The AI will never be fixed, so stop hoping... :(

[Pizlenut]

The ranged unit thing is going to be sort of fixed in next patch I think. The notes said the AI was using ranged units to get flanking bonuses, and they've removed that.

It does do that... The AI will move range units up against your units all the time. I think it also tries to retreat them when it realizes they are in danger which is another problem. Oops its in danger, oops I wanted the flank bonus... oops oops oops.

It would explain a lot to say the least.

 

[Babri]

I don't want a smarter AI, at least not without better optimizing the game first. My computer is well above the recommended specs, but I have to play at close to the minimum graphics settings and turns can still take a while in a developed game. Giving the AI more moves to think about will just make it slower.

You can say that's just the reality of building a smart AI or you can say the game is fubarred, as you please, but just making the AI smarter without changing anything else will make the game worse for anyone who isn't running a super computer.

Changing programmed behavior like archies up front makes sense. It's cool if they want to tweak what's already there, but adding new stuff isn't going to work very well unless they can better optimize the game's overall performance first.

I completely agree with you.

 

[Paradigne]

One thing I'd like to comment on: The people who think hurting a fresh unit is worse than taking out an almost dead unit:

A) Fresh units do full damage (except Japan)
B) an almost dead unit will do little damage and STILL takes a resource so you cannot start to rebuild it.

I think it's programmed that way on purpose, not an error.

 

[JBConquests]

Of course they can build a good AI for this game if they would just spend their time at it. I agree that it isn't a simple task but it can be done. Any talented software engineer with allot of time on his/her hands could do it.

I am hoping that the Better AI mod will take up the challenge.

 

[PieceOfMind]

One thing I'd like to comment on: The people who think hurting a fresh unit is worse than taking out an almost dead unit:

A) Fresh units do full damage (except Japan)
B) an almost dead unit will do little damage and STILL takes a resource so you cannot start to rebuild it.

I think it's programmed that way on purpose, not an error.

Well (B) was by design meant to be a factor to take into account but in reality it hardly matters in the game.

The problem is, you missed C: An almost dead unit can heal for free to full health over some turns.

If a player or AI never takes into account that he sometimes needs to actually kill the units, then an intelligent opponent would just keep cycling reinforcements to the front while the damaged units heal. It might be reasonable as a stalling tactic but it doesn't win a war.

Having said that, I think you raise a good point. The AI is the way it is probably on purpose. Since individual units are much more important in the game now, is it possible that the AIs are designed not to try too actively to eliminate units.

 

[Öjevind Lång]

Gets my vote ..... "not invented here syndrome" is the cause of many screaming disasters.

Civ Franchise has been hugely successful, and the "complaints" on Version changes have been within expected bounds. Until Civ 5. The complaints this time are on an unprecedented scale, far far beyond "new version syndrome". Its no co-incidence it happened when wholesale changes were made to the very core fabric of the Franchise, the latter had never happened before - previously, the core Franchise ethos and make up had been incrementaly enhanced - unlike this time when it was wholesale destruction of what makes up the very core essence of Civ.

I think most traditional fans are waiting for this upcoming Patch, at present its a kind of "the jury is still out" feeling. Fingers & toes crossed, but I still have a gut feeling that the Franchise we've known for 25 years is about to go down the pan; and some wacky reincarnation, unrecognisable from the Franchise we knew, is about to surface and borrow the Civilisation Franchise name as a marketing label.

Regards
Zy

I'd say that the changes implemented in Civ III were at least as drastic as the ones in Civ V. Civ IV was a drastic reworking too. People seem to forget what it was like each time a new version of Civ appeared.

 

[Zydor]

I'd say that the changes implemented in Civ III were at least as drastic as the ones in Civ V. Civ IV was a drastic reworking too. People seem to forget what it was like each time a new version of Civ appeared.

I remember them well - hence my phrase "far far beyond New Version Syndrome".

The position/comments re version changes used as new version "defence" is as old as the hills, and always comes out every time a Version changes - it can many times apply as some individuals can be unsettled by changes. In 15+ years playing this Franchise I have never felt any undue worries on Version change, been well happy with the direction taken on all Version changes - until now. This is wholesale change of the Franchise at its very Core, a change warmongers are less likely to see or acknowledge, as aspects stripped out were non warmonger and strategic in nature.

The end result is not for me, although I await the upcoming patch, and hopefully that will put me back in "happy land". Frankly I doubt it, they are changing the Franchise core make up and target market. Hence the unprecendented level of complaints over its make up and direction.

Others still enjoy the game, excellent stuff, genuinely pleased - Enjoy - I bare no ill will to the Franchise, its been a big part of my recreation activities for 15+ years. I just cant live with the travesty of an alledged "strategy game" that they turned it into.

Regards
Zy

 

[tom2050]

Firaxis never fixed the AI problems in Civ 3, which they probably could have done in a week; and they had years to do it, and they knew about the issues; yet ignored them. There is no point to even consider that they will fix Civ 5 AI problems to any acceptable level.

They even actually implemented new AI bugs into C3C that didn't exist earlier, and never fixed those (and they knew about them).

 

[whb]

I am in computer science (machine intelligence and human-computer interaction). I haven't looked in depth at Civ5's AI, but here's a few guesses as to why the game design might have made AI-design harder than Civ4.

- With 1UPT, you can't just have a heuristic about the kind of mix of stack you want to send. Instead, the AI now also has to pick between various different configurations of troops on the ground with respect to the varied different kinds of threats that could flank them, etc. Panzer General might have a good AI for that, but the makers of Panzer General presumably only needed their AI to do that -- they didn't also need to build a solid AI for all the other aspects of the game too. (The Civ5 team probably were a bit pushed for time).

- Global happiness also makes things a bit more complex -- previously a city governor could just optimise its individual city; now the optimisation has to be across the whole empire.

- Border expansion can now be directed at will (buy a finger of tiles to grab that resource), making resource capture harder for an AI to predict.

- Skewing your empire temporarily in any direction can trigger a significant one-time benefit. (Run happiness to get a golden age; culture-spam for a new policy; spam military for a one-time war; spam cities to zero happiness in preparation to build or buy a splurge of happiness buildings in them) Because there are quantised trigger-levels, you are best off going hell-for-leather at one of them, ignoring the others, then switching, rather than taking a balanced approach. You are usually better off going all-out to get benefit A at t=5 and then all-out to get benefit B at t=10, rather than taking a balanced approach and triggering both at t=10. That can "feel" bad if an AI does it. It also means it's harder for an AI to exploit your situation or infer your longer-term goals, because you will suddenly switch track after you've triggered the policy / golden age, etc.

- Diplomacy is less clear (no religious alignments) and involves more participants (every city state).

- As every city now defends itself, the human player no longer gets caught in the trap where they neglected military to try to get a tech jump, and a stack of Mongols turn up unannounced. It now takes enough turns for the Mongols to do damage that the human can use the AI's tactical and strategic limitations to defeat an invasion even starting from almost no troops. That could make the AI feel less effective.

The problem is that each of these changes gives rise to new strategies that can take significant advantage of them, and these strategies are quite different to previous Civ games. The AI to use these strategies is achievable (though they ran out of time). The AI to detect a human player using these strategies is harder. The AI to detect a human player using these strategies and foil their plans is very difficult for some of these mechanics. And that means that when you play you usually feel like the AI is being "dumb" because it always seems you are catching it unawares.

Anyway, that's my blind guess from just playing half a game of Civ 5 so far!

PS. As an addendum, it is worth remembering that Soren Johnson, Civ4's designer, was Civ3's lead AI programmer. It's not so surprising, then, that the Civ4 game mechanics are easier to design a good-feeling AI around!

 

[Zogar]

Well, AI getting fixed is one of the points that defenders of Civ5 use : 'once AI fixed, perfect game'.

Obviously, detractors of Civ5 know better :
- AI won't be fixed
- game performance won't be fixed
- UI might be fixed

Why ? Because it should have been working in the first place. That's not something that takes 5 min to fix, you need to rewrite whole chuncks of code ... And that costs too much money, it would have been much more sensible to write proper code.

 

[Öjevind Lång]

Well, AI getting fixed is one of the points that defenders of Civ5 use : 'once AI fixed, perfect game'.

Obviously, detractors of Civ5 know better :
- AI won't be fixed
- game performance won't be fixed

Why ? Because it should have been working in the first place. That's not something that takes 5 min to fix (opposed to gameplay mechanics, which should be easier to fix), you need to rewrite whole chuncks of code ...

Well they won't even fix gameplay mechanics, so how the hell are they going to fix AI and game performance ?

Which they are apparently doing right now, and have been doing for weeks.

 

[Zydor]

They will fix the AI for sure - they have no choice as the simple mechanics of tactical play are broken, and those are not hard to sort out. I suspect the rushed released / year end yadda yadda gave the devs little time, so that part is understandable, if decideadly unforgiveable from the the point of view of what that says as a Company about attitude to loyal fans. The unknown is what parts of the AI are being "fixed" ...

The big unknown , and until the "Patch" comes out it will remain speculation albeit reasonable deduction, is what direction they are going with this. They stripped ouit huge chunks, all of it non-warmonger and strategic structure in its nature. Shafer stated clear and loud in a Polycast that one primary driver for the Civ 5 Release is to "widen the Fanbase". Read that how you like, but its a strange way to say increase sales .....

So, put that together with the aspects they stripped, and the conclusion they are shifting the Core make up of the Franchise, and changing the target market is inevitable. When you change a Strategic game to a wider market - and strip out massive non warmonger aspects, and include clumsy Giant Death Robots as a magic new idea, its not rocket science to work out whats happening.

I hope - with every core of my body I am wrong - but the evidence suggests otherwise, and I still have a dark forboding about it all. We will all know the truth when the "Patch" comes out.

Regards
Zy

 

[V. Soma]

Dear Zy,

I understand what you write, yes, civ5 was released to make it sell,
and yes, things changed for the mellower or what...

But here I have hope that being after the big sells Shafer will change the game
to become more closer to previous civs...
maybe there is no more big pressure on Firaxis to make it nice and shiny and, khm, streamlined...

And I think it is not the final last patch that will come next...

 

[enigmaticblake]

Ok, since I see you now meant to speak of collision detection, I would guess you are interested (perhaps already following?) the pre-production news on Kings and Castles. In it, and in SC2 as well, a much speedier pathfinding algorithm is used. I think they call it flowfield, but the point is that units are permitted to get closer together for a short time, to navigate obstacles while keeping formation for example. Fewer headaches with units bumping into each other (extremely annoying in SC1).

I'm even more confused when you speak of 'no clipping' as that is even different again. The wiki page you provided mentions that 'no clipping' is a different concept to the clipping it describes. Indeed, 'no clipping' is a more familiar concept to most gamers.

Honestly though, I don't see how collision detection is relevant to civ5. Were you making a general analogy? Getting units to maintain a formation despite meeting obstacles (including terrain and other units) is a tricky task for sure, and I don't understand what you're suggesting to do to improve it.

This flow field concept could definately apply to Civ 5. Many older games That have troop marching in formation together as a group also permit unit to get closer together or over lap for a short time for pathfinding purposes.(old games like age of empire 2/all of the total war series).

This could be applied to Civ by letting 2 units moving in formation to occupy the same hexagon for one turn only. The next turn they would have to separate if possible. If a space with 2 units is bombarded they take much more damage. IF 2 units are trapped on the same space by enemy units and are attacked they get a massive defense penalty.

This should work simuliar to "flowfield" i am guessing it calculates where a single unit should move every x amount of time. of course in this case it would happens each turn. they would mimic getting closer together by being on the same tile temporarily.a slow moving "flowfield" if you will.

This could add tactical depth to the game punching a whole true there lines with a tank or knight flanking and surrounding enemy so they are easier to kill. also if the enemy are confined to a smaller area bombardment is more effective.

 

[enigmaticblake]

In the wiki link it is well explained. Although it is mainly a graphical explanation there it often is also a pathfinding problem (no overlapping units/polygons means more complex pathfinding algoritms in order to allow smooth unit movement). Civ V is not an rts but it can be compared. No clipping in an rts would have a great impact on performance and unit behaviour. And in most cases it is not be implemented well (units that get stuck, take too long to reach a destination). And often it is much worse if they need to move in a formation (which is essential for CIV V for a good war AI).

Before I forget:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipping_(computer_graphics)

But luckily you don't have to be very smart to fix warriors running in fortified positions triple times stronger. Bad thing is they need backup...

Edit: after reading the wiki link above the proper term should be collision
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collision_detection

In the idea i proposed my previous post. Clipping would not be an issue it is just a temporary stack of 2 units. This should allow proper formations to be programmable.

If age of empires 2 could do it years ago i think Civ 5 can do it now.

 

[Paeanblack]

So according to Sid Meier his philosophy is that the AI shouldnt be outsmarting the player he should rather be reflecting what the player is doing, give the player confirmation of the situation and the player will be satisfied.

This is based on sid's experience and feedback over the years. It works.
(Even if people complain and say they want a genius ai, they dont really mean it, according to Sid)

That's probably true, but certain basic AI tactics should be in the game.

For example, the AI will never shoot at embarked units. Once you take care of the navy, you can sail your units freely, and the continent full of AI Artillery will just sit there doing nothing, allowing you to cherry pick your amphibious assaults.

"If I can see it, and I don't have anything better to do, I should shoot at it". That's not a genius tactic that would demoralize players. It also doesn't involve complex code...the computer is already checking a list of potential targets, so just add embarked units to the list.

 

[Öjevind Lång]

So, put that together with the aspects they stripped, and the conclusion they are shifting the Core make up of the Franchise, and changing the target market is inevitable. When you change a Strategic game to a wider market - and strip out massive non warmonger aspects, and include clumsy Giant Death Robots as a magic new idea, its not rocket science to work out whats happening.

I hope - with every core of my body I am wrong - but the evidence suggests otherwise, and I still have a dark forboding about it all. We will all know the truth when the "Patch" comes out.

Regards
Zy

I do wish they'd take out that stupid Star Wars robot. A very poor decision which smells "marketing department" a long way off. As for the patch, I am, unlike you, hopeful that it will make Civ V a truly great game. It's too early to declare that everything is lost, in my opinion.

Of course, if anyone simply dislikes Civ V, that doesn't worry me in the least. That's for each individual to decide. I detested Civ IV: Colonization because I felt it was actually a much poorer game than the original Colonization, and yet there were quite a few people - sensible people, good gamers - who liked it and played it. And that group included people who had played the original Col too. Tastes differ, and there is no objective or "factual" way to decide who is right at the end of the day. We can only discuss which aspects of a game we like or don't like and explain why those aspects make us feel the way we do or don't.

 

[Zydor]

..... We can only discuss which aspects of a game we like or don't like and explain why those aspects make us feel the way we do or don't.

Yup, and taking it personal that someone else has different views is an exercise in ultimate futility - but then again I guess thats life on Internet boards - all part of life's sweet pattern

Except that damn robot



Regards
Zy

 

[Paeanblack]

I do wish they'd take out that stupid Star Wars robot. A very poor decision which smells "marketing department" a long way off.

The Giant Death Robot is good game design. Once the tech tree is complete, there should exist a means to break through any remaining resistance. With nothing left to research, the game should accelerate to a finish.

Previous Civ games relied on nukes to allow player to achieve the final breakthrough of a strong military stalemate, but for many players, that left a bad taste. There are a few downsides to nuclear war. Some players just didn't like the idea.

The GDR is basically a nuke in a more palatable form. The game design needed a melee super-unit and the flavor dictated that it be clearly distinct from anything else already in the game. The GDR works perfectly in both regards.

 

[Zydor]

Until your opponent rolls out his/her GDR - then the clammer comes for more of 'em to hunt in packs - then commeth the death star to eliminate the GDR packs - then .... geez this is Civ, not Star Wars. A possible solution:

1. Shoot the designer
2. Nuke the GDR
3. Go watch Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

I just feel sorry for the axemen in the lower difficulty levels faced by this beast - they already have Modern Armour trampling the local mud huts - poor things

Regards
Zy