Not that I like the new diplomacy AI much ("I don't WANT to kick your tail, Ghandi, but you're leaving me no choice"), but people seem to have a huge blind spot for IV's shortcomings. It DID have issues, even five years after release.
Sure did Civ4 having flaws all over the place.
Yet, it had enough to offer to make you forgive these flaws.
That is exactly, what I am missing in Civ0.V. You stumble from one game element to the next and :facepalm:
4-lvl-AI? Inexistent
lowest-(combat)-lvl-AI? Inexistent
Interesting diplomacy? Inexistent
And the list could go on and on and on...
The way I see it, the AI is (at least in theory) programmed to be pissed off by the same things that would piss a player off. You know what pisses off me off as a player?
Getting beat to wonders and cities sites.
I call it smart AI. If you're becoming too strong, wouldn't a group of human opponents do the same thing to you?
Both above quotes together hit the nail on its head.
The AI shall reflect human behaviour.
That's good and fine, but it just reflects the behaviour of human *players*, not the behaviour of human heads of state.
In a game, a human may act like crazy because after all it is just a game. DoW? So what, it's a game. Ending a preferable treaty? So what, it's just a game....
In the real world, most of the leaders would have behaved completely different from how the AI behaves.
Therefore, for a game in which you shall have the feeling of creating an empire, the AI should behave like leading an empire, too. Everything else is just a killer for the immersion.
Generally, declarations of war are predictable in Civ V. Would it make the game better if we stuck a red pin to every Civ that was going to declare war on you? That's not diplomacy. That's just adding numbers.
Where is the problem with having numbers if everything is so predictable?
Your statement just doesn't make any sense at all.
Either we face predictability, then let's have the numbers.
Or we are confronted with really surprising elements, then hide them. But there aren't surprising elements, if not *how* stupid the AI reacts.
The surprise is in the degree of stupidity, not that it is stupid.