Mîtiu Ioan
Deity
I partially agree - Civ 4 was quit disappointing and "flat" after riflemans & cannons was available.
IMHO Early/Medieval wars was quite funny, interesting and well-balanced ...
Was Civ IV combat broken and not Civ V?
- Thread starter KAuss
- Start date
I partially agree - Civ 4 was quit disappointing and "flat" after riflemans & cannons was available.
IMHO Early/Medieval wars was quite funny, interesting and well-balanced ...
r_rolo1
King of myself
@Thoras
No, I wasn't arguing against the OP per se. I was arguing against the flood of people that jumped to say that civ IV was terrible in defensive terms. Yup, the game penalized heavily being idle while being bombarded, but RL does that too
But, as one of the people i faced in Pitboss games said once, in Civ IV if you let the enemy get to your city gates , you deserve to lose that city ... and that was exactly what the AI did. And people in general , as they never ( or rarely ) play levels where they have to actually mount a defending strategy , see the AI falling siege after siege and then conclude that defense is weak in the game 
Given the point I was arguing was not only the OP one , but of the responses people gave and the tone of those, I think that my start was both adequate and in tone
Anyway, the OP is wrong in that particular regard as well . Civ IV is a game where defense is the winner.... as long as make something diferent of simply stacking CG troops in cities, AI style. When you're defending, the terrain plays in your favour, you have the advantage of roads everywhere or near that and you can choose where and when to attack the invading force ( you know, counter-attack is still defense ). Said this, i've see humans trouncing massive human invasions with hammer inferiority more than once using well timed counter strikes, so i'm not seeing how war in civ IV is a matter of hammers ... unless you are playing against someone dumb and hammer beefed . And even there ... I've seen enough of OCC-AW won in high levels in civ IV to even think on that as a certain
P.S I maintain my point: Civ IV a lot more friendly for the defender than the OP stated ,and because of that his point stands in dangerous terrain ... I just not call him flat out wrong in all of his analysis because I am still evaluating how defender friendly and attacking friendly civ V really is, so i can't say with honesty how both games compare regarding this.
No, I wasn't arguing against the OP per se. I was arguing against the flood of people that jumped to say that civ IV was terrible in defensive terms. Yup, the game penalized heavily being idle while being bombarded, but RL does that too
But, as one of the people i faced in Pitboss games said once, in Civ IV if you let the enemy get to your city gates , you deserve to lose that city ... and that was exactly what the AI did. And people in general , as they never ( or rarely ) play levels where they have to actually mount a defending strategy , see the AI falling siege after siege and then conclude that defense is weak in the game Given the point I was arguing was not only the OP one , but of the responses people gave and the tone of those, I think that my start was both adequate and in tone
Anyway, the OP is wrong in that particular regard as well . Civ IV is a game where defense is the winner.... as long as make something diferent of simply stacking CG troops in cities, AI style. When you're defending, the terrain plays in your favour, you have the advantage of roads everywhere or near that and you can choose where and when to attack the invading force ( you know, counter-attack is still defense
). Said this, i've see humans trouncing massive human invasions with hammer inferiority more than once using well timed counter strikes, so i'm not seeing how war in civ IV is a matter of hammers ... unless you are playing against someone dumb and hammer beefed . And even there ... I've seen enough of OCC-AW won in high levels in civ IV to even think on that as a certain P.S I maintain my point: Civ IV a lot more friendly for the defender than the OP stated ,and because of that his point stands in dangerous terrain ... I just not call him flat out wrong in all of his analysis because I am still evaluating how defender friendly and attacking friendly civ V really is, so i can't say with honesty how both games compare regarding this.
Mîtiu Ioan;9700355 said:I partially agree - Civ 4 was quit disappointing and "flat" after riflemans & cannons was available.
IMHO Early/Medieval wars was quite funny, interesting and well-balanced ...
What I meant was : civ IV AI was no goot at warfare, I edited my previous post sorry.
ohioastronomy
King
- Joined
- Dec 14, 2005
- Messages
- 714
You can't make an unchallenging current game (Civ V) better by disparaging a different game. The 1 unit per hex decision was a very bad one and it will be dumped as a foolish mistake in the future. They could have chosen a more reasonable stacking limit which wouldn't have made pathing such a nightmare and would have permitted decent combat AI. One unit per hex favors "unit of doom" by the way, hardly better than "stack of doom", and people have just started on the obvious cheesy exploits this bad new idea will permit.
When I fired up Civ 4 I got a challenge and when I fire up Civ 5 I don't. If the AI did well by brute force it still made for a much better game than the current mess.
Lets's get some basics done.
Would the CIV IV AI leave a defensive unit like an archer in the city to defend. Yes. Does CIV V? No, it walks them into the open and gets them killed. This is the simplest city defence tactic and the AI doesn't know it.
Would the CIV IV AI walk units randomly into your territory. No, it used stacks of doom with a good unit composition or put troublesome forces into defensive terrain. Does CIV V? Yes, single units walk into your territory with no hope of killing anything ever.
Would the CIV IV AI walk units around with a poor unit mix? No, it would always stack units so they had multiple defences. Does CIV V? It's not such an issue but I've never seen the AI use its unit mix to any advantage.
Would the CIV IV AI preserve its units? Generally yes, a stray unit would fix itself in a hilly forest for years and make you pay to remove it. Does CIV V? No, and it's terrible mistake as units are more precious.
Which is pretty much what i said in my post without drawing out specifics.. lol why would you only quote the first line?
They don't have to because they can buy rush units now... Instead of having just ONE unit, they have to MOVE THEM OUT, to get a 2nd one... You cannot stack anymore, so keeping a unit inside would hinder you to get more forces... I've lost many a units (bout the only way I lose them) to buying cannons / archers in towns I'm attacking with a high def value...
I agree the AI should walk their archers away from the enemy when moving them out, but you missed the point altogether with the new mechanics...
No because they had barbarians to do that for them... I must say the old barbs were way more fun tho... Still, the SoD was what covered the old AI... It don't matter how many units they make, they all go into one stack... They don't have to worry about terrain, they just walked as they pleased if you didn't have collateral units to take care of their stack... This isn't improved AI, it was just out producing you and forced you to play one way... It's about as brain dead as V...
I say they're about even here... I see a heavy mix of spears in some, but that's maybe cause they lack iron or the other civ has a lot of horses... Civ IV does this too, they load up on spears if they know you have horses aplenty...
I seen AI heal baiting the cities to attack them all day... So yes they do...
CornPlanter
Emperor
I am not even sure if you read what I post, because I stated several times I do like Civ 5 combat system more.
So a single unit that is "of doom" is worst than a stack of units "of doom?"
So a single unit on one tile is worst than 10x that same unit on the same tile?
I'm having a hard time understanding that mathematically...
If they take away 1UPT after Civ V, it would be a big mistake... They need to fix what it is now, just because the AI is too stupid to setup a wall for you to walk into now does not mean it would not learn to in the future...
Just launch the game up in MP and play a half smart human player... Then the "tactical" battles will make more sense...
Yes the AI is horrible right now, that is not the fault of game mechanics, it's just the programmer lacking in creativity...
dannythefool
King
- Joined
- Jul 15, 2009
- Messages
- 657
It's even more powerful in Civ V because the archer won't even have to defend itself. All attacks on the city tile are defended against by the city. The AI should really use this. Free attack for the city tile. (Yes, in Civ IV you can have multiple units in there instead, my point is the difference between no unit and an archer is much more significant in Civ V.)
On the upside, I've seen it use the same tactic with ships in cities. So it could well be it's only moving units out of cities so it can rush-buy (even if it doesn't actually buy anything).
To be fair, it only does that when it thinks it has no other option. It's still stupid. But if the AI has enough units, it'll usually send a large front of units. That it often puts the weakest (ranged) units first is another issue though. There's also a problem when the AI has too many units, and doesn't know how to move them anymore, but I've only ever seen that happen on archipelago maps (because expanding to other islands seems to be very unattractive to the AI) and on very late game screenshots.
I think the AI could be greatly improved just by adding some simple rules for things it shouldn't do, e.g. if there's only going to be one unit in the army, call off the attack.
At least I don't see AI melee units protect ranged units. Sometimes it happens, but I think this is accidental because, most of the time, the AI just tries to attack with a randomly laid out blob. E.g. if it has swordsmen and cannons, the cannons are first to go in about as often as the swordsmen, at least from my experience.
This could be a bug though, even something simple like path finding could break this, so let's see what happens.
I've seen it do this, but it's no longer viable to just park a unit in a hilly forest as movement speed has been increased. The AI should probably pull them back into their own territory where it heals faster if it's outside the AI's borders.
It also doesn't seem to have any interest in protecting its workers. Although that has become harder, since it can't just move all of them into a city anymore, so maybe it just doesn't know how to deal with this once it has a civilian (e.g. a general) in the nearest city.
The AI does do this... Whenever you are fighting against a civ rich in gold, they'll always buy a range unit for their city... That unit will stay in the city firing at all nearby enemy until you pull away out of range...
Then and ONLY then does it walk that unit out to wander off... It isn't smart how they do it, but I can see that by moving out it'll provide another slot for them to buy another unit...
So I see it as a repairable mistake, but bottom line is they do defend with units, and they always buy the best unit for defense as well... Always ranged and never melee...
Naw on higher lvls the AI still gets huge production bonuses. Its just changed over to Blob of Death instead of stack.
Spoiler :
Clearly this sort of set up will allow the sort of advanced combat tactics that everyone on this forum wanted so much. No room room to maneuver, with literally every tile filled with a unit, but I'm sure you Civ V tactical geniuses will find a way to defeat it with 4 warriors.
JudgeDeath
Warlord
- Joined
- Nov 14, 2005
- Messages
- 191
So can we all agree then that the combat system in Civ V is superior, but that the AI needs to be a lot better?
However vranasm back on page 1 made a good point (and one I made in an earlier thread) that has been totally ignored. The AI doesn't take enough time to think. A good chess program, like Rybka, needs time to come up with a good move, maybe something between 10 and 120 seconds depending on the complexity of the situation. But even then the opening moves are all pre-programmed in. If it had to make insta-moves from the start any competent human would beat it.
Civ V is several degrees more complex than chess. Still some lessons could be learnt:
1) Give the AI a bit longer to make moves - every second helps. At least at higher difficulty levels.
2) Pre-program some base responses, like what to build, based on what's available and what the enemy has.
3) Improve the algorithms for the rest, e.g. where to place units to best advantage, order of attack.
4) Improve (create?) the evaluation, so that it predicts the outcome if defending or attacking and acts accordingly.
However vranasm back on page 1 made a good point (and one I made in an earlier thread) that has been totally ignored. The AI doesn't take enough time to think. A good chess program, like Rybka, needs time to come up with a good move, maybe something between 10 and 120 seconds depending on the complexity of the situation. But even then the opening moves are all pre-programmed in. If it had to make insta-moves from the start any competent human would beat it.
Civ V is several degrees more complex than chess. Still some lessons could be learnt:
1) Give the AI a bit longer to make moves - every second helps. At least at higher difficulty levels.
2) Pre-program some base responses, like what to build, based on what's available and what the enemy has.
3) Improve the algorithms for the rest, e.g. where to place units to best advantage, order of attack.
4) Improve (create?) the evaluation, so that it predicts the outcome if defending or attacking and acts accordingly.
Ancient Bear
Chieftain
So combat still sucks in Civ? That's been the case from the beginning through 4 at least.
CornPlanter
Emperor
I most certainly agree that the basic idea of Civ5 combat is better than Civ4 combat. Details might require some adjustments, but generally Civ5 > Civ4. I like this change very much.
Now what I disagree with is that Civ4 combat is broken, or that defender always loses, or that production is everything, or that in your particular example defender stands no chance...
And yes the sad part is, it seems this kind of combat is way too complicated for the poor AI now
dannythefool
King
- Joined
- Jul 15, 2009
- Messages
- 657
Ok, maybe if they have enough gold. But I've certainly taken lots of cities from spearmen. Or undefended cities with two cannons right next to it. Maybe they purchase ranged units, but they don't try to move one back into the city?
Another thing is that the civs that have ranged UUs use them a lot more, this seems to help with defending cities.
r_rolo1
King of myself
No, we don't all agree on that
Atleast i don't sign under that I can sign under the combat system in civ V having the potential for being better than civ IV one, but I don't have the degree of familarity with civ V one to make a acurate and fair comparison between both.What i can say is that 1upt and unlimited stacking both have serious issues that can't be solved with ease and that there are some readily visible quirks in civ V combat system ( note, not civ V AI messed order of battle ) that are signs for using atleast a little caution.
