To those early game warmongers among us.

[Grendeldef]

Hey, we're too lazy to make military AI any smarter, so we'll just adjust conquest penalties to the extreme.

Love,

Firaxis.

This sounds about right though there's the element of cost-effectiveness so I'll give'em some slack and just wish, hope & all that sort things that the AI would be better, much better.

Actually there are still people who point fingers at German people and call them "Nazis" but they can't say it out loud because this or that... but yeah, we get what you mean.

Sure, there're individuals who still dislike them but that not a valid reason for global sanction. There's huge difference in between how individuals think and nations act.

I think it's for the best. If they are done to be excellent at using their military, plus with advantage they already got, human players will NEVER win. It's pretty much the same reason why AI is horrible at air\naval units. They can already see where strategic resources would be, who's to say they wouldn't spam dozens of bombers and just roll through human players?

Not to mention their happiness\tech bonus, they'll just spam 20 cities and drop 20 units per turn, using them on same skills as excellent deity players. It's better that AI is bit dumb. I mean, less experienced players already have trouble with Shaka on King\Emperor because of city\unit spam.

This doesn't make any sense. Firaxis are not first giving bonuses to AI and then dumbing it down for balance sake but vice versa. They'll make an AI they're happy with and then comes the hand outs. If the AI would be competitive without bonuses it would be bloody awesome and make the game vastly better - we could've have a deity+n levels without the current stupidities and on easier levels humans would be compensated; a win-win situation really.

 

[njmfff]

I think the whole idea is that if the AI was more intelligent in using their military, the production and research advantages could be toned down at higher difficulty levels. The bonuses are just compensating for weak AI. We're just used to "high difficulty = city and unit spam" because that's the way it's worked since Civ I

Hopefully future patches and modding will eventually buff up the combat AI, similiar to what Civ 4 had with mods like Better AI and K-Mod. I actually had to drop down a difficulty level in K-Mod, but that was a good thing.

Agree there, I would rather have smarter AI with no starting bonuses. Prince and Deity are basically the same, only AI gets more land due to two settlers start on DT. In doesn't add to anything beside player need to wait for about 50 turns to catch up with AI. After that, game plays like it's Prince level.

and AI's starting bonus army doesn't add much to it's early aggression, since he badly uses military, so they are easily fend off. (2-3 well placed Composite Bows will do the trick)

 

[Callonia]

No. I pretty much like the penalty. Since when do warmongers care who they associate with, because anyone that opposes them will get the axe anyway? If you don't like everyone hating your for being a warmonger... then don't be a warmonger. Problem solved.

Ha! That's what you think!
I love being a warmonger and I get giddy everytime someone brands me a vile warmonger, its actually a compliment. They acknowledge I'm kicking their arses and they're in tears over it.

 

[Ninakoru]

If you don't like everyone hating your for being a warmonger... then don't be a warmonger.

....

BNW was designed to work with certain warmongering penalties. Changing them would most likely cause some serious issues in global diplomacy of the game.

Come on, come on... That's plain stupid IMO.

Early profitable warmongering (AKA conquering something) is penalised way too hard in early game, it can be somewhat managed at late Medieval.

Enabling early conquest to be a bit profitable wouldn't make the game like in G&K where game could be decided on T100.

Taking two of three cities from a neighbour in Classical era on a Standard map right now will condemn your game diplomacy for the rest of the game, and you have to take cities from other six players in order to fulfill domination. You're a Warmonger bastard to the rest of the world and you have advanced 14% in your domination progress meter.

This is clearly broken, some civs with early UUs should be able to make use of them other than to chase some barbs or defense. Finding a sweet spot in warmonger penalties, nothing game-changing.

 

[Polisurgist]

Well, if you like the penalty, you could keep it on the "Brave New World" setting. Why deny others what they want just because it's already working as intended for you? What if some people enjoy early game warmongering?

I'm a player who likes early-game nuclear weapons. Can you make a mod for me too?

 

[Callonia]

I'm a player who likes early-game nuclear weapons. Can you make a mod for me too?

No mod necessary, just load up firetuner and give yourself nukes :3

 

[Bad Wolf]

This should be reflected by Antiquity sites popping up around battles

When I was first reading about BNW this was the impression that I got from archaeology, that the antiquity sites would be seeded at locations of ancient battles and such. But thus far I have only encountered antiquity sites seeded by barb camps and ruins, which is pretty disappointing.

 

[Cromagnus]

Ha! That's what you think!
I love being a warmonger and I get giddy everytime someone brands me a vile warmonger, its actually a compliment. They acknowledge I'm kicking their arses and they're in tears over it.

I do have to admit I like it when the text shows that they think I'm going to "send the world back into the Dark Ages" (The level above "Your warmongering is an issue of global prominence")

 

[Wodan]

When I was first reading about BNW this was the impression that I got from archaeology, that the antiquity sites would be seeded at locations of ancient battles and such. But thus far I have only encountered antiquity sites seeded by barb camps and ruins, which is pretty disappointing.

I definitely get antiquity sites from other sources. While I hardly keep detailed notes, a clear example is an antiquity site near your capitol, which happens pretty much every game. You're never going to have a barb camp or ruin there.

 

[Socratatus]

I became an early warmonger because the AI forced me by attacking me for no reason except to steal my city while I was peacefully trying to make my own way.

I really don`t care or worry about penalties. I treat it like real life. If someone starts war on me, I fight and may even take his Capital to teach him a lesson, penalty or no, everyone hating me or no. I know I`m usually in the right, even if the numbers might not say so.

 

[Cromagnus]

FYI, warring is just broken right now. Haile Selassie liked me, friendly, the only red text was that I spied on him and was building cities too fast... I was already at war with Denmark, who had been at war with Ethiopia for a while, taking their cities. I *liberated* Zurich, and in the same turn, now Haile thinks my warmongering is a matter of global prominence.

Why? Because taking a CS is a Major warmonger penalty. And right now, as far as I can tell, you only get the Liberation bonus *with the civ you liberated*. So even liberating a CS makes you a warmonger. Stupid patch.

EDIT: Ok, this seems to resolve itself the next turn. Just don't try to trade with that person until then. They'll give you a crappy deal.

 

[Cromagnus]

This sounds about right though there's the element of cost-effectiveness so I'll give'em some slack and just wish, hope & all that sort things that the AI would be better, much better.

This doesn't make any sense. Firaxis are not first giving bonuses to AI and then dumbing it down for balance sake but vice versa. They'll make an AI they're happy with and then comes the hand outs. If the AI would be competitive without bonuses it would be bloody awesome and make the game vastly better - we could've have a deity+n levels without the current stupidities and on easier levels humans would be compensated; a win-win situation really.

Speaking as an AI programmer, and as I've said before on these forums, it would be extremely hard to make the AI good enough at Civ to compete with the best players on an even footing. Now, there are certainly silly little things they can fix, and you'll find me complaining about them as much as anyone else, but there are 3 key areas that are difficult to fix:

1) Long-term planning
2) Military strategy (especially troop movement)
3) Knowing when to drop everything else and focus on one thing

Of the three, #1 is IMHO actually the easiest to make better than it currently is, but the hardest to truly "fix".

The analogy is chess. Chess is completely predictable with enough computing power. There are no random elements. One person moves, then the other, until someone wins or a stalemate occurs. Each person has only 16 units they can move, there are only 6 unit types, and the board has only 64 tiles.

Even with this seemingly simple set of requirements, it takes a super-computer to beat the world's best human players. If you added just one random element to the above equation, it would be very difficult for any computer existing today to beat a human at Chess. If you made the board slightly bigger or added more pieces, it would be even more difficult. The game of Go is more difficult for a computer than chess simply because of the possible number of moves, even though what you can actually do is limited to "place a piece".

Civ is MANY times more complicated than Go or Chess, has a bigger board, way more possible unit types, way more pieces (than chess at least), and adds a large number of random factors, and instead of 1 opponent, you have SEVEN.

Now add in multiple victory conditions, barbarians... To put it in perspective, to make a computer unbeatable at Civ would require solving multiple NP-complete problems, (which is fundamentally impossible without quantum computing or the like) and just the number of possible moves alone would require the AI spend an amount of computing time on its turn that would mean you'd die of old age waiting. Literally.

In fact, I'm pretty sure the AI would be smarter *right now* if the computer was allowed to spend more time on its turn thinking. But one of the #1 complaints among players is turn times... You can't have it both ways, folks. ;-)

Luckily, the computer doesn't have to be perfect. ;-)

So, lest my constant complaining sound like I'm not giving props where they're due, the programmers at Firaxis have done a pretty good job by just making the AI not completely hapless. There are definitely things they can do, but they're actually quite challenging.

#1: Long-term strategy. Every time a patch/expansion changes the ruleset and problem space, it takes the best civ players in the world a fair amount of time to come up with a new "semi-optimal" strategy. It would take the CIV AI programmers a similar amount of time to come up with AI strategies that are as effective.

So, when Tabarnak posts a 3-city tradition food caravan strategy, this is an example of something the AI team ideally would be doing on their own internally. Ideally, they would be at least coming up with semi-optimal peaceful tall strategies for the AI. These are the easiest to come up with because there aren't as many variables as there are in conquest. Defense is easier than offense. Your empire is smaller and more manageable, etc.

However, they need a *stable build* to come up with and test these strategies. If balance is still being tweaked, and the game is totally buggy, they can't effectively run simulations to see how their AI strategy is faring. It's entirely possible they're doing exactly what I describe... although I imagine it's more likely they're just crunching to fix bugs for most of the time when the game balance is stable enough to come up with strategies. ;-)

And, I don't work at Firaxis, but I can pretty much guarantee from experience that the build isn't stable until shortly after -er I mean before they send it off for production. *cough* launch-day patch *cough* ;-)

So that means the AI programmers really have no hope of developing long-term strategies for the AI until AFTER launch. And the first patch is fixing exploits and balance and bugs, so really, it's not until after the first patch. Which is why, IMHO, you see so many AI fixes come in the first and second patch.

But, nonetheless, I'll keep coming back to what they *could do*.

Imagine if the AI went all-out science: Rushing libraries, NC, Universities...

This would make Deity insanely hard. The AI already techs significantly faster than the player, grows faster, builds faster, buys cheaper, can support more units, etc.

Any strategy the player uses would be *more* effective in the hands of the AI on Deity, or on any level above Prince, for that matter. And it would make every difficulty level harder. Which is what you want as a starting point.

Trust me when I tell you it's so much nicer to be in a position where you're dumbing down your AI to make a difficulty level easier, rather than trying to make it harder. For example, in an FPS, there's no reason an AI can't always have perfect aim, and complete foreknowledge of where the player is. You can start with that and intentionally make the AI less effective than that to match the difficulty level. The AI has access to similar information in Civ, IMHO... they know where your troops are, and pretend not to. However, this information doesn't give them the same advantage that perfect aim in an FPS does.

None of what I'm saying addresses the troop movement/military strategy issues in CIV, but that's a much harder problem to solve, and a whole separate rant.

What I would really like to see, as a player, is just the AI attempting to follow long-term strategies that work. I know they *have them*, because there are variables in the XML that seem to control how much they focus on their long-term plan, how likely they are to abandon it when things aren't working, how much priority they give it over defense, etc. etc.

But I'm pretty sure their long-term plan isn't very good, because if it were, in any situation where the AI's neighbors are playing peaceful, the AI would severely out-tech the player on Deity. Without interference, they should be able to have universities up SUPER fast, especially with the GL... they should be able to complete the rationalism policy track and have research labs by turn 150.

Now, that's a flavor issue, of course, but it's just an example. The AI really reminds me of a novice player. Building things they don't need, just because they can. They never seem to be really sure why they're doing what they're doing. Why is the AI building Wonders it doesn't need instead of focusing on tech? It's all very novice-level behavior.

To be fair, for a very long time I was not good enough at Civ to know what I should be building and why. I used to follow the build recommendations because there was just too much to think about. I didn't micromanage tiles. So maybe for most Civ players, and most difficulty levels, it doesn't matter that the AI plays like a novice. Maybe it only matters to that tiny vocal minority of Deity players. But to us, it matters a lot.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

So maybe for most Civ players, and most difficulty levels, it doesn't matter that the AI plays like a novice. Maybe it only matters to that tiny vocal minority of Deity players. But to us, it matters a lot.

Those movement calculations take a LOT of time between turns though (probably the longest if I'm not mistaken). If this game is truly for casual players/MP, it would have made sense to make some concessions there, even if it meant a slightly weaker AI (though you could have the AI mimic strong player strategies as you say --> its biggest challenge has been its bonuses + tendency to run away. Minor tactical improvements have rarely made high-level AI significantly harder).

From a cost/benefit perspective, it's hard to justify spending 40-60+ seconds on late-game AI turns unless their unit movements are much better than something attainable by a more simple algorithm. Everyone is going to draw the line a bit differently in regards to "how much is too much" or "how much is enough", but given that the vast majority of civ players never make the highest levels (CFC is a biased sub-sample, and even here that's true, even in older civ titles), long AI turn times don't make sense in context unless we are getting a LOT from the additional seconds.

30 seconds x 200 means over an hour and a half of waiting. Is it necessary? People have different opinions on how much of an issue it is, but an equally valid question is "just how much are we getting from an extra 60-70 minutes of wait time across a game?".

To illustrate my point with a proven example, compare Vanilla/Warlords AI with BTS AI in civ IV. The latter supposedly improved tactics, but it was hard to notice much change outside of whipping when you get close to a city (and that clearly wasn't a complex decision, since AI would basically always do it while in slavery). However, BTS deity is actually easier due to removed bonuses...and whether you win or not still depends very much on a little early luck/positioning. Is that worth an extra 60 minutes per game? Almost every loss was being bogged down with the computer running away, or getting overwhelmed early. Neither of those things require precision unit movements, and precision unit movements in civ V by the AI, as you say, can't come close to what a human can present anyway. Once again, its big threat is becoming a runaway or simply flattening you before you can prepare early on.

The only reason BBAI in civ IV (better AI mod) was nearly impossible on immortal/deity is that it would notice it's stronger and declare on you instantly. Even if you only built military, those archers hit too soon lol. It did tech a little better and was slightly better at war, but almost always meaningful improvements to the AI come at the strategic, not tactical level. As such, I disagree with heavy machine resource usage on the tactical level, unless the game is specifically only about tactics or you're truly going all-out there (which is outside of the scope of all civ games).

 

[Cromagnus]

Those movement calculations take a LOT of time between turns though (probably the longest if I'm not mistaken). If this game is truly for casual players/MP, it would have made sense to make some concessions there, even if it meant a slightly weaker AI (though you could have the AI mimic strong player strategies as you say).

From a cost/benefit perspective, it's hard to justify spending 40-60+ seconds on late-game AI turns unless their unit movements are much better than something attainable by a more simple algorithm. Everyone is going to draw the line a bit differently in regards to "how much is too much" or "how much is enough", but given that the vast majority of civ players never make the highest levels (CFC is a biased sub-sample, and even here that's true, even in older civ titles), long AI turn times don't make sense in context unless we are getting a LOT from the additional seconds.

30 seconds x 200 means over an hour and a half of waiting. Is it necessary? People have different opinions on how much of an issue it is, but an equally valid question is "just how much are we getting from an extra 60-70 minutes of wait time across a game?".

Agreed. Luckily, with 8+ core systems becoming more prevalent, we could easily see smarter troop movements in future versions of Civ. If an algorithm is written with parallel processing and scaling in mind, you can just throw idle cores at it. Of course, that would mean smarter AI (and a harder game) for some people than for others, which would make the playing field less level when it comes to HOF games, etc.

Ideally there would be a slider for # of AI iterations in the map setup, with a default, so no matter how slow your machine was, everyone could play on a level playing field. In addition to Deity Continents Standard Pangaea, you could specify AI LVL 6, or something similar, which would execute the same number of calculations no matter how slow or fast your machine. Yes, it would mean longer turn times for slower machines, but I'd gladly pay more for hardware that gave me a better AI experience.

In fact, you might as well have that be part of the standard Deity settings. (Max AI iterations)

There's no point in a Deity that isn't hard, and I'd much rather have it be hard because the AI is doing more calculations than because of artificial starting advantages. It would mean that, in order to play Deity, you'd need a beefy machine, but the players who do play Deity are such a small subset anyway, and are so obsessed, I don't see any of them complaining about that. ;-)

Also, regarding machine usage at the tactical level: I disagree, at least when it comes to naval warfare. The AI is completely and utterly incompetent at naval warfare. The lack of strategic planning is the bigger problem, but the more glaring, noticeable problem is the terrible troop movements. If throwing more hardware at that would help, and I think it would, you could definitely turn down the AI advantages on Deity when it comes to unit build time, unit maintenance costs, XP bonus, etc. I'm not suggesting that you also turn down everything else. But their units start with a promotion, gain promotions 2x faster, they build units 2x faster, they pay 1/2 as much for rush-buying, they can support more units both in terms of population limit and gpt, etc. etc. You could turn down a lot of that if they were better at combat, because they wouldn't need or lose as many units.

And there's a critical mass point at which the AI has so many units (to compensate for being bad at war) that the sheer number of decisions it has to make per turn is way too high, and there's nowhere for those units to go. Player unit carpets make it hard for a *player* to move their own troops. But add in a per-unit calculation cost, and the fact that the pathfinding is completely ruined by units in every tile... I mean, it's self-defeating to have that many units.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Agreed. Luckily, with 8+ core systems becoming more prevalent, we could easily see smarter troop movements in future versions of Civ. If an algorithm is written with parallel processing and scaling in mind, you can just throw idle cores at it. Of course, that would mean smarter AI (and a harder game) for some people than for others, which would make the playing field less level when it comes to HOF games, etc.

My point is that such might be the wrong direction. How much utility are you getting, even if you dedicate an entire core to nothing but AI movements and have it calculate them during the player's turns? I'm picturing something like this:

Simple algorithm -- 90 second turns --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Human -- Good Human

With each "-" being a proportionate amount of effective tactical movement. If you're going to chew up so many resources, it needs to be worth it!

There's no point in a Deity that isn't hard, and I'd much rather have it be hard because the AI is doing more calculations than because of artificial starting advantages.

I don't think adding 16 cores will reach that goal. The returns of each extra few minutes of iterations is probably too small. If we get quantum computing or some such other super technology that shatters our perception of what's even doable, then the situation might change. Right now, however, I'd rather it minimize its usage of iterations on movement and just have some planned strategies based on the mechanics. That would still be a time sink, but it would make the AI much more effective for much less resource/time cost.

It would mean that, in order to play Deity, you'd need a beefy machine, but the players who do play Deity are such a small subset anyway, and are so obsessed, I don't see any of them complaining about that. ;-)

You see one. I was more of a tier-2 deity player in civ IV (low win rate, but played and won, even attained HoF spots), but this was an issue then as it is now. IV's AI had the advantage of not having to manage 1UPT pathing, though its tendency towards only SoD (and rarely more than one) shackled its potential, too.

TBS really shouldn't be the most resource-intensive genre lol. I haven't seen much in any LP or my own experience to suggest the extra time is being spent productively from a movement standpoint, so making the game take even MORE resources to slightly improve that again isn't going to be the core challenge in a future civ game, unless we're talking distant future.

 

[Cromagnus]

My point is that such might be the wrong direction. How much utility are you getting, even if you dedicate an entire core to nothing but AI movements and have it calculate them during the player's turns? I'm picturing something like this:

Simple algorithm -- 90 second turns --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Human -- Good Human

With each "-" being a proportionate amount of effective tactical movement. If you're going to chew up so many resources, it needs to be worth it!



I don't think adding 16 cores will reach that goal. The returns of each extra few minutes of iterations is probably too small. If we get quantum computing or some such other super technology that shatters our perception of what's even doable, then the situation might change. Right now, however, I'd rather it minimize its usage of iterations on movement and just have some planned strategies based on the mechanics. That would still be a time sink, but it would make the AI much more effective for much less resource/time cost.



You see one. I was more of a tier-2 deity player in civ IV (low win rate, but played and won, even attained HoF spots), but this was an issue then as it is now. IV's AI had the advantage of not having to manage 1UPT pathing, though its tendency towards only SoD (and rarely more than one) shackled its potential, too.

TBS really shouldn't be the most resource-intensive genre lol. I haven't seen much in any LP or my own experience to suggest the extra time is being spent productively from a movement standpoint, so making the game take even MORE resources to slightly improve that again isn't going to be the core challenge in a future civ game, unless we're talking distant future.

In my experience, most CPU time is spent in horribly inefficient code, not algorithm logic. Real-time XML parsing, reference-count management, copy constructors, virtual function overhead, allocation/deallocation of temporaries, etc. etc..

Most games don't have efficient AI code because it's usually written in an system designed to be flexible and generic, to give designers more control. The end result is horribly inefficient in real-time.

And I disagree, strategy games *should* use the most CPU time. Because it's turn-based, the game AI doesn't need to do ALL it's thinking in roughly 1-3% of one frame. (IE 0.1millisecond-1millisecond)

Instead, a game could spend a full second on AI (literally 100-1000x more time) without it being annoying, because it only does so between turns.

And with 7 AIs, giving each of them as much time as they all get on a single core would really help. It would quite literally make turns 7x faster.

And although it would mean that higher difficulties would require a better machine, it would make the higher difficulties harder in a way that was more fun.

I do agree though, long-term planning and strategy should be the focus. However, that's not free, CPU-wise either. If you turn that up, you'll need a beefier machine too.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Instead, a game could spend a full second on AI (literally 100-1000x more time) without it being annoying, because it only does so between turns.

Why not during player turns? Only a fraction of things are contingent upon player involvement on any given turn. At least some of it could be off-loaded, even on 2-4 core systems.

I do agree though, long-term planning and strategy should be the focus. However, that's not free, CPU-wise either. If you turn that up, you'll need a beefier machine too.

Yes, but less so...IE more improvement per increase in performance. I'm all for a good AI, but I'm also all for a good game experience. If developer constraints prevent the former, a balance should be sought between the two. Extra time should only be added if the improvement in the AI is very significant.

 

[Thunda]

I am in. Want to see such an option. I hate the warmonger penalty incredibly. I hated it before and now its a scandal. I always went early wars, conquering CS. Now I just go bankrupt and everyone on the planet hates me. So I cant really play my game -> no fun.

I've been doing lots of warmongering lately. I've found that there is plenty of gold to be had from pillaging to make up for lost trade and keep your economy going. If you take workers with you, they can repair the tiles after you puppet a city in time when the resistance ends for city people to work. Usually you can find a partner to friend who is in the same boat as you...i.e. Hiawatha, who is warmongering across the globe and needs a friend. He will have plenty of money to trade your resources to.

 

[Polisurgist]

I do agree though, long-term planning and strategy should be the focus. However, that's not free, CPU-wise either. If you turn that up, you'll need a beefier machine too.

I've long maintained that the only real solution to game AI is to host a giant learning instance on a server somewhere to have instances of the code play through hundreds of iterations of the game, and to have these AIs play just like multiplayer opponents. You'd need to be online to play against them (but that's at least a better reason to require it than DRM), and the difficulty would just be based on how many iterations that given AI instance has gone through.

Hell, someone could even start this as a service with enough starting capital and not even need the game studios to sign on.

 

[Thunda]

This doesn't make any sense. Firaxis are not first giving bonuses to AI and then dumbing it down for balance sake but vice versa. They'll make an AI they're happy with and then comes the hand outs. If the AI would be competitive without bonuses it would be bloody awesome and make the game vastly better - we could've have a deity+n levels without the current stupidities and on easier levels humans would be compensated; a win-win situation really.

This is what I don't get. I know as much about programming as I do what color of panties my grandmother prefers, but I don't see why a computer can be made to play chess and beat grandmasters but cant be programmed to simulate the tactics of an elite player like the Tommy guy?