What aspect of Civ should Firaxis most improve?

[Master Zen]

I have to say it: AI.

The AI is terrible, and has always been terrible in every Civ game, the only reason the harder difficulty levels are hard is because of the awsome handicaps and cheats they are allowed. I, for once, would like to see an AI capable at military strategy with good combined arms coordinations, launching of large naval and ground invasions etc. I would be quite willing to keep a simplified combat model if and only if the AI is drastically improved.

I have included other aspects of Civ to vote upon, but in case I forgot one, just post it.

-MZ

[Jonny]

I agree entirely. The AI is the most important part of strategy games like these (unless you play only MP), and Civ's AI needs some improvement. I'll take a better, more strategical AI over added complexity any day, and I'm sure a lot of other people would too.

I will add, though, that scenario editing capability was a close second choice for me in this poll. That's another area that needs some improvement over Civ3 as well.

[Skanky Burns]

What a pointless poll.
You do realise who is the lead developer for cIV, don't you?

[Vince278]

In order of preference:
1. AI
2. Economics
3. Techs
4. Editing
5. Cultural

The rest doesn't matter to me much (except for the banana ). If you have to choose between cute graphics, awesome sound, or a more robust AI please choose the AI always.

[Robert]

The cIIIv AI is one of the best AI's you'll find in any game available.
Do you have any idea how hard it is to program an AI for complex games like civilization?

I hate it that it needs to cheat, but there is no other option with the current computers.
For a simple game of chess IBM needed to create the huge big-blue computer that was able to beat the best chess-player. And that was most of all because big blue was filled with millions of former chess games so it could refer to those games for what to do.

That's impossible with civ, since civ is different every game.

The AI is good, and I surely hope that cIV will have an even better AI, but claiming that the cIIIv AI is worthless does no justice to Soren.

Go Soren, you're the man

Culture/Religion! That's the thing to focus on.

[Master Zen]

The Civ3 AI is a definite improvement over the Civ2 AI that I agree wholeheardtedly.

But it pales in comparison with other more complex games, particularly wargames.

[Robert]

There aren't many complex wargames that can compare to civ. Of course, simply war is simple enough. Take simple RTS games.

But civ is much more than war. The AI must chose between war, development, diplomacy, culture and economy. War is just a small part of the game.

[Vince278]

I hope I never implied the AI is worthless but I'm sure we all can agree there is room for improvement and it is one of the most important parts of the game.

[Robert]

Not you, but Master Zen did so:
"The AI is terrible"

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Master Zen
The Civ3 AI is a definite improvement over the Civ2 AI that I agree wholeheardtedly.

But it pales in comparison with other more complex games, particularly wargames.

Wargames have limited options, like chess. Computer programs are good at chess.

Strategic games such as Civ are like Go. Computers suck at Go.

[Brent]

I vote Scenario Editing, not so much because of any specific way to improve it (I am very satisfied with the C3 editor), but because it's what I care about the most. One specific way to improve it would be AI to analyze the scenario you've made.

Things you didn't list: Quantity of premade scenarios. Quantity of premade civs.

[Dauphin]

An AI will never be good enough. If there are simple ways of improving it, by all means the additions will be welcome, but I wouldn't focus attention on it beyond implementing tried and tested models and using ideas from other games.

[Master Zen]

Originally posted by CyberShy
Not you, but Master Zen did so:
"The AI is terrible"

And I stand by my words.

- The AI has no clue on how to use artillery
- The AI has no concept of concentration of force
- The AI cannot use effectively the slider
- The AI cannot stage invasions involving more than one transport
- The AI is easily tricked via it's own cheats (ex. leave a city undefended as a lure and it'll go after it even if it can't see it)
- The AI sucks at workforce optimization
- The AI sucks at tile improvement


If this isn't a terrible AI, I don't know what is.

[Drachasor]

I have to agree with Master Zen, the AI completely stinks. It can go up against even a fairly green player on even terms so long as the green player can defend themselves.

While the Civ III AI is a bit better at defending itself, the AI still isn't that great.

Of course the biggest change the AI could use is in the concentration of force and proper use of transports for an invasion (as Master Zen touched on). If it could just manage to attack correctly and with numbers, then it would be a more fearsome opponent. As it is now, the difficulty system completely relies on cheats, and everyone knows the no-cheat difficulty level is a joke. I'd like to see this changed.

As for comments about it being too difficult to program the AI, bah, I say. The AI can already find targets to go after, so how much harder would it be to teach it to wait until it has a sufficient force gathered before it attacks? The same goes with the transport issue. That alone is a massive issue.

Worker useage really stinks too, and part of that is because it is a bit unclear what the optimum strategy is to use workers, but the problem isn't insurmountable, the AI could still be improved here. (If I may toot my own horn, then the thread I started a few days ago--my Crazy Idea--would probably aid worker usage. Specialized cities means it is easier to know how to improve them).

I know, and I am sure Master Zen knows, that a perfect AI isn't feasible. Indeed, I am sure that at the higher difficulties there will still be some level of cheating. However, that doesn't mean that you couldn't get rid of the blatantly stupid and harmful things the AI does to itself. Even better, design an AI that will make some stupid and self-hurting decisions at lower difficulties, but these gradually disappear as it gets tougher.

All this would merely require time debugging the AI, finding out what is causing the stupid behavior, and making an algorithm to fix it. Getting rid of really stupid AI behavior that is caused merely by 1 or 2 factors, is not rocket science. I admit the AI would still probably have some stupidities not easily resolved, but I see no reason why most of Zen's list couldn't be fixed.

-Drachasor

[Vince278]

If most of what Master Zen lists is implemented we would see a big improvement. I'd also like to see the AI have more personality and to be more human-like in actions.