Civilization V- Might actually be good now. Stay tuned.

[Paelos]

Civ 5 is light years ahead of the other games in terms of military decision-making. The spacing forces you to use tactics to attack other units, they properly enforce correct use of land formations for advantages, and destroying or losing units is a huge deal. It's more chess-like than any previous of the iterations.

I don't think it's too clean, I just think for all the strategy you can use, the AI never really makes you use it or uses it themselves.

[proudft]

The AI has a tough job to do with combat strategy.  The more simple and elegant the system gets, the more obvious the AI mistakes are.   I'm sure it will get better with time/patches, but I don't think it will ever be "great".  Imagine having to write an AI for chess from scratch in a couple of months, for example.  This is a lot closer to that than 'build giant pile of discounted units, send all at enemy city' which could get you a long way in previous Civs.

[Murgos]

I think a proper AI with World War II mod would definitely make this game quite enjoyable.

I think you could do a pretty good Eastern Front style mod with this engine.  Cut out city management and resources entirely and just line up Russia vs. Germany with each unit representing a division.  Use promotion attributes to represent the different quality levels of the various units.

[Modern Angel]

Oh, you'll hear no complaints about the death of stacks. I really like it.

[Khaldun]

Totally liking the combat, but also the way that non-combat paths become much more sensible and comprehensible here--trying to win culture victories in Civ IV was a sort of perverse endeavor. Just going on a rampage and conquering your way across the map really doesn't work easily and that's as it should be.

Agree though that the AI doesn't understand the first thing about how to make it tough on the human opponent. If you place a city right and get units around it, you could make it virtually impossible to capture, which is really neat. Chokepoints in Civ V are for real, except that the AI doesn't know how to make them as impregnable as they could be.

[Reg]

I'll confess I'm on the side of the people that played a few games and lost interest. It just feels bland to me. Disappointing wonders, disappointing lack of wonder movies, meaningless diplomacy. The lack of a proper game ending set of graphs and stuff. The game felt like it was rushed out the door and there's just no excuse for that when they knew they had a guaranteed best seller.

And I've got a bad feeling that a shitload of stuff has been held back so that we can be nickel and dimed to death with DLC.

[Khaldun]

On diplomacy, yeah, I've felt a bit annoyed that I can't really 'play' there, e.g., in Civ IV, there was the question of whether you'd be able to do the maximum arbitrage on trading particular technologies, or use technology trading to try and pump up another power, etc. But you can still do a bit of the same thing by subversively feeding units to an allied city-state. Still diplomacy often seems very cut and dried in Civ V, at least so far.

[Big Gulp]

There are certain things I like about the diplomacy now...  Like how they'll confront you about massing troops, or how they react to you after you've just destroyed another civ.  Shit like that I dig.  I just wish in streamlining they wouldn't have removed so much depth.

Agree completely about the AI.  We've made huge strides in graphics, but AI is still stuck in the mid 80's for video games.  Its a fucking disgrace.

[Malakili]

There are certain things I like about the diplomacy now...  Like how they'll confront you about massing troops, or how they react to you after you've just destroyed another civ.  Shit like that I dig.  I just wish in streamlining they wouldn't have removed so much depth.

Agree completely about the AI.  We've made huge strides in graphics, but AI is still stuck in the mid 80's for video games.  Its a fucking disgrace.

How feasible is good AI?  I mean, I can't think of a single game ever that has done it, and maybe thats your point, but surely this isn't just a matter of processing power to pump polygons.  AI is just an entire different beast.

[WayAbvPar]

I am glad to see I am not the only one growing disgruntled with the game. I have only managed to completely finish one game; there is so much drudgery and doing nothing but waiting for techs in a lot of the eras, especially since it is so easy to run roughshod over opponents in the earlier eras with just a bit of tactics and planning. I really miss the Retire option- it was nice to end a game when I got bored but still get a feel for how it was going.

There is definitely a good framework here for a great game, but it needs some love for sure.

[Tarami]

The way I see it, an AI is supposed to be competitive with a human player while getting the broad strokes right. If that means it has to cheat, go ahead and have it cheat. A legal but incompetent AI is just useless to everyone, which appears to be the case with Civ 5.

[Ingmar]

I suspect most of the programmers out there who could really nail a complex AI for a game like Civ V are not actually working in the gaming industry, and I also kind of suspect the time it would take to really craft one right is longer than the development cycle of most games.

[shiznitz]

Are the environmental mechanics gone? I hope so.  What about the happiness mechanic? I haven't bought this but I will.  I like the no stacking.

[rk47]

They removed individual city mechanics and instead implemented overall empire happiness whereby total happy minus unhappy people in all your cities = happy / unhappiness depending on positive or negative value. So building theaters in any city would add a positive value to it and taking over a foreign city will create more unhappiness etc.

[El Gallo]

How feasible is good AI?  I mean, I can't think of a single game ever that has done it, and maybe thats your point, but surely this isn't just a matter of processing power to pump polygons.  AI is just an entire different beast.

Civ 4 has pretty damned good AI.  Bit it's a lot easier to make a good UI in an empire builder (Civ 1-4 + AC) than a war simulator (Civ 5).  

That's a big part of my unhappiness with the game.  All the tactical focus is on combat, which is widely divergent from its predecessors.  In previous Civ games, combat took up maybe 5% of your focus. Military strength was an almost-inevitable outgrowth of your economy.  The rest of your focus was on the big picture, and the AI (and the rules of course) made it pretty challenging to keep up.

On a conceptual level, it changes the game from being based on an economic view of history (with a healthy dose of geographic-determinism, though that declined from Civ 1- Civ 4) to an old-fashioned EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT HISTORY CAN BE LEARNED FROM WATCHING "THE 300" AND MEMORIZING THE DATES OF SOME RAD BATTLES RARRRRRRR!!!! view.  I'm sure you can detect my preference on this front despite my carefully neutral prose.

[Paelos]

Are the environmental mechanics gone? I hope so.  What about the happiness mechanic? I haven't bought this but I will.  I like the no stacking.

No, environment is still important. Actually it's very important for how you conduct your battles. Happiness is spread across the totality of your empire, so you can't have pissy cities. You instead get a pissy empire.

[Ingmar]

I think he meant the pollution/ocean levels rising stuff.

[Samwise]

I suspect most of the programmers out there who could really nail a complex AI for a game like Civ V are not actually working in the gaming industry, and I also kind of suspect the time it would take to really craft one right is longer than the development cycle of most games.

If the game's mechanics aren't balanced and finalized until relatively late in the dev cycle, it's also going to be pretty hard for the AI to keep up with it, and possibly not even worth starting on it at all until the game's rules are more stable.

[Sjofn]

How feasible is good AI?  I mean, I can't think of a single game ever that has done it, and maybe thats your point, but surely this isn't just a matter of processing power to pump polygons.  AI is just an entire different beast.

Civ 4 has pretty damned good AI.  Bit it's a lot easier to make a good UI in an empire builder (Civ 1-4 + AC) than a war simulator (Civ 5).  

That's a big part of my unhappiness with the game.  All the tactical focus is on combat, which is widely divergent from its predecessors.  In previous Civ games, combat took up maybe 5% of your focus. Military strength was an almost-inevitable outgrowth of your economy.  The rest of your focus was on the big picture, and the AI (and the rules of course) made it pretty challenging to keep up.

On a conceptual level, it changes the game from being based on an economic view of history (with a healthy dose of geographic-determinism, though that declined from Civ 1- Civ 4) to an old-fashioned EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT HISTORY CAN BE LEARNED FROM WATCHING "THE 300" AND MEMORIZING THE DATES OF SOME RAD BATTLES RARRRRRRR!!!! view.  I'm sure you can detect my preference on this front despite my carefully neutral prose.

I am a big ol' carebear in Civ games. I am the peaceful empire that always gets fucked by the giant stack o' doom because while I would have military units in my cities, the AI would inevitably have 345862375863452 units in one stack that would crush me once it felt the desire to do so. In this new way, I can tell when they're thinking of bothering me, and can shift accordingly BEFORE they actually start to bother me, instead of having a Civ that I had been happily trading with and stuff go killcrazy and crush me beneath its boot. Hell, even if I ignore the warning signs, as long as I have SOME units and a decent set of roads, I can usually fend my attacker off long enough to get my war machine into gear (although I'll probably lose a city or two if the AI REALLY wanted to kick my ass, Elizabeth totally zerged me one game with about a gazillion knights). I vastly prefer Civ V's combat. It doesn't make me want to knock over the board and start over rather than try to fight my way out of a crappy situation like the other ones did.

[Ingmar]

I think one thing they could do is maybe relax the resource limitations on units a bit for AI at the higher difficulty. I am pretty well convinced the reason you so often see lame zergs of spearmen from the AI is they just don't have any iron for building non-spearmen infantry units. I don't think just lifting the restriction would be good, you need to make it possible for the player to take out their resources as a strategic decision, but maybe at higher levels letting the AI get 2 swordsmen for every 1 iron or something would be a decent compromise.

[rk47]

Nah. It's not that. I just finished a standard one continent game on immortal with 5 warmongers: civs, bismark, nobunaga, montezuma, hiawatha, Caesar. I picked Alexander and just built hoplites. What do I see? Nothing but warriors and archers attempting to counter my hoplites backed with a few companion cavalry + great general. I couldn't believe it and double checked. Yep. It's immortal.

[Comstar]

For all of you complaining about the AI- what game have you played that AI that was acceptable enough (and also, beat you every time because it's smarter than you).

[tgr]

I haven't tried this game out myself, but I hear good things about the AI in it:
War in the pacific: admiral's edition
http://www.digitalriver.com/dr/sat5/ec_Main.Entry17C?SID=50505&SP=10023&CID=120628&PID=988675&PN=1&V1=988675&CUR=578&DSP=&PGRP=0&ABCODE=&CACHE_ID=120628

[Ingmar]

Man I think just linking that game probably made your neck grow an inch of hair.

[Sky]

For all of you complaining about the AI- what game have you played that AI that was acceptable enough (and also, beat you every time because it's smarter than you).

Nobody gives a fuck about making good ai. Not just beat you every time AI, but an AI with a remote level of trickery or ingenuity. Just can't be done, apparently.

Anyway, those complaining the game needs patching. No shit. If you really thought this game would be any good until at least the second expansion, you were deluding yourself. Much like Civ4, I'll play a couple games and then hang it up for a couple expansions or until Kael works his magic. Firaxis really, really needs to hire Kael. Hell, when someone was complaining about a start in ice and tundra tiles, I was thinking "Well, hopefully you chose the setting for End of Ice Age and it will thaw to...ah shit, that's FFH2".

[Murgos]

I haven't tried this game out myself, but I hear good things about the AI in it:
War in the pacific: admiral's edition
http://www.digitalriver.com/dr/sat5/ec_Main.Entry17C?SID=50505&SP=10023&CID=120628&PID=988675&PN=1&V1=988675&CUR=578&DSP=&PGRP=0&ABCODE=&CACHE_ID=120628

It does plenty of dingbat things.  Like daily air raids on unoccupied bases.  Or splitting the Kido Butai up into small easy to defeat in detail pieces.  But it's a pretty good challenge for novice and even low intermediate players.

[tgr]

Man I think just linking that game probably made your neck grow an inch of hair.

I do, in fact, have a proper neckbeard.

It does plenty of dingbat things.  Like daily air raids on unoccupied bases.  Or splitting the Kido Butai up into small easy to defeat in detail pieces.  But it's a pretty good challenge for novice and even low intermediate players.

The first almost sounds like a mistake any human could think of doing in the heat of war. vOv

But you're saying it's not a hard AI to beat, just tough for up to low intermediate?

[Typhon]

Much like Civ4, I'll play a couple games and then hang it up for a couple expansions or until Kael works his magic.

Of course I agree with you, but I have to say that I'm liking the changes that not being able to stack brought a bit more than I thought I would.  I played maybe three or four Civ 4 games at launch before feeling like it was just too bland to continue.  I can see me playing at least ten of Civ 5 before shelving it for awhile.

I'm not sure how FFH 3 (I'm pretending that it's a done-deal that he'll make FFH 3) will deal with the elevation of importance of individual units.  Hero units are already so game-changing in FFH 2 and there are dozens and dozens of standard units in any given FFH 2 game.  If he reduces the cost of having an army in FFH 3, the tactical battles could well become an exercise in frustration.  If he leaves the cash-manageable number of units at about a dozen (for a standard-sized game), then heroes (if left at their current level of power) become grossly overpowered.  If he reduces the power of heroes it drains some of the flavor out game.  It's going to be tricky.

[Sky]

His first mod was for the stacking code :P

[Typhon]

lol... doh!

[PkProjects]

I suspect most of the programmers out there who could really nail a complex AI for a game like Civ V are not actually working in the gaming industry, and I also kind of suspect the time it would take to really craft one right is longer than the development cycle of most games.

Although, that AI could be used for multiple games and sold to other developers if it's really good, so it might be worth the investment.

[Samwise]

I suspect most of the programmers out there who could really nail a complex AI for a game like Civ V are not actually working in the gaming industry, and I also kind of suspect the time it would take to really craft one right is longer than the development cycle of most games.

Although, that AI could be used for multiple games and sold to other developers if it's really good, so it might be worth the investment.

Unlikely, since a good Civ AI would be tuned specifically for the rules of Civ.  A game AI isn't like a human being that can easily learn how to do different things and apply basic skills across an array of similar games; it's usually a set of carefully constructed rules that allow it to play one particular game well enough to pass for a decent human player.  Some generic concepts like "pathing" can be (and already are) ported from game to game, but concepts like "how do I balance economic and military advancement" are going to require different sets of rules for different games.

[PkProjects]

I suspect most of the programmers out there who could really nail a complex AI for a game like Civ V are not actually working in the gaming industry, and I also kind of suspect the time it would take to really craft one right is longer than the development cycle of most games.

Although, that AI could be used for multiple games and sold to other developers if it's really good, so it might be worth the investment.

Unlikely, since a good Civ AI would be tuned specifically for the rules of Civ.  A game AI isn't like a human being that can easily learn how to do different things and apply basic skills across an array of similar games; it's usually a set of carefully constructed rules that allow it to play one particular game well enough to pass for a decent human player.  Some generic concepts like "pathing" can be (and already are) ported from game to game, but concepts like "how do I balance economic and military advancement" are going to require different sets of rules for different games.

Definately true, but if you're smart enough to code a complicated AI, I guess it wouldn't be too hard to adjust it to several needs. Just like some webdesigners re-sell their site design to different clients, adapting the code to their will and needs. Only this would be a bit more complicated and time consuming.

[Tannhauser]

Two AI moments:

Normal Difficulty/Archipelago-Hiawatha sends a fleet(!) of six caravels and units to invade my island city.  He would have won except I insta-bought longbowmen.

King Difficulty/Pangaea-I had just finished my second city and started mining iron when the Ottoman Empire decides I'm weak and attacks.  He might have won except I insta-bought archers.  Then my Songhai swordsman came out and murdered him.

Both attacks were in force and were capable of at least taking a city.  Both times I defeated them with the insta-buy unit option.  Kind of felt like cheating, but since every turn is like ten years you could conceptually say that I raised an army of archers in that time.

So maybe a mod to prevent insta-unit purchasing. 

[Tebonas]

It just cements the Money >>> all else balancing problem in Civ5.

If you hadn't the money to instabuy those archers on a whim, you would have needed more forethought. Its really hard to screw up money flow in Civ5, though. Go to Trapping on the tech tree and spam Trading Posts everywhere. If you need food buy food buildings or Maritime Citystates.