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Jump King
Aug 10, 2011

TooMuchAbstraction posted:

It absolutely is, especially in a game as complicated as Civ is. The problem with Civ5's AI isn't so much that it cheats, but that it does it ineptly and blatantly. When you see an AI city with no developed tiles somehow still popping out millions of units and producing implausible amounts of science, you know something fucky is going on.

Your avatar looks a little like george shrinks's dad

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berryjon
May 30, 2011

I have an invasion to go to.

Fister Roboto posted:

hard chokepoints

I remember when you could move into/through Mountains. They even had an awesome defensive bonus too!

Gort
Aug 18, 2003

Good day what ho cup of tea

berryjon posted:

I remember when you could move into/through Mountains. They even had an awesome defensive bonus too!

Let me tell you of a little thing called the CPP

Fister Roboto
Feb 21, 2008

berryjon posted:

I remember when you could move into/through Mountains. They even had an awesome defensive bonus too!

I have no idea why they ever made mountains completely useless obstacles.

Jastiger
Oct 11, 2008

by FactsAreUseless
I think the biggest drawback for the AI isn't necessarily its inability to manage units, though that is problematic. The biggest problem was the diplomacy system. The AI acted so erratically and unreasonably that it really takes you out of the game. You have them down on a war THEY Started, yet everyone else hates you for winning it, and all you want is access to their iron for peace and they refuse. They'd rather die than give you a resource they can't even flippin use.

I feel like that isn't really that big a problem. Endless Legend and EU4 managed to have AI's that know how to handle deals and war, why was civ so obtuse about it? Civ 4 wasn't perfect, but at least it made SENSE for their actions sometimes. I think we'd all have a lot less gripes about the game if the diplomacy system just worked a bit better than it does right now.

Gort
Aug 18, 2003

Good day what ho cup of tea
My pet peeve about Civ 5 diplomacy was when an enemy player was allied to a city state, and then declared war on you. The city state joined the war. You now have two choices.

1. You conquer the city state. The entire world now hates you for your unprovoked aggression.

2. You put up with being raided forever

Chamale
Jul 11, 2010

I'm helping!



Gort posted:

You can achieve "bad AI" in two ways though - by not putting enough resources into AI development, or by purposefully or neglectfully designing a game the AI can't be good at playing.

For instance, if you make four starting choice trees - let's call them Liberty, Tradition, Honour and Piety - and one is good and the other three are poo poo, then "bad AI" is any AI you haven't told to just go Tradition every time. If you actually balance your game so that all four are valid choices, presto - you just made your AI a lot better.

I asked Civ V's AI developer if the AI follows preset strategies or dynamically tries to figure out what to do. Apparently there's no preset strategy at all, which is a bad choice considering how unbalanced Civ V is between different play styles. The AI would be much stronger if it was programmed to always choose Tradition, and prioritize population, science, and happiness in that order.

Hand Row
May 28, 2001
I like the idea of Ghengis Khan spawning somewhere with a ton of horsemen as an example of a "city state" rather than the lovely one city implementation in Civ V. Basically city states should be random events with very unique traits rather than neutered normal civs.

But it sounds like we are getting the envoy system which so far sounds alright I guess.

Gort
Aug 18, 2003

Good day what ho cup of tea

Chamale posted:

I asked Civ V's AI developer if the AI follows preset strategies or dynamically tries to figure out what to do. Apparently there's no preset strategy at all, which is a bad choice considering how unbalanced Civ V is between different play styles. The AI would be much stronger if it was programmed to always choose Tradition, and prioritize population, science, and happiness in that order.

I think the issue with this kind of AI programming is that the game designers didn't mean to make a game that was badly balanced, it just sort of happened that way and they didn't get any resources to fix it after the fact.

TooMuchAbstraction
Oct 14, 2012

I spent four years making
Waves of Steel
Hell yes I'm going to turn my avatar into an ad for it.
Fun Shoe
The danger of a heavily-scripted AI is that it always does the same thing, which makes repeat playthroughs less interesting. It also makes the AI more brittle to modding -- if it always takes Tradition even though that tree was modded to give +1GPT and nothing else, that's a problem.

I wouldn't mind seeing some special events, though I'd be hesitant to tie them to specific factions. Having a barbarian force of a bunch of <some civ's special unit> show up out of nowhere could be interesting though, and if they conquer any cities they could form a new civ.

Gort
Aug 18, 2003

Good day what ho cup of tea
Well, Genghis being one of 30+ AI civs that might appear plus the fact that he probably won't be next door to you most times will probably provide enough replayability, I would've thought. Not to mention that if 30+ AI civs all have similarly earth-shaking unique abilities, there's a vast number of combinations you'll encounter.

The main aim is to avoid the games where the AI just sort of peters out, like any game where the Huns don't decide to rush their neighbours and just sort of dwindle into insignificance since their entire schtick is rushing their neighbours.

Chamale
Jul 11, 2010

I'm helping!



I wonder what Google's Go AI would learn if it played Civ V. One thing that's tough for a human to coordinate, but probably doable for an AI, is timing an Ideology slingshot so you fill your culture the turn after getting an Ideology and immediately pick a tier-2 Tenet. It's possible to get Volunteer Army before inventing Musketmen, and it's broken as poo poo.

Raserys
Aug 22, 2011

IT'S YA BOY

Christo posted:

The only sliders Civ needs is in a character customization menu. The world's next great leader shall be born in the monster factory!

this + a custom nation designer would be sick. i know it's nothing that mods can't accomplish, but still

Marmaduke!
May 19, 2009

Why would it do that!?

TooMuchAbstraction posted:

The danger of a heavily-scripted AI is that it always does the same thing, which makes repeat playthroughs less interesting. It also makes the AI more brittle to modding -- if it always takes Tradition even though that tree was modded to give +1GPT and nothing else, that's a problem.


Like back in Civ 2, with its original WW2 scenario. If you're England and you contact France, they will instantly dissolve the alliance the game set you up with, which kinda ruins the point. On the other hand they make you unable to make peace with Germany, but only by brute force.

Ghostlight
Sep 25, 2009

maybe for one second you can pause; try to step into another person's perspective, and understand that a watermelon is cursing me



Fister Roboto posted:

I have no idea why they ever made mountains completely useless obstacles.
Because they are then (theoretically) tactically useful for the tactical combat.

Digital Jedi
May 28, 2007

Fallen Rib
Civilization 6 E3 Demo, Narrated by Sean Bean

Didn't see this posted yet.

Makes me so much more excited.
And really hope Bean does narration within the game not just these videos.

Chamale
Jul 11, 2010

I'm helping!



Raserys posted:

this + a custom nation designer would be sick. i know it's nothing that mods can't accomplish, but still

I am modding a custom civ for the first time and it is way more work than it ought to be. Because of the way the game handles data, you have to program the civ piecemeal in a bunch of different places, and you need to convert the civ's icon into the obscure .dds format for like 8 different resolutions.

One thing I'd love to accomplish with mods is to occasionally have something like the opposite of a golden age, when all civs can't produce anything except soldiers and research slows to a crawl. But I don't know if it's even possible with the tools available.

Chronojam
Feb 20, 2006

This is me on vacation in Amsterdam :)
Never be afraid of being yourself!


Dds format is pretty standard fare for a texture format and has been since forever, though. It's as ubiquitous for textures as jpg is for photos.

SirKibbles
Feb 27, 2011

I didn't like your old red text so here's some dancing cash. :10bux:

Digital Jedi posted:

Civilization 6 E3 Demo, Narrated by Sean Bean

Didn't see this posted yet.

Makes me so much more excited.
And really hope Bean does narration within the game not just these videos.

And here is a live stream of that demo going into detail.

https://www.twitch.tv/firaxisgames/v/74092701

Don't have to settle on the coast to build ships loving finally

edit: Does has to be within 3 tiles of the sea though. And something about fresh water vs salt water too.

SirKibbles fucked around with this message at 02:32 on Jun 24, 2016

Raserys
Aug 22, 2011

IT'S YA BOY
I really hope they include that opening speech in the actual game

Negostrike
Aug 15, 2015


AAAAAAAAA FIRAXIS HEARD MY PRAYERS they totally remade Civ 1 theme that's fuckin sweeeeet

Negrostrike posted:

How about Firaxis go back all the way to Civ 1 for the menu music, whatcha say?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYJC2fkLshw

(Yeah it's CivNet but it's an arranged version of Civ 1 opening)

Not sure if they'll use a rendition of it for the menu though

Sarmhan
Nov 1, 2011

I can't wait for Sean Bean to quote all sorts of things at me.

Clarste
Apr 15, 2013

Just how many mistakes have you suffered on the way here?

An uncountable number, to be sure.

Gort posted:

My pet peeve about Civ 5 diplomacy was when an enemy player was allied to a city state, and then declared war on you. The city state joined the war. You now have two choices.

1. You conquer the city state. The entire world now hates you for your unprovoked aggression.

2. You put up with being raided forever

Uh... you do realize you can declare peace with any City State at any time, right? I mean, you have to end the war with their ally first, but that doesn't seem to be what you're complaining about.

Grapplejack
Nov 27, 2007

Fister Roboto posted:

I have no idea why they ever made mountains completely useless obstacles.

I really wish Dido's ability didn't damage your dudes on mountains for half their health, it's not like mountains are super common.

Borsche69
May 8, 2014

Gort posted:

Civ 4 was panned similarly to Civ 5 until it got its two expansions.

What the gently caress? No it wasn't.

Borsche69
May 8, 2014

MMM Whatchya Say posted:

Civ IV was a better game on release than Civ V was, but they both took expansions to get to their completed form.

I sincerely don't understand this line of reasoning for Civ4 BTS. That was a horrible expansion, introducing a ton of broken features like espionage, corporations, colonies, the apostolic palace etc. The only 'nice' inclusions were just the new civs. Everything else was just a shitshow.

Target Practice
Aug 20, 2004

Shit.
I haven't seen any videos or screenshots or read the thread but I'm gonna pre-order this like a goddamn fool.

Gladi
Oct 23, 2008

SirKibbles posted:


https://www.twitch.tv/firaxisgames/v/74092701

Don't have to settle on the coast to build ships loving finally
.

Yes! Finaly we can have Piraeus.

Away all Goats
Jul 5, 2005

Goose's rebellion

Now they just need to announce a canal tile improvement and I can stop taking forever to settle cities.

Super Jay Mann
Nov 6, 2008

Borsche69 posted:

I sincerely don't understand this line of reasoning for Civ4 BTS. That was a horrible expansion, introducing a ton of broken features like espionage, corporations, colonies, the apostolic palace etc. The only 'nice' inclusions were just the new civs. Everything else was just a shitshow.

I think the QoL improvements and the new civs/leaders/units/etc. make it a net positive overall, though I suppose all that stuff didn't need an "expansion" to be made to include them.

I don't hate the espionage system as much as some people do (spy missions are BS though) and I actually quite like corporations. The AP is total garbage though, I'm glad you can just kill it entirely by turning of diplo victory.

The Human Crouton
Sep 20, 2002

Away all Goats posted:

Now they just need to announce a canal tile improvement and I can stop taking forever to settle cities.

https://youtu.be/YBdl8YVFK4o?t=1m55s

My guess is they won't for vanilla, but are thinking about it for the expansions.

Hand Row
May 28, 2001
Considering how walls work now you'd think they would be able to do something similar with canals in an expansion.

OfChristandMen
Feb 14, 2006

GENERIC CANDY AVATAR #2

The Human Crouton posted:

https://youtu.be/YBdl8YVFK4o?t=1m55s

My guess is they won't for vanilla, but are thinking about it for the expansions.

They infer that because TR is in the game, a canal "district" will be able to be made, at the very least as a World Wonder. With districts/wonder requirements it shouldn't be too hard to tell a tile to accept Naval units.

Also to the poster who was complaining a few pages back about "Battering Rams" allowing units to attack walls directly, this is because a city has no ranged attack without walls built. So presumably, destroying a wall actually stops the city (and the military encampment) from attacking you, so that seems very effective in city combat.

Chronojam
Feb 20, 2006

This is me on vacation in Amsterdam :)
Never be afraid of being yourself!


The spying from beyond earth works well so I hope they keep that kind of targeted effect.

The Human Crouton
Sep 20, 2002

I think canals would be great, but I don't want to see 5 tile canals all over the loving place. Maybe, if they include them, canals will have a "cannot be built adjacent to another canal district" to prevent that.

-Dethstryk-
Oct 20, 2000

The Human Crouton posted:

I think canals would be great, but I don't want to see 5 tile canals all over the loving place. Maybe, if they include them, canals will have a "cannot be built adjacent to another canal district" to prevent that.

I was thinking about this earlier, and how I thought it could work is that canal improvements could only be built if there's an adjacent ocean tile. This would prevent long canal stretches like you are talking about, but still allow canals through two hex widths of land, which seems reasonable.

The Human Crouton
Sep 20, 2002

-Dethstryk- posted:

I was thinking about this earlier, and how I thought it could work is that canal improvements could only be built if there's an adjacent ocean tile. This would prevent long canal stretches like you are talking about, but still allow canals through two hex widths of land, which seems reasonable.

That's a better idea than mine. I like it.

Phobophilia
Apr 26, 2008

by Hand Knit

-Dethstryk- posted:

I was thinking about this earlier, and how I thought it could work is that canal improvements could only be built if there's an adjacent ocean tile. This would prevent long canal stretches like you are talking about, but still allow canals through two hex widths of land, which seems reasonable.

this is literally the civ4 mechanic: forts next to all bodies of water act as canals

civ5 canals were irritating because not only were coastal cities rarer (due to happiness), but only your rare coastal cities could act as canals. in maps with multiple non-connected seas, entire areas were effectively inaccessible to combat ships unless you lucked into settling the correct seas. civ4 lakes maps were super fun to play when you had a half dozen fronts to defend and project force across

Jastiger
Oct 11, 2008

by FactsAreUseless
I don't see the problem with canals all over the place. Just make it super expensive, but if you want to be Las Vegas, then go right ahead. Easier to gently caress over, but hey why not.

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Chucat
Apr 14, 2006

Fister Roboto posted:

I have no idea why they ever made mountains completely useless obstacles.

In 4 they give you mad vision (around 3 tiles worth) and can also help function as chokepoints, which are both actually pretty useful.

Chamale posted:

One thing I'd love to accomplish with mods is to occasionally have something like the opposite of a golden age, when all civs can't produce anything except soldiers and research slows to a crawl. But I don't know if it's even possible with the tools available.

This exact thing came up when Civ 3 was being made, I'll just let Sullla explain it:

quote:

Penalties in an empire building game are generally something to be avoided. You want to reward players for doing well, not punish them for failing. There's a reason why the Civilization games have Golden Ages and not "Dark Ages" in them - the latter would not be fun for most players. (The Civ3 design team actually implemented a whole "Dark Ages" concept in the testing stages, and took it out of the game because it simply wasn't fun.) Worst of all are penalties that accrue to players randomly, for things that they had no control over. I'm looking at you, floodplains disease and plague from Civ3! There will be some players who enjoy that sort of thing, but most people won't find it to be very amusing. These sort of things should be avoided when designing a game. (Note that penalties are different from challenges; there's nothing wrong with having a challenging game design. The Ninja Gaiden games are extremely challenging, but they are generally not punitive in their design. You just have to be really, really good to win.)

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