Will they ever fix the Overflow problem?

[Paszczak]

The AI doesn't need to know any "tricks". Those should be left for the player to discover and use so the game can reward smart play (and punish bad play). The AI just needs to have a solid game plan that they will pursue from turn 1, instead of spending all their resources on goofing around and doing useless things, which only purpose is to annoy the player.

• don't build 20 Pikeman on a water map, build a fleet instead
• don't backstab-denounce the player for warmongering, wait until the DoF has expired and sneak-attack
• don't settle cities on 1-tile islands without resources
• don't DoW and bum-rush player's capital on a hill behind river, try attacking his secondary cities first
• ...the list goes on forever...

Fix those and you can start worrying about AI not using Great Scientists correctly

 

[Cromagnus]

Moment-to-moment decision-making is hard to code for in AI. A long-term plan of "beeline Education and fill specialist slots" would (with very little coding) make Deity challenging enough by itself that they could relax some of the bonuses that AI get. I agree that it would be ideal if they made smarter decisions across the board, but this one change would make every victory condition harder to achieve. And this isn't a trick, this is just acknowledging that civ is all about science and making the AI take advantage of it. (Not all of them... shaka should play like Shaka... but if you don't have a medieval or prior UU that you intend to use for global domination, Education should be the focus of the AI... IMHO)

 

[adcarrymaokai]

Actually, are there any platforms where devs interact with players? I play some other games, and one of them has game designers chatting on the official forums all the time. I personally want to see Honor/Piety buffs, as well.

 

[joncnunn]

Scanning thread: Unless there's a big expansion, I can't see them making such a big change.

Just don't use the exploit as the AI doesn't know how to use it.

Saw an idea to limit it to current tech: That would be a really bad idea for the AI who you know is likely to be researching a cheap tech whenever they spawn GS.

If I were revising Great Scientists (& Great Writers) what I'd do is lock their strength upon them being spawned. (Similar to Great Musicians)

Tweaks to policy trees: Easily modable, see the mod forums.

 

[Ieldra]

I've been affected by the overflow problem occasionally without knowing what it was, but I think the general AI is much more of a problem. When I'm playing a tech-oriented civilization and take cities from another which was ahead in tech only to find they didn't even build universities in their cities, when cities shrink by two thirds of their size after taking them because the AI had ignored food limits, those are things I find hugely annoying. I get that the AI needs bonuses in order to be a challenge to the human player, but they could at least be a little less blatant about it.