The game is just TOO easy!!!!

[Sir Beane]

CIV IV is the easiest game you've played in your life? Wow. I think Total War isn't even a walk in the park compared to the harder settings in civ. I guess I never learned the "spam the world with immortals" technique... I mean the AI is pretty dumb in wars sometimes, but at least it attacks you where you're weak or when you are at war with someone else etc. And falling behind in the tech tree really isn't advicable.

I agree with the OP, the game is too easy. I understand it can't be harder because newbies would cry and quit, but the solution seems simple. Just increase the difference in difficulty between the settings, or actually make the AI behave differently between the settings, making it more aggressive on teh campaign map.

Aggresive AI doesn't always equal difficulty though. Sometimes super aggressive AI factions are easier to beat because they throw low quality troops at you and don't take the time to ttech up and get a strong economy.

If you really want a TW game to beat you you are going to have to fight against another player .

[Dead Guy]

I recently fought a danish army consisting of 8 regiments of pikemen, 3 militia and 2 regional cavalry, I don't think it will get any worse ;)

Seriously though, you have a point. I guess what I mean is making it more aggressive "in a good way". Aggressive so that you have to worry about defending your land from time to time. Oh well, I still enjoy the game a lot, I just think it could have one or two clicks harder than very hard on the slider.

[Sir Beane]

I recently fought a danish army consisting of 8 regiments of pikemen, 3 militia and 2 regional cavalry, I don't think it will get any worse ;)

Seriously though, you have a point. I guess what I mean is making it more aggressive "in a good way". Aggressive so that you have to worry about defending your land from time to time. Oh well, I still enjoy the game a lot, I just think it could have one or two clicks harder than very hard on the slider.

TW should go the same wasy as Galactic Civilisations 2. That game has so many difficulty settings it's hard to remember them all, I think it has ten or more. They range from pathetically easy all the way up to hellishly difficult.

[ironanvil1]

TW should go the same wasy as Galactic Civilisations 2. That game has so many difficulty settings it's hard to remember them all, I think it has ten or more. They range from pathetically easy all the way up to hellishly difficult.

GalCiv 2 is a good way ti go, in that the higher difficulties actually made the AI smarter rather than just adding additional resources to a moron.

It also has the various choices of what you want included in each game.

I don't want an AI that's necessarily more aggressive, just one that will surprise you on occasion with sneakiness rather than just spamming elite stacks. Stuff like cutting you off from your allies, building up it's own coalition and isolating you diplomatically before invading, that kind of thing.

[zarkis]

There are several factors which are contributing to the overall weak campaign AI performance.

(1) Inability to launch naval invasions or transport troops between hotspots.
(2) Wasting their units in endless small scale raids.
(3) AI countries are locked up in endless wars between each other without any progress, which drains their economy. That may be the reason why many factions have a worse financial rating later in the game then in the beginning (exeptions are Spain, England, Holland and France)
(4) Insufficient recruiting behavior, which seems random and not controlled by any plan.
(5) Sometimes strange attack moves, where the AI attacks a stronger force with a much weaker force.
(6) Inability to retreat on the campaign map when facing impossible odds (a feature even RTW had).

So far, I have no idication that the campaign AI was improved or worked on. Maybe they run out of time, the whole stuff is unfinished, and we will get a better AI opponent with patches. Maybe CA failed to acknowledge that this area needs some serious work. However, from the interviews they did, I had the impression, that they were working not only on the battle AI (which is not without flaws but quite improved over RTW/MTW2 in my opinion) but were designing a new campaign AI too. For example they talked about the campaign AI telling the battle AI what to do in certain situations and implementing a more goal based system overall. So far, I can't see any of that. It's a pity because ETW has many neat new design features, great graphics and the battles are quite fun.

[Rufus]

I think the person who brought up the Prestige campaign raises a good point. If you're going for the Prestige victory in addition to your normal victory conditions, you have to research a lot of the technologies and philosophies that might give rise to a revolution within your own home territory. This doesn't necessarily negate the problems others have identified, but it could make the grand campaign harder.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

Heh, at least ETW got JAG to post.

Now, what to do if ETW is too easy but Galciv is boring because it doesn't have tactical battles...

[Spino]

GalCiv 2 is a good way ti go, in that the higher difficulties actually made the AI smarter rather than just adding additional resources to a moron.

It also has the various choices of what you want included in each game.

I don't want an AI that's necessarily more aggressive, just one that will surprise you on occasion with sneakiness rather than just spamming elite stacks. Stuff like cutting you off from your allies, building up it's own coalition and isolating you diplomatically before invading, that kind of thing.

Well most people who cry for a better AI opponent simply want one that 1) behaves sensibly and 2) behaves more like a human than a jacked up ENIAC on overdrive. Understandably 1) is far easier to achieve than 2) but the fact that some developers can do both leaves us wondering why the rest don't make a bigger effort to do so as well.

The lackluster AI in E:TW and other strategy games only illustrates the massive differences in design approach between most developers and Stardock. When Brad Wardell & company set down to design the Galactic Civilizations series they deliberately set out to create an extremely effective AI opponent for the single player game. A strong AI was considered one of their top priorities and they applied an extraordinary amount of intellect and resources in order to achieve their goal. As many people have mentioned, this effort SHOWS. The fact that Brad Wardell cut his teeth as an AI programmer didn't hurt either...

The folks at Stardock knew that if they provided a challenging AI that did not need to resort to cheating in order to make a good show of it would go over well with gamers and they were right!

[Dogfish]

When Brad Wardell & company set down to design the Galactic Civilizations series they deliberately set out to create an extremely effective AI opponent for the single player game. A strong AI was considered one of their top priorities and they applied an extraordinary amount of intellect and resources in order to achieve their goal. As many people have mentioned, this effort SHOWS. The fact that Brad Wardell cut his teeth as an AI programmer didn't hurt either...

The folks at Stardock knew that if they provided a challenging AI that did not need to resort to cheating in order to make a good show of it would go over well with gamers and they were right!

I read that and can't help but think back to reading an interview where somebody at CA was bragging about how they spent a couple of years getting the water to look right.



Yes, CA, the screenshots are very pretty. Now please make a decent AI and the game will be in the upper echelon as it was expected and hoped to be.

[Polemists]

It's a personal opinion of course but I never found CIV IV any comparison to TW or even CIV III or CIVII even (which were both far superior in my view.) Yes though, I found civ far to easy, thus the expansion packs I found boring and useless and stopped after I bought the second one.

The AI is where it needs to be. CA most likely will not make a higher difficult level. If they did, you would all still groan and moan and CA would feel like they didn't actually accomplish anything.

As stated, the only way people who want impossible difficult will be happy, is if they fight a real human, who will zerg rush them every turn. If that's what you want, great, go find a player who likes that tactic.

I'm very happy with the game at Medium as are alot of people apparently, so I see no point to mess with M, if CA wants to go fiddle with VH be my guest. Though I imagine H and VH already are more difficult then Medium and the Ai is more aggressive.

As I said, I think CA should just focus on multiplayer. That way the die hards can all go fight each other and leave the rest of us who like the game alone

Aggressive so that you have to worry about defending your land from time to time.

This goes back to opinions. I had over 1000 cheroke attack lower lousiana, and then Florida in a wave of blitzes that lasted 5 turns when I had only 100's of men as I was trying to hold off Rebellions back in Europe. That was on M, and is plenty of difficult enough for me.

[Strategy]

It's a personal opinion of course but I never found CIV IV any comparison to TW or even CIV III or CIVII even (which were both far superior in my view.) Yes though, I found civ far to easy, thus the expansion packs I found boring and useless and stopped after I bought the second one.

Question: Since, according to your own words (quoted from above: "..maybe impossible is bad"), you have not played CivIV at the higher difficulty levels, how can you comment on Civ IV being "easy" to play?

That you find CivIV boring and useless is fair enough; tastes differ. But if you haven't played the game on impossible level - and won easily - I fail to see how you can argue CivIV being easy.

In any case, if you enjoy the game on M/M, why not go and enjoy it and leave us grumpy old (or younger) men who are unsatisfied with the AI to our grumpiness.