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Courtesy of Pyrkaige at CFC, linking to Qt3
Patches
AI abilities
AI "cheating"
A little more elaboration
Well, when the game core SDK is released you can take a look and let me know where I added these bonuses on accident.
The AI does lose units to disbanding, but it's a slow process (just as it is for a human). I think psychology plays in here. If a human loses one unit, he notices immediately and tends to correct the problem quickly. The AI just bleeds over time until things get better (or not). The least advanced unit is also the one disbanded, which means the strong AI units on the front line won't be the ones disappearing. If the AI has a lot of units and is losing money, it tends to have a LOT of units, which means its going to take some time before ALL of the extra units are disbanded.
The most fleshed-out part of the AI is probably how it approaches Happiness. It is obsessed with staying above the Happiness limit. It bee-lines for luxuries, trades them quickly if it has excess (and likes another player that also has excess), constructs Colosseums, nearly always picks policies that help with Happiness, etc. As soon as the AI hits "Unhappy" (before "Really Unhappy") it stops expanding, preventing the situation from deteriorating further. Because the AI civs are rarely unhappy, they rarely have to suffer the combat penalty.
Even with all of this though, the AI tends to lag behind the human with regards to total population. It's not able to micromanage the numbers in the same way a person can, and also can't build up the REALLY large food surpluses humans like to. The lack of population tends to catch up to the AI in the later part of the game, where it tends to lacks technology and cities with really high production.
To quote Pyrkaige:
I think this is tentatively positive news. It shows that there are adjustments being made to address people's concerns. I'm curious to see what the first patch (and additional patches) address.
Patches
Hey guys. Just a quick update. Sorry for the recent absence, I've been traveling quite a bit lately.
There are several things which we are looking at improving with Civ 5. Most of my time since getting back has been spent working on the interface, particularly with making more information accessible. These changes will go out with the next big update in a few weeks. The plan is also to make major revisions to the diplomacy system, and while I can't talk about the details yet, I think you all will find them an improvement. That will be added with an update later this year. Also included will be a number of AI upgrades.
Thanks to all who have purchased the game - the plan is definitely to continue improving the experience for everyone playing. The game isn't perfect, but we feel good about the foundation laid so far, and expect Civ 5 will stand up with every other game out there and continue to get better over time. I can ensure that I'll be working on Civ 5 as long as I'm able to.
Jon
There are several things which we are looking at improving with Civ 5. Most of my time since getting back has been spent working on the interface, particularly with making more information accessible. These changes will go out with the next big update in a few weeks. The plan is also to make major revisions to the diplomacy system, and while I can't talk about the details yet, I think you all will find them an improvement. That will be added with an update later this year. Also included will be a number of AI upgrades.
Thanks to all who have purchased the game - the plan is definitely to continue improving the experience for everyone playing. The game isn't perfect, but we feel good about the foundation laid so far, and expect Civ 5 will stand up with every other game out there and continue to get better over time. I can ensure that I'll be working on Civ 5 as long as I'm able to.
Jon
Just to clear some things up - on Prince the AI plays by almost the exact same rules as the human. It receives a marginal discount to unit gold and supply costs, but that's pretty much it. There's no cheating with construction, gold production, happiness, puppet rules, research agreements, visibility, combat odds or whatever else. It has basic insight into the total military strength of other players, but no more so than what's available to the human via the demographics screen.For anyone digging throught the XML files: there's actually a number of fields from Civ 4 which we never cleaned up, and some of them misrepresent what effects there are on various difficulty levels - so don't take all of those numbers as gospel. The values in the AI strategy files are for steering AI preferences, and have nothing to do with bonuses.
If it seems like the AI has a lot more cities/happiness/units than the human at that level, it's merely that the AI focuses much more on those aspects of the game than a human does (perhaps too much so, in fact - at the expense of buildings and gold, in particular). One of our goals going forward is to shore up some of the biggest and most obvious AI deficiencies. The new rules added to Civ 5 pose a pretty big AI challenge, so we're spending as much time as possible working on this part of the game.
If it seems like the AI has a lot more cities/happiness/units than the human at that level, it's merely that the AI focuses much more on those aspects of the game than a human does (perhaps too much so, in fact - at the expense of buildings and gold, in particular). One of our goals going forward is to shore up some of the biggest and most obvious AI deficiencies. The new rules added to Civ 5 pose a pretty big AI challenge, so we're spending as much time as possible working on this part of the game.
On higher levels the AI gets bonuses to the production and generation of things like units, buildings, etc. and discounts to costs like maintenance, but it can never "snap its fingers" and make anything appear under any circumstances. How closely it has to obey the game rules does not change based on difficulty level. If an AI signed a RA agreement with someone, it meant they had the requisite gold (for at least one turn) - it may have gotten it from another player, from a goody hut, from disbanding something or even from losing out on a wonder (which they like to build). But it's always legit.
Originally Posted by Chris Nahr
However, I'm not buying this. The AI often runs outrageous gold deficits which are visible on the trade screen; yet its countless units never seem to get disbanded, as they would for a human player. And those sprawling AI empires surely push its unhappiness into the deep red, especially with a lack of buildings/wonders to compensate; yet the AI never seems to get the unhappiness combat penalty that human players would get.
However, I'm not buying this. The AI often runs outrageous gold deficits which are visible on the trade screen; yet its countless units never seem to get disbanded, as they would for a human player. And those sprawling AI empires surely push its unhappiness into the deep red, especially with a lack of buildings/wonders to compensate; yet the AI never seems to get the unhappiness combat penalty that human players would get.
The AI does lose units to disbanding, but it's a slow process (just as it is for a human). I think psychology plays in here. If a human loses one unit, he notices immediately and tends to correct the problem quickly. The AI just bleeds over time until things get better (or not). The least advanced unit is also the one disbanded, which means the strong AI units on the front line won't be the ones disappearing. If the AI has a lot of units and is losing money, it tends to have a LOT of units, which means its going to take some time before ALL of the extra units are disbanded.
The most fleshed-out part of the AI is probably how it approaches Happiness. It is obsessed with staying above the Happiness limit. It bee-lines for luxuries, trades them quickly if it has excess (and likes another player that also has excess), constructs Colosseums, nearly always picks policies that help with Happiness, etc. As soon as the AI hits "Unhappy" (before "Really Unhappy") it stops expanding, preventing the situation from deteriorating further. Because the AI civs are rarely unhappy, they rarely have to suffer the combat penalty.
Even with all of this though, the AI tends to lag behind the human with regards to total population. It's not able to micromanage the numbers in the same way a person can, and also can't build up the REALLY large food surpluses humans like to. The lack of population tends to catch up to the AI in the later part of the game, where it tends to lacks technology and cities with really high production.
One note: the Qt3 forum is a place where a lot of different game developers hang out, and is generally a fairly cozy forum. It won't help if a bunch of people go there and spam that thread with requests for more info; that will likely just make the PR people step in, and limit anymore posts. Let's play nice! 
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