why is there no real difficulty setting? any difficulty mods out there?

[tommytoxen]

so i bought civ 5 last week and although i've had fun and do enjoy it, (played through 3 games on epic settings up to now).. i'm disappointed there's no difficulty setting so it's quickly becoming boring and not really worth the money for just a week's gameplay :/

i've tried everything from prince to immortal and the ai seems equally dumb on every setting, the only noticeable difference is how much the ai cheats. i've only ever played civ once before, i think it was civ 3 years ago i played for a while before uninstalling because i noticed the ai had some sort of wallhack, it kept following me about the map and seemed to know which part of my empire was the least defended?? i don't play with cheaters, it's the main reason i never play online games, so i don't have to put up with aimbotters and wallhackers so i don't expect to face them in single player too o.O

anyway thankfully i've not noticed any of that in civ 5 i even tested it by leaving a city completely undefended and no ai player magically spawned out of nowhere with its wallhack/esp cheats to take it so i'm impressed with that.

but i've noticed it has a no upkeep hack and also a faster research hack and i'm not sure but when i try to grow my empire too quickly i suffer unhappiness and my research/gold slows down, yet the ai seems unaffected so i'm assuming it has a no unhappiness hack too.

but cheating does not = difficult, i won all 3 games in the end. the game's enjoyable still but what i want is a challenging ai but even on immortal the ai still embarks into the sea one by one without an escort just to get picked off by my battleships, or attacks my city with 3 mobile sams at a time?!?!?

seriously why's there no real difficulty setting where i can make the actual ai 'difficult'? more smartey less cheatey.

so yeah, does anyone know how i can increase the game's actual difficulty without simply throwing no upkeep/no unhappiness/infinte gold hacks at the ai??

 

[IronfighterXXX]

seriously why's there no real difficulty setting where i can make the actual ai 'difficult'? more smartey less cheatey.

I really wouldn't call it cheating as you know from start that AIs will get bonuses to improve their gameplay (just read the description below difficulties): http://www.civfanatics.com/civ5/difficulties

so yeah, does anyone know how i can increase the game's actual difficulty without simply throwing no upkeep/no unhappiness/infinte gold hacks at the ai??

Become world famous programmer and be first to teach AIs how to play as human (and win computer Noble prize )

Seriously you can try some mods like this: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=550671
but don't expect miracles.

 

[Sclb]

Try deity first before asking for actual AI mod, Acken has a new mod for it.

 

[tommytoxen]

deity's just the same, ai plays exactly the same, it isn't any more difficult, it just gives the ai extra hacks.

if i used an infinite gold hack or a no unit cost hack in any online multiplayer game like most sucky players do i'd get vac banned for it yet it's ok for the ai to use hacks just because the developers are too lazy to add difficulty settings for the ai??

i wanna play civ with the ai on a difficulty level other than
"incompetent"
"incompetent with free units hack"
"incompetent with wallhack and instant construct hack"
"incompetent with wallhack and instant construct hack and no unhappiness and instant research and infinite gold hack"

you get the picture.

ie: on settler setting the ai is dumb (it'll act the same way it does in civ 5 now on any setting - ie will send one single unit across the ocean to you completely unescorted just to get blown up by your ship before it even makes it anywhere near you). but then on immortal setting the ai will use escorts when transporting troops across the sea, they'll setup a line of defensive units in front of their siege units which they will use to bombard you before flanking from the sides with attack units.

THAT's what an increase of difficulty means.

^ no mod/patch to add a real difficulty setting like above?

 

[consentient]

Try Acken's mod

 

[Gedemon]

^ no mod/patch to add a real difficulty setting like above?

In fact the actual game does that for a few things, like building bigger army before sending them against the player depending on the difficulty setting or attacking (or not) earlier. But yes, mainly it's based on bonuses.

For mods trying to teach the AI how to play better, look at Artificial Unitelligence or the Community Patch Project, but none use difficulty setting to activate AI improvement AFAIK.


edit:
Moderator Action: and moved to the mods section

 

[tommytoxen]

thanks i grabbed the community patch project and edited some of the files myself. i don't mind giving the ai a few bonuses, the ai sucks so much it needs them, but having a blatantly cheating ai just to mask developers laziness/incompetence is ridiculous. i've noticed this is a recent trend for games and i hope it ends soon, can we go back to having real ai?

an ai was invented in the 80s that could beat humans at chess. in the early 90s derek smart coded a self learning neural net ai, the longer it played a game the more it learned how to play the game, the more it learned the better it actually got at playing the game. that was over 20 years ago. it's already been done. if firaxis/2k developers are too lazy to code one themselves surely they can just buy one that was already made instead of copy/pasting some college kid who's barely learning coding's free github ai script into the game.

2015 now and developers have seemed to have gone back to the 1970s spectrum zx days where no ai is coded in whatsoever, but the game is just given scumbag cheats and hacks against you instead. it's pure laziness, nothing more nothing less. either that or programmers these days are a lot dumber than the programmers we had 20 years ago, which wouldn't surprise me.

anyway the community patch seems to have fixed a lot of the problems, the ai seems to be playing a tad smarter. it's still not great but it's a lot better than it was, appreciate the suggestion thanks