Sid Meyer's Civilization - Beyond Earth

[Vendetta]

Yes, but Japan was unusual in that it ignored the relative industrial capability of the US in launching its attack on the US and the European colonial powers. The only other nation I can think of that made a comparably big mistake of the same type in the modern era was Nazi Germany, which also had huge problems accurately judging its enemies' strength starting in 1941.

Japan also had a specific limited objective to force the US to recognise its holdings in the Pacific and Southeast Asia and was hoping to avoid a protracted war where the US' greater industry would be able to play a part (hence the attempt to remove the US pacific fleet at the start of the war and give themselves the greatest strategic window to achieve their objective possible), whereas a 4X AI doesn't ever seem to have an objective beyond being at war because it just doesn't like your face.

[Simon_Jester]

Yes.

Of course, programming an AI to seek out reasonable targets as military objectives is practically impossible, I suspect.

But since that's pretty much inevitably the case, the AI should at least be programmed to show some basic common sense in deciding who to fight.

And maybe some discretion about how to fight, if applicable.

And above all, the AI should show some sanity in deciding why to fight- a weak AI should not be automatically programmed to get more and more hateful and aggressive toward you until it finally launches a completely suicidal attack when its position has become totally hopeless. That's just making it unnecessarily easy for you to gobble up the territory it would otherwise occupy.

Conversely, an AI in a strong strategic position should be very hard to placate and attack you opportunistically, even if in theory it had no particular incentive to oppose you other than:

It is always a temptation to an armed and agile nation
To call upon a neighbour and to say: --
"We invaded you last night--we are quite prepared to fight,
Unless you pay us cash to go away."

This would be a good way to make the game challenging. Especially because the odds are that in the long run you will outgrow the AI, so the AI should capitalize on early-game advantages if it's supposed to be a threat.

[Vendetta]

I dunno, it shouldn't be too hard to have an AI that won't declare war unless it has a specific strategic objective like "gain control of special resource tile X, currently in player's empire", or "obtain enough space to found X more cities", or "obtain X amount of loot from player treasury" and it will then put forth its efforts in the war to do X whilst defending its territory.

You could even use spies to find out what the AI's "desires" were (oh shit did I just invent a reason to have an espionage system that is useful to the player).

Not just, y'know, "you didn't teach us how to build boats so now it's war buddy!" which is certainly what the original SMAC AI would do if it had contrary social goals to you (try refusing to give Miriam tech for nothing in return, it's almost certainly a casus belli for her).

Which is even silier.

"you know how to build super awesome destructo-ray battleships, if you do not teach us this secret our pew pew laser cars will destroy you!"

The end result of a diplomatic conversation with the AI shouldn't be "and now we will have absolute war forever."

[PainRack]

Am I the only player where the other party has never backstabbed in such an absurd manner in Civ5?


Seriously. Maintain a large military, one that's powerful in terms of combat strength and they absolutely refuse to declare war on you. This even if the bulk of your military is on the opposite side of the map bashing someone else up.

The problem is maintaining that military, especially in higher levels. Hell, at least Civ 5 hasn't went the Civ 2 route, which is cheat and invent spam wave of cruise missiles designed to overwhelm my aegis cruiser defences of my carrier stack o doom.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

No you're not, I was scratching my head at the descriptions of previously friendly AI "always" backstabbing, because it's never happened to me. I use the production rule of thumb "1 building followed by 1 military unit" in each city to keep the AI from getting too randy.

[Crossroads Inc.]

Another thing I learned in Civ 5 is DO NOT BREAK PROMISES.

Seriously the AI seemed to have a Looooong memory.
All of those "Do not settle cities near us" or "Keep your troops away from our borders" or "Do not send missionaries to us"
Break any of those and usually every civ on the planet starts to denounce you,.

[Borgholio]

The problem with the "Don't settle near us" is that they never listen to you when you make the same demands...and when they make the demand to YOU, it's just because they want the land instead. I wish I could say to them, "Ok if you have a settler on the way, I'll let you have that land. If you haven't even started building a settler, then fuck you I was here first."

[Wing Commander MAD]

Never listen, the majority of the time if you try that option they get pissy and throw a tantrum. Or how about the habit they have of settling worthless land near your territory for what I gather is solely to piss off the human player. Nothing like setting up a nice empire, watching your culture fill the land, only to have some jackass from the other side of the map plop a city down.

I just hope the AI has to play by the same rules this time around. The AI in Civ V not having to manage happiness is BS. Nothing like planting your second city and then soon finding an AI who has five already. Then there's AI's like Hiawatha who put the normal city spamming AI to shame. I kinda wish the game had a mode where you stick a single civ on a map with the goal of either cultural or space victory and see what happens. One could only imagine how the map would look end game...

[PainRack]

Never listen, the majority of the time if you try that option they get pissy and throw a tantrum. Or how about the habit they have of settling worthless land near your territory for what I gather is solely to piss off the human player. Nothing like setting up a nice empire, watching your culture fill the land, only to have some jackass from the other side of the map plop a city down.

I just hope the AI has to play by the same rules this time around. The AI in Civ V not having to manage happiness is BS. Nothing like planting your second city and then soon finding an AI who has five already. Then there's AI's like Hiawatha who put the normal city spamming AI to shame. I kinda wish the game had a mode where you stick a single civ on a map with the goal of either cultural or space victory and see what happens. One could only imagine how the map would look end game...

There's a single city mode actually. Haven't tried it out.

The problem with the "Don't settle near us" is that they never listen to you when you make the same demands...and when they make the demand to YOU, it's just because they want the land instead. I wish I could say to them, "Ok if you have a settler on the way, I'll let you have that land. If you haven't even started building a settler, then fuck you I was here first."

You can just....... ignore their demand. There's a hit to diplomacy but its specific to that civilization and it honestly isn't that long.


The problem with Civ 5 diplomacy is that its based on a series of logical assumptions...... that eventually gets everyone to not be on your side. And its designed to do so by default, because the game is trying to hobble your victory.
The thing is, single logic points, such as don't spread your lands, don't trepass near my lands, it doesn't work in a grand scheme of things. The game code is designed to have an AI resent you for single faults.... and its unbalanced because they all add up and there's only a few ways to gain their acceptance, namely, trade, friendship declearation, be friends with their friends and them, giving them benefits and helping them out in war.

The only way to sustain a diplomatic relationship is to fight a war alongside them. Do that once in a while, hell, entice them to fight in a war and then JOIN a war to help them tends to make them friends, especially if you cede conquered cities to them. Although warmongering can break that down extremely fast.


What pisses me off is the game capital city focus. It makes it impossible to have an tribute state, because occupation of their capital city will eventually deny you their friendship, even if you're singlehandedly responsible for liberating all their cities and making them a viable state and etc.......

[PainRack]

The complaint is that the AI betrays people for unpredictable reasons, or at times that it is irrational to do so. Or that they hate you based on things that leave you no way to win their support- they hate you for settling and not settling, or if you approach them or if they approach you, or something like that.

As a result, the AI stops looking like a nation sincerely trying to win the game, and stops looking like a real-life nation with rational diplomacy. It starts looking like a trigger-happy schizophrenic, someone who may profess to be your friend this morning, then start attacking you this afternoon because the incomprehensible voice in their head told them to.

The AI doesn't get unhappy for unpredictable reasons. Its spelled out in the diplomacy screen and espionage even tells you that the AI is trying to betray someone or attack someone or etc.


The thing is, the game designers wanted a game where you suffer penalty points for starting to win, or exploiting winning conditions such as 4x.

The failure is that the game diplomacy interaction doesn't allow intergration with other aspects of gameplay, and I suspect the AI is not up to it either. You might be immensely more powerful than them but they won't acede to requests and threats from you if they hate you.

But all the accusations of them being utterly irrational? Let me see...... You are expanding rapidly towards their border, threatening their own room for expansion. You are exploding your own cultural and relgiious pressure towards them, overwhelming their own indigenous culture and relationships. Your military is moving around their boders, threatening them.
As you become more stronger, nations no longer offer favourable trade deals with you, in fact, they expect you to give them more unbalanced deals. And of course, as an ally, they tend to start asking you for aid and it can be extremely unbalanced aid deals.

But hey, the US is helping out with both MH 307 and South Korea ferry sinking. They give routine economic aid and loans to everyone else and even their trade treaties tend to benefit their opponents more than themselves.

[Simon_Jester]

The catch is that if the US failed to provide such routine aid and support to allies, those alliances might fade into neutrality... but the newly neutral countries wouldn't declare war on the US out of sheer spite. Especially not given the size of the US military.

[PainRack]

Is that a difference between basic and God & Kings or Brave New world?

Because I never had that happen to me. Well, not as long as my existing military, as opposed to my 'potential' military was stronger than theirs.

I'm not going to say that the game AI is realistic or playable or anything like that. I'm just saying that the game diplomacy AI is predictable, it just not predictable in the way that we want it to be.

[Purple]

Honestly, the more I think of this the more I know I am going to be disappointed. And for entirely unjust reasons as well. Basically, I know I am expecting something that will at its core be SMAC II and I know that has no chance of happening because ultimately the copyright rights aren't there for it to happen. (As far as I know EA owns the rights to SMAC).

You see, what made SMAC so awesome to me was not the gameplay but the underlying ideas. The atmosphere. It just felt like SF. And not the kind of work out SF you meet in 90% of games but the kind you see in those really good old SF books. The colorful leaders, the living planet, there was just something unique about it that made it feel more like 2001 A Space Odyssey and NOT like CIVIII in space.

[Simon_Jester]

EA may have the copyright, but they can't get the intellectual property rights on creativity.

I'm cautiously optimistic about Meier and crew being able to catch the lightning again...

[Borgholio]

I'm cautiously optimistic about Meier and crew being able to catch the lightning again...

Many of the developers acknowledged the issues with Civ 5. I'm certain they will try to make improvements.

[Purple]

EA may have the copyright, but they can't get the intellectual property rights on creativity.

They can however make it difficult to make anything resembling the original game sufficiently in terms of the underlying lore that it gets the same atmosphere.

[Simon_Jester]

I must respectfully disagree. Especially if I'm prepared to accept an as-good atmosphere, while allowing for certain changes. EA may be able to copyright the idea of a planetary neural network that runs on xenofungus and produces mind worms to defend itself. But they can't copyright the idea of a sentient planet in general, or of a mysterious alien presence on a planet that the colonists gradually become more familiar with.

[Lagmonster]

I'm cautiously optimistic about Meier and crew being able to catch the lightning again...

Many of the developers acknowledged the issues with Civ 5. I'm certain they will try to make improvements.

I have this suspicion that very few developers start out with the intention of making a lousy game. Crap evolves on its own, guided by producers and marketers.

[Purple]

I must respectfully disagree. Especially if I'm prepared to accept an as-good atmosphere, while allowing for certain changes. EA may be able to copyright the idea of a planetary neural network that runs on xenofungus and produces mind worms to defend itself. But they can't copyright the idea of a sentient planet in general, or of a mysterious alien presence on a planet that the colonists gradually become more familiar with.

That's not the part I am worried about. The idea after all is much, much older. What really made SMAC to me was the factions as well as the general relationship to humanity in it. The idea that in the future human kind would be divided not by nationality, but ideology and the crazy leader of choice they chose to follow. Each of them, different and unique in their own way and contributing thus to the mythos. And they can well copyright Chairman Yang.

[Simon_Jester]

They can copyright Yang but they can't copyright Scary Hive Warren as such; the idea is too blatantly inspired by North Korea. They can copyright Dierdre but not biologist-ecologists, and so on.

Basically, the field of science fiction is broad enough that there are infinite possible fascinating stories to tell about humans colonizing an unknown and potentially hostile alien world.

[Purple]

They can copyright Yang but they can't copyright Scary Hive Warren as such; the idea is too blatantly inspired by North Korea. They can copyright Dierdre but not biologist-ecologists, and so on.

Basically, the field of science fiction is broad enough that there are infinite possible fascinating stories to tell about humans colonizing an unknown and potentially hostile alien world.

But it won't be the stories I grew up playing.

[Simon_Jester]

If you want to play the story you grew up playing, play the story you grew up playing.

[Lagmonster]

Don't worry. Someone will mod the game into SMAC2.

[Purple]

If you want to play the story you grew up playing, play the story you grew up playing.

I am. GOG to the rescue.

Don't worry. Someone will mod the game into SMAC2.

My estimates for it are that it will happen before the first expansion pack. Still, it's not the same.

[Phillip Hone]

I got it in 2008 for the first time, for 99 cents. Best dollar I've ever spent. Such a good game. I actually liked Civ 5, so I'm looking forward to this, even though it will fall short of my overly ramped up and nostalgia tinted expectations.