The AI is still horrible.

[nokmirt]

Panzer General isn't open ended like Civ, there are clear objectives and a limited number of turns. And of course, and this is what helps the AI most, it starts out with a well balanced, well positioned force put in there by human designers.

Yes, true, but during the game things change. Units move etc. The AI in PG still knows how to use them. And although, GnK AI is better than vanilla, many times they are lost as to what units should attack what. For instance, the AI will concentrate all it's air power on an inf unit in the forest, when it should be taking out artys. In PG your artys get attacked let me tell you, because it knows artys help the infantry/tanks etc move forward to capture objectives.

In CiV, the AI should concentrate more on important targets and move down from there, then it would be much better. The other issue I see is huge traffic jams, which cause units that could be effective, to be blocked from getting in a better position to do their job. Fixing these little fundamentals will go a long way to improving the AI. They would be able to make some changes via patch or update. We are not going to have to have the whole AI reprogramed to make it play better. The devs have to notice what it does wrong and make units attack more critical targets in range. The current AI coding should be able to take that on, am I not correct?

The thing is if your city is being weakened by artillery turn after turn, wouldn't you try to use counter battery fire or air power to knock off some enemy artys? The AI should do the same thing, right? Instead of bombing the insignificant infantry in a forest 3-4 hexes away and of no threat to the city under attack. If planes can reach the artys they should knock out more critical targets. In my current game they could have and did not.

 

[Drawmeus]

I agree as well. For me, prince is the cut off point. Beyond prince difficulty, they could have really catered to the hardcore, and left the first 4 difficulties for us casuals. =)

They did. They did it with bonuses instead of AI, though.

I can guess the reason, of course: small improvements in the AI are extremely expensive, in both development costs (paying those specialized folks) and in computer resources, while bonuses are virtually free for both.

Couple this with what I am virtually certain (and have stated many times going back pretty much right to Civ V's launch) was a Civ V game that was not given adequate development time for one reason or another - which was probably pushed out the door at least 6 months to a year early - and you have a recipe for a sloppy AI.

If they ever get around to releasing the C++, I'm sure the AI will very rapidly get better as players improve it. I can see where it's not a developer priority, though, when everything is in crisis mode (AI that can challenge our top 10% of players, vs fixing dozens of crash bugs? Uh, fix the crash bugs please) on a rushed schedule, or on the very small development team that expansion packs typically command.

In short, it's bad, it will stay bad unless modders can fix it, but it's a fact of life. The sucky thing is you can't really even vote with your dollars on this. If Civ V doesn't make money, they won't make sure to do the AI better next time, they just won't make a Civ VI.

 

[Calouste]

Yes, true, but during the game things change. Units move etc. The AI in PG still knows how to use them. And although, GnK AI is better than vanilla, many times they are lost as to what units should attack what. For instance, the AI will concentrate all it's air power on an inf unit in the forest, when it should be taking out artys. In PG your artys get attacked let me tell you, because it knows artys help the infantry/tanks etc move forward to capture objectives.

In CiV, the AI should concentrate more on important targets and move down from there, then it would be much better. The other issue I see is huge traffic jams, which cause units that could be effective, to be blocked from getting in a better position to do their job. Fixing these little fundamentals will go a long way to improving the AI. They would be able to make some changes via patch or update. We are not going to have to have the whole AI reprogramed to make it play better. The devs have to notice what it does wrong and make units attack more critical targets in range. The current AI coding should be able to take that on, am I not correct?

The thing is if your city is being weakened by artillery turn after turn, wouldn't you try to use counter battery fire or air power to knock off some enemy artys? The AI should do the same thing, right? Instead of bombing the insignificant infantry in a forest 3-4 hexes away and of no threat to the city under attack. If planes can reach the artys they should knock out more critical targets. In my current game they could have and did not.

The AI in PG is hard coded to attack artillery. You can put an artillery just in the visible range of the AI (so basically in a location where it doesn't really threaten anything) with an AAA behind it that the AI can't see, and the AI will attack it with a plane and get killed by the AAA.

Not saying that the AI in Civ5 couldn't do a better job at it, but the AI in PG isn't really better, just balanced differently in that regard.

 

[nokmirt]

The AI in PG is hard coded to attack artillery. You can put an artillery just in the visible range of the AI (so basically in a location where it doesn't really threaten anything) with an AAA behind it that the AI can't see, and the AI will attack it with a plane and get killed by the AAA.

Not saying that the AI in Civ5 couldn't do a better job at it, but the AI in PG isn't really better, just balanced differently in that regard.

I don't think it CiV AI, needs to be hard coded to attack one particular unit. The AI will be a work in progress.

In my game, I am attacking the Maya on their own continent. Then, what does the Mayan AI do, it wastes valuable military resources to invade the tiny tundra city of Mombasa, owned by Austria. The Mayans lost 3 battleships, 3 destroyers, 4 infantry units, and 2 rocket artillery units, all sunk trying to go through my territory on the way to the Austrian city. The Mayans should have left that fleet and those units at home to protect their shores. This proves the AI is still idiotic.

 

[Billy Rubin]

Imho, the AI became worse with G&K - it actually does use prophets, missionaries and the new culture bombs, but often tends to get stuck with way too few cities, opting to launch unreasonable attacks on me or other neighbours whilst having 5+ absolutely perfect spots for cities in their back they leave unsettled until I take them in the industrial era.

Not to mention its total inconsistency and lack of common sense and basic reason - Simple example (Standard map size, king, epic): fought alongside rome for ages (not that I had to - they were rather puny but I wanted to give them time to develop for a good campaign), had various trade agreements with them, they were friendly and suddenly, the declare war on me.

They never attacked, I vastly out-teched and outnumbered them and just ignored them. Ten turns later, they approach me and offer me all their treasury, income and luxury ressources for peace...

Great :/

Since then, they always repeat the same process - make peace offering me everything they have, establish an Embassy, make an open border agreement and declare war again for no reason without standing a chance and completely out of the blue. Rinse and repaeat.

I stopped playing beyond emperor on vanilla because it gets even more ridiculous on higher difficulty levels where the AI 'gangs up' on me, just to beg for peace 10 turns later offering me everything they have - the higher the difficulty level, the more civs do it at the same time, so i considered these games to be even easier.

On King, the AI is already pretty suicidal, On Emperor, it does the wardec-> surrender thing in stacks and Princre is just too easy from a game mechanics POV...

 

[smallfish]

The AI always builds a gazillion cities in my games. If its not expanding early, its doing the late expansion routine or going full conquest.

e: usual suspects for the latter are Oda, Monty, Askia etc.

Funnily enough, in current game, Songhai got boxed in by semi-runaway Korea and got DOWed hard. If I didn't intervene off the bat (and I had to - Sejong was the tech leader and my coveting neighbor), he would have fallen even with the rough terrain around Gao.

 

[smallfish]

Your right smallfish, that is a huge step. What's funny is that I have fun pillaging again.

Pillaging is always fun as the Danes, but apparently their Berserker special ability doesn't carry over to muskets? :/

 

[Winston]

Hopefully some modders will improve the AI over the next few months, it definitely feels much easier than before but then again I've been playing Thal's excellent VEM for ages so I can't really compare G&K to vanilla - I'm pretty sure VEM changed the AI

 

[Winston]

You know, I think I failed to appreciate just how good VEM is - I always really liked it but in contrast to G&K I can see it's much better than I gave it credit for.
If Thal or any of his associates are on here I just want to throw out a thankyou to you guys, I think Firaxis should be thanking you too really

 

[gunangel]

In my experience, AI has the gifted potential to out-expand human players in sp and mp, but seem to lack the smarts in combat maneuvers. Give them 5 infantries vs another player's 5 infantries they will always lose. I would expect the AI to be better in chess-like gameplay.

 

[smallfish]

The thing is if your city is being weakened by artillery turn after turn, wouldn't you try to use counter battery fire or air power to knock off some enemy artys? The AI should do the same thing, right? Instead of bombing the insignificant infantry in a forest 3-4 hexes away and of no threat to the city under attack. If planes can reach the artys they should knock out more critical targets. In my current game they could have and did not.

I've seen them attempting to counter my rocket artilleries by spamming helicopters through my flanks. The Arabs were pretty aggressive with the amount of forces they had at their disposal (Deity), but one thing that really doomed them was their lack of tubes to properly hammer my city. All that aluminium went into helicopters instead. Still, given the stuff at its disposal, it made a good show in badly wounding a couple my rocket artilleries (had 4) and smashing the Marine/Infantry/SAM screen I had in front and around my cities.

Indeed, AI behavior is quite inconsistent, and I would rather they actually send in some more siege units (eventually spotted a rocket artillery, it got bombed by bombers) instead of spamming machineguns and marines at my face.

 

[tf21]

Panzer General
Hearts of Iron

Panzer General is challenging, but its also scripted and not open ended. Programing that AI is nowhere near the complexity of Civ.

Hearts of Iron had some strange behavior, was bugged filled when it first came out and the Pacific Theater where combined land, air and sea operations took place, the AI had problems. I haven't played it in years so maybe that's all changed.

I've seen some less than brilliant things done in Civ5. I agree there is room for improvement. There is a lot of things for the AI to do besides just combat.

I'm sure as I play more I'll see some flaws. I can't say at this point if its better or worse. I'll have to play some more and try some different maps.

 

[Janig]

I've played out GalCivII...what would you recommend? I play SCII when not playing CivGK, but I prefer turned based.

I recommend League of Legends. LoL is completely different to Civ, yet it represents everything I miss in Civilization 5. LoL's matchmaking system is really fast - no need to worry about finding a good game. LoL multiplayer games always last 20 - 45 minutes, so one can easily have regular breaks. The LoL playerbase is broad. Some of the poorest gamers in society play LoL because it is free and has easy system requirements. Some of the most competetive gamers also play LoL because it has tournaments with big prize money. Finally, LoL has the best donation model around. LoL is free to play and youre welcome to donate, but players who donate only have a psychological advantage over those who do not. In LoL everyone is equal; it is the most enjoyable game Ive found in many years.

 

[Prophet Skeram]

I'm a marathon speed player. The AI is really bad on that speed and it hasnt changed.

Anything under diety is an auto-win. (not saying diety is hard or something lol). And its not because im good or something its just ridiculous

- The AI barely uses religion
- has no clue of how to play during war
- Is horrible at using city states and it's even worse now
- Don't make enough cities
- Has poor diplomacy skills
- Suck at using its gold
- His empire management in general is very poor

The only real improvement I noticed is that the AI is now decent with his workers. The rest is so tiny that it really doesnt make a difference.

I really hope you're not done with the AI. The only reason he's kinda decent in diety is because the AI doesnt play CiV anymore, he plays starcraft 2 (pump tons of unit and building like its nothing).

It's pathetic.

thank you for listening to my whining

I've just finished my 2nd game on Prince level (I know, I know ) as Boudicca and I actually got quite challenged by the AI at some point - did play quite a bit of Civ 4 and a bit of Civ 2 back in the day, so I'm not new to the Civ concept.

I played as Boudicca (continents, standard, standard) and quickly sweeped the floor with the neighouring city states with holy warriors - and when I wanted my happiness and economy to catch up, 3 Civs simultaniously DoWed me (2 direct neighours and Arabia).

I quickly overrun my 2 neighours and took the entire half of my big continent (still in early medival times), but Arabia refused to make peace and started sending troops, and here's where the fun started:

my big continent was basically devided in halves by a small land bridge, and Arabia had already taken the entire other half (puppeting some CS, allying others) of the continent, wiping out Babylon completely (and - I think - also another Civ) by about 1400-1500 AC.

He was really good in tech (only about 1/2 age behind at each point), always guarding the border, always spamming troups, always having cannons/artillery in each and every city, spreading Islam across his entire empire etc.

So I took him on and looked for an ally: The powerful Bismarck (yeah, he was ahead of everyone in tech by quite a margin and had a ton of victory points - tech wasn't my main focus though).

And Bismarck proved to be quite the ally, despite being on the other big continent.

He always agreed to DoW Arabia for a reasonable price, often contacted me to donate me spare resources he had in abundance, never given away stuff he needed though, while all the time going straight for a science victory (building Apollo early, going straight into 3 RS Boosters) - he even still maintained a large, modern army (no medival units left) while getting angry at me only for taking CS allied with/conquered by Arabia for myself and killing of Babylon by conquering its capitol after liberating it from Arabia.

After I finally took down Arabia, I was in real fear that Germany might finish his spaceship before I could take him out, so I immediately rushed him and he put up a heck of a fight again, despite being nuked twice - he even nuked my troops back after I landed.

In the end, I decided to not conquer the whole world, but rather just take out India's capitol and end the game this way (India focused heavily on wonders and befriending CS, having only 2 gigantic cities, far larger than anyone else).

It took me until around 2025 to finish this game, on prince level, with the arguably overpowered Boudicca.

So I wouldn't call the AI horrible as a whole, I was actually pleasently surprised about the amount of fight they mustered against me, and about how their Civ's traits played out (Arabia being super aggressive, Germany going for a science victory pretty damn straight and India focusing on mega cities and wonders) - and the diplomacy was surprisingly reliable aswell.

Granted, I've had other games aswell, but it IS possible to at least have the AI appear pretty decent at times.

PS: Sorry for the wall of text.

 

[trooth]

Sounds like a very fun game. I prefer prince level against a good AI. I don't like prince if the ai just hands you a victory. Some games are harder than others. Maybe in a patch or two the ai will come along much further.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

 

[Prophet Skeram]

Sounds like a very fun game. I prefer prince level against a good AI. I don't like prince if the ai just hands you a victory. Some games are harder than others. Maybe in a patch or two the ai will come along much further.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

Yeah, but it seems to depend quite a bit on luck.

Sometimes, some AI civs get really powerful, sometimes they just wage futile wars against each other for the entire game, it seems.

I was just so pleasently surprised to see that level of play on prince difficulty.

 

[gaiko]

Agreed.

Yeah I believe someone once said to the effect "Marathon is like playing two levels lower than the difficulty you set it on", which is sad because it really sounds like a fun speed to get into the "historical" groove.