Which AIs do you find the most aggressive? Which AIs are most successful in wars? Shaka, Monty, Ragnar, G khan? I found Monty not very successful. In the world map, I put Sitting Bull and Washington in America and found that Sitting Bull can actually stalemate Monty. In Africa, Mana Musa actually holds Shaka back and vassalizes Ramesse. Darius is a power house in Asia and Bismarck dominates the North and Western Europe.

None of them.

On normal maps where starts aren't one-sided or imbalancing (which is part of the fun of earth maps but they are NOT balanced), there are a few AIs that suck a little less at war than the rest:

Shaka
Bismark
Monty
Napoleon
Ragnar
Mehmed
Zara
Justinian
Genghis Khan
Gilgamesh

Some of them aren't overtly aggressive, some are, but they are the ones that given even the smallest land advantage, tend to consistently beat other AIs.

I've found that Gilgamesh is a pretty good early war AI. Of course, the player should always be better as the AI rides the little yellow bus when it comes to war.

In one game on Prince/Epic I had Ragnar conquring half the world :P
Luckyli I got cultural victory before he reached me.

The warmonger AI's with high unit spam rate are generally better at wars. Once they pick up steam, they can become particularly troublesome because of cheaper AI upgrades. I find Monty to be a pretty effective warmonger, especially if he starts next to an AI with a low unit build probability as he'll eat them up in the midgame.

I agree with Blitzkrieg about Gilga... I remember a game where he vulture rushed Isabella and killed her completly...

Globally the AIs with high unit building proba and high attack courage... ie TMIT's list :lol:

Cheers

I've found that as you progress in difficulty, Monty becomes better at his game. When I used to play Noble/Prince, Monty was always a complete wuss. Once in a real long while, he'd have a halfway decent empire and MAYBE a vassal.

But now, on Monarch, whenever he's not spawned near me, I notice he has a pretty damn good empire and lots of troops to boot.

I've found that as you progress in difficulty, Monty becomes better at his game. When I used to play Noble/Prince, Monty was always a complete wuss. Once in a real long while, he'd have a halfway decent empire and MAYBE a vassal.

But now, on Monarch, whenever he's not spawned near me, I notice he has a pretty damn good empire and lots of troops to boot.

My guess is that's because difficulty bonus give him what he lack the most - economic edge, whereas it does not help that much as far as combat is involved.

Regarding earth maps, those leaders are in tough spots which explains you results.

As far as random maps with equal chances. here are the most agressive (or have the shortedt fuses)

Shaka
Napolean
Genghis
Monty
Ragnar
CAthy
Julius Caesar
Alexander

Now, who wars well is another question. Those I think are

Shaka
Mehmed
Zara
Justinian
Gilgamesh
Ragnar

In the world map, I put Sitting Bull and Washington in America and found that Sitting Bull can actually stalemate Monty.Monty's dominance of the new world has much to do with barbarians.

Back to the topic, I was rereading an old post of mine which included this interesting tidbit: Monty makes a great friend because he's the only AI capable of successfully waging war. It was written in regards to vanilla, but the principle is the same. He builds alot of units, and is sensitive enough to declare war.

Monty declares at friendly and has high unit spam and itchy trigger finger. If he's on the other side of the world, I'll make friends (if possible) but, really, I plan on having a confrontation at some point or another. That's not to say you can't bribe him to kill someone else instead. I've had situations where I bribed him to go get someone else and he ended up declaring on me basically as soon as he achieved peace with my chosen scapegoat, though. So much care is needed with the Monty-and-Me complex.

I got stuck on a large island with Monty in a game last night. He just get sending wave after wave of guys until I cracked.

He's a huge pain. You know he's coming after you with tons of guys. If I don't get him early, he always seems to show up on my doorstep sooner than later.

I was playing Continents... And found Sitting Bull between me and Monty.

As soon as I get some axemen up, Monty declares on Sitting Bull, and strong-arms me into joining him. With some chariots, I take some of Sitting Bull's better cities... And prepare my military for the inevitable confrontation with Monty.

When he does strike, my horse archers make short work of his Jaguars and Catapults... And then it takes a good 30 turns of me beating on him, and even taking two cities, before he is willing to talk to me.

He lost maybe 30 units on my turf... And in that time, got a total of -1 War Weariness for it. UH.


Thanks to that, I'm now way behind tech-wise compared to the civs on the other continent (Aside from Sitting Bull, the civ behind Monty is Toku - not the best trading partner).

At least I managed to snag Liberalism... Monty's busy fighting Toku, so maybe I can get to rifling, before Monty declares again.

Monty tends to get overrated. He spams his underpowered (underpowered the way he uses it at the very least) UU, which is trivially easy to beat when you are using axes.

When I made the statement (sometime pre-Warlords), Monty was the only AI capable of taking an enemy city. That isn't to say he was good at it, just that he could actually do it.

Virtually every other AI would build massive stacks, but would never mobilize them to combat. Every war was a cold war, except for wars involving Monty.

The AI has come a long way since.

Gilgamesh. And not just the early game. I ran across him and his neighbors possessing a substantial tech lead, and made first contact with his continent as Augustus. I had already removed Monty and Lizzy from my continent, so I guess I got sloppy from so many years of peace.

We hit it off well enough, and did some tech trading. I eventually gave him Feudalism in exchange for a handful of junk techs I'd neglected after he kept getting friendlier, even adopting my religion. He then promptly vassalized the rest of his continent (surprisingly quickly) and rapidly closed the tech lead, eventually surpassing me. Presumably, because I was getting hammered with maintenance costs, while he just had to throw treats to his vassals from time to time.

At least he was friendly. :\ It was sort of like giving a dollar to a beggar and then watching them buy a winning lottery ticket.

Oh well, this is how we learn. Don't bargain techs that can drastically change the world.

When I made the statement (sometime pre-Warlords), Monty was the only AI capable of taking an enemy city. That isn't to say he was good at it, just that he could actually do it.

Virtually every other AI would build massive stacks, but would never mobilize them to combat. Every war was a cold war, except for wars involving Monty.

The AI has come a long way since.

I agree with this. In vanilla civ, the enemy tended to do more harrassing than actual conquering. Monty was the only resident sociopath in most of my old games.

Monty tends to get overrated. He spams his underpowered (underpowered the way he uses it at the very least) UU, which is trivially easy to beat when you are using axes.
That's saying he started on your landmass and relatively close to you. On Monarch, if I meet Monty via Optics/Caravels, he tends to have a rather large empire and sometimes he's even doing well in the tech race. It depends, though. If he starts next to a Protective civ or axeman UU spamming civ, he doesn't do well.

I've seen Hannibal do quite well. He'll always be up there in tech, and he's aggressive enough to get himself into a good position. In my last game on Emperor he was a bit of a runaway AI, and after capping a couple of other civs he came after me despite being friendly just a few turns before. It was a smart move too, because I was building up for our inevitable showdown but wasn't quite ready for him yet. I lost three frontier cities before I was able to meet his stack and finally drive him back. Unlike many AIs, he was clearly going for victory, and he was pretty close to getting it.

Hannibal is quite good at the game (for an AI). Like you say, he's usually pretty strong in techs (not like MM, but better than most) and is aggressive to a point so he doesn't kill his economy. Good call on Hannibal.

I'm going to backup Hannibal here. Personally, I can't play that well as Carthage, but anytime I discover them in a game I get a little nervous. Hannibal always seem to be able to balance tech, war, and growth in the games I've played with him. He usually ends up in the lead for a while or comes in second.