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T-hawk Wrote:Well, except that that's realistic. The US can leave its northern border undefended since it knows that Canada is friendly and will never declare war. Hah, so you think! Don't say I didn't warn you when in a couple of turns Canada sneak-attacks you (and bribes the Dutch and South Africa into a phony war against you, too)! :neenernee
Okay, I agree that it's realistic (at least for modern times, don't know how it's been in the past). But as I said, I think Firaxis tries to model the AI to play like a human would play a strategy game, and not necessarily to model a world with realistical diplomatic relations between nation states. At least that's the impression I get.
Quote:Anyway, let's all turn the hype machine down a few notches, and see what is actually in the game before we go condemning or worshiping it.
Yep, as I said: I reserve my judgement until the actual game is published. But speculating about upcoming games and arguing game mechanics pleases the geek in me. 
-Kylearan
There are two kinds of fools. One says, "This is old, and therefore good." And one says, "This is new, and therefore better." - John Brunner, The Shockwave Rider
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After seeing a handful of previews, the interest I had in Civ5 was totally destroyed. The more I hear about it, the more I figure I'll probably just pass on Civ5. Nothing they've told us sounds interesting or even good to me. Besides, I'm content with Civ4 at the moment, which really is a testament to how good of a game it was.
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T-hawk Wrote:Well, except that that's realistic. The US can leave its northern border undefended since it knows that Canada is friendly and will never declare war.
I think here is a mixing of reality with game again. A human opponent in the Game might attack you if you expose your border no matter how friendly you were. So why should an AI not do that?
Why should the AI act like a real-world-politician and not like a player?
After all Civ is a Game and not a simulation. I see it positive if it becomes harder to calculate what the AI will do as long as one can still have some clue how they react.
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scooter Wrote:After seeing a handful of previews, the interest I had in Civ5 was totally destroyed. The more I hear about it, the more I figure I'll probably just pass on Civ5. Nothing they've told us sounds interesting or even good to me. Besides, I'm content with Civ4 at the moment, which really is a testament to how good of a game it was.
Uhm BTS in its current incarnation is quite good (exept the absolutly broken spy-system and some other things ). To avoid the spies I have recently started the one or othere Orig Civ4 game and I was surprised what claring inbalances and stupid AI it contained. OTOH I still remeber how happy we were with it when it released. So I wont pass on Civ5 but will try it and judge it once I have experienced it.
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It looks to me like the problem isn't whether you can see the +/- modifiers (since as has already been mentioned you can use a reference sheet), but whether AI diplomacy is completely predictable from the information the player has.
From reading the posts above, (I haven't seen the original interview), Civ 5 will do away with visible +/- modifiers. If that's all that's changed, apart from some of the values, then the system is no better than Civ 4's diplomacy.
What could they do to prevent such obviously deterministic AI relations? I can see two options. The weights of individual +/- modifiers could change from game to game; this would suggest hiding the modifiers from the player, so that reliable diplomatic decisions could only be made after quite some time dealing with that particular AI. The other is that the AI could lie to you sometimes. e.g. Monty says he is Friendly, but really is only Cautious because you have a city on land he particularly covets. This seems a little less fair, but can still be managed by good intelligence.
April 28th, 2010, 23:01
(This post was last modified: May 1st, 2010, 19:13 by MJW (ya that one).)
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News:
1. Some new articles on CFC added three new things:
a) Roads will effectivly cost a fee to use. That's one way to solve the mindless road spam problem (if it is one!). This methond is a bit too "brute-force" for me. But it will solve the problem  .
b) Units will upgrade right away when you get the tech. The article may just be poorly written though.  For some reason I think Sullla would hate that change.
c) There is now a civ "tech-tree" so you can customize your civilaztion. For example there is a branch on it called "traditional". The branchs are not linked at all so you can go as deep as you want.
2. They have switched from "heavywieght" Python to the "lightwieght" Lua (wikipedia!). I'm not good enough to know if this is good or bad.
Someone has made a "flame" thread on the changes made to the AI in order to not clog the new CFC articles. I think the "core" of the changes to the AI is now it will try and win. For example, they would have to add so many hidden diplo modifers that the same "+&-" would be very hard to use. Maybe they replaced it with something else that would not suffer from this problem. 
Maybe Jon, like I do, hopes his infuence on Civ series is not too "destructive". At least he is not trying to please everyone and tried to make a good game.
Edit: Science and gold will now be different things-- no slider!
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I hope Firaxis is smart enough to make an option for AI: Multiplayer AI or Singleplayer AI. MP acts as if it was another player, plays to win. SP acts as if it was a country.
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An article about Civ 5 Interesting bits:
One of the big changes is that the A.I. leaders all have an agenda. They all have a plan," Shafer says. "They're thinking about the situation. They're evaluating players, determining if they're going to be friends or foes or deal with those they've marked as enemies.
City-states only have one city, but their borders can grow. Generally, they mind their own business, though Shafer says a group can band together and fight an aggressive warmonger.
You have certain major players that are pledging to protect minor players, and you don't know if you attack them if they're going to respond with force." This air of uncertainty is something that can often be missing for an experienced Civilization player. Certainly every version of the franchise has an element of randomness, but rarely is there much true diplomatic mystery. Civ V hopes to bring that mystery in.
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At least, that diplomatic mystery should be good for storytelling.
mh
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i can almost hear the first person souting about how they got done out of winning the game by some shady AI diplomatic modifiers already.
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