The Escapist Magazin covers Civ 5

[Robert]

More news from E3! "Civilization V Breathes New Life Into the Series" The Escapist Magazine titles it's E3 preview. The article brings more news about the known E3 topics: social policy, victory conditions and City States. But the article is not a repeating of already known information.

We learn that the Social Policy tree unlocks the very large "Utopia" wonder that leads to a cultural victory. A civ can build it when 6 out of 10 social policy branches have fully been researched. Every branch consists out of 4 or 5 policies. The Aristocrazy policy, in example, gives a 33% wonder build increase. "The goal is for these policies to be important for everybody, and not just the culture players"

You can read the article right here. Enjoy!

[Hauldren Collider]

Does the Utopia wonder result in Orwellian totalitarianism?

[OzzyKP]

All of the combat changes are to prevent the "Stack of Doom" into which previous Civ strategy usually devolved. This made clear by the demonstration given by Peter Murray from Take-Two Interactive. "With clever selection of units, good, efficient use of terrain, and solid tactical deployments, one unit of Riflemen held off an attack against three military units and actually beat them back pretty badly," Murray said. "When you're able to do that, that feels really good. The Stack of Doom model really favored the civilization that had the biggest production capability. Now, if you don't have the biggest production, but you're a good general on the battlefield, you're going to be able to hold out for a little while longer. And that feels really cool when that happens."

This sounds awesome. Everything in that article sounds awesome. Big improvements across the board. I can't wait to see the different cultural values categories and bonuses.

But if combat is far more strategic than it used to be, how will the AI handle this? In the old games that were decided more on production capacity (as the article noted) the computer would usually have a higher production capacity (due to their handicaps) yet, the human player would always be able to defeat them due to tactics and strategy. Now that strategy and tactics are even more important and production capacity (i.e. the AI's only real strength) is less important, where does this leave the AI?

[Hauldren Collider]

A couple opinions about the AI:

1. I'd like the AI to actually get "smarter" as the difficulty level goes up instead of just cheating more. My education in AI is a bit limited (the most complex AI I've ever written was a minimax for Othello), but I think this would be possible depending on the algorithm. Basically if you're using minimax for instance, just have it run at a greater recursion depth, or for something like Monte Carlo, do more simulations. Or at the very least you could increase the amount of information it analyzes at different difficulty levels. Like, at a lower difficulty, it looks at how many units you have and what kinds. At a higher difficulty, it also looks at nearby units that could make revenge kills. Then again maybe my expectations are too high for an AI of a game this complex....

2. The AI should be patched regularly to include strategies and tactics discovered by players.

3. It should focus on winning instead of being "realistic" like with the religion and favorite civic stuff in civ 4.

[thyrwyn]

They have already said that the AI has been greatly overhauled. The have actually created several tiers of AI, such as:

1) Tactical AI: how do I use the units I have?
2) Strategic AI(s): What should I build & what do I need?
3) Command AI: How am I going to win and how should I get there?

[Theben]

Does the Utopia wonder result in Orwellian totalitarianism?

No, a Thomas Moore-style theocracy.

[Blaupanzer]

Exactly; read the book.

[Felch]

The most shocking bit of news is that Monty was building a spaceship.