Recent content by Sydney Posada

AIs do not demand things of other AIs, or if they do, the other AI never refuses. AIs never suffer from diplomatic penalties for refusing requests to go to war or stop trading, and they never suffer those penalties for refusing to give tribute techs. It’s kind of frustrating that...

This sounds kind of extreme, but in a lot of ways it's true, at least for me. My favorite victory conditions are Domination / Conquest, and there it's all about either waging war or planning for your next war. Figuring out who'll be your next target, trying to get the diplomacy in your favor for...

That's a good game design idea to keep in mind, but they're never going to get the goals of having pseudo-historical role-playing AIs and playing-to-win AIs coincide perfectly. In fact, it's doubtful they can even come close. One basic stumbling block is that the rules of Civ just don't tend...

There seems to be a lot of debating to cross-purposes here. There seem to be two main philosophies on how to enjoy Civilization: 1) It's an immersive, alternate-historical, role-playing experience. 2) It's a strategic board game, like chess. Obviously most people are a mix of both, but it...

Why do you think Marathon does get the best victory times, even for non-military victory conditions? Is it the fact that early conquest still plays a role in those games (to set up a better scientific, etc. base), and that wars take up fewer in-game years to wage, thus allowing a lesser impact...

For some reason, Gandhi and Hathepsut always seem to end up peace-vassaling themselves. It's quite annoying, though I guess it doesn't necessarily make them bad AIs, if they're going for culture or whatever. Tokugawa almost always ends up far behind, and Isabella often finds herself being the...

Praetorians may win more games, and are clearly superior in terms of strategic value... but War Elephants are so cute! I'm loathe to slaughter them when they invade my territory, and I shed a single tear every time I do so. ;)

Now you know how the British feel... ;)

Does anyone ever go "all in" on the New World, forsaking the Old World entirely? As in, moving your capitol and transporting all your troops and Workers over to the Americas? And even letting your Old cities fall to the first declaration? I imagine you'd take a big hit when you did so, but...

Bureaucracy from Civil Service, if abused correctly, can be extremely powerful. If you've been cottaging your capitol well, you can easily supply 30-40% of your entire empire's research with it. And I'm usually upgrading from the starting civic, which means the boost is very significant. Also...

Woah really? I could have sworn I've had cities with an already-present religion spontaneously get a new one. I don't think I saw an AI missionary convert it, but it's possible I missed it, I guess...

While I am open to using any strategy to winning, I do kind of anthropamorphize the various AIs, to a certain extent. My typical victory is through Domination or Conquest, so warring is what I do, but I have a bit of a code of honor about it.. Inevitably I will turn on my former friends in my...

I'm a bit confused as to your description of why the game is boring. The game prompting you for choices of what to build and what to research is not really a huge part of the game. First of all, I almost never do what they suggest, so it's not like it's one choice of two, it's one choice of...

Oh of course they do bribe other AIs to war. It's just that the diplomatic penalty for *refusing* to go to war never shows up. If the player refuses, it's a permanent -1 hit to our diplo with that civ. Other AIs never get that penalty.

Frakkin' toasters! :lol: And no, I've never been offered gold either. I was just trying to imagine an alternate system in which they offer something - ANYTHING - to get you to go to war, instead of bullying you all the time. I think we should file a class-action lawsuit.