Civilization 5 Announced

[Krill]

Focusing on the AI build aspect of your post, isn't that clearly a lebensraum-style aggressive act that reasonably could only be dealt with by war (although culture could work)? In other words, there's nothing wrong with what the AI is doing, as a strategy. If you don't have the strength on paper to resist, it may even be a smart move.

What makes it all seem problematic, in my view, is that you can probably respond by razing the city, and win the subsequent war at least partly due to poor AI combat performance. But this very big problem doesn't make the initial city build flawed as well.

Oh, I have the power...in fact another AI has also declared war and is about to raze the city without my help (which is another point to consider...why settle the city if it can't hold it). But the issue is that there is only one method of dealing with it effectively, and that is warfare - buying tiles isn't possible when you need to buy at least 6 just to stop the AI settling 2 tiles from you city. Nor does the AI consider the cities resources if you have already bought the tiles that would be in the inner ring of the new AI city, it just settles the city anyway.

Could it be that the AI decides the city spot, builds the settler, then sends the settler all the way to the city spot and settles it regardless of what has changed between making the decision to build the settler, and settling the city? What if the whole AI settling problem is tied in with scouting - on the lower levels, the AI doesn't scout that well, doesn't find the city locations it should settle, and so doesn't build settlers. I need to reload that previous game and see what happens if I buy the city tile the turn before it settles the city...

Really, culture has been broken and reformed to fit into the Social Policy trees. It's so hard to get culture to expand borders naturally (where you want them to go), that you are forced to buy tiles. You can no longer "peacefully" take over land when a city is slammed down next to yours, short of a Great Artist, and that only works in your lands to take over the adjacent tiles that aren't yours. So you will almost never get more than 3 tiles, which is an absurd waste of resources most of the time (unless, say, you really need that iron etc) and really pisses of the AI anyway, in which case why even both when it is just simpler to raze the other city? This whole part of the game got broken for what amounts to a second tech tree and another version of beakers, which you can only generate via artist specs, building certain city improvements and wonders, and the great artist tile improvement. You can't overpower the other civs culture (which is a mechanic to keep gold buying viable, I assume. It would be really annoying to buy a tile, only to lose it to culture the next turn. To keep both systems in, their can't be any competition between them owning a tile). So yeah, another chalk mark against this culture system in my eyes, for SP anyway.

And then you run over the AI militarily because it sucks at 1UPT. As Sullla said, at least the C4 AI could defend itself. If the C5 AI could do that, then sure, it can be aggressive and plant cities right in your face, providing it could hold them.

Speaking of buying tiles, have you noticed that after a while you can't buy them in a certain direction? It seems as if the game wants a more-or-less even circle around a city. I have tried to expand into an adjacent luxury tile from an already well-expanded city, and not been allowed to... but could have bought any number of sea tiles.

Can't buy tiles outside the third ring of the city perhaps?

[Gold Ergo Sum]

You can only buy a tile that your city can actually work I think. So you can only buy a tile 3-tiles away. You can earn tiles farther away by cultural expansion, but not by tile purchase. Or that has been my rough guess at the mechanics as I've seen them.

[ForeverAugust]

And then you run over the AI militarily because it sucks at 1UPT. As Sullla said, at least the C4 AI could defend itself. If the C5 AI could do that, then sure, it can be aggressive and plant cities right in your face, providing it could hold them.

This is similar to what happened to me. To clarify, it was my first ever game. I was playing a standard map. I started on the western coast of an island. Alexander started on the eastern coast. In between were several city states, Japan, American and Egypt. On a real world map, i'd estimate the distance between Greece and myself at about 5,000 miles. I usually send scouts periodically to update my map. I sent one out, and there right on the eastern border of London (I was England of course) was Alexanders second city...completely unprotected. I wanted to make use of one of the new features and told him to stop making cities on my borders. He said somthing about "I am Alexander, the Great! Hurrah! I build where I want!" so of course I awlked on in and destroyed his undefended city. From that point on he never made another city for the whole game. Japan however were dotting cities all over the place without rhyme or reason, cities it couldn't possibly connect. What's up with that? Surely it's not intentional tactics...

I'm so frustrated I was so looking forwards to improved AI and diplomacy.

[Krill]

Oh, and I want the combat log back. If that isn't returned, then pitboss and PBEM will have taken a massive step backwards. And don;t anyone even dare say that PBEM is obsolete as an excuse - Pitboss needs it because you aren't always logged in there. nor is the Notification log ever enough. All I've ever seen is the lats battle (your pike has lost 4 strength to a spearman, which is a bit dumb when it ended turn on a forest at full health).

[Dantski]

Oh, and I want the combat log back

is it possible they left the civ4 coding in for that? It's the same with FFH until you fiddle with something or other

[Yazilliclick]

I think the log does show combat. There's only single round though I do believe. Units just do certain amount of damage and I think it shows how much damage they've done. Not sure if it shows health values and not sure how the calculations are worked.

*edit* Actually don't think combat is a roll of the dice deal anymore (could be wrong) which could be a good thing for competitive play as it eliminates randomness. Though could make it a bit less interesting as there wouldn't be the chance of a surprise upset

[shadyforce]

What is involved technically for a PBEM? Is it possible implement it via modding? Do we have access to the source code (and not just the XML)?

[Jowy]

Venturing back to some older discussion, I don't think there's anything wrong with the marime city state bonus. What *IS* broken is that AI's will not fight hard enough over the control of them. Let's take a hypothetical situation of multiplayer, in which two players both want to befriend a maritime city state for the food bonus. I acknowledge that there are different ways to befriend a city state, but the one that's not dependant on chance is gold. You'll always be able to gift gold to get the city state's favour. So one player gets the control, then the other one outbids him, then the first one outbids again and so on, as it makes sense as long as the gain is bigger than the loss. But at some point it won't make sense to bid any more, and the "price" for gaining the food bonus is set at balance with the actual bonus.

[Krill]

Good luck teaching the AI that game theory...

I think the log does show combat. There's only single round though I do believe. Units just do certain amount of damage and I think it shows how much damage they've done. Not sure if it shows health values and not sure how the calculations are worked.

*edit* Actually don't think combat is a roll of the dice deal anymore (could be wrong) which could be a good thing for competitive play as it eliminates randomness. Though could make it a bit less interesting as there wouldn't be the chance of a surprise upset

It doesn't show all of the battles/bombards that take place during the turn, only that you lost units.

[Tatan]

Disclaimer: I have not actually purchased Civ 5 yet, but thought I still might be able to contribute something [mostly] intelligent to the conversation.

And then you run over the AI militarily because it sucks at 1UPT. As Sullla said, at least the C4 AI could defend itself. If the C5 AI could do that, then sure, it can be aggressive and plant cities right in your face, providing it could hold them.

I think that a major reason that the Civ 5 AI is incompetent while defending itself is that the AI defensive strategies possible in Civ 4 were obsoleted by 1UPT. From what I have observed in Civ 4, the AI seems to follow a two-pronged defensive strategy:
-Load up every city with a mini-stack of units.
-Gather any left-over units into one big stack and hurl them at the nearest enemy units.

The Civ 4 AI didn't really defend itself, as much as make it more difficult to be conquered.

Now, obviously, the old strategies simply aren't possible in Civ 5. Still, a number of things might solve or at least lessen the problem:
-Make the AI train a "garrison unit" for each city, that always hangs in or around its city, regardless of the state of war or peace.
-Give the AI a max number of scouting units, depending on the era and map size, so that you don't have the majority of the AI's army off in the wilderness while you conquer their cities.
-Make the AI keep a "reserve force" of units, which it can rush off to any place being attacked.

Now, as I mentioned, I have not actually purchased the game; however, from what I have read in other peoples' reports, the AI often seems to have just 2-3 units defending for their entire empire, which just can not be right.

Even if it means giving huge production bonuses to the AIs on higher difficulties, I think there needs to be some way to get the AI to have more units available for defense. I would rather win [or even lose!] against a substantial AI army, then have my 3-4 guys roll over an entire empire.

Thoughts?