Is this the sign of winner on Immortal?

Take a look at my demographics just before I won (around turn 350).

Should a civ this small and weak win on Immortal?

My opponents gave me lots and lots of gold throughout most of the game through lump sums and trade routes, allowing me to ally with city-states and buy votes.

My opponents, except for the Huns, never bothered to test my military, just a few idle threats that they were plotting against me. These were opponents that were consistently 5-10x more powerful than I.

My opponents allowed a minority Ideology (only claimed by me and my neighbor) to become the World Ideology.

My opponents allowed a minority Religion to become the World Religion.

My opponents built the Manhattan Project well before I but no such weapons were used.

My opponents all built the Apollo Program but between them all, only one spaceship part were built.

My one cultural opponent, Ethiopia, got very far ahead in culture but they decided to stop being aggressive there and wasted time going on the military techs and some conquering.

My one military opponent, Huns, built very large forces (mostly naval) but didn't push the military techs and were constantly sitting on thousands of gold that could have been used to upgrade.

I never focused on any one thing, which is my usual effective style of play, because I wanted to learn and try all of the new mechanics and features. Therefore, my play was very un-optimized on purpose but I still was allowed to win.

Immensely fun game to play but a hollow, unsatisfying victory because my opponents decided to roll over and play dead, on Immortal no less.

...yay?

The AI seems dumber than it did in GnK, if that's what you're getting at.

I think my point was that I don't think the Ai is dumb, it is doing a lot of things right. It is, apparently, programmed to give players a better chance of winning by holding the AI back. I guess, for some, that's perfectly fine - as long as you have fun playing. I believe it wouldn't take much to tune the AI to be more effective and efficient in winning (by whatever means). It can't be tuned so that we can never win but it shouldn't be so passive in letting a weak civ win.

Then play on Deity?

Diplomatic Vitory has to be reworked, no question about it. The fact that it seems you were a pretty irrelevant civ for most of the game is probably why you were neglected for so long, but this is more a problem of Diplomatic Victory being too easy.

mistermoo33 said:

The AI seems dumber than it did in GnK, if that's what you're getting at.

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Generally, they seems smarter to me... but not invariably, as in this case.

you had #1 approval, why would they attack you?

You know, I remember the biggest complain about Civ5 vanilla being that enemy civs didn't act like other civilizations trying to manage a... civilization, but rather like other players trying to win a game. Now I see a bunch of people complaining the complete opposite, once they've finally put it back more in line with how Beyond the Sword was. I don't get it.

Regardless, consider that as with any game... or situation for that matter, the odds of winning "easily" dramatically increase the more people there are. A 1v1 for example, it's all you, if you win, you earned it. 22 civs on the other hand, it's possible to slip by, take advantage of the weak when the strong put them down, and generally the odds of just falling into a lucky situation are greater. n the other hand, it's just as easy to end up at war with everyone. You just generally have less power over your situation the more opponents there are.

Take my last immortal game for example, I started next to Arabia and the Huns in kind of a triangle. I saw a tonn of battering rams on my border, so I asked Atila to go to war with Arabia. He agreed, because why not? He spent most his army razing all of Arabias cities, I waited until he did that, then easily took the capital which only had 2 archers defending it.

With Arabia down, he declared war on me a few turns later, but, with his army gone and my new territory advantage (Shoshone) I crushed him. pretty much started the game with two capital cities. Easy Immortal win that I certainly did not earn.

If you want to really pass the judgements you're passing, you need to be considering what was best for every other civ before establishing why none of them went out of their way to put you down.

Sometimes, in the chaos of a big game, you can just fall into 1st place by accident.

Why are you playing on Immortal if you think its to easy? Go up to Deity?

This has always been possible though, otherwise OCC wouldn't have existed.

I have no issue personally with being able to maintain relations with the AI to a point they don't attack. Yes, it's more realistic if they act like players and murder you when you have a weaker army, but if they do that, diplomacy becomes moot. I prefer a middle ground, too weak an army and they should backstab (from my experience, they do, but perhaps the threshold on "too weak" is too forgiving), but if your army is at least decent (let's say at least half their strength, or even 1/3rd), they should not just blindly attack you unless they dislike you.

One thing the AI really needs is they need to better contest you on city states, especially when you are going for a diplomatic victory (and even more so if they are as well). I think the reason diplo victory feels so easy right now is because it's trivial to have the late game economy needed to buy all CS while the AI just rolls over and sits on 20k gold letting you vote for everything you want. Most of my diplo games end with me having a huge surplus of money to mass buy an army in case of war, simply because I don't need to spend my gold. Pursuing diplo with good AI should require I spend most this money in some way (buying CS back/etc).

I dunno, I've played games where the AI is ridiculously savvy, and Alexander going for diplo victory will ALWAYS buy all the city states and won't just let you keep them.

Immortal is SO easy now. In g&k you were lucky to be only an era behind in tech, but now even with low pop cities I never seem to be more than 8 techs behind. Also low GPT means the AI can't run away as easily, plus the 5% city science penalty.

This is the result of a game with basically broken City States (They were broken before but BNW gave a broken System more importance) and an AI which doesn’t bother to attack for the most time if you don’t attack at any point in the game yourself.

Are you supposed to win like that on immortal? Well, I guess currently it’s not hard to do so. Because city state “management” is as crucial as unit management and the AI excels in being horrible at both. My suggestion: Start over and disable city states and diplomatic victory.

I feel like I'm living in the twilight zone when I see all these threads popping up.

Of my 7 games in BNW so far, all emperor/immortal, I've had AI invasions in 6. In 4 these were earlyish - before turn 150. Twice they were pre 100.

In my latest game on immortal as Venice I've been at constant war for 150 turns, including double teaming, and been dowed by 4 seperate civs. I played immortal level as standard in GNK and I never really experienced anything like that.

Maybe it's because I add more civs and reduce city state numbers these days. I recommend giving it a shot and seeing if it gees up the AI a touch.

Abraxis said:

You know, I remember the biggest complain about Civ5 vanilla being that enemy civs didn't act like other civilizations trying to manage a... civilization, but rather like other players trying to win a game. Now I see a bunch of people complaining the complete opposite, once they've finally put it back more in line with how Beyond the Sword was. I don't get it.

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It is not the same people complaining! Personally, for example, I was always totally content with other civs playing "as humans". There could have been some tweeks regarding general attitude, but all in all I liked it the way it was. I know many did not, but I did. Sorry for this!
I just feel sorry with Firaxis, as it is true that you can not please everybody! Somebody will always complain!

While I can perfectly accept the new "roleplaying" AI behavior (so I don't complain! ), I still think the game lost some challenge. In addition to this, if we have the AI rolplaying, well known warmonger civs shouldn't fall out of their role and play so peacefully. (Or should I say: cowardly?)
There really should be a good bunch of (early!) aggresion in the game to spice things up a little bit.

Spy_Lord said:

In my latest game on immortal as Venice I've been at constant war for 150 turns, including double teaming, and been dowed by 4 seperate civs. I played immortal level as standard in GNK and I never really experienced anything like that.

Maybe it's because I add more civs and reduce city state numbers these days. I recommend giving it a shot and seeing if it gees up the AI a touch.

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Yes, I suspect you could be right. I have been playing adding more civs and less city states too, and I see a lot of wars happening. Zulu always attack as soon as they have speamen. Playing on immortal.

As I am playing multiplayer that's not an option for me unfortunately.
I always play small maps, no city states, but with high sea level to reduce the land.

In MP you cannot add additional opponents.

I only have a minute but for the record, I have been a vocal critic of turning Civ into a roleplaying or SimCiv type game and have always complained about cheesy wins and the AI not playing to win.

My point for this thread was not about what I did (I'm comfortable playing Immortal and have had lots of good games pre-BNW) but what the AI did not do. That's why this game took so long to play because I was examining each AI (the Huns military, Ethiopia's culture, AI gold, etc.) and trying to figure what they were thinking - and reinforced by the Replay Graphs at the end. In summary, they were holding back or switched off their main goal.