A.I. too much of a pushover

I have now played a handful of Civ Rev games, one or two for each level. And it's just too easy. I won on Deity the first time I tried. And I'm certainly no Civ God. At best I'd have called myself a decent Civ player, from back in the days of Civ III.

Is the A.I. equally bad on all versions? I have the iPad version. I think it looks very slick and general game-play is smooth. But there's just not enough to it to make it a challenge. And given that the iPad version doesn't let you play other people, after the few games I've played I feel pooped out. The fun is up.

The strategy I employed is putting out a few warriors to go out exploring. For this I set the city on maximum production. After say three warriors (also depends what I find in huts) I switch to maximum food to build a boat and then a settler. Generally I build a settler around the same time my warriors make 100 gold from exploring (making another settler). The boat also goes exploring and tries to get the artifacts.

When I encounter other civs, I use a warrior or two to contain them in the space they're in. Not until much too late would they try to get past them by declaring war. It's not always possible for all of them, but very often you can contain your nearest neighbors this way while you fill the land in between with cities. When they get more advanced you can retreat to cities built near the containment area to keep the blockade intact. If a neighbor declares war, they have to get past the city that blocks them, so a small army is usually sufficient to keep them at bay. Generally they destroy themselves trying to take the city for a turn or two and then offer peace.

Any threats of further civs can safely be ignored. They have to come through your neighbors to get to you, which they can only do through war. I have yet to see an army make it to me that had to pass through unfriendly territory.

I also have yet to see a civ invade any island. By the time of Galleons the game is already in the bag. And the A.I. doesn't seem to use boats much. The best I've seen it do is use a Galleon or a Cruiser support a land battle. They never go looking for Atlantis so that's a freebie.

On the lower levels I find the fastest is simply to go after a domination victory. This gets harder on the higher levels Emperor and Deity, so there I went for a space-race or economic victory. Really easy.

Without the option of network play, this game is nothing.

Well keep trying for a Domination on Deity. If you use that strategy every time, try a new one!

Yeah, the SP game is a bit too easy in that there's no level hard enough that I might lose the game. That's why I play online, but unfortunately you don't have the option with the ipad version. Does the scenario editor offer any help? The ipad version is the only one that offers that feature. Any way to make the game harder?

The only other thing to do is try to go for a very fast victory, like a 50 AD tech victory or 2000 BC dominion victory. Sometimes I enjoy just pushing a single city up to 31 population or something. The last few games I've played in SP is basically trying out "settler rush" strategies to beef up my online game. The idea is you move your initial settler, try to pick up gold, then settle right by an AI civ, rush a warrior and walk on in to their empty city, basically starting the game with two cities and maybe a free tech. After that, it gets pretty dull again though.

Well, sure, I can try to make the game harder for myself. But the point of buying games is to be challenged by the game-maker, not by myself. So feel a little short-changed by this version of Civ to be honest.

Tesuji said:

Well, sure, I can try to make the game harder for myself. But the point of buying games is to be challenged by the game-maker, not by myself. So feel a little short-changed by this version of Civ to be honest.

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I hear you. I wouldn't be on a forum talking about this game if I only played the single player version. If you have a 360 or ps3 you should get that version and play online. It's really quite a good online game (despite some bugs). It's still civ, but the games don't take hours and hours and hours.

Tesuji said:

When I encounter other civs, I use a warrior or two to contain them in the space they're in. Not until much too late would they try to get past them by declaring war.

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Here is where you lose me. How do you contain other civs using a warrior or two without war? If you're not at war, the other civ can drop a city wherever it wants and your warrior either gets booted out or not depending on if you have open borders.

Or maybe this is an iPad specific issue where you can win by building two warriors.

(ooh, this must be a Civ Rev thing ... wrong forum!)

automator said:

Here is where you lose me. How do you contain other civs using a warrior or two without war? If you're not at war, the other civ can drop a city wherever it wants and your warrior either gets booted out or not depending on if you have open borders.

Or maybe this is an iPad specific issue where you can win by building two warriors.

(ooh, this must be a Civ Rev thing ... wrong forum!)

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It's probably a Civ Rev thing. The nature of the terrain tends to be such that it has many choke-points. Posting a warrior or two on such a choke-point prevents the A.I. from passing with a settler. It can declare war of course, but it tends not to do so until later. By then you've had plenty of time to box them in with a city or two and you can start to back-fill the land between the choke-points and your capital at your leisure.

So you found a way to exploit the AI and complain that the game is too easy? Do what the other guy said and try playing another way.

Tesuji, you really hit the nail on the head when you said that the AI waits too long to declare war on you warriors settled for containment. That, more than anything, is what makes the AI lame. All you have to do is think about what a human player (such as yourself) would do. If an enemy civ dropped a warrior on a choke point near your capital, you would build an army, declare war and keep your lanes of movement open. It seems to me that there must be a way to program the AI to value freedom to move and explore the map over just about anything else.