Beyond the Sword First Impressions

[sunrise089]

Originally Posted by sooooo

Hmm, if you wanted you could turn on stack attack and autopromote and do it in one fell swoop, like in multiplayer. Sure you'd probably lose a few more troops, but it would be quicker.

I always have stack attack on, and never autopromote. I guess my MP games, such as they are, don't have enough total units to require autopromote.

[HouHou]

Of course the AI whips and produces units when it's being invaded. It doesn't want to lose! Thanks to Blake's work, the AI now has an awareness of when it's in danger of getting blasted off the planet, and responds appropriately. If you had that kind of stack coming at you, of course you'd whip and draft anything you could to stay alive. Why shouldn't the AI do the same?

Whipping and producing units is great when it has a chance to win, but when it's 50 rifles/trebs/cannons versus....catapults then I don't really see the point of resistance.

As for stack attack and auto-promote, I do that. It does help, but the sheer number of units is just blah. Either that I'm just used to the faster gameplay of Vanilla/Warlords.

BTW...for all those who think the normal AI are 100% wusses...let me show you:



He had at least one more stack that was the same size, and about 3-4 that were 50-75% of that number.


And while I'm not sure what it means, the fact that the AI can still produce units and research with a 4-digit war weariness rating is kind of odd.

[Qwack]

Im pretty sure that war weariness number is incorrect. Or maybe its total war weariness for all his cities, but it still seems kind of high.

[ThERat]

The way to solve late-game tedium in a 4X game is not to weaken the AI to fold faster. The true solution is a victory condition that kicks in when the outcome is inevitable but before the actual slog. Domination was originally conceived as a shortcut to conquest, but the implementation missed the mark, because of the technical tedium of growing population and expanding borders in captured cities.

Not only that, have you tried to got for domination on a continent map. Taking and keeping cities overseas is totally suicidal for the economy. As stated, not knowing this new 'feature' my economy went into a total meltdown until it occured to me that city maintenance and not inflation was killing me. Mind you, I played with state property at that time. (e.g. Taking just one more city overseas saw my income drop by +50gpt) What fun concept is this supposed to be? If vassals would be properly implemented, then maybe it would help but currently they are not implemented in a way I like it.

As I see it, the new features might make the AI more human like and concepts more 'realistic' (as if Civ was ever really realistic), but it's so much more tedium and less fun. I don't want to constantly build units in a peaceful game just because the AI spams huge stacks of units (and no, they don't only build them to defend against an invasion). I don't want to worry about spies all the time to counter all the 'annoying' spies. I want to be able to take over the world without fighting so many units and constantly monitor WW and the economic meltdown that comes with more cities.

I love playing huge C3C games as fighting wars is fun there. Using armies, artillery, bombers etc with graphics that support the warfare game. I don't mind spending hours on that. In CIV however, everything was done to make warfare less attractive (still no WW-free government available). Graphics are terrible from mid to late game and make looking at huge stacks painful. So, if making warfare the less attractive way to play the game, why do we now get to fight huge stacks (even on normal mode)? Why is a very early war the best way to win on higher difficulties?
Though I might draw some flak here, I think Soren did something right about the AI balance (though I also bittely complained about certain CIV features). Currently the game doesn't feel right for me with regards to the AI. The whole balance of the game does not feel right...

[EricStratton]

Originally Posted by ThERat

...the AI spams huge stacks of units (and no, they don't only build them to defend against an invasion).

I won't comment on much else b/c I'm still working on playing a BTS game all the way through but ThERat's right on this point. As I mentioned in a previous post, my "best friend" that was on a continent w/ me built a huge offensive stack for no apparent reason and then never used it.

Can't blame the AI, tho. Seems like something a human might do especially if he realized I could see into his cities. I mean, in all honesty it's what kept me from destroying him.

[Blake]

Thanks T-hawk. Your farmland caretakers comment was spot-on.

[Kylearan]

Hi,

I'm with T-hawk and Blake on this subject. As someone who for years wished game developers would invest more resources into game AIs instead of graphics, I love what Blake has done with the BtS AI. Why on earth should a more stupid AI be more fun to play against? I see the point about more tedium as you have to fight more units, but at least the AI offers some intelligent resistance now!

Wars in vanilla CIV (and even more so in C3C) were mind-numbingly automatic, requiring no real thought. You could play with little to no defense, tech to a military advantage (always relying on the whip to counter the odd AI "invasion", which it made with laughingly tiny stacks most of the time), and when you decided to attack the AI, it crumbled with little to no resistance. It was simply like pushing a "I want to win now" button - where's the fun in that?

I really don't see the problem with the AI keeping so many units even in peace-time. What are you all complaining about, that you no longer can get away with the ridiculous nearly-no-military play we all were so comfortably used to? Now keeping a low military to tech faster is actually a gambit which can fail. Thanks Blake!

The only thing I don't like is that the AIs are so vulnerable early on, which still makes early aggression the best strategy. It's like all AIs are playing a low-military gambit all the time, which doesn't feel right.


Apart from the AI, which I really like, there are some issues which are a bit annoying about waging war. The WW model is one thing (I can live with that), and the slow-responding graphical UI is another. I have to agree with ThERat here: C3C was graphically much better suited to commanding a lot of units than vanilla Civ is, and BtS made this even worse.

-Kylearan

[ThERat]

I agree that the AI is much smarter thanks to Blake. Unfortunately that doesn't necessary translate into a more fun game.

Maybe the issues that make this just more obvious are as mentioned the horrid graphics and the now overly complex game. I think BTS might have overdone the complexity of the game. Spies concept now is very hard to understand (multiple slider and added interface to deal with). Don't even ask me about corporations. I find them mind boggling complex. That's not fun and I don't even want to use them at all...

Maybe someone could post some 'corporations for dummies' here

[HouHou]

I'm with T-hawk and Blake on this subject. As someone who for years wished game developers would invest more resources into game AIs instead of graphics, I love what Blake has done with the BtS AI. Why on earth should a more stupid AI be more fun to play against? I see the point about more tedium as you have to fight more units, but at least the AI offers some intelligent resistance now!

To me, intelligent resistance is fine; BtS is the first time I've ever built a Castle or used a Drill 2 Longbow, and this was in direct response to crazy AI stacks. It's the "cleanup part" (after you take most of his land, including capitals and holy cities) I have issues with. I'm not really sure how whipping catapults against rifles displays the abilities of an "intelligent AI." In addition, there is nothing fun about a culture system that promotes either a) taking cities ASAP OR b) near-total annihilation of the AI, and not a good medium in between.

I don't want a stupider AI; my comment about the lack of rushing + AI's liberal whipping was not to complain about the AI, but instead to point out how the WW and culture mechanics were not (IMO) adjusted to compensate.

I like the fact that playing peaceful is a lot more feasible in BtS (my first Emperor win had a total of one offensive war and two cities taken as well as an Axeman that survived a Grenadier attack), I like the fact that more wonders are open (I think Industrious got a nice boost) , and I definitely liked the first time I saw Julius roll up with a 30 unit SoD.

[Qwack]

To me the only problem is the amount of time late-game turns took(due to 100's of obsolete units, and even with no combat animations and stack attack, the in-between time between turns is huge due to so many AI moves). I actually love how the AI plays, and if AI's get as strong as suryavarman got in my last game, thats absolutely wonderful. 49% land area, sheesh.

One thing that I would like to see is a better AI research, rather than spamming 100's of units, it would have a few less units but more advanced units. And yes, I know that its not as simple as this, and I know that programming the AI is a difficult task. Just stating a preference whether or not it is practical or even possible.