Whatever they do I hope the AI is substantially upgraded

[Trav'ling Canuck]

As for the difficulty levels ramping up, I think they progress quite similar to the older Civ games.

Not for me. I capped out at Emperor level in earlier versions of Civ. Civ 5 was a lot easier and I could win at Immortal consistently, occasionally on Deity. Civ 6's Deity is like easy mode on steroids (tranquilizers?). I stopped chopping, stopped taking AI cities, ignored all my neighbours so they'd be constantly mad at me, and none of it matters, you can still cruise to victory 50 to 100 turns before the AI has a hope to win because the AI is so excruciatingly slow to win any victory condition and so unwilling/unable to disrupt the player's own progress towards victory.

 

[Gorbles]

Heh heh. My Diablo III reference is very dated. Shows you how much I play and follow video games...

You’re very welcome to your views, and my post was well in the territory of pure opinion and unsubstantiated conjecture.

I just honestly think the game would get more traction if it was genuinely harder. I don’t think that needs to make in inaccessible - to me, accessibility is more about how easy the game mechanics are to pick up. But to the extend difficulty is linked to accessibility (agree it is to some extent), that could be better mediated through an assist mode and or beginner Civs.

I honestly think people in the games market are looking for harder games. I don’t think difficulty would alienate- quite the opposite. Yes, the game would need to provide players with a leg up. But people want depth. Accessibility- and depth.

But hey. Just my opinion. Based on not a lot, frankly.

An aside: “assist” modes. What is the point of difficulty levels below Prince? These basically are Civ’s assist mode - but does anyone ever need these? Prince seems so easy as it is. What’s the need for even lower difficulties?

If that were the case, all that would help you is more difficulty levels. And / or a better way of setting the defaults for Play Now (I can't remember how well the game actually remembers it off of the top of my head - work is all-consuming at the moment ).

I think more options, like you previously said, would help a lot. More visibility on setting those options too. I have ideas on how I'd rework a bunch of things in the frontend and pre-game UI - I don't know how much is currently possible with mods, but it's always something that's interested me (having a history modding games anyhow), but the time is the thing that always stops me, hah. More options would let the AI cope better with certain "all or nothing" switches (like the longstanding Raging Barbarians switch).

 

[Council 13]

To be honest, I don't think I have seen the AI mount 1 single reasonably threatening attack in any of my games - I normally play on Emperor difficulty. Most of the time, they barely even have any troops - and even if they do, their attacks are totally disorganized and uncoordinated. Navy combat is even worse, and air is non existent. Its pretty pathetic and I really can't believe its this bad for this long. I hope there is something in this expansion to address this.

 

[Siptah]

To be honest, I don't think I have seen the AI mount 1 single reasonably threatening attack in any of my games - I normally play on Emperor difficulty. Most of the time, they barely even have any troops - and even if they do, their attacks are totally disorganized and uncoordinated. Navy combat is even worse, and air is non existent. Its pretty pathetic and I really can't believe its this bad for this long. I hope there is something in this expansion to address this.

I don‘t even think the combat AI is the worst problem to be honest. Yes, it is horrible, no doubt. But that the deity AI with its massive bonuses towards production and science can (more or less) easily be beaten peacefully in the science race is almost unbelievable.

 

[_Calyx]

The ideal game should accomodate different types of players - calling for Prince to be properly hard defeats the purpose of having varied difficulty levels. As a sensible, middle aged guy, the games that frustrate me most are the ones difficult even at lower difficulty settings (looking at you, God of War). I play Civ on King and that's the optimal difficulty for me - not completely trivial but not frustrating either. Why would you want to rob me of my fun?

While I agree with all of your other points, I do not share the quoted sentiment. Why diminish my gaming experience and have me now win only on Prince, when before I used to win on King? Who benefits from this? I will feel like I achieve less - is that the desired outcome?

We desperately need a better AI, but this has absolutely nothing to do with how the different difficulty levels relate to one another. We can have a smarter AI without artificial bonuses provide the same level of challange on King difficulty as a dumb AI with artificial bonuses gets these days. Why should this lead to King being demoted to Prince? One does not follow from the other.

As for the difficulty levels ramping up, I think they progress quite similar to the older Civ games. I know for sure that I played Civ V on King, too, and Civ IV... Hmm... Was it Prince or King? I can't recall. I think I played the older Civ games on levels up to Deity, but I was younger then and I actually enjoyed the challange. These days I just want to chill out while playing (but still with a sense of accomplishment ).

I think what people are trying to say is that when the AI receives no bonuses over the human player, it should still be smart enough to play well - it doesn't matter what you call that difficulty, but right now it is prince and the AI obviously cannot play well.

I find higher difficulties annoying to play because of they way to AI bonuses work - instead of a tough game against competent opponents, I spend the majority of the game at Immortal attempting to catch up in tech/culture and once I do its quite easy to win. Meanwhile if I play on King or even Emperor, I am eras ahead of the AI for most of the game.

If the AI could offer a decent challenge when on even footing, keeping up with the player in technology and competently managing warfare, then this intelligence of the AI could be tuned at each difficulty instead of the bonuses. I think this would be a much more natural way to set the difficulty.

 

[Giskler]

Yay, this topic again

 

[Stringer1313]

I think for the first time, the AI complaints are getting to me. For the very first time, an AI has finally declared war on me after the Classical era (in renaissance), and all it did was throw warriors and chariots at me. Meanwhile, my one frigate picked off nearly all of the attackers one by one (are frigates too strong?) easily.

 

[bbbt]

Spoiler: The AI won't be massively improved. Most of the time of the AI developer will have gone to make it simply recognize new mechanics (what is a dam, where do I place it? What is the concept of 'global project') and things like the new set of secondary agendas. Not a lot of time in fine tuning existing mechanics. Maybe a few weak areas (science/cultural victory, AI personality distinctions, airforce usage) mildly improved.

 

[Iberian]

The only way the AI will improve is if the AI programmer gets replaced with AI. If they code in a neural network that teaches itself using the OpenAI from Google then we will all start crying about how the AI is too hard and it beats us even on settler.

 

[Naktis]

Keeeeep hoping , and maybe they deliver it for Civ.......Nine!

 

[Uberfrog]

Yay, this topic again

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose...

Civ AI has always been poor. Look in the Civ IV forum, and you will see numerous threads lambasting the AI of that most hallowed of games as well. It is not trivial to make a challenging AI for a symmetric, random map, turn-based strategy game. It's incredibly easy, however, to complain about it online

 

[Elhoim]

I definitely want the AI to be better at combat (be able to use all units more or less effectively), and a bit less crappy at building stuff, specially regarding workers (especially repairing!).

Regarding difficulty levels, Prince should always be the "no-bonus" point. With a better AI it will be a bit harder, of course, but it should stay as the non-bonus point. Current difficulty implementation is bad, though, with flat modifiers from the get go. All difficulty levels should be a bit more even at game start, and increase way more during the game.

I dislike combat bonuses in any difficulty.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

The AI at Prince should be really hard.

No! "Really hard" should be reserved for Deity level. And if you say that Deity is not hard enough then the answer is to work on making Deity harder so that expert players get more of a challenge. But leave Prince as it is now for the more "casual" player. Prince is supposed to be an intermediate level. That's the whole point of the difficulty levels: to give different players different challenges.

I do think there are areas of the AI that should be improved. I just don't think the game on Prince should be "really hard".

On aspect of the game that definitely needs to be improved is the AI not upgrading units or falling so far behind in science that their units are woefully obsolete. I play on Prince but I can easily get 2 eras ahead of the AI, causing me to get mechanized infantry when the AI is still using pike shot and musketman units. It makes war completely trivial in the modern era. I don't care if the AI is a little sub par tactically but at least give it era appropriate units so my modern era units are not fighting medieval units!!!

A few possible solutions:
- Make latter techs much more expensive to prevent runaway science civs and/or introduce a mechanic where the player has to choose between science and other things. Maybe have the player have to assign pop to districts. This means you would have to choose which yield to focus on. If you assign pop to your campus, it means taking pop away from say your industrial zone, more science but less production in that city. This way, the player would have to make sacrifices. They could not just have more of everything like it is now.
- Give civs that are behind in tech a huge discount to help them catch up. Maybe techs that are already discovered by 2 or more other civs get a 50% discount or something?
- Allow civs to buy units from other civs even if they lack the tech requirement to build that unit themselves. This way a lesser civ could still buy a few advanced units.
- Let the AI cheat by auto upgrading units for free.
- Introduce more units that don't require strategic resources so that the AI and the player can still field a competitive army even without a resource. For example, you could have a "bronze age" swordsman unit that does not require iron. It would not be quite as good as the regular swordsman but it would at least allow civs without iron to have a basic swordsman unit. Alternatively, you could change how strategic resources work where no unit requires them to build but instead units just get a buff if you have the resource. So all civs can built the swordsman but civs with iron get say +20% combat strength to their swordsman.

I think this could help a lot.

The fundamental problem though is that civ6 is designed for the human player, not for the AI. The game mechanics are designed for the player to learn and hopefully enjoy but they are very complicated for the AI. If you truly want a tough AI, you only have 2 options: change the game mechanics to make it easier for the AI or use machine learning and AI to create your in-game AI. Doing machine learning is not cost effective for a company like Firaxis. So the only option left is to change the game mechanics to be more AI friendly.

 

[Elhoim]

No! "Really hard" should be reserved for Deity level. And if you say that Deity is not hard enough then the answer is to work on making Deity harder so that expert players get more of a challenge. But leave Prince as it is now for the more "casual" player. Prince is supposed to be an intermediate level. That's the whole point of the difficulty levels: to give different players different challenges.

I do think there are areas of the AI that should be improved. I just don't think the game on Prince should be "really hard".

On aspect of the game that definitely needs to be improved is the AI not upgrading units or falling so far behind in science that their units are woefully obsolete. I play on Prince but I can easily get 2 eras ahead of the AI, causing me to get mechanized infantry when the AI is still using pike shot and musketman units. It makes war completely trivial in the modern era. I don't care if the AI is a little sub par tactically but at least give it era appropriate units so my modern era units are not fighting medieval units!!!

A few possible solutions:
- Make latter techs much more expensive to prevent runaway science civs and/or introduce a mechanic where the player has to choose between science and other things. Maybe have the player have to assign pop to districts. This means you would have to choose which yield to focus on. If you assign pop to your campus, it means taking pop away from say your industrial zone, more science but less production in that city. This way, the player would have to make sacrifices. They could not just have more of everything like it is now.
- Give civs that are behind in tech a huge discount to help them catch up. Maybe techs that are already discovered by 2 or more other civs get a 50% discount or something?
- Allow civs to buy units from other civs even if they lack the tech requirement to build that unit themselves. This way a lesser civ could still buy a few advanced units.
- Let the AI cheat by auto upgrading units for free.
- Introduce more units that don't require strategic resources so that the AI and the player can still field a competitive army even without a resource. For example, you could have a "bronze age" swordsman unit that does not require iron. It would not be quite as good as the regular swordsman but it would at least allow civs without iron to have a basic swordsman unit. Alternatively, you could change how strategic resources work where no unit requires them to build but instead units just get a buff if you have the resource. So all civs can built the swordsman but civs with iron get say +20% combat strength to their swordsman.

I think this could help a lot.

The fundamental problem though is that civ6 is designed for the human player, not for the AI. The game mechanics are designed for the player to learn and hopefully enjoy but they are very complicated for the AI. If you truly want a tough AI, you only have 2 options: change the game mechanics to make it easier for the AI or use machine learning and AI to create your in-game AI. Doing machine learning is not cost effective for a company like Firaxis. So the only option left is to change the game mechanics to be more AI friendly.

Yeah, I agree with several points. BTW, you can assign population to districts.

I modded my game so that techs outside the current era are way more expensive, and from the previous eras way more cheaper. Hopefully the AI can now more easily get resources from trade to upgrade units (it seemed so in the latest livestream).

As you said, one of the weakest points of the game is the lack of unit upgrades from the AI, making the combat, and hence everything else, much more easy.

 

[steveg700]

No! "Really hard" should be reserved for Deity level. And if you say that Deity is not hard enough then the answer is to work on making Deity harder so that expert players get more of a challenge. But leave Prince as it is now for the more "casual" player. Prince is supposed to be an intermediate level. That's the whole point of the difficulty levels: to give different players different challenges.

I do think there are areas of the AI that should be improved. I just don't think the game on Prince should be "really hard".

Well, let's put it this way: at a difficulty level where no civ has any advantages over another, the player shouldn't be able to nonchalantly walk the bases to victory. It shouldn't be necessary for the AI to get handed yield multiples, extra cities, or outright cheats just to deal with the fact that the AI doesn't know how to use the manifold toys made available for the player.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

Yeah, I agree with several points. BTW, you can assign population to districts.

Yeah but somehow it does not seem very meaningful in my games. It definitely does not force me to choose between science or production. Maybe it is my bad but I rarely even assign pop to districts. I use the auto focus option so the AI is probably doing it for me.

I modded my game so that techs outside the current era are way more expensive, and from the previous eras way more cheaper. Hopefully the AI can now more easily get resources from trade to upgrade units (it seemed so in the latest livestream).

Very cool!

As you said, one of the weakest points of the game is the lack of unit upgrades from the AI, making the combat, and hence everything else, much more easy.

Thanks for replying to my long post.

 

[King of Prussia]

I doubt we are getting any major AI improvements. We will get a few tweaks, maybe some minor improvements here and there, but nothing major in how well the AI plays. I think the biggest improvement we heard so far is a new field for how likely the AI is to attack city states.


I'm just hoping the AI can finally use its air force remotely effectively. It is very sad that all this time after release, and it still can't do it. I am not saying perfectly or as good as a human. Just using it would be a major step up.

This and the various bugs that you see on EVERY play through consistently, get very old. I just dont get it. You can see in the streams they do their research, and take pride in what they do yet they don't seem to care about some of the more glaring issues that make the whole game look bad. Surely when they play the game as much as they do, they would see these and want to fix them(bugs at least) right away so they dont have to deal with them anymore. The notifications still bug out on the right side of the screen to this day.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

I think to get the AI to be "good" it would require them to pare down the rules to the point I wouldn't really be interested in playing any more.

so unwilling/unable to disrupt the player's own progress towards victory.

I think part of that is continued reaction to the fans' reaction to original Civ 5 AI--the Game players vs. Role Players pretty much. People were angry that someone on your team the whole game would suddenly turn against you just because you were "winning." Many people hated that.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

I think to get the AI to be "good" it would require them to pare down the rules to the point I wouldn't really be interested in playing any more.

I think there is a middle ground. I don't think the game needs to become checkers just so that the AI can become good. But as I mentioned in my previous long post, the game could change a few rules just to fix the most glaring problems.

 

[steveg700]

I think part of that is continued reaction to the fans' reaction to original Civ 5 AI--the Game players vs. Role Players pretty much. People were angry that someone on your team the whole game would suddenly turn against you just because you were "winning." Many people hated that.

Well, that's really more of a problem with the way the behavior was exhibited towards the player. The game should go to pains to make it clear that all civ's are self-interested, and even amicable relationships are all ultimately self-serving. Instead, the player is presented with the notion of genuine friendship, as if they should be expected to concede their victory politely. Looking at the agendas for civ's in Civ VI, the words "like" and "dislike" are used way too much. Instead, "respect", "values", or "benefits from" would be more suitable.