Civilization VI - Now available, so you can sink all your free time into it

[Dawkinsfan69]

I mean they change enough shit each game/xpac to keep things interesting... You could spend 20-40 hours on each installation having fun learning new mechanics and then playing a few games where you kind of understand what’s going on, and the AI will be challenging enough.

The AI is only really an issue once you’ve spent hundreds of hours mastering the game to the point where you can predict AI behavior, or you’ve read strategy guides on how to exploit AI/optimize builds like a little bitch thus ruining the game for yourself.

You don’t need to spend 5000 hours obsessing over a game to make it worth the purchase.

 

[Castozor]

I mean they change enough shit each game/xpac to keep things interesting... You could spend 20-40 hours on each installation having fun learning new mechanics and then playing a few games where you kind of understand what’s going on, and the AI will be challenging enough.

The AI is only really an issue once you’ve spent hundreds of hours mastering the game to the point where you can predict AI behavior, or you’ve read strategy guides on how to exploit AI/optimize builds like a little bitch thus ruining the game for yourself.

You don’t need to spend 5000 hours obsessing over a game to make it worth the purchase.

I'd agree but in the context of Civ 5 and presumably 6 too the AI is so hilariously inept at waging war with 1upt that it becomes apparent right in your first war. Unfortunately upping the difficulty doesn't make it any better either, they just have more stuff to pile up in choke points.

 

[Jimmious]

Yep exactly that. In Civ6 I only had issues from the initial barbarian rush on high difficulties. After that , even if you try to not be militaristic, the AIs simply can't wage war. You need 3-4 units and that's it.

 

[Raghar]

Mitä vittua

Did these three people who used tag bad spelling expect voi vittu?

 

[Wilian]

Mitä vittua

Did these three people who used tag bad spelling expect voi vittu?

I don't know but they must be uncultured swines for not appreciating the most cultured language and wording that has ever graced this planet.

 

[flyingjohn]

I mean they change enough shit each game/xpac to keep things interesting... You could spend 20-40 hours on each installation having fun learning new mechanics and then playing a few games where you kind of understand what’s going on, and the AI will be challenging enough.

The AI is only really an issue once you’ve spent hundreds of hours mastering the game to the point where you can predict AI behavior, or you’ve read strategy guides on how to exploit AI/optimize builds like a little bitch thus ruining the game for yourself.

You don’t need to spend 5000 hours obsessing over a game to make it worth the purchase.

The ai can't even win a game unless it is deity and it snowballs by eating up its neighbors on a far away continent.
Once you figure out that,then you figure you out you are just playing a badly designed imitation of simcity.
A 4x game needs enemies that are a threat else,it is not a game but click next turn simulator.

Oh and anybody saying older 4x ai was bad,well at least it could fight back and focus on targets.

Civ 6 ai dances around its target and it still can't move and shoot for fuck sake.

 

[Dzupakazul]

Bad AI has been the bane of strategy games forever and will remain so.

It always has been an issue, indeed, but the more the time passes and the more the developers add layers of "complexity" and small nuances in their games, inevitably the AI falls behind.
For example -IN THEORY- the single military unit per tile is an improvement to the simple blobs of the past... In practice though it adds a huge overhead to the AI which has to calculate positioning and all these stuff per unit and as a whole.... And obviously the developers will not try to make that actually work. So the AI definitely feels even worse now in Civ games regardless if it never was really good anyway

I agree. I generally feel like Civ4 had the most challenging AI mostly because the game had most of Civ3's exploits gone (Right-of-Passage abuse: park your stack outside the enemy's most important towns, declare war, conquer him in one turn; the AI overvaluing money in tech trades and getting ripped off royally; pop-booming with Republic/Democracy), vastly lowered down the amount of abuse savvy players could do with World Wonders (Wonders as a whole where brought down a peg where they were still very useful, but not absolute must builds that could royally wreck games by themselves; also you could no longer pre-build a World Wonder by building a different one and then switching to the one you desire once you get the tech, and there was no wonder cascading in general), and overall lowered the amount of stuff that really served only the player (sure, the AI in Civ4 isn't great at developing its cities, but the overflow mechanics and all sorts of ease-of-use things that the iteration brought over Civ3 made empires more managable in general) - one could even argue that the Protective trait's main purpose is to help the AI. Also Civ4 is the least bad at warfare thanks to Blake's AI that was so good it was patched into BtS by Firaxis.

So yeah, for sheer challenge, I think Civ4 got it right. Flaws of the AI aren't as apparent due to the mechanics, there are quite a few AIs who are competent at carving out an empire and riding that to a possible victory, there aren't as many gamebreaking tools given to the player, the Stack of Doom mechanic favors the high-production discounts the AI gets, and the amount of "cheating" the AI does is mostly limited to the production bonuses that you basically agree to the moment you advance to a difficulty past Noble. Compare that to Civ2, where the AI's planes never run out of fuel and AI Spies are capable of Inciting Revolt in your capital.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

i still remember my first war in civ6. this guy whose i was friend with declared war, then for countless turns i didn't even see a single unit of his, until he called me "please i can't take this anymore, don't hurt me, let's make peace".
people who made money from this deserve a fate worse than death.

 

[thesheeep]

i still remember my first war in civ6. this guy whose i was friend with declared war, then for countless turns i didn't even see a single unit of his, until he called me "please i can't take this anymore, don't hurt me, let's make peace".

Sounds like the AI became self-aware

 

[flyingjohn]

 

[cvv]

Some people claim they got used to the goofy, cartoony art style.

Me, the more I look at those stupid Disney faces the more angry I am.

 

[Emily]

Just fucking lol at AI not even being able to play the game. Like yeah all those features and what not and the game is not even playable.

Civ4 was the only real civ game in the end tbh. 5 was so horribly stupid that even on deity it didnt offer any challenge and.I havent even tried 6.

 

[Fedora Master]

Some people claim they got used to the goofy, cartoony art style.

Me, the more I look at those stupid Disney faces the more angry I am.

The map itself looks really good, especially with the dynamic lighting. The units also look fine and realistic. Some of the leaders are alright as well but they really started to shit the bed with these new ones.

Speaking of AI in strategy games: The AI in Dominions 5, while not super smart, manages to play the game just fine despite the mechanics being described as "the Dwarf Fortress of TBS games".

 

[flyingjohn]

Hm,is anybody else annoyed by how civ and most 4x games have no treaties system in diplomacy?
Imagine having a option to limit military production or making specific territories demilitarized zones,etc...
That would be especially useful for annoying ai that declare war on you all the time.And it could lead to war casus belli which would be somewhat interesting.

 

[thesheeep]

Hm,is anybody else annoyed by how civ and most 4x games have no treaties system in diplomacy?
Imagine having a option to limit military production or making specific territories demilitarized zones,etc...
That would be especially useful for annoying ai that declare war on you all the time.And it could lead to war casus belli which would be somewhat interesting.

I don't see that happening in something traditionally known to have a rather simplistic diplomacy like Civ.
In something like Europa Universalis, HoI, etc... maybe.

 

[Average Manatee]

i still remember my first war in civ6. this guy whose i was friend with declared war, then for countless turns i didn't even see a single unit of his, until he called me "please i can't take this anymore, don't hurt me, let's make peace".

Sounds like the AI became self-aware

Makes sense. AI couldn't take playing Civ 6 any longer, begged player to quit.

Hm,is anybody else annoyed by how civ and most 4x games have no treaties system in diplomacy?
Imagine having a option to limit military production or making specific territories demilitarized zones,etc...
That would be especially useful for annoying ai that declare war on you all the time.And it could lead to war casus belli which would be somewhat interesting.

Doubtful that anyone could come up with a formula to programmatically weight (and communicate to the player) the value of things like this so it wouldn't be open to abuse. Otherwise you have either: 1. A massively exploitable AI, B. An option that the AI never accepts, or C. An option that the AI rarely accepts that players find unpredictable and therefore rarely waste time looking for. Then if you do all that you get into issues of how do you correctly react to one side violating the agreement (e.g. do you forgive 1 military unit in the DMZ for 1 turn? What if the unit in the DMZ is next to your city with a dozen wonders? What if another enemy runs through the DMZ and you want to kill them?)

 

[Dawkinsfan69]

Yea you guys are right, the other civs can't really do war.. Guess I didn't notice because barbarians are so damn aggressive I just thought I was getting lucky with other civs, but they literally won't build units :/

That said, the city states build shittons of units and going to war with a civ that's friends with a city state can make things interesting..

Anyway I remember why I keep uninstalling civ games, because I start playing and check the clock and it's like 2 days later and I haven't done shit

 

[Space Satan]

Ai here is not threatening, CivIV AI is threatening. CivV AI is a joke, and have no ability to deal with 1UPT shit, and will lose any amont of units. CivVI AI is even worse than V

 

[Dawkinsfan69]

I remember CivV ai being a lot better. They would build units and declare war and then my city would IMMEDIATELY be surrounded by like a pretty large army

 

[thesheeep]

I remember CivV ai being a lot better. They would build units and declare war and then my city would IMMEDIATELY be surrounded by like a pretty large army

Yes... and that pretty large army would then continue to shuffle back and forth in the most inane manner, without really doing much.

 

[flyingjohn]

Wow civfanatics is something special:

Don't troll other members like that, just because people aren't botrhered about a Production Queue doesn't mean they have no Strategy!! --NobleZarkon

 

[coldcrow]

Civ4 was the apex of the series, it's dead now. Full Piranha Bytes cycle.

 

[Gerrard]

I just started playing C2C for the first time. Fucking sea of animals man

 

[Cael]

Civ4 with BTS is the last Civ ever. The rest that came after it is basically TB tower defence.

 

[Dzupakazul]

Thread made me roll a Random / Fractal ('the unpredictable map type') match of Civ4 on Emperor after a bit of a hiatus. Got Augustus and never put any Praetorians to use because of how much land there was to REX and my location wasn't too generous with Iron. Went for a 12 city Industrious core full of wonders until I got Tanks and threw them at the backwards Ethiopians who still had Longbowmen, and acquired some more towns, then full on Farmer's Gambitted to a lazy 1900 AD Space Race. Or it would be lazy but the last 20 turns had me constantly checking Mayan Cultural Victory progress (VERY close to a win) and the moment I launched, Sumeria decided to pay me a visit with the Modern Armor they've been building ever since they got Composites. AI still isn't too great at warfare (kept paradropping units randomly to mop up, never spearheaded for my capital in spite of it being the de facto Sumerian victory condition [though, well, Maya would have won if my ship got destroyed]), but abusing the production edge from difficulty and waltzing the stack around is something they're alright at. (Of course, had I actually been building an army instead of relying on a handful of veterans from The Tank-on-Knight War, I could probably vassalize everyone 10 times over)

Still, Civ4 is still a scary, scary game if you roll a Continents (especially isolated) start and one of the AIs (preferrably a "competent" one, with a strong militaristic/expansionist flavor to conquer and subdue their rivals but without going batshit insane and neglecting tech like Montezuma/Shaka does; Catherine the Great and Julius Caesar are usually quite fantastic at this) is given a runaway start with two weak AIs. Prodding with a tiny Caravel into a 20 city empire that's deep into Gunpowder tech is something that can happen even on Monarch.