which btw is double fail for firaxis because it removes excuse of "it was impossible to make ai of this complicated game okay" - no it was, and Community Patch achieved this). Then we got Beyond Earth which AGAIN had terrible AI and diplomacy (as well as its own fresh problems which all together caused this game to die surprisingly quickly). Then we wait for civ6 and AGAIN we get horrible AI and diplomacy. A year passes, AI is still horrible and some people still have desperate hope that Firaxis will suddenly wake up, after SEVEN YEARS of turning its ai into garbage, and make its ai good.

No it will not. Firaxis needs major kick in the rear end, or change of crew, or change of leadership. Until that happens, you all can only be deluded from patch to patch and from expansion to expansion that artificial stupidity which was immense for years will suddenly magically become decent.

Frankly, at this point I think the attitude of "just wait, they will eventually improve AI" is not merely silly, but downright destructive - it allows Firaxis at doing what they do. Maybe if forums were united in their anger at the state of (lack of) challenge in this game somebody up from here would finally say "Beach, we have a problem".

Anyway, for me at least, misery of those aspects removed most of fun from civ6. Why bother about animated leaders when they are shiny shells hiding utter stupidity? Why bother about strategy at all when your opponents are so braindead you basically have to invent house rules for yourself to not overwhelm them past early game unfair rushes? Why bother about new DLCs and civilisations when you could overcome those machine fools with "generic civ, no bonuses of any kinds" just as easily?

"Definition of strategy: A method or plan chosen to bring about a desired future, such as achievement of a goal or solution to a problem."
For me at least, the challenges offered by civ6 are way below the threshold for strategy, and it'd be fine for me if it low difficulty was the design, but it is the result of incompetence.

 

[bc1]

the vast majority of players struggle on settler difficulty: so there is no incentive for 2k/Firaxis to work on AI

 

[Victoria]

"Definition of strategy: A method or plan chosen to bring about a desired future, such as achievement of a goal or solution to a problem."
For me at least, the challenges offered by civ6 are way below the threshold for strategy, and it'd be fine for me if it low difficulty was the design, but it is the result of incompetence.

This game is amazing for strategy with such a great amount of choice. Just because Firaxis provides you with SV, RV, DV, CV and points does not mean you have to be obedient to the beast.
For example, I want to get a CV in under 150 turns on deity, I need strategy to do so. Sod the victories, it's about your own goal setting.
How about a OCC ? Someone has won an OCC at deity.... is that lacking strategy?
And strategies do not have to be about traditional 'winning' so try to build a wonder on each continent or have a city with 15 seaside resorts.
They are not incompetent, just making more money for the shareholders by spending less time.

I am making the most of the money Inspent and it's great, all about attitude

 

[Mechazawa]

Honestly, I have lost hope at this point.

Firaxis is either completely incompetent regarding AI/diplomacy, deluded and oblivious to the problems of their own game, or cynically doesn't care about those aspects.

I am so ****** tired of this stupid excuse "the game is only x months and years old, they will suddenly make its core features much better, just keep believing" - this attitude is what allows companies like Firaxis on getting away with garbage like this.

Terrible AI and bad diplomacy is not the issue of only Civ6. It has been an issue since release of Civ5. It's seven years and Firaxis still shows no will regarding improving those aspects. SEVEN YEARS!

On civ5 release back in 2010 (!!!) AI was unbelievably bad and later patches and expansions merely managed to desperately patch it to ordinarily bad state, and it took modders working on .dll code of the game to make its AI decent (which btw is double fail for firaxis because it removes excuse of "it was impossible to make ai of this complicated game okay" - no it was, and Community Patch achieved this). Then we got Beyond Earth which AGAIN had terrible AI and diplomacy (as well as its own fresh problems which all together caused this game to die surprisingly quickly). Then we wait for civ6 and AGAIN we get horrible AI and diplomacy. A year passes, AI is still horrible and some people still have desperate hope that Firaxis will suddenly wake up, after SEVEN YEARS of turning its ai into garbage, and make its ai good.

No it will not. Firaxis needs major kick in the rear end, or change of crew, or change of leadership. Until that happens, you all can only be deluded from patch to patch and from expansion to expansion that artificial stupidity which was immense for years will suddenly magically become decent.

Frankly, at this point I think the attitude of "just wait, they will eventually improve AI" is not merely silly, but downright destructive - it allows Firaxis at doing what they do. Maybe if forums were united in their anger at the state of (lack of) challenge in this game somebody up from here would finally say "Beach, we have a problem".

Anyway, for me at least, misery of those aspects removed most of fun from civ6. Why bother about animated leaders when they are shiny shells hiding utter stupidity? Why bother about strategy at all when your opponents are so braindead you basically have to invent house rules for yourself to not overwhelm them past early game unfair rushes? Why bother about new DLCs and civilisations when you could overcome those machine fools with "generic civ, no bonuses of any kinds" just as easily?

"Definition of strategy: A method or plan chosen to bring about a desired future, such as achievement of a goal or solution to a problem."
For me at least, the challenges offered by civ6 are way below the threshold for strategy, and it'd be fine for me if it low difficulty was the design, but it is the result of incompetence.

The issue isn't about being lazy or incompetent, its actually quite simple. Civ is designed as a multiplayer game. At least thats what it feels like; and a lot of people who seem to be famous for multiplayer have never touched the AI, its not a part of their scope at all. I would imagine there is some base of players who play Civ games and never once touch single player. I don't know if such numbers are available. But, I would imagine people who play multiplayer the most vastly outnumber those who do not. I have never even clicked the multiplayer button (in civ5) though so take my words with a grain.

--

Lel its actually quite sad..
Sid Meier's Civilization V 25,967 (current) 27,326.2 (30d avg)
Sid Meier's Civilization VI 15,752 (current) 16,378.4 (30d avg)
This doesn't show multiplayer vs single player though...considering Civ V only has two multiplayer games that I can see right now..yeah.

http://steamcharts.com/search/?q=civilization

I don't know if Civ games have another other outlets besides steam so maybe these numbers arent all of it.

 

[juanpavo]

For example, I want to get a CV in under 150 turns on deity, I need strategy to do so. Sod the victories, it's about your own goal setting.

Yes, this is the only way I play now.

 

[UWHabs]

It is unfortunate that the AI doesn't provide quite enough resistance.

For example, my current game, I was on an offshore island chain just off the main pangaea. But Russia became dominant, completely wiping out Syria, wiping out most of America, and getting the main part of Japan. So, finally a runaway AI, as they started going after Montezuma next.

However, I didn't want to lay down and die, so I did what anyone would do - Venetian Arsenal/Battleship destruction. I rushed to subs and battleships, ran the +100% production card, and spammed them like crazy. By the end, I had about 8-9 submarine fleet/armada and I think 13 battleship fleet/armadas, which worked well with 2 GG that overlapped them (helps that my Petra/desert hill/Ruhr Valley capital could build a battleship armada in 3-4 turns). So even though Russia had nearly completed the tech tree (I was seeing helicopters, modern armor, modern AT walking around their zone). What did they do? Nothing. They sent a couple suicide units feebly against me, but I just walked my boat squad all the way around the continent blasting everything within range, and taking every city as we went. Now, I understand that the armada that I built up might have posed a problem, and I did rush them a little bit. But they simply could not come after me. Even after I captured their 3 best cities, they still had about 10-12 cities inland, and never fought back against my boats. I mean, my boats were strong enough that I think I would have been able to win anyways, but I kind of expected a little bit more fight. Heck, even if they threw a modern AT garrisoned in the city, that would have added an extra few points of defense that would have slowed me down a little.

So yeah, the AI is still a little lacking. It was still fun (especially once I allied Kabul partway through the war, and my boats were getting 9-11 XP per attack), but it does detract a little when I can essentially be a tech level behind, yet completely curb-stomp the runaway leader. Heck, even if they just let me take all their coastal cities, and stockpiled a ton of troops through their inland cities, I had to take one city out of battleship range to win. But with a few modern troops they could have fought off any land units I sent their way, and if they were smart, could go take back cities once my battleships had moved around. It was a large tundra passage to make my way around the continent and would have taken a while for them to get back to defend my cities if they counter-attacked.

 

[Zuizgond]

the vast majority of players struggle on settler difficulty: so there is no incentive for 2k/Firaxis to work on AI

How do you know?

 

[Ferocitus]

I'm happy your happy. But it doesn't change that it increasingly appears the issue isn't that the game is rough & unfinished, but that this is the level of quality the Developers have to offer.

At this stage after the release. It also began in a far better state than Civ 5.
I don't agree "that it increasingly appears...that this is the level of quality the Developers
have to offer".

So we need to like it as is, or not, rather than expect massive changes.

No, each person can like it for what it is in any way they see fit, according
to their individual expectations.

I don't want to be, and won't be, part of your "We need to..."
I can almost guarantee that what I want eventually is completely different
to what you want. (Unless you have some interest in available platforms for
autonomous agent research with applications that aren't game-related.)

You clearly like it as is, which is fine.

I like the state it is in at this stage, and relative to where Civ 5 was at
the same stage, and knowing it will continue to be improved and developed
over the next few years.

If you're not happy I hope you'll continue to voice your dissatisfaction. That's
just one of many ways to influence Firaxis. Another is not to buy any of their DLCs.

 

[Ferocitus]

I am so ****** tired of this stupid excuse "the game is only x months and years old, they will suddenly make its core features much better, just keep believing" - this attitude is what allows companies like Firaxis on getting away with garbage like this.

Your loss, my gain.
The game is far better than where Civ5 was at the same stage.

I hope they take note of comments from people who would have been happy
to buy it even earlier. It might make them release Civ7 in a rougher state and
start money rolling in sooner.

Why should I wait until the game meets your standards?
You and many others can wait a couple of years, or perhaps never buy it.

 

[ZubieMaster]

Yes, this is the only way I play now.

Yes people threw around "SimCiv" and "Clash of Clans" comments to try to describe it, but your "play my way" description is probably the best, and indeed what we have is Minecraft: Civ 6 mode. Not saying there's anything wrong with people that enjoy that, I just think Civ used to be about building an epic empire, not just open sandbox, and it was possible to play the game to end up with the feeling that I built something that stood the tests of time, not just patting myself on the back for out-"smarting" a dumb non-opponent AI. Both are fantasies (the old Civ was beating a dumb AI too of course), neither is wrong, just there's clearly a group that is more excited about the current direction and probably overdue for the ones like me that still pine away for that old feeling to just go away.

 

[Victoria]

One thing not mentioned is the journey. I love the the bumbling way we bubble on toward a new release, lots of gossip and gasps, frustration abounds, screams of yesssss when a replay button appears on the wall to be shattered by the repeated wisdom of nukes being the future. Groans at the ability to make peace with a warring CS and secret smiles at the ability to take 5 cities with the threat of a thrashing.
God bless you Firaxis, you may not have the fastest train at the station, nor the prettiest but it's certainly not a dull ride.

 

[Broletariat]

I'm still not worried as of yet. I bought Civ V the day it was released. Had my issues with it and didn't touch it again until Gods and Kings. So if I have to compare my experience to the last game, Civ VI is doing better. But the last patch really messed things up and I'm really praying for a hotfix this month or at the latest in September.

 

[PhilBowles]

Yes people threw around "SimCiv" and "Clash of Clans" comments to try to describe it, but your "play my way" description is probably the best, and indeed what we have is Minecraft: Civ 6 mode. Not saying there's anything wrong with people that enjoy that, I just think Civ used to be about building an epic empire, not just open sandbox, and it was possible to play the game to end up with the feeling that I built something that stood the tests of time, not just patting myself on the back for out-"smarting" a dumb non-opponent AI. Both are fantasies (the old Civ was beating a dumb AI too of course), neither is wrong, just there's clearly a group that is more excited about the current direction and probably overdue for the ones like me that still pine away for that old feeling to just go away.

That's always been the way to approach Civ games, though. Back in Civ I, when there was some correspondence between the rate of progression through the tech tree and the dates (and so game time was measured in dates rather than in turn numbers), I set myself goals of reaching certain techs like Gunpowder before they were introduced historically. That doesn't work any more because game time has been almost completely decoupled from tech rate for at least the last three Civ games (I don't recall Civ II or III as well as either Civ I or the games I played more recently), nor do my other favoured exercises of beating my previous best time to reach Alpha Centauri or completing the palace, but 'winning by turn X' has always been a good fallback.

Why? Why is it the wrong game, why ought they be doing something different? That's not given, and I think it'd be a pretty hard sell to establish this is the case. Maybe you'd just rather they be more like Civ V because you like that game more.

"And next on BBC 2: The World at War, in the style and voices of Rick and Morty".

Good idea, personal preference, or objectively inappropriate idea, would you say? Same thing here - it breaks immersion in a game whose entire purpose is to provide a sense that you're re-enacting a historical development. Even the language you've been using to describe it concedes as much - you want characters expressing emotions, not actual civilisations, which is at odds with the game's core concept.

I know if I'm playing an older Civ game that, yes, Germany is led by Bismarck or France by Napoleon, but when I interact with those civs I'm playing as Civ X interacting with Germany or France, whose representatives are there just to fill excess bits of screen with appropriate images, I'm not having a get-together with Otto. They're there to portray the characters in a thematically appropriate way, not to be the main focus of their civs. And while I can have fun with advisors in Elvis costumes, I don't have to have them imposed on me. It's bad enough that Civs V and VI insist on describing civs' actions by the characters' names ("Who did X? Oh, you mean Nubia").

Ok, sure, but that's a big stretch if you're trying to apply it to V. I sincerely doubt they considered that at all. There really isn't any room for debate here, there's simply no consistency, not even on this matter. Some are slightly off to one side, but many are way off on one side (no consistency on which side either), like Pachacutie pie, Enrico, Atilla, Theodora... Then several ARE more or less dead-center: Sulie, Wu, Ghandi, Casimir, Ashur, Darius, etc.

The CIv V images were obviously composed as full pictures - the character is wherever it's most appropriate to make the best picture. No, they aren't all well-judged but it's not clear at all why their being in different positions is an issue and it rather seems to argue against your earlier claim that they aren't distinct enough. Why is it inherently better to have Character With Beard 1 in the same place as Character with Mustache as though the whole thing's just an RPG character creation screen with an assortment of different heads and costumes? Master of Orion II was doing that in 1996, so it's hardly a daring, untried aesthetic.

And none of this is any defence of the stylistic choice for the leaders - wherever they are relative to their background, what benefit accrues from weirdly angular exaggerated caricatures when Civ V had success with naturalistic leader figures?

 

[bc1]

the vast majority of players struggle on settler difficulty: so there is no incentive for 2k/Firaxis to work on AI

How do you know?

go have a look at "game of the month", it's mostly "high end" players so the average civ player is struggling on... ok maybe Chieftain not Settler
Does not change the argument, though