Sid Meier's Civilization

[Computer God Autism]

So, on AI in Civ.

It seems to me like for the last 30 years the biggest problem with Civ (or any game) is the AI. Will it ever be fixed? What do you guys think the real issue is?

Civ becoming less of a computer game.

Honestly, I don't usually mind poor ai in strategy games as long as it isn't incapable of actually using the tools available to it. If it has multi I can play with someone else, if there's modding support then I can get better ai mods, worst case scenario I can just have a relaxing game of civ-building without feeling the need to be hypercompetive.

But Civ moving to try to be more like a boardgame since V has been bad. Yeah, hexes have some advantages over squares, but I get the feeling the shift was made as much to appeal to the emerging Eurogaming crowd as it was because of the mechanical possibilities it offered (and the ease of not having to worry about diagonal movement in code), and plopping wonders down on their own tile is straight out of Catan (this makes sense for some wonders, not every). Similarly, the increasing reliance on third-party software and lack of modding support kills the potential of what could be done with Civ. VII having hard resets on age changes is the latest in this; clearing out wars and units on an age change is something you'd see in a board game between sessions or after certain phases to, but makes no sense in a computer game. One of the greatest advantage of having a computer game is that it is capable of simulating things at greater depths and complexity than a board game, intentionally making the design shallow is suicidal.

 

[Jesus Swept]

I couldn't get the nVidia overlay to show up on the recording, but the game runs at ~40fps (with drops) with GPU at 99% and graphics set to minimum.

~40 leaders, 1/3 are female


Oh no


Yeah but where's the link to her Tumblr?


"Believed" to have led an army, "possibly" losing an eye...


How many armies did she command?


Yo Alex, I'm happy for you, and imma let you finish, but Sappho wrote one of the best poems of all time!


>be woman
>agitate
>get arrested

 

[Jesus Swept]

So, on AI in Civ.

It seems to me like for the last 30 years the biggest problem with Civ (or any game) is the AI. Will it ever be fixed? What do you guys think the real issue is?

Civ games are easy for humans and hard for computers. The types of decisions and volume of information you have to take in and respond to is beyond Firaxis' understanding (but not beyond unemployed civ modders).

Making AI better by allowing them to cheat and handicapping the player is gay because it encourages cancerous meta gameplay and exploitation of in game systems and exploiting the AI's weaknesses.

The only good solution is duplicating human minds and imprisoning them in silicon, forcing them to play Civilization VII for 6,000 millennia. I'm not sure about the ethics but I'm pretty certain it's legal.

 

[IsaACKRepentance]

Still trying to figure out how to war in Civ 4, mainly taking cities. I can tell the strat is to send out lots of siege units and use the bombard feature to reduce the citys defense to 0. But I still get hardwalled by all the units while I try to take over the city.. are their any units that are good for the attacking after youre done bombarding the city?

I feel like I'm missing something incredibly obvious and I'm just a retard but I really cant take any cities for the life of me.

 

[Computer God Autism]

Still trying to figure out how to war in Civ 4, mainly taking cities. I can tell the strat is to send out lots of siege units and use the bombard feature to reduce the citys defense to 0. But I still get hardwalled by all the units while I try to take over the city.. are their any units that are good for the attacking after youre done bombarding the city?

I feel like I'm missing something incredibly obvious and I'm just a retard but I really cant take any cities for the life of me.

Depends on the age you're in and the mod, but the biggest is you'll want to give some units the city raider promotion and have some with the medic promotion in your stack.

 

[Kane Lives]

Still trying to figure out how to war in Civ 4, mainly taking cities. I can tell the strat is to send out lots of siege units and use the bombard feature to reduce the citys defense to 0. But I still get hardwalled by all the units while I try to take over the city.. are their any units that are good for the attacking after youre done bombarding the city?

I feel like I'm missing something incredibly obvious and I'm just a retard but I really cant take any cities for the life of me.

Collateral damage is your friend. Once you bombard the defenses down to an acceptable level (doesn't need to be zero), suicide your siege units into the city stack. Even if the siege unit dies, every unit (up to a limit) in that stack will take damage from the attack. Do this enough times and even the biggest doomstacks will be food for your city raider units. Collateral damage is the answer to doomstacks in IV, and why siege units are premium units there.

 

[I Know 孤独のせい]

Making AI better by allowing them to cheat and handicapping the player is gay because it encourages cancerous meta gameplay and exploitation of in game systems and exploiting the AI's weaknesses.

This band-aid solution unfortunately is prevalent everywhere, especially in strategy games. Cant think of any developer these past decades who actually tried to improve or develop an AI that is capable of playing the game it's part of. It's just cheats and ignoring game systems that only the player has to deal with.

 

[Jesus Swept]

Spoiler: more ara autism

21 FPS, 99% GPU, 77% CPU, staring at a field. This game might run worse than Borderlands 4.



My war on Belgium ended the same turn I successfully sieged his capital. I have to wait 19 turns to try again even though his capital is literally on fire.


When you start a religion you get to pick which kind of religious building you want from 5 or 6 options. The Sacred Temple comes with +25 culture and has the cheapest requirements by far.

The other buildings are identical except they don't give any culture, and they require weird materials like concrete and stained glass in large numbers; things you won't be able to produce for a while.

End of Act 1 summary. The one civ to get culled was the one I personally destroyed already. I have over 1,000 prestige more than the next highest guy, and 50% more production, and I'm several eras ahead. I could wage war on the entire world at this point and the game is trying to drag itself out.


>minor spelling error
it's over

As far as balance goes in the v2 update, it seems like they arbitrarily changed a bunch of shit around without really thinking about it. The old civs were boring as fuck and had no character or interesting bonuses, now they're somehow even worse. They automated 90% of the crafting systems so you don't have to engage with it at all, but the crafting was the only part of the game that was actually unique. Now it's just really shit Civ that won't run on a laptop.

 

[Slap47]

Here is a list of woman leaders you could add to the game that would be less retarded.

1) Corazon Aquino. After the murder of her husband she took up the cause of overthrowing the dictator Ferdinand Marcos and became the first woman president of the Philippines. She passed several democratic reforms, but was notoriously corrupt and unwilling to do any land reform. Despite this she is revered as the "Mother of Democracy" for the country. Perhaps you could get a free government change and plantation bonus - I dunno, I don't know how this game works and never will.

2) Eleanor Roosevelt. She was FDR's partner in crime and worked alongside him to pass several reforms. She played a key role in the United Nations. Could probably reward a diplo playstyle

3) Janet Ragan. A white Jewish woman became the president of Guyana and actually did a really good job. Tall isolationist/peaceful happiness playstyle.

4) Indira Gandhi. She was uncompromising and brutal in her mission to make India more centralized and militarized. She was the one that pushed for India to have nukes and embrace the green revolution so you can make her the tall nuke meme faction without it being forced.

5) Margaret Thatcher. Its not a civ game if some crazy British lady isn't randomly declaring war on you.

So, on AI in Civ.

It seems to me like for the last 30 years the biggest problem with Civ (or any game) is the AI. Will it ever be fixed? What do you guys think the real issue is?

I do not really see a problem with the AI in Civ and I feel like most people are fine with the current system of using every trick in the book to beat an opponent that simply has more of everything,

 

[LowlyPheasent]

I do not really see a problem with the AI in Civ and I feel like most people are fine with the current system of using every trick in the book to beat an opponent that simply has more of everything,

The problem with it is it gets stale and predictable, and not something you can diplo with well. In turnbased games I play with people anytime the AI gets involved it's just annoying. People are dynamic and you can do more with them, the AI is formulaic and dumb ai operates on a separate set of rules. Predictable AI can be bad because it's just about exploiting particular quirks every time.

 

[Rome's rightful successor]

It's been almost 9 years since the last Civ game and yet let's check out how one of the many knock offs doing today.....

...Oh lol.

 

[Smashed & Slamed]

It's been almost 9 years since the last Civ game and yet let's check out how one of the many knock offs doing today.....
View attachment 8011159
...Oh lol.

Honestly some neat concepts. The game was just a bit cheap feeling and like all civ games past 2 suffered from AI too dumb to use the mechanics. Gonna give it another try. Might give a recap.

 

[Jesus Swept]

Millennia is at least worth a few plays to see some of the weird alternate ages, and to try out the different national spirits. Don't give Paradox any money though.

Edit: Hmmmm, why would closed borders boost happiness...

 

[Shining Wit]

I do not really see a problem with the AI in Civ and I feel like most people are fine with the current system of using every trick in the book to beat an opponent that simply has more of everything,

I don't mind the enemy having the advantage to begin, but that benefits them only so long, their retardation just means its an Ancient era barrier

I really dont think its too hard to make the AI notice things like needing more soldiers and cancelling building a wonder to reinforce its army, but the AI never seems capable of doing this

 

[Fig Kommandant]

let's check out how one of the many knock offs doing today.....

On a final note for the game: I hate how they chose a medieval crown on a skull with the name Millenia. They obviously were inspired by Shelley's Ozymandias. Pop-history nerds are their core audience and they fail to appeal to them. I can understand Halo trying to appeal to CoD players, but why civ games have continued to try to appeal to non-nerds is beyond me.

 

[Computer God Autism]

They obviously were inspired by Shelley's Ozymandias. Pop-history nerds are their core audience and they fail to appeal to them.

What about Ozymandias makes it specifically pop-history?

 

[Lemmingwiser]

Edit: Hmmmm, why would closed borders boost happiness...

It's what the typical left moderate approach is in these games. You have the same in old world. Because of the nature of these games, it doesn't make sense to have choices that do nothing or are purely negative, so the positive effects of things like that are always played as a bread and circusses appease the peasants or oligarchs thing and never as giving more security, order, or long term growth. It's the smallest of olive branches.

In old world you could have had an interesting duality between being monotheistic vs plurality of religion. The subtle bonus for monotheistic is that you only have to deal with one religion, which means you can convert each of the oligarchical families to that religion and then as long as you keep the leader of that religion happy you have a huge relationship bonus towards all characters in your court.

But it doesn't even come close to the massive bonuses you get from multiple religions and having tolerance civic. Just almost infinite happiness (just like having multiple religions in the real world) Not only that, but it allows you to build the religious improvements of each religion.

You'd think that a city could build 2 zoroastran temples, but you're limited to 1 per religion per city. So somehow having 1 temple of each of 4 religions gives you four times the bonus. When if you think about it, it's just people being split in schisms and going to a different building to do the same thing. It would be less productive, less efficient.

 

[Racial Slurs the Movie]

C2C just looks so sick.

Hope you enjoy playing for three in game days despite winning in the first 4 hours cuz you can't reach the last enemy through deep desert.

 

[Polyboros2]

Picked up Old World when it was on sale for $4. I like adding the Crusader King Nobility to a civ style empire construction.(I could never get into CK because of its map game status.) However I found it extremely shallow, once I get to a certain point the city development is very dull and repetitive. Not as bad as Humankind's meta of your city being two halfs each the same tile improvement, but after I have my initial setting done, it seems to become a war and family management sim.

Civ 7 I find to still be much more engaging.

Civ IV is awesome. The full compliment of expansions is the most complete version if Civ. As for mods, Caveman 2 Cosmos is one of the most hopelessly autistic mods ever. It's great!

As for Civ VII... did they fix it yet?

It's definitely better. The issue with Civ 7 wasn't that it was broken. It just wasn't finished, they charged $70 for a game that should of been labeled early access. Nothing was play tested beyond it being functional, the UI was obviously not even looked at closely before release, the AI was worse than usual, clearly Cultures were cut and made into DLC. I have my suspicions that was 2k pushing for income after Midnight Suns flopped(great game though) and they were scared after Borderlands movie bombed and they had already sunk a ton of money into 4.

We just got the 1.2.5 update, and the game is in a much better place. Now that I've finally gotten around to finishing a full playthrough(more due to friends flaking off than the game itself) I have a greater appreciation to some of the elements.

Military Victory is better than it's ever been in the franchise history. Having to hunt down everyone's capital around the world has always been too tedious for me. In 7 you only need to take other settlements in Antiquity, New World ones with your religion in Exploration, and if other ideologies in Modern. To win in Modern you have to get the point victory from conquering and then develop the Hydrogen Bomb.

The legacy path system is unfinished, line everything in Civ 7, but I think it's a good fresh idea, like half to most of the new stuff in the game. The ages don't bother me as games tended to run in a few play sessions anyways, and I like the buffs you get rewarded with for doing well on legacies in the previous age.

There's a lot of other minor things, like combing civilization and city state into a shared and limited Influence resource, that I think have potential but are so half baked still that it's not worth going into detail yet.

Oh no

Oof, Firaxis has been pretty pozzer with their choices, but that's even worse than Harriett Tubman(who ironically in game constantly tries to steal your technologies instead of researching them herself). At least most people have heard of Tubman.

Fun thing to do, read Firaxis' summary of Female leaders and then their actual history. Even on Wikipedia if you have a little bit of critical thinking you can see through what they say that did and the actual historical events. For example they gave Tubman a Militaristic Role because she "Lead an armed assault that freed a group of slaves from the Confederacy" and even Wikipedia states she wasn't at all involved with the assault, planning, or leadership and just snuck in before hand to speak to the slaves because she was the only one that spoke their Creole.

 

[Scale Smerch]

It's been almost 9 years since the last Civ game and yet let's check out how one of the many knock offs doing today.....
View attachment 8011159
...Oh lol.

Doubly hilarious too when Humankind is still trucking along with updates (and upcoming DLC rumours):