TotalBiscuit thinks the AI is good. and i'm now willing to believe it...

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(I've been told i should post this on the Civfanatics website but a user over at Reddit. I realised i should probably do so, just to get your opinion. This is a direct copy and paste from my post over on Reddit)

The problem at the moment isn't the AI. It's the balance.

All the choices the AI has made, the way they apparently chase after eureka bonuses and where they place their districts, has all been good. But the problem is, the player is just a bit better at those things, it will always be the case because we haven't actually invented an artificial intelligence that is more intelligent then humans yet. So to expect Firaxis to make one is ridiculous.

The balance problem comes in when the ability to focus on one thing is far too easy. As Quill18 proves, a science victory is super easy when you just focus on science and then only begin to focus on production when you start the Space Race projects. An AI does not do this focus, they try to advance the eras at a realistic pace from what i've seen.

Another issue is most of the criticisms on /r/civ has been made by people who watched the big youtubers. I for one made a post not long ago based mostly on civ playthroughs i watched. These big Youtubers are, for the most part, very skilled players, with a lot of time playing civ (with it being part of their job and all). They often focus on a certain path and do it efficiently.

Then we look at the less skilled players, TotalBiscuit for example is what you might call the average player. Being a reviewer and a youtuber means he will be looking at the game differently to the average player, but he's one of the closest we've had so far. He actually begun to struggle with the invasion of Rome because the AI has been able to keep up with him tech-wise. He hasn't over-specialised in any department (except depriving the naval side, having researched planes before renaissance boats). This meant the AI was keeping pace, and was able to fight back reasonably well. He actually complemented the AI when questioned on his opinion, saying it made some pretty smart choices. And the more i've begun to watch the smaller Civ playthroughs, rather then these youtubers that try to find the optimal strategy and usually play on higher difficulties where the AI begin with an advantage. Similiarly, we've read articles complimenting Civ6 on how amazing is, written by people who've never played the game before. And if you've never played a civ game before, yet find it super fun, Firaxis did something right.

Of course, there are lots of balancing issues. Techs are too cheap, Eureka's are maybe too strong, production costs seem to high sometimes etc. But changing values in a code is one of the least difficult things. Modders do it all the time, so i can imagine it's even easier for industry professionals.

TL;DR - A hard AI is difficult to create, because you need to make them smarter then a human. The people we've watched play Civ6 have all been "pros". The "average" players we've seen have all enjoyed the game and think the AI is good. Balance is still an issue however.
 
That reddit user was me, thank you! I'll share my comment here, then follow both threads.

From reddit:
While I think this is a good point, I know I'm not on the top players' levels, and yet watching Marbozir's game I feel fairly confident I could do it better at this point simply due to his lower familiarity with the game systems and different prioritization style, alongside a couple blunders. I'm glad to hear that some players are struggling, because I've been getting a bit worried that one might be able to do do whatever they felt like without much trouble, and still win.

I really hope it turns out that you're right. I think I'm gonna love this game, but having meaningful choices will be very important to that.
 
At harder difficulties they need to ensure AI builds a decent military. I think the game will be fine with average players (just a gut feel) but they gotta do something about human players steamrolling with a giant military.
 
The AI will never be as good as the better humans without giving the AI significant cheats. The goal should be can the AI create a decent challenge for ordinary players, as that will satisfy the majority of people who purchase the game.
 
for civ fanatics, it doesn't really matter whether the AI is kind of okay for the first couple of games

we're going to be playing a lot, so the more important comparison is going to be how the AI behaves after we've already learned all the rules and aren't going in blind
 
I'm getting annoyed of the argument "making an AI is hard and it won't ever be at human level".
We know... Truly. This doesn't mean obvious issues like the AI not bringing any units in a war should be ignored. Or it not defending.

Even with the AI criticism, the game is still being praised. It still doesn't invalidate the criticism. I like what I see, I really do. But concerns are valid. And its not like I expect Marbozir/Quill and cie to lose on Prince... no. I just want to see a normal attack if the AI decides to go to war. Not bring 1 warrior 1 slinger.
Also, we haven't watched any "pro". Because there are no "pro" at this stage.


However, you are right about Balance. The difficulty of a TBS game is as much the AI as it is its balance. For the simple reason that the AI has no notion of taking the OP option/unit while humans do. This is a divide that can only be helped by making the game balanced. And it should be balanced.

But if the logic behind the AI is too faulty, balance alone won't cut it.

Firaxis still has time to improve both the AI and the balance but that's what forums are for. Discussing what we have been shown. It was 2K/Firaxis's idea to show us the game. We then react to what we were shown. Up to them to prove concerns are wrong the 21st.
 
Regardless of what anyone says about the AI right now, whether they be average players or pros, there are still flaws that are apparent with this current iteration of the AI. I've watched numerous live streams and videos now where the AI barbarians will literally walk their captured settlers into the human player's territory as if to say, "here, we've got nothing better to do with him, HERE YOU GO!" This sort of behaviour needs to be addressed and it doesn't matter what sort of bonuses the AI gets. No amount of bonuses is going to change fundamental AI scripting. It just means that on higher difficulties the AI will do things like throw more melee units at you or research techs faster, but it won't prevent the AI from walking settlers into human territory or acting irrationally or randomly when engaging in diplomatic actions.

This version of the AI has flaws that even Civ V's AI didn't have at release, so I can only hope that Firaxis is taking the steps necessary to fix these really dumb AI actions so that upon release, we don't have a dozen threads full of posts complaining about poor AI (I mean, people will complain about the AI no matter what, but I'd like to see the amount of complaints kept to a minimum).
 
These are all valid points, and i totally agree. But they are also things that shouldn't require that much work to change.

If the engine has even a remote likeness to Civ5, then the AI will work partly off values. These values can be tweaked. There is no doubt at this stage that the AI is 100% finished. Now they just need to tweak it.

I have seen the AI spam out units before however. In a livestream by the Yogscast on the first day of the embargo lifting, two AIs declared war on them and Lewis lost his Capital. This could of just been terrible playing (no surprise), but it also shows they are capable of doing so. They also spam out Apostles and Missionaries so much, meaning there is something in their code for unit production. But it maybe that the AI is just too focused on others things to care about this unit production.

Once again, tweaks. Hopefully they don't need to make any big AI changes that will delay the game, and/or require patches.
 
These are all valid points, and i totally agree. But they are also things that shouldn't require that much work to change.

If the engine has even a remote likeness to Civ5, then the AI will work partly off values. These values can be tweaked. There is no doubt at this stage that the AI is 100% finished. Now they just need to tweak it.

Hard to say where exactly they are compared to the preview build. And you're actually right that a lot of things in the AI works properly. It expands, it moves units etc. Some of its flaws are easy to fix and could be just a number to tweak. But that's also the case for many thing. We as fans just point out the issue. The ball is in their hand now to do the easy tweaking.

I have seen the AI spam out units before however. In a livestream by the Yogscast on the first day of the embargo lifting, two AIs declared war on them and Lewis lost his Capital.
Their livestream VOD is subscription only sadly.

Once again, tweaks. Hopefully they don't need to make any big AI changes that will delay the game, and/or require patches.
Regardless to what state the AI will ship. I certainly hope we get patches post release and expects it.
 
You're judging this from his stream? Do you know if he intends to upload it to youtube? I seem to have missed it apparently :(
 
AI is incapable of long-term planning. That's why it receives 'cheats'. Also considering the fragility of cities and importance of the few units I can see the AI getting shafted very easily.
 
I'm still convinced it has a lot to do with difficulty. I just played a few prince games of civ5 in the last few days. A few things;

A.) I don't really consider myself a deity player. I can win there but I don't enjoy it.
B.) I hadn't really played civ5 in over a year until now, trying to run some comparisons (mostly focused on tech rate).
C.) I absolutely crushed it.

The biggest thing of note in these civ6 playthroughs is that, without the increased bonuses to things like research and production and unit maintenance - These civs are just going to be puttering around when compared to Deity level players - even if they have half a clue how the game works.

In the most recent stream I watched, Filthy has about 10+ cities at turn 100 and they're all functioning really well. He is virtually unthreatened by any of his neigbors, who all ahve 3-4 cities at most.

There's no contest. We can't make an accurate assessment unless these guys are playing on comparable difficulties. Even in regards to the tech rate. Quill18 won his space race at around 300 turns or some such. It is not uncommon to have ~300 space victories in civ5 at all if you know what you're doing.

Sure, Quill doesn't exactly know what he's doing - but he's playing on Prince. The A.I. threat is non-existent which basically means you can build 5 military units and voila - the game is a building sim. No worries.

I hardly believe that would be the case if they were all playing Deity. Or even Emperor.
 
You're judging this from his stream? Do you know if he intends to upload it to youtube? I seem to have missed it apparently :(

He only puts his livestreams on twitch for payed subscribers, sadly.

Their livestream VOD is subscription only sadly.

The Yogscast livestreams actually appear on the Yogscast Live channel. But the one where Lewis plays Civ6 is part of their Deck Rippers (usually Hearthstone) livestream, so it's not listed as Civ6. They also had this weird splitscreen thing going on, since three of them were playing different games at the same time. It's hard to tell what's happening.
 
Nothing about AI in games has changed so I don't know why we expect any change in the AI in Civ. Computer's can't imagine so they can't play civ.

Debates about how Firaxis can reduce the scope of AI cheating on higher levels via AI should be debates about what are other ways to reduce the scope of AI cheating, or what are ways to reduce the impact of cheating on play-stype options, and what are appropriate ways to make Prince a more challenging baseline difficulty without shutting off long-term play.

Civ should have a difficulty curve more like regular video games: the base difficulty is very hard to beat at the end, the hardcore difficulty is ghastly all the way through.

Nothing about tweaking the AI's limited brain functions or piling on old-style AI bonuses will achieve that.

We need a new type of cheating. (for example the idea that occurred to me in the earliest VI AI thread, about creating a "shadow AI" where the unseen continent develops in story mode rather than playing out the game on the real map, and then the map is generated when the player gets there: allowing for guaranteed runaway AIs geared for turn-300 wins, that didn't have to hog up wonders and such during the early turns).
 
Either that or some kind of deep learning mechanism where thousands of games against players are run or simulated. But that would be very complicated, resource intensive and AI talent is scarce seeing as all the big companies scoop them up.
 
I'm still convinced it h
as a lot to do with difficulty. I just played a few prince games of civ5 in the last few days. A few things;

A.) I don't really consider myself a deity player. I can win there but I don't enjoy it.
B.) I hadn't really played civ5 in over a year until now, trying to run some comparisons (mostly focused on tech rate).
C.) I absolutely crushed it.

The biggest thing of note in these civ6 playthroughs is that, without the increased bonuses to things like research and production and unit maintenance - These civs are just going to be puttering around when compared to Deity level players - even if they have half a clue how the game works.

You are no doubt right that Prince->Deity has always been an enormous leap in the Civ series, but this is cold comfort for me. That's because Civ V was still too easy on Deity, not because outteching or outexpanding the AI was easy, but because of the AI's tactical incompetence. Even Deity AIs didn't have a prayer of conquering any player who built a handful of archers. Build a few more than that and you could conquer any AI you chose.

So I'm sure the AI will start expanding better and spamming out units as the difficulty goes up. But all indications are that it will still have no idea what to do with those units. Maybe the raw difficulty-based combat bonuses will help (although this is a bitter pill to swallow), but the human playing will still be fighting AI units that can only shuffle around helplessly.
 
I've watched numerous live streams and videos now where the AI barbarians will literally walk their captured settlers into the human player's territory as if to say, "here, we've got nothing better to do with him, HERE YOU GO!" This sort of behaviour needs to be addressed and it doesn't matter what sort of bonuses the AI gets.

I had noticed this and started to wonder if it was intentional. That sort of behavior sounds like a strange "bug" to me. They didn't do that in Civ V and I find it hard to imagine how such a change could be made accidentally. It lead me to wonder if there is something more fundamentally new to the barbs in Civ VI that they haven't told us yet... as if the barbs NEED the scouts for some reason and they are generating them themselves, not capturing them. Something related to making the barbs a playable "civ", maybe? I don't really know, but the phenomenon has set me to wondering.
 
I had noticed this and started to wonder if it was intentional. That sort of behavior sounds like a strange "bug" to me. They didn't do that in Civ V and I find it hard to imagine how such a change could be made accidentally. It lead me to wonder if there is something more fundamentally new to the barbs in Civ VI that they haven't told us yet... as if the barbs NEED the scouts for some reason and they are generating them themselves, not capturing them. Something related to making the barbs a playable "civ", maybe? I don't really know, but the phenomenon has set me to wondering.

Could be a direct side effect of roads no longer costing maintenance + trade units auto building them. I could envision times in which the fastest way for a barb to get a captured civilian back to the camp is via a road in neutral territory. Which of course sends it near a players territory.
In addition edge case of the "home barb camp" has already been destroyed, but a barb unit from it had already captured a civilian and is now trying to get it to what is now the closet barb camp.
 
We need a new type of cheating. (for example the idea that occurred to me in the earliest VI AI thread, about creating a "shadow AI" where the unseen continent develops in story mode rather than playing out the game on the real map, and then the map is generated when the player gets there: allowing for guaranteed runaway AIs geared for turn-300 wins, that didn't have to hog up wonders and such during the early turns).

I like your AI idea. It's more of a quest kind of style where you overcome one barrier after another. Conceptually it's similar to what someone else has said about AI -- the goal of a good AI is not to have it be exactly like a human, for the AI to create INTERESTING OBSTACLES for you to overcome. Luckily, I suck at Civ so it's not hard for me to get this feeling at like, Monarch level lol
 
I think AI flanks and moves it's troops better, finally moves and shoots! It just builds too few units on this build (or cause of Prince).

A nice thing was to see Victoria spreading English Empire all over different continents, both her landmass and others, like the devs had said while back they are tweaking her colony strategy to be optimal for her.
 
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