Do AI Cheat? What tips can you give to a not so good Civ Player

[VladDaImpaler]

I'm trying to play the game, and I like to get challenged but not to the point of constant frustration and raging at a game.

I don't know if I'm doing something wrong but it always seems that the AI is able to EXPLODE when expanding. It'll be still very early in the game and they are somehow able to have 14 cities (while I have 4 and poor) with a ungodly and ing obnoxious military who just keeps sending waves and waves at me. When I try to even keep up with that kind of expansion my science research will eventually be stuck at 0-10%.

I see people playing in Deity and emperor and such, while I'm stuck struggling through prince while noble is too easy (I'm practically always in the top 3 and can push people around).

Is the AI cheating? They get unlimited gold, or some sort of (I hate games like this, instead of programing a good AI they just have it cheat... lazy bs). How do you more experienced players go about playing the game? I'm looking to get better WITHOUT exploiting flawed game mechanics or cheating.

[Antmanbrooks]

Unfortunately there is a steep learning curve with this mod and I've learnt you have to play it slightly differently from other mods and vanilla BTS. It's got by far the most aggressive AI I've ever seen and there is seemingly little in the way of penalties for the AI having a massive empire.

Some advice I can offer is as follows;

• You won't win or do well in every game once you play at Monarch level or above.
• You will be reliant to some degree on good starting locations.
• Military might buys you time against the AI but it costs you money, so that's where the good start location and wise tile management comes in.
• Beeline military techs and good civics. Monarchy and Slavey are a good combo early on so long as you have a light horse or skirmisher "police" unit to kill revolting slaves. Caste System is great if you have a state religion throughout your empire.
• Always have a few defenders of mixed forces, as the AI tends to calculate it's chances of military expansion by the weight of your defensive city units (not sure if this is 100% accurate, but it certainly seems that way). How many times has a friendly AI declared war because your border cities are opportunistically empty of units?
• Beeline happiness buildings/resources as happiness means more citizens working tiles which in turn means more production/commerce.
• Turn off growth when that extra citizen will just add unhappiness. There's no point having an unhappy citizen, he's wasted and you could be adding production or commerce by working a tile that ensures you don't grow the city until that citizen can be put to good use once you have the extra happiness to allow him to work a tile.
• Don't be too concerned with the number of cities you own stiffling your research, I've successfully managed to control am Empire almost as big as the AI with 0% research and still kept pace with the AI's tech simply by researching whatever the AI has already got (it costs less if you have open borders too) and constructing buildings that give a bonus such as schools.
• As long as you can roughly keep up with the AI in terms of number of cities and maintaining a decent army then you can slowly build up your commerce and avoid being hemmed in by their aggressive expansion.
• If you really struggle then beeline the Great Lighthouse and the Colossus, I consider this combo a cheat when combined with the Financial trait. The gold is ridiculous and if this combo doesn't win you the game on it's own then there's no hope for you!

None of the above will help one little bit on some games though as the AI does get some substantial bonuses(cheats) on levels like Monarch and above and if you don't start well you're f*&ked.

I think anyone that tells you they always beat the game on Emperor or above is either lying or exploiting the game mechanics rather than playing organically like most people do (essentially they are maths guru's and use their awesome calculator brains to beat the AI at it's own game). If you're like me then playing like that takes away some of the fun.

Having said all this I'm still very much with you on this one. The AI is capable of expanding far, far too easily IMO and it's got absolutly zero honour and WILL stab you in the back despite having "friendly" relations. For me, this makes the MOD limited in a way despite being amazing on so many levels. There is only one way of successfully playing this mod and it involves having as big an empire as you possibly can and gearing for war every time. If you don't do this you will lose.

If it was possible to stiffle the AI's expansionist rush tactics then that would be great. As it stands all the AI players only play one way. Build big and build fast. They have severe advantages over the human player at monarch and above and they all play the same way. It would be great if small empires had different advantages to big ones and in turn this would open up the game for builder and scientist play styles. As it stands though if you don't play like the AI you get left behind. More cities always equal more science/resources/production and once you get to a certain empire size there's no looking back.

[pletiplot]

I started playing RI few weeks ago and I did not have ever reach medieval age. I was crushed to the ground everytime. The advices I have seen today may help me, I will try them.
But I realy dont understand when playing on third level (prince I think), how the AI can have in the midle of classical era 9 cities, twice big army than me and five tech advances before me, while I have 5 or 6 cities, my fin balance is on zeroes , I produce directly from buildings only and there are few of them, soldiers barely garrison the cities and when riders or revolting slaves destroys a town or a golden or salt mine (or both), I am in real fin trouble and when I found or even capture a city, I am in trouble too. (and then units go on strike and are disbanded). I think the advices you gave are good, but it just cant be enough. Or does the good start mean to have my own island?

The AI must cheat or the world is just weird!

[Walter Hawkwood]

Of course AI "cheats" (and sometimes in your favor). AI can't be expected to play by the same rules as human anyway, since AI "thinks" differently. There are a lot of artificial restrictions on AI players, such as favorite civics, other "personality" variables etc. Basically, AI plays a different game than human. And yes, on anything higher than noble, AI gets an increasing set of bonuses - that's what difficulty levels are about. I don't really know if that constitutes a "cheat", though, since a cheat is giving yourself an unfair advantage to give you better chances of winning - while in AI case, you as a player assign it the advantages to get yourself a better challenge.

[Yudishtira]

Try Chieftain or Warlord difficulty. I don't think I had to even consider the economy when I played them . When you find them too easy (you will very soon), move back up.