FuzzySlippers posted:Its the Firaxis Civ cycle. Civ x comes out and people shout it is worse than Civ x-1 with expansions. Civ x gets more expansions and gradually becomes better than Civ x-1. There are always people who say they can't give up on Civ x-1 but most people will have settled into Civ x. And yet Civ5 remains worse than either VI or IV Also I believe this cycle only applies at all for x>4
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# ? Nov 26, 2020 10:49 |
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# ? Jun 4, 2024 00:04 |
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Civ V is my favourite. I think I have over 700 hours played. Every now and then when I feel like playing civ I hesitate whether to play civ VI with its unstacked cities or civ v with its late-game ideologies which, I feel, do a good job shaking up the late-game.
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# ? Nov 26, 2020 11:17 |
ded posted:In my experience the AI sort of gives up on armies around mid game. I kinda noticed that but hadn't really thought whether it was all the time. So many games it seems like even war-like civs (that hate/are hated by everyone else) stay at war for centuries but the map barely changes. Does the AI just never set up and execute massed attacks late game? They also seem to barely know how to use planes
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# ? Nov 26, 2020 11:39 |
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Nosre posted:I kinda noticed that but hadn't really thought whether it was all the time. So many games it seems like even war-like civs (that hate/are hated by everyone else) stay at war for centuries but the map barely changes. The AI is unbelievably bad at managing armies. In Civ V I experimented with this; I easily won on Emperor by simply building and researching whatever the advisors recommended, and being smart with units. I won on Prince by clicking buttons completely at random, except for units.
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# ? Nov 26, 2020 11:50 |
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Nosre posted:Does the AI just never set up and execute massed attacks late game? They also seem to barely know how to use planes Planes, no not really. They do execute late game attacks the problem is that they do it super late game with giant death robots and not after oil era stuff. I think this is mostly because once the tech that obsoletes walls and gives every city a static defense hits the level of force needed to take cities becomes higher than the on par tech level units so it waits until uranium cuts down the potential enemy offensive capability of competing Civs. You see this in the games where people put all the AI in a game and let them fight it out. Essentially Civs start dropping as their access to strategic resources dries up.
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# ? Nov 26, 2020 11:53 |
I've done 3 or 4 late game domination victories (advanced bombers and GDRs) and yea I think only once did a civ have a fighter up, otherwise they just don't defend against air at all. I also don't think they moved it around, so I could just avoid that area. It's kind of impressive that the game(s) are still good enough that we've all got hundreds of hours in them despite such blatant (once you're looking for it) AI shortcomings
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# ? Nov 26, 2020 12:39 |
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I’ve never seen an AI Civ make either a fighter or anti air unit. Once you unlock bombers it’s basically game over.
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# ? Nov 26, 2020 14:53 |
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They where good enough about in Civ5, fwiw. Maybe because the AA unit was pegged as a generic middleman that could be spammed?
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# ? Nov 26, 2020 15:35 |
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Continuing the big historicism discussion about Civ, while I'll defend the historicism of missionaries work converting nations I think its worth stressing at the end of it all Civ is a board game with historical themed elements, and not really a proper simulation/roleplaying experience like a Paradox game (those have their flaws here and there but they do a decent job of being hyper focused on a singular time period or two to keep them on point) This isn't a knock against it, either, I don't think Civ has ever had any pretense of being perfectly accurate and is a game series where Fascist China can fire nukes against Communist Rome. Besides conflict between faith and state happening, there's like a general lack of that sort've factionalism in general in Civ games and its kind of an unexplored mechanical space at this point. In general, everything happens from a top down decision making process by you as a player to direct your civilization towards its ends. So something like directing missionaries to proselytize in new lands is something that, again, I'll defend the historical basis of religious and/or political leaders doing and that did work but it becomes in Civ something you can go all in on in away over the entire course of a game that perhaps feels jarring, where as I think the historical counter examples of crusades and persecution are themselves something that occurred itself because of real world factionalism and interconflict between religious factions, political ethnic and class factions and all that jazz over disparate centuries.
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# ? Nov 26, 2020 16:42 |
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Yeah I think Civ V has better challenge from a military perspective. I play emperor / immortal on VI and if you decide to go to war it’s super easy. I try to moderate this by just not doing it or only responding to aggression. Even then things get weird. Mali declared war on a city state and gave me the option of a protectorate war so I went with it with 4 heroes and he didn’t have a single unit and only border cities had walls. I think he got caught in a loop attacking the city state for a few thousand years
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# ? Nov 26, 2020 17:38 |
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Yeah I just played a game as Alexander on King difficulty and I rolled over everybody so easily. They had virtually no military to speak of. Civ 4 didn't have districts but at least the game was a challenge. The fact that the AI doesn't build planes at all is a huge indictment against the developers of the game.
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# ? Nov 26, 2020 20:00 |
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Deltasquid posted:Civ V is my favourite. I think I have over 700 hours played. Every now and then when I feel like playing civ I hesitate whether to play civ VI with its unstacked cities or civ v with its late-game ideologies which, I feel, do a good job shaking up the late-game. Thats what I miss the most in Civ 5. That and the better world congress But I cant play without districts anymore edit: Don Pigeon posted:Yeah I just played a game as Alexander on King difficulty and I rolled over everybody so easily. They had virtually no military to speak of. Civ 4 didn't have districts but at least the game was a challenge. The fact that the AI doesn't build planes at all is a huge indictment against the developers of the game. Yeah, that kind of stuff makes me wonder if the AI stupidity is not intentional, at least partly. Bombers are hands down the most effective military unit late game, and the AI flat out refuses to use then edit: I seen they use fighters, though Elias_Maluco fucked around with this message at 20:25 on Nov 26, 2020 |
# ? Nov 26, 2020 20:23 |
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There is no need to intentionally cripple your AI on high difficulty levels. This is just straight up the AI not being able to play the game, so they can only win via the passive bucket filling mechanics which is pretty much just an score victory under a different name.
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# ? Nov 26, 2020 20:43 |
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twistedmentat posted:i have 836 hours in civ6 Mayan twins are pretty cool, got attacked by Basil so his army turned into my army which then took over most of the viking army. Sinbad was real helpful clearing out all those longboats too.
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# ? Nov 27, 2020 00:55 |
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I’d say that the AI has always been terrible but at least in 3 and 4 they’d build enormous, computer crashing armies occupying a single terrain piece and invade/defend with them. I feel like it can’t be much of a computer script change for the devs to make them build and use air units properly.
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# ? Nov 27, 2020 02:25 |
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The AI didn't have any priorities at all for several months after release because their programming spelled the word "yield" wrong. Don't the AIs still have a bug where they can't use more than one nuclear weapon? For whatever reason, the devs have decided that competent AI is not important for this game.
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# ? Nov 27, 2020 07:18 |
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Honestly for me it isn’t that much when I go conquering I get bored but when I treat the AI like part of the terrain I’m building in its better. I can’t imagine how hard it is to code ai in a 1UPT hex game thinking about it makes me stressed I’m amazing they can take city states.
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# ? Nov 27, 2020 07:39 |
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I guess coding an AI good at 1UPT tactical combat is pretty hard indeed But making the AI not ignore the best units of the game and not build a dozen of aircraft carriers it has no use for cant be that hard
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# ? Nov 27, 2020 11:51 |
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Yeah Civ V and Civ BE had perfectly fine combat AI, particularly once they got access to planes and artillery.
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# ? Nov 27, 2020 12:58 |
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The most baffling part is that the game allows you to stack planes so if anything the AI should be allowed to just go haywire with them and start making doomstacks in the late game.
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# ? Nov 27, 2020 14:06 |
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I have a feeling the battle-pass is selling poorly, I'm apparently in the elite 0.1% that manage to build 5 heroes in one game hope that civ7 won't have that garbage
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# ? Nov 27, 2020 14:17 |
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Kaal posted:Yeah Civ V and Civ BE had perfectly fine combat AI, particularly once they got access to planes and artillery. What?! I suppose that given a certain combat unit, the AI could figure out how to issue an attack order with it, but I literally never saw it make any aggressive moves. I once saw something resembling an army, walking back and forth across a huge fungal wasteland, doing nothing for eras. This is especially compounded by the AI falling behind a monkey throwing darts at the keyboard, so it will never have anything resembling a competitive economy or tech against even the most rookie of players.
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# ? Nov 27, 2020 14:20 |
doing a bit of reading and the problem might actually be the Aerodrome, because it comes so late the AI will rarely have a free spot (both a flat tile, and a district available) in their core cities (aka ones with decent production) Combine that with them also needing aluminum, and needing the tech, and prioritizing it, and then using it correctly, and you get what most of us are seeing in our games of "never"
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# ? Nov 27, 2020 15:20 |
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Serephina posted:What?! I suppose that given a certain combat unit, the AI could figure out how to issue an attack order with it, but I literally never saw it make any aggressive moves. I once saw something resembling an army, walking back and forth across a huge fungal wasteland, doing nothing for eras. This is especially compounded by the AI falling behind a monkey throwing darts at the keyboard, so it will never have anything resembling a competitive economy or tech against even the most rookie of players. Sounds like you might want to try playing again at a higher difficulty. They'll invade right quick if you give them a chance.
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# ? Nov 27, 2020 18:00 |
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Holy poo poo Sinbad is BROKEN. Eight charges, each of which can be used to extract 500 gold from an enemy naval unit (you can hit any given unit twice, which then kills it). Then every time you bring him back, the amount you gain from the ability goes up by 100. Last game, I was enemies with Kupe for most of the game, and because he had an infinite supply of weak ships for me to exploit, I saved up all my faith and brought Sinbad back four more times, gaining me 28,000 extra gold over the course of the game.
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# ? Nov 27, 2020 19:02 |
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Yeah if people are annoyed at the AI up the difficulty - the AI’s calculations about whether to go to war shift dramatically when they have a hundred units milling around
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# ? Nov 27, 2020 19:06 |
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Tom Tucker posted:the AI’s calculations about whether to go to war shift dramatically when they have a hundred units milling around good thing i have a 24 core cpu
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# ? Nov 27, 2020 19:26 |
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an AI Mulan retired and their army score went down by 400 (her first life, dunno what happens next, but I feel like the Terminator is out there)
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# ? Nov 27, 2020 22:14 |
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So I played as Babylon today. Then I met Babylon. It was correctly named Anshan in the notification and envoy screen, but it said Babylon on the map. Once I got suzerain of them, my envoy screen broke, being stuck at "confirm placement" and not updating as I met new states/got more enjoys. About 20 turns later, the game crashed. Cool.
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# ? Nov 27, 2020 23:16 |
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Kaal posted:Sounds like you might want to try playing again at a higher difficulty. They'll invade right quick if you give them a chance. I played two rounds of BE before throwing it in the e-trash in disgust. First round on normal [or normal+1?] difficulty, literally no idea what I was doing. No read wikis, nothing. I hit the 'affinity ascention' victory type before any other players had yet to choose a affinity. For those who haven't played BE, this is the equivalent to finishing the space race while nobody else has discovered crossbowmen yet. It's absurd, affinity choices happen so drat early in the game that it boggles me. My second game I cranked the difficulty to one-less-than-deity. Same thing happened, except roughly half of them had chosen their affinities this time. Still don't know what most of the tech tree is like - my victories where not due to mastery of any systems, that's for sure. The opponents just kinda sat there, like a human baby given control of an octopus' limbs. Just weak twitching, really.
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# ? Nov 28, 2020 01:47 |
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The only Civ game I don't remember fondly was III and that was because their culture system was real funky and ended up having cities constantly flip back and forth. V the only issue was death stacks of hundreds of units that would take forever to defeat. Or was that IV?
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# ? Nov 28, 2020 02:55 |
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IV had the mega stacks that you defeated by literally throwing siege units into a blender to deal AOE damage, but the stacking let the AI wage war effectively.
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# ? Nov 28, 2020 02:58 |
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Finally won a multiplayer game in my group lol, Babylon just instantly getting all Information Era techs with that one Great Scientist is so overpowered lol
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# ? Nov 28, 2020 03:06 |
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Serephina posted:I played two rounds of BE before throwing it in the e-trash in disgust. First round on normal [or normal+1?] difficulty, literally no idea what I was doing. No read wikis, nothing. I hit the 'affinity ascention' victory type before any other players had yet to choose a affinity. For those who haven't played BE, this is the equivalent to finishing the space race while nobody else has discovered crossbowmen yet. It's absurd, affinity choices happen so drat early in the game that it boggles me. There were a bunch of changes in BE over the course of its life, and particularly in regard to its difficulty. Apollo at launch and Apollo after Rising Tide are very different AIs. It certainly has a better combat AI than Civ6, which is pretty disorganized.
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# ? Nov 28, 2020 03:13 |
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Excuse me, but I believe it's called a Tech Web.
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# ? Nov 28, 2020 03:28 |
Does anyone else play Civ V Vox Populi? I like a number of the new systems in VI, but it's hard to move on from VP in terms of AI/balance/pace. Mostly pace.
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# ? Nov 28, 2020 03:38 |
Tom Tucker posted:Yeah if people are annoyed at the AI up the difficulty - the AIs calculations about whether to go to war shift dramatically when they have a hundred units milling around i'm convinced that the AI for most, or maybe all, civs doesn't actually build units with the intent of going to war. i think each civ has some hidden math it does to determine the ideal number of troops it wants to have at any given moment, possibly for bellicose civs this is literally just how many they can maintain with their current gold income but regardless they all have it. once they're at that goal, they look around at all of their neighbors and see who has smaller armies and/or undefended cities on their frontier and, if they find a soft target, they move the various units they've built to get to that cap over to the nearest city and attack with what is effectively a scratch army. maybe someone who frequently plays on deity can speak to seeing more intelligent unit building behavior, but every time I've had a war declared on me, it's been with a hilariously incompetent collection of units. also, units continue to stream in by ones and twos even after the war has started, which i'm guessing that's units from far-flung parts of the empire arriving in late, but it's never ones that the AI seems to need. seeing the AI roll up on a frontier city without any siege units, get their rear end kicked, then when the initial attacking force is like 75% dead and i'm mopping up, a couple siege units show up only to get immediately merked is one of the most hilariously stupid AI behaviors imaginable. literally the only explanation is that the only AI around what units to build is an empire-wide "30% ranged, 20% cavalry, 10% anticavalry, 40% infantry" type thing that they won't differ from ever.
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# ? Nov 28, 2020 04:53 |
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Dipping my toe in Civ6 on PS4 having not played since losing hundreds of hours of my teenaged life to Civ2 (and FreeCiv, later and in passing) has been, uh, overwhelming. Mechanics are pretty different even if the spirit is the same. Any thread-recommended tutorials for sussing out districting and maximizing production? My first two rounds I've been massively outpaced in tech and production on Prince difficulty ()
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# ? Nov 28, 2020 04:57 |
LeeMajors posted:Dipping my toe in Civ6 on PS4 having not played since losing hundreds of hours of my teenaged life to Civ2 (and FreeCiv, later and in passing) has been, uh, overwhelming. Mechanics are pretty different even if the spirit is the same. I found streamer Potato McWhiskey's Overexplained series to be extremely useful in understanding the underlying mechanics. The first video starts here: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=J62EqRqxnv0 Also, get the UI mod he links in the video description, it is a massive improvement on the default without changing the game itself in any way. You'll be glad you did.
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# ? Nov 28, 2020 05:55 |
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# ? Jun 4, 2024 00:04 |
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Goa Tse-tung posted:I have a feeling the battle-pass is selling poorly, I'm apparently in the elite 0.1% that manage to build 5 heroes in one game For me, I keep reading about secret societies and heroes and everything in the frontier pass and I am not interested in the least, especially not for what they're asking. It's nearing the end of the game's lifecycle when they start pulling out the wacky ideas- I remember BF1942's secret weapons expansion.
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# ? Nov 28, 2020 06:28 |