Bad AI is not likely to be fixed

[ColdPhoenix]

What? I would have kept them for myself.

I did that last night but was disappointed to find that the settler then turned into a worker...

[MxM]

I am 100% sure that AI will be greatly improved, what I do not know if this greatly improved AI will be done before expansion.

From another side, the game is more difficult than Civ IV in terms of decision making having consequences that happens far in future (city placement is one example, it is more important than in Civ IV and with greater consequences for the end game. Tactical battles is another example. The complexity of it is equivalent to complexity of checkers). So I do think it is more difficult to write good AI, and actually I am quite impressed what is there already, not in terms of game-play, but in terms of AI programming.

[pauli]

now LOOK. the ai we got was good enough for civ2, and dammit, it's good enough for civ5!

[Modo44]

Why? just check history.

Yeah, especially the AI mods for Civ 4 were total crap. Oh, wait...

[Heraclitus]

Why? just check history. And I don't mean just civ's. Games with bad AI never got their AI fixed substantially. MoO series, MoM, SMAC and TW series to name a few, all had bad AI. Fixes and unofficial patches/mods always came out and dealt with the most urgent matters, yet the AI always remains on the same general stupidity level. It's really hard to write a decent AI to games, and it's even harder fixing it and raising its level from "bad" to even "barely good".
It's history folks, and it's hard to argue with that.

And it also makes me quite sad. I love Civ and I kinda like this game, despite all the issues.

You do realize that Civ4's AI was significantly improved via patches, since they included improvements from the better AI mod right?

[Heraclitus]

The AI has always been ****ing retarded. It's not nearly the worst aspect of this game.

NO WORLDBUILDER HOW DO I GIVE MYSELF CARRIERS?

I AGREE THIS IS A TRAVESTY

[Adagio]

Creating an AI for a game like Civ is very difficult. I sure hope we'll get a better AI sooner or later (maybe someone will make a better AI mod?)... but there's one thing about the AI that I really hate: The worker AI... The AI keeps on changing tile improvements. 30 turns ago I had a city with farms as far as the eyes could see. Now there's not a single farm left, while there's those trade improvements all over... and what is the AI doing now? Removing all those trade improvements to make them into farms... while there are still some tiles around the map that has not been built on yet
Until this has been fixed, automating the workers is a big NO NO

[Ming]

Automated workers in Civ IV sucked as well

[MxM]

Creating an AI for a game like Civ is very difficult. I sure hope we'll get a better AI sooner or later (maybe someone will make a better AI mod?)... but there's one thing about the AI that I really hate: The worker AI... The AI keeps on changing tile improvements. 30 turns ago I had a city with farms as far as the eyes could see. Now there's not a single farm left, while there's those trade improvements all over... and what is the AI doing now? Removing all those trade improvements to make them into farms... while there are still some tiles around the map that has not been built on yet
Until this has been fixed, automating the workers is a big NO NO

Did you see any correlation of what workers are doing with your happiness/gold income? Because if you have high happiness and good gold income it make sense to put farms. If you income is negative and/or your happiness is around 0 or less, then it is better to put trade posts. I have observed this behaviour myself, but I thought "wow, AI is that smart that it evaluates my needs first and replaces the improvement according to that"!! If you do not like replacement of improvements, just select it in the options, but I do suspect it will be less than optimal.

[Dactyl]

There's one simple thing they could do that would slow down early rushes by human players. Right now you can wreak havoc on the AI civs with three or four horsemen and a great general. It doesn't even matter if the city you're attacking has walls. It'll just take a turn longer to conquer the city. Why not make it virtually impossible to take a city without siege equipment? That would slow down rushes because the catapults or trebuchets wouldn't be able to keep up with the mounted units. It would also make city walls a meaningful defensive upgrade.

[dregor]

There's one simple thing they could do that would slow down early rushes by human players. Right now you can wreak havoc on the AI civs with three or four horsemen and a great general. It doesn't even matter if the city you're attacking has walls. It'll just take a turn longer to conquer the city. Why not make it virtually impossible to take a city without siege equipment? That would slow down rushes because the catapults or trebuchets wouldn't be able to keep up with the mounted units. It would also make city walls a meaningful defensive upgrade.

They would then have to make catapults and trebuchets not require Iron, which they currently do. And honestly, it's a band-aid fix and doesn't address the problem.

[Tyrathect]

You do realize that Civ4's AI was significantly improved via patches, since they included improvements from the better AI mod right?

Nope. Civ4 BTS AI with latest patch still sucks.

[ColdPhoenix]

Nope. Civ4 BTS AI with latest patch still sucks.

It wasn't perfect but most people agree it was decent as far as AI for a pretty complex game goes. Would you like to expand on what you think was wrong with it?

[Tyrathect]

It wasn't perfect but most people agree it was decent as far as AI for a pretty complex game goes. Would you like to expand on what you think was wrong with it?

I agree it was decent in comparison to other 4X titles. Still quite dumb though, and I don't think the BTS AI was a major improvement upon the original, only an incremental one.
What's wrong about it? I can give you some examples. It still can't conduct a successful marine invasion. It can't properly prioritize different fronts in warfare. It still builds a ****load amount of unnecessary naval units. It still tries to conquer the same border city wave-by-wave with too few siege units, instead of massing a single stack and steamroll you in a single attack. All you have to do is just have enough archers/longbowmen/infantry with defensive bonuses in one city and you're fixed for a massive XP farming. After he finishes throwing his entire army at you, all you have to do is just retaliate and conquer his cities one by one with ease.

[Zoetstofzoetje]

I just managed to tinker Civ5 into working on my computer yesterday. Not quite sure what the problem is, but my video card is not accepted. Through a trick with a USB video card I managed to get it up and running. The funny thing is that the USB video card (a displayport) actually uses the capabilities of my normal video card (ATI X1300) to run. Anyway.

I found the game to be quite fun in the early and mid-game. The new mechanics operate in the same way as I used to run my Civ4 games. I always turned off research trading, put the game on epic, and the loss of the slider means long-term planning is more important. At worst it decreases your flexibility.

On my continents map however, the AI's never built more than one extra city. The city-state system, while novel and potentially very interesting, is simplistic at present. What's worse, the AI had armies of warriors at a point where I had a prosperous 12 city empire. This is on King, mind you. Every now and then they would spawn better units (pikemen, horsemen), but never more than one.

Why did the AI never get around to building more than a second city? Why did they not upgrade or replace their warriors?

The key issue with Civ5 is definitely AI. I love this new combat system, it allows for all kinds of ingenious strategies. A smart player can use terrain and circumstance to their advantage. It's fabulous. But it's a bridge too far for the AI. Or two or three bridges.

This game should not have been released yet.