by hanibal in 2160 bc... is this supposed to be funny?

At least you know how the AIs "feel" when you axe rush them.:D

blah, it's the 2nd time... and again this bummer...

by hanibal in 2160 bc... is this supposed to be funny?

it is for us :lol:

I guess you boxed him in on some crapy land. When an AI has very little land and no room to expand it becomes much more aggresive and Hanibal isn't really the most peacefull AI anyway.

Personally, I think that's pretty neat.

In addition to the 'Aggressive AI' option - which I feel often results in the AIs shooting themselves in the foot - I'd like a 'Bastards!' option that removes anything designed to ensure a fair and winnable game to human players.

actually pacal could've box him in later(I was boxed in from the start). He had room for at least 5 more cities. I think razing a barbarian city he probably wanted ticked him off... no clue.

However, much like the barbarian archers event in 3k bc, I really don't understand what the devel. expects us to do... The bonuses on immortal can't be coped in the 1st 100 turns(on marathon)... or ok, guess I could've build only axes and settle myself with 1 city...

Anyway, looks like a trait of this guy; another time had a settler parked, saw him coming with his settler, settled, bam... 5 turns later guess who was knocking on my door :p Ok, then I guess was somethin' like -1.5k bc :p

In addition to the 'Aggressive AI' option - which I feel often results in the AIs shooting themselves in the foot - I'd like a 'Bastards!' option that removes anything designed to ensure a fair and winnable game to human players.

Montezuma...

If you realize one of your neighbour is boxed in, its time to drop everything else and build an army. Not just to avoid death by axe, but also because that neighbour will probably be a weak small Civ that you should kill off yourself! :D

can't really axe rush ~25 tiles away. Not on immortal, not with the new bts whipping.

The sad thing is that, at the time, you can't ask them to go to war, so you can't see that they have "too much on their hands". Not that I'd think about that anyway in -2k... :p

Unit spam wins. Gameplay loses. Hooray for MP-SP crossover (and its 'unintended' consequences)!

@ Diamondeye: Monty is cute and fuzzy and I love him. Either he's a good lapdog or my best source of Great Generals. He sort of has the 'Aggressive AI' built into him from the start, usually shooting himself into the foot as well but I haven't been victimised by him before I was ready yet.

The kind of AI I meant would be more akin to something players might do... steal workers at the very start, try for an appropriate rush whenever the opportunity arises, form alliances to take down someone who's on the verge of becoming monstrously powerful etc.
I think many things are less limited by the complexity of the AI, but by the desire to give the player a fair and winnable game every time.

not really a axe rush but today Nappy attack me with 10 axes and few spear @ around 500 BC when he find out I have the mids and happy running his fav civic Rep :D He attack my Mids city but fail to my 5 archer and 1 warrior lolz . monarch btw .

The kind of AI I meant would be more akin to something players might do... steal workers at the very start, try for an appropriate rush whenever the opportunity arises, form alliances to take down someone who's on the verge of becoming monstrously powerful etc.
I think many things are less limited by the complexity of the AI, but by the desire to give the player a fair and winnable game every time.

This mode is available. It's called MP. Note that many of the game's features are useless in MP.

I think the number of people who want SP to be approximated to the MP experience is fairly small. Unfortunately, they are quite vocal and influential, which has resulted in the idiosyncracies of BTS as seen today.

Haha, that happened to me too. Shaka nailed me around that time too. Quick game :(

Ouch! Too bad. If you know what you did wrong, its a learning experience, though.

DoWs in the BCs suck ass. but I just suck it up and start a new game. I play epic so I don't lose that much time, probably would be worse on marathon. I really can't expand and manage to build 4 defenders for each city in the bcs, so there's not much you can do.

I keep an eye on my nearest neighbour's power graph (especially if they are boxed in)... A lot of the time it starts spiking up and you know what to do... Build a lot of units... the arms race has begun. After their retarded rush you can counter-attack and end their pain. However, before you know it, Huayna Capac on Paradise Island is building all the wonders with an archer in all his cities while you fend off Shaka's retarded army.

I really don't understand what the devel. expects us to do...
Could you share some more details of your game? What leader were you playing? What tech/build path did you take? Did you tech Archery and build a few archers for garrisons and escorts?

I have to think the AI noticed your power to be lacking, and having no room to expand, did the logical thing, and attacked its weakest neighbor.

Immortal isnt a level you can play the "I should have time to . . . (whatever) . . . before they AI comes for me" game. Many Immortal/Deity players do nothing but make units at the beginning of the game, and go for Archery ASAP, even if its just Barbs they are worried about.

Now, if you indeed had Archery and a couple archers and still got rushed, my apologies, as I said in the beginning, perhaps more details would help identify how you could have prevented it.

by hanibal in 2160 bc... is this supposed to be funny?

Very common in mp. Most of the time, if they get axe and you don't, they attack. If they fail, they quit :lol:

Only been rushed once in SP, by Gilly. He razed 2 of 4 of my english cities before I quit and started swearing...

Could you share some more details of your game? What leader were you playing? What tech/build path did you take? Did you tech Archery and build a few archers for garrisons and escorts?

I have to think the AI noticed your power to be lacking, and having no room to expand, did the logical thing, and attacked its weakest neighbor.

Immortal isnt a level you can play the "I should have time to . . . (whatever) . . . before they AI comes for me" game. Many Immortal/Deity players do nothing but make units at the beginning of the game, and go for Archery ASAP, even if its just Barbs they are worried about.

Now, if you indeed had Archery and a couple archers and still got rushed, my apologies, as I said in the beginning, perhaps more details would help identify how you could have prevented it.

This is Agg. AI, some AI's will rush you early regardless of how many troops you build. (Gilgamesh is notorious for vulturerushing me even when I have loads of axes myself defending)

In my game 60% of the land was unsettled (so no blocking), Shaka was on the other side of then continent and still came knocking on my door in 2100 BC. Now, I play marathon (cheaper troops and quicker movement) and it would be silly to not factor that in addition to the insane bonuses the AI gets at Immortal level. (So on other speed the rush would come later and be more easily handled) Some games just can't be won. (I killed half his army then, I had 4 archers defending but still lost the city and the game was pretty much wrecked after that)

Ouch! Too bad. If you know what you did wrong, its a learning experience, though.

No it's not. If you want to counter this you'll have to slow down your pace in the start very much (to have a chance, the game is pretty much wrecked for you anyway at that point), and considering I've had this happen to me no more than once in maybe 20 immortal games it's not something you should plan to counter. I think this could almost be considered a bug with high difficulty level, Agg. AI and marathon, since the AI abuses it's bonuses to make a pretty much uncounterable rush. (my rush consisted of 4 impis and 5 axes, good luck countering that without getting copper early or being protective with archers and a city on a hill)

Another thing about the BTS AI is how it loves to fight a stalemate war unto death. In vanilla or Warlords, once they have sustained high losses, they will usually agree to peace. In BTS, however, you might have to annhilate half their forces or their empires before they give up on what they want from you (usually a city). Otherwise, they just want to continue fighting, economic stagnation be damned, dragging you down into WW hell with them.

Maybe the next step in the AI's evolution is to make them declare war on the player immediately, regardless of whether Always War is ticked or not.

If it was Aggressive AI setting, then I can understand it, but nowhere did the thread starter state that.

Personally, if I was playing Agg AI on Immortal, I would be certain of a few things, like all my early cities on hills, lots and lots of units, etc etc. I dont see the "fun" in that, hence the reason I play lower levels.

1st - yay, happened again, this time shaka, and again this dreaded 2160bc year:p

2nd - was single player

3rd - played agg ai once or twice; the ai seems to play so much worse it wasn't at all fun. So, was normal ai.

4th - randomed ramses, was boxed in from the start(those long peninsula starts fractal starts where you end up in the end of the peninsula) so was planning an obsolete ww spam. However, despite that, since there was no stone anywhere and I had only 3 forests near capitol, rest being jungle(btw... at least 80% of the other capitol... that has to be a good joke), I planned to skip stonehenge and go straight for gw.
That means I actually built 5 axes while waiting for masonry and such. Also got the cover event, however this didn't help, as I had no plans on rushing hanibal(way too far to be effective - probably doable due to cover event, however maintenance would've kill me). Actually I'm abit paranoid with defence - always going for archery, this game I didn't simply because bronze 1 tile away from the capitol, but normally I build more then enough units for defence since surviving on marathon is harder... obviously 3 times more barbarians requires more units, since the healing rate is the same. Even this game I was building defence as well... there was no industrious ai in sight, but who knows what's on the other continent, so gw wasn't guaranteed, plus I knew hanibal can go war mode pretty fast till you get to share religion.

No it's not. If you want to counter this you'll have to slow down your pace in the start very much (to have a chance, the game is pretty much wrecked for you anyway at that point), and considering I've had this happen to me no more than once in maybe 20 immortal games it's not something you should plan to counter. I think this could almost be considered a bug with high difficulty level, Agg. AI and marathon, since the AI abuses it's bonuses to make a pretty much uncounterable rush. (my rush consisted of 4 impis and 5 axes, good luck countering that without getting copper early or being protective with archers and a city on a hill)

100% agree. If you want to counter a rush at -2k or the archers event at -3k you can as well kiss bye bye the game. The -3k is doable if you start with hunting, but otherwise... Worse, since there's no culture at that time, they can attack anywhere(had my 2nd city, which was deeper inland with 3 axes, however he went for the capitol which was behind. Even that wasn't a problem, since whipping another axe ensured my survival. However, after giving myself 5 modern armor in world builder he still didn't want peace unless I give my other city, which is poor coding to say the least(with 5 modern armor I had about 5 times his power...)

If all AIs were perfecty opportunistic without a preference for war or peace the game would lose a lot of íts flavour; knowing to some extent what to expect from a given opponent can make the game deeper and richer.

What I dislike, however, are the inconsistencies. If a warmonger is annoyed with me, can wipe me out 3 times over and afford further growth... why do they postpone war until centuries or millenia later when I'm in a much better position to fight back?

It would be nice to have the option for a challenge with the feel that the opponents are playing the same game. That would be a harsher, nastier and less predictable environment with the option to lose even with near-perfect play - indeed similar to multiplayer in some respects. It would also be an opportunity for the developers to show off 'look what I can do' with their AIs instead of holding them back.

The BTS AI was programmed to meet such an 'ideal' as far as possible. It was only when the most hardcore supporters realised that it would mean far too much unit spam that they had to moderate it to save the game. Some still talked in terms of selling out, but IMO they were only expressing their own extremist views, perhaps in the interest of not appearing to back down from their earlier opinions.

The problem with such an 'ideal' of unpredictability and harshness of environment is it is ultimately reducible to a simple but stupid equation: spam more units than the AI, if you don't just kill them altogether (which might require you to spam even more units). I enjoy the subtler play of the 'softer' version of the game, thank you very much, even if it seems to be less optimal in terms of AI behaviour. I also play strategy games where the main objective is war so the AI will always be opportunistic, and these games are not the same as Civ. We had a very opportunistic AI in Civ2, and I think many players found it rather a pain in the bottom at the end of the day. If anything, it should be a mod, which I think is available.

^^We know how the BtS AI designer loves to play ... :rolleyes:

I don't have any kind of problem in being axe rushed ( it sucks... but live and learn )... hey, I do remember bitterly of being archer rushed by Alex in Warlords ( I settled near the only cooper in a wide radius and Alex decided that he needed it... Lesson learned: never go Oracle with Alex nearby ;) ). But BtS AI sometimes is too warfan for its own good ( even the "softer" one... agg AI is a complete joke in that regard ) and has a hard time in recognizing tactical defeat ( due to the fact that AI measures his sucess in war by number of lost units... it makes them think that they are winning if you suicided a bunch of cats and conquered a handful of cities ( not exactly ;) ) and makes them think they are losing badly if you destroy their SoD without even taking one city ( Like in Shaka ALC )... none of them is a accurate measure of the situation ).

Other issue is the fact that the AI doesn't calculate well if the best path for the game is war or peace and it has a really hard time in letting small vassals of big powers alone ( and also has some problems with the DPs ).

In resume, I would like a more inteligent AI ( not necessary oppurtunistic ) that would take more correct decisions about the state of the world before entering in berserk mode... being agressive pays out sometimes ,but not always ( I do remember someone saying to me that axerushing was ( from a human point of view ) making units while they made cities and wonders and ending with units, cities and wonders ;)... but it can become they having cities, wonders and units and you having a cripped economy, monty style ) and accepting a good peace is far better than continuing a war because we killed a lot of cats.

On topic : being axe rushed sucks :lol:

On topic : being axe rushed sucks :lol:

No, it's actually quite fun seeing the AI suicide troops against your shock axes behind walls. (Hey, free GG points whats not to like) But.. getting axe rushed before 1700-1800 BC sucks. (Thats the earliest accepted time for me ;))

But anyways, seems like marathon and immortal setting makes some stupid early axe rushes. Patch? :D

(Wonder what a Deity axe rush would be like. 3000 BC? :eek:)

^^I've seen a post of someone being axerushed in marathon before 3000 BC on agg AI :eek: That should not be fun at all .....

Guilty? The impi man, of course.... :lol: