I havn't the faintest clue whats going on here.
I'm playing the germans and currently at war with persia, admittedly the largest civ in the game i'm playing. We recently met to discuss peace and I noticed he's suffering -5000 gold per turn and has 0 in his coffers. However, when I get a glimpse of the land on his mainland every single hex has a unit of some kind in it. Is this meant to be possible?
the AI blatantly cheats. I don't think it pays any maintenance on units. If you look at their happiness its probably something like +40... there are various other ways it cheats as well. When i turned a mod on the other day that shows a single player scoreboard i learned that on emperor level, after just 2 turns every single AI will have at least 22 points, while i have 10. I know for a fact now they are getting free techs and other bonuses that people have denied for months. Just more ways to mask how horrible the AI really is.... which is a serious competitor for worst AI in the history of gaming.
At high difficulty, among other things, the AI gets free techs at the start of the game. This is right there in the XML, and not concealed, IIRC.
The in-game tool-tip for King and higher difficulties even mentions that the AI gets bonuses. While I'd prefer smarter play over arbitrary bonuses, I still know what I'd be up against.
There's another revelation though, that regardless of difficulty the AI gets a Chieftan-level happiness bonus. (While I haven't crunched the numbers, this would make sense to me as the AI always seems to have high happiness, even on Prince which is supposed to be the "no one has any bonuses over anyone else" setting.)
Part of the problem is that the game mechanics themselves are unbalanced in favor of rampant, unchecked expansion and production of an overwhelming number of military units.
Removing the +2 gold and research from cities MAY help, but its really just a band-aid fix. What this game really needs is some form of declining return for building too many cities (thus simulating the difficulties and increased cost of maintaining a larger infastructure and education of a large, but spread-out population). You should start the game with 100% multiplier to your gold and science. Each city you build should reduce this number by some small value. This way, each new city may provide extra raw science and gold, but it will decrease the productiveness of ALL OF YOUR CITIES. Some buildings (like Courthouses and certain wonders) and Social Policies should reduce this effect (but NEVER remove it completely). Essentially, every player in the game needs to reach a point where vertical expansion (increasing population and productiveness of existing cities) is more profitable than horizontal expansion (building more cities).
I've played single player games and followed a strategy similar to the AI: build butt-tons of cities and military units early, then conquer the map, razing any non-capital cities and pillaging all improvements in enemy territory while mostly ignoring your own happiness. The increased tech speed gives you access to better units, and the vast amounts of gold you get from owning lots of cities (and pillaging, capturing) allows you to upgrade these units whenever a new one is available. This strategy is particularly viable as Greece, since the decreased decline of relations with City-States allows you to befriend every City-State on the map and gain all the food and culture you need from them while you focus exclusively on killing the other Civs. Its almost laughable how outrageously easy it is to win with such a strategy, but its not very fun to play, as the poor tactical AI makes the game just a tedius series of declaring war, moving to a city, bombarding the city, capturing the city, heal your units, move to next city, repeat.
The AI is actually playing a very close to optimum strategy for winning the game (with military victory), except that their tactics suck.
all we really need is a better AI, less demanding graphics engine (read: buggy), fix all the handicap bonuses, and add city maintenance done exactly like civ4. That would make this game about 1000x better. probably some other nitpick adjustments as well obviously, but those are my main concerns.
oh and I'd agree with Bearsfan, the strategic AI isn't that bad, its really the tactical AI. At least considering they aren't playing by the same rules, massive expansion is the best way for them, but its not always fun to spawl crappy cities all over the map, or even see the AI do it.
The upcoming patch increases the minimum distance between cities from 2 to 3 hexes, and that basically cuts the number of cities you can fit in the same amount of land in half.Originally Posted by MegaBearsFan
I don't think there should be a declining return for more cities. What was off however is that the return on founding new cities was significantly higher than improving your existing cities. That cities and terrain will now have lower base values, but buildings and improvements will have higher returns should move that balance towards improving existing cities. And of course settlers get more expensive as well.
I think another problem leading to ICS is the fact that there are a lot of ways to mitigate the unhappiness from number of cities, but almost none for population. Admittedly I play on Settler (always an adjustment period transitioning to a new Civ game...), but my unhappiness from number of cities is almost always under 1, while my unhappiness from population is usually between 4 and 6. From a very simple logical perspective, having a billion tiny cities will easily be better than having a handful of massive cities in the eyes of that simple logic (even if you will never get a new Policy, and if you form trade routes across that massive distance you will have really high maintenance fees). It would seem that the AI is using that kind of simple logic to me.
Raising the minimum city distance will help though. When I play in mod mode, one of the ones I use already does this. The AI still sprawls, but there are a lot fewer cities in that sprawl.
what do you mean mitigate the unhappiness from # of cities OR population? Its both. Both contribute to unhappiness, but both are solved in the same stroke, you don't mitigate them separately (save the forbidden palace). The AI ICS has more to do with the fact that it does not have to deal with unhappiness (it gets ludicrous happiness bonuses), it does not pay unit maintenance (so more gold to spend on infrastructure). In terms of happiness I agree a billion tiny cities would be better than a handful of massive ones, but not for the same reasons. It would only be better because you could grab more resources to counter the unhappiness, and also you would be able to build more coliseums. Other than those two factors, it would actually be worse, but those are huge factors in terms of gaining more happiness than you're gaining unhappiness (from population growth or more cities, doesn't matter).
The late game economy is completely broken with inflation increasing so fast that you're constantly forced to disband units and buildings just to keep solvent.
Firstly: why?
Secondly: this point is reached when the map is full of cities.
Having vast numbers of cities would be a huge problem if the AI had any sort of tactical acumen. They would be impossible to defend.
ICS by the AI in itself isn't a problem. The real problem comes from the lack of Happiness and Maintenance constraints the AI has. If Happiness was a factor and AIs were running ICS they would be constantly under -20. That's a 'We Win' button.
Which brings us back to the 'intelligence' of the Artificial Intelligence. If the Happiness and Maintenance bonuses were reduced to make them still relevant, then perhaps the ICS would be less prevalent and a challenging game could be played. Except the AI isn't smart enough for that.
Not true. When you mouse over your Happiness, it shows how much of both Happiness and Unhappiness your empire is generating, itemized by source. Unhappyness is broken into 2 different forms, from population, and from number of cities. Also notice that in the Tradition Branch, Legalism reduces the unhappiness from population by 33%. In the Piety tree, Theocracy can reduce it by another 20%. Meanwhile, the Forbidden Palace reduces the unhappiness from number of cities by 50%.
After looking up the specifics, I had it wrong. But I still find an issue with it. You can reduce the unhappiness from number of cities by 50%, but from population only by 23%. Add that 50% back to Unhappiness from number of cities, and it's something like 1.4ish at 4 or 5 cities. Assuming a 5 for unhappiness from population, adding back the 23% gives 6.5ish. Without mitigating any unhappiness at all, 4 cities with populations between 15 and 20 has 4.6 times more unhappiness from population than from number of cities.
How is that not an incentive to have lots of small ones over a few large ones? It's probably not the defining point of the AI's decision, but it's still a factor.
[EDIT]And it's showing that it's 2:30 in the morning, cause I fail at maths (33%+20+=23%??? >.<) So it's 50% for number of cities, and 53% for population. Meaning that without mitigations, at 4 cities with populations between 15 and 20, number of cities gives you 1.4 unhappiness and population gives you 10.6 unhappiness, which is 7.6 times more from population than from number of cities.[/EDIT]
Ideally, any game designer for a large scale game wishes for a number of different strategies to be viable, allowing players to achieve the goal of the game in a number of different ways instead of a list of steps to be repeated over and over.
That's where it is in Civ5 as it is now. But that's probably not where the design team wants it, and it's certainly not where I want it. However, I don't think BearsFan meant that there would be only 1 such place -- there should be multiple points along the "curve" between spreading and consolidating that are ideal zones that are to be desired for. In that scenario, you choose the one that you find most appealing to you personally, rather than what we have now of "must have maximum number of cities nao!!!".
Pretty sure everyone has agreed that it is unfun, which, since the goal of any game is to have fun, is most likely a problem.
Agreed. This would be the first step to de-incentivizing it to the AI -- alter the system so that it is no longer hands down the most efficient way of doing things from a mathematical standpoint (AI's think with math).
We'll just have to wait and see to make that determination. I think you might just be surprised, assuming the development team ever attacks the issue.
Last edited by PhailRaptor; 02-25-2011 at 02:40 AM.
The problem is probably that incentives aren't that useful against the AI; it doesn't accurately weigh up the actual pros and cons of every technique - it uses manually-coded weights for things. It does assess territory by its production potential, but it does so with human-coded weights for different factors (and what seems to be a very odd algorithm).
If you alter various factors so ICS doesn't work, the AI will still do it. This is probably why it's given chieftain-level happiness bonuses.
ok PhailRaptor, i see that you are talking about reducing it with policies and such. I didn't mention that, but your right. I guess I never really try to reduce my unhappiness, only increase happiness. Legalism doesn't reduce it 33% globally anyways, only in the capitol. To me, going for policies such as that are really a waste. Your better off founding a new city on a luxury resource and building a coliseum, and using policies on stuff that are honestly much better. You can have massive sprawling empires and never take a single policy that reduces unhappiness and still have +40 happiness if you do it right.
Reducing unhappiness and increasing happiness are not mutually exclusive......
Depends on the location of your capital and the civ you're playing. Some capital sites have a lot of river and resources and it can be worth it to work all those tiles. In the upcoming patch the capital unhappiness reduction goes up to 50%, although it moves to a policy later in the branch.
Well, if there is one you don't have already. I've seen quite a few games where there were only 3, maybe 4 different luxuries within a reasonable distance.
yes, I'm aware, thanks. That was kinda the whole point. All I was saying is from a strategic perspective most of those policies are utterly pointless if you expand and build correctly. You said you play on settler, I usually play emperor or immortal on huge maps with 15+ civs. I know the happiness doesn't change, but other factors are involved and playing on higher settings you need to expand towards luxury resources ect., so you don't have to waste policies on things like that and instead you can use it to fuel military or economic growth.
I care to differ. I've been at war with the AI and noticed that they had -25% or -33% for being unhappy or not having enough of the resource. I've seen the happiness and the resource each.
Last edited by Machturbo; 02-26-2011 at 03:52 AM.
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