Civ4 looks like revamped Civ2

[fed1943]

I do think civ 4 is a great game,perhaps the best strategic game ever.It´s an open game,I mean that a change of people,of leader,of playing style,is like buying another game.Even now just after two months,that´s clear:just read from different people who plays differently.
civ 4 is quick,is slow,is peaceful,of war,of expansion,of concentred strenght,of just you(and your opponents)want it to be.
(Previously,I have just found that,and smaller effect,in SMAC - remember the forest planet of Zhakarof and the fungus planet of Deidre).
Best regards,

[Moonbars]

Originally posted by cycl0ps
Diadem,
on the contrary civ4 is just full of constraints to let the poor AI keep up. That's why civ3 went into my games never to play pile and this one seems destined to go the same way. It might be your kind of game but I like mine more free format and require some real strategy. Civ2 was a fantastic game in its time but I would need convincing that this is.

I agree. The AI is worse than it was in civ3, they just changed all the rules so that the stupid random things the AI is scripted to do don't nerf it as much as before. very disappointed in civ4, although the 1.52 patch has at least let me see the wonder movies properly. Yay.

[Moonbars]

Originally posted by Krill
Hey, I prefer to play Quick speed, because that, for me, just about right. Marathon sounds insane. I won't even touch it after trying it...

it's good that the game lets us have different speeds. I haven't tried quick, as I found "normal" to be way way to fast for me. I'll give a qucik game a try.

I like Marathon because I get a chance to use my units before they are obsolete, and build improvements before there are another 30 researched, and I have no idea what one to pick.

On the subject of difficulty levels, I still want to play a game against an AI that can compete at a balanced level, without any handicapping of the player or AI bonus taking place. As you go up the difficulty, it is true that the AI has more units & does better, but all this means is that it takes longer to wipe all those units out. Unless the AI randomly decides to send lone horse archers to die against fortified promoted Longbowmen sitting on a hill behind a city wall, of course. I mean really. If I had moved my horse in, without knowing what the defender was, and I only had one horse, i'd have withdrawn or pillaged. why can't the AI make these decisions? It calulates the odds for the player already.

[Cort Haus]

Moonbars, we'd all like a stronger AI, but while there are evidently some AI improvements that shouldn't be too hard to implement, there are limits to the AI's ability to compete on level terms with a human, and it's not realistic to expect a thirty-quid game to act like a billion pound science fiction AI.

Civ is not like chess, with decision trees and decades of algorithmic experience. It is a thousand times more complex and human players who can spend as many hours as they like on a turn expect the AI to take its turn in a fraction of a second.

A game AI for something as complex as Civ 4 can not be expected to compete with the marvels of a human brain, and I urge people who want to play against a competent and bonus-less AI to remember this.

If you want to play Civ against someone as smart as a human - play against a human.

[Moonbars]

Horse Archer:
if # of units < # of enemy units and chance_of_winning < 10% then
{
if improvement_value > X AND defence_chance > 50% pillage()
if defence_chance < 50% withdraw()
}

scripted AI is easy and FAST, and C4's scripted AI sucks. I dont even think it is tracking things from turn to turn.

If I need a 2 gig of ram & a 3 Ghz CPU for the graphics, there is plenty of CPU time for the AI.

The AI seems to be decent at most aspects of civ that are easy to map and situationalise, such as city build queues, and the rules changes (like storingprod if you change builds, not loosing wonder, no pre-building wonders, etc) really help the "expoit" tactics a human can emply. The city placement AI is a little off. I believe it should be giving each tile a score, based on easy things like resource access, fresh water, coastal, growth potential, etc. It should also consider things like location with regard to other players etc. I cannot acces this is too stressfull, it would be addition and subtraction on about a max of 100,000 tiles each turn - should take less than a second. Infact, the AI need only compute it when new settlers are built, or it is considering building one, or has just built one, or more in the early game when lots of scouting is taking place.

the Combat AI is useless. Many possible improvments here, i'd like a fuzzy logic decision engine to be used to decide actions based on the evalution of varies tests like "am I outnumbered" "is my advantage on attack or defence" "why are we at war - did I want a resource"

Roll on the SDK.

[Calvin Vu]

Although I liked Civ II and agreed that Civ 3 was a sadistic piece of junk (nerfing and thrashing anything that might be too difficult for the AIs to keep up with and to make sure that there would be no fun left), I strongly disagree that Civ 4 is the same as Civ 2.

I don't believe that at higher level the AIs don't attack. I just finished a game at emperor level when the Chinese attacked me from the East before I even got my first axeman out. Then a dozen turns or so later, after I repelled the attack and was about to mount a counter attack, the Mongolian declared war and attacked from the West. Luckily, the Indian and American from the South didn't jump in for the free-for-all.

I agree with Cort Haus that it sounded like you are playing at the lower levels. There is also an option to set the AIs to agressive, I think, if you want it to be more challenging combat-wise. I never try that since they are agressive enough for me. I don't know if there is a 'peaceful' AI option or not. If there is one, maybe you set that and forget about it .

[cycl0ps]

Calvin,
it isn't about difficulty levels but the basic game concept is flawed. Even on jungle it produces maps with deserts in most cities - to stop city expansion? The forbidden palace - please! Another crappy workaround to compensate for limited expansion capability. Now it ain't real life but most expansive empires in the past became that because of the cohesive nature, religious or otherwise, of the empire involved. Civ2 whatever its failings allowed multiple outposts civ4 don't. Both city building and combat are handled better in other games but so far I haven't seen one that can do both well. What's the point in building an army that can't take anything other than local cities only sack them.

[Hauptman]

Originally posted by cycl0ps
Calvin,
it isn't about difficulty levels but the basic game concept is flawed. Even on jungle it produces maps with deserts in most cities - to stop city expansion? The forbidden palace - please! Another crappy workaround to compensate for limited expansion capability. Now it ain't real life but most expansive empires in the past became that because of the cohesive nature, religious or otherwise, of the empire involved. Civ2 whatever its failings allowed multiple outposts civ4 don't. Both city building and combat are handled better in other games but so far I haven't seen one that can do both well. What's the point in building an army that can't take anything other than local cities only sack them.

What the hell are you talking about?

Error: Babblefish exceded. Reinstall English Language.

(sorry i stole that)

I have definatly taken cities across the world because it had alot of a certain resource... but it costs alot to maintain (until state property) and you may need to sack some adjacent cities to knock the culture back, but I've done it....

[joncnunn]

On Civ II, that was too easy to beat on Diety level [it's highest]

So easy in fact that I operated under the human handicap of having to win both ways [capture all but one city and lauch the spaceship] without ever being the one declaring the war and still won handily. When your power rating got too high : boom! AIs sucide left and right by declaring war on you. And you got to use their own rail network against them to basically wipe their empire out in one turn.

[Urban Ranger]

Civ 2 is mainly a wargame in disguise, and is unbalanced in a number of ways. I hardly played any other way than to go to war early and often. Kick people hard.

[xxFlukexx]

Ya I think we all agree with you Moonbars, if the game is anywhere close to a fair playing field, the AI really stinks. But extra units and discounts on everything cover up the bad AI somewhat. I hope that the SDK brings about a Golden Age of AI in Civ4 and we can have AI that cheats some, but not nearly as much as it does now.

The problem with that horse archer raiding script(I think that's what that is) is that you don't know if there is a spearman waiting around for your horse archer, by the time you get close to raiding something, a spearman can see you and gank you. And if the AI uses say 5 horse archers near my city of 6 defenders(a few archers, some warriors and 1 spearman) then they all would go through that and all decide not to pillage when they should pillage as 5 horse archers can make a real big mess fast when there's only one spearman around.

I also do not see how you can say the AI in Civ3 was much better than Civ4. I mean in Civ3 put one defensive unit on a mountain in enemy terrain. GG, you WIN! Now the Civ4 AI sometimes attacks when it doesn't have much chance of winning, but destroying the entire AI army in one turn with 1-2 defensive units, now that's much worse.

cycl0ps: Your last post made absolutely no sense whatsoever. Civ4 is nothing like Civ2 at all except for the very basic gameplay elements.

[tai4ji2x]

if you like civ2 so much, well... go back and play civ2, then...

[Cort Haus]

First the OP claims that Civ 4 is just Civ 2. Then he claims that it is not Civ 2 enough. Hmmm...

[cycl0ps]

Believe it or not I have gone back to Civ2 and played it. The graphics are a tad naff but the gameplay is far better. I apologise to Americans who have difficulty understanding English .
Now this game is supposed to be about Civilisation - Correct? Civilisations are always at war with each other sooner or later or even often! If it's meant to be a LIMITED city building game then it is only rated about 10% against SIMS and the like. Fiddling about building techs and Wonders don't exactly rivet one either and soon becomes routine. Let's be charitable and give it another 10%; Oh and about 2% for the joke diplomacy and 8% for the trade. So where is the real fun to be had?

Since we were on about Babel Fish then the game can't be aimed at the Marvins' - they wouldn't sell many copies particularily in the US .

[ghen]

The game isn't a city building game... its an empire building game with warfare and diplomacy.

All the minor aspects like buildings in singular cities and unit promotions are added flavor. Certainly not neccessary, but they make the game way more fun. Face it, complicated decision making is fun. Planning what you're going to build where and who to fight next is fun. Defending against overwhelming barbarians is fun. Building a wonder before everyone else when you know they're trying for it (pyramids) is riveting and fun.

If you call Civ4 a routine, thats a slap in the face to all the changes the developers made from the civ3 days. There's so many viable tech builds now that have true bonuses and weaknesses its silly. There's also different empire building strategies that work well too.. anywhere from 1-10 cities to as many as you can handle under police state and state property. Heck, people are STILL arguing as to whether you should chop a certain amount of forests down!

When a game creates arguments based on in-game developer designed strategy I call that a major win for the company and consumers alike.