When the AI consistently beats you to a wonder by 1 turn...

Infantry#14

Emperor
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Dec 26, 2006
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Last game on Emperor, Washington beats me to all but 1 renaissance wonders by 1 turn. Seriously, this gets very frustrating. I was building wonder only at my capital and he seems to know what wonder I was building at the moment and beats me to it.

I thought the game was designed such that whenever there is a tie, the precedence goes to player 1 by default. This is the observed behavior for World Congress elector votes. Since player 1 is the player, I thought I was safe when I had 1 turn left. I ended my turn and boom! I lost the wonder race.
 
Following some interesting advice on here I did not establish any embassies with the powers I met. I found that I usually ended up beating the AI to the wonders and did not encounter any instances where they beat me to it by 1 turn. I too have often been frustrated by the 1 turn snatch by the AI in many of my games. I will keep experimenting with the no embassies strategy and see if it continues to work for me. Apparently with embassies the AI is able to peek in and see where you are in your wonder construction and can adjust its construction to beat you to it. So far one game in and I have seen a difference so that may be something you want to try.
 
Following some interesting advice on here I did not establish any embassies with the powers I met. I found that I usually ended up beating the AI to the wonders and did not encounter any instances where they beat me to it by 1 turn. I too have often been frustrated by the 1 turn snatch by the AI in many of my games. I will keep experimenting with the no embassies strategy and see if it continues to work for me. Apparently with embassies the AI is able to peek in and see where you are in your wonder construction and can adjust its construction to beat you to it. So far one game in and I have seen a difference so that may be something you want to try.

Embassies do not allow the AI to "peek" into your city screen; however, having line of sight to a city allows anyone to see a wonder being built on the map screen.

They wouldn't alter their production strategy anyway, as they always max out their hammers when hard building a wonder, so there's no alterations to be done.

To beat the AI to wonders, get the tech before them and manually max out the hammers on the city screen, rather than leaving to the "production focus" option. You can often knock a turn or two off by totally zerioing food surplus. This way you'll know that when you get beat, you never had a chance of winning, as the AI is ahead of you in production or tech.

If you're in renaissance you should be using your spy to follow the tech leader and watch what they are building in their capital. Then you can be doubly sure if you are wasting your time or not.
 
Tile yields are accumulated at the beginning of your turn, not the end. Food is gathered first, pop added or subtracted from growth or starvation, then the other yields are added, THEN you get control of the game to choose production, move units, etc. Then the process is repeated for each player until it is your turn again.

Besides, you can see wonders under construction through the fog, so you should even start a wonder an AI is working on.
 
Following some interesting advice on here I did not establish any embassies with the powers I met. I found that I usually ended up beating the AI to the wonders and did not encounter any instances where they beat me to it by 1 turn. I too have often been frustrated by the 1 turn snatch by the AI in many of my games. I will keep experimenting with the no embassies strategy and see if it continues to work for me. Apparently with embassies the AI is able to peek in and see where you are in your wonder construction and can adjust its construction to beat you to it. So far one game in and I have seen a difference so that may be something you want to try.

Interesting...maybe I'll try that....I can't see much advantage to having early embassies anyway...usually you can "sense" where their captial is And usually I want to have as little contact as I can with the AI until I get some momentum going with my cities.

But the 1-turn snatch happens often enough that something has to be going on....maybe another type of bonusing for the AI? And in some cases when you see the city the AI built the wonder in it doesn't seem like it could possibly have the production to do it.....and also to build their "crazy-big" army at the same time....
 
Since player 1 is the player, I thought I was safe when I had 1 turn left. I ended my turn and boom! I lost the wonder race.

You would have been safe if Washington ended the current turn with "1 turn left", but he was clearly on "1 turn left" on the previous turn, and you wouldn't find out about that until it was his turn to play.
 
I thought the game was designed such that whenever there is a tie, the precedence goes to player 1 by default. This is the observed behavior for World Congress elector votes. Since player 1 is the player, I thought I was safe when I had 1 turn left. I ended my turn and boom! I lost the wonder race.

You would have been safe if Washington ended the current turn with "1 turn left", but he was clearly on "1 turn left" on the previous turn, and you wouldn't find out about that until it was his turn to play.

Scott Jegg sums it up well, but maybe some more explanation will help. The human player does win ties, but you may be misunderstanding what constitutes a tie in the context of how turns are processed. On each "turn," the human player does go first, but the "turn" is not complete until the AIs, the CSs and the barbs have their shot at things -- the turn does not end when you hit Next Turn.

More to the point -- the game does not process/update AI status (i.e., build status, tech and social policy selection, trade expiration, etc.) at the beginning of the human player's turn -- AI status is updated/processed at the beginning of the AI's "turn". What that means is that when you are spying on an AI during your "turn" and see they have X turns to go on a wonder, you need to keep in mind that they haven't taken their "turn" yet -- when they do take their "turn" and the AI status is updated, they will have X-1 turns to go on that wonder, which means you need to be prepared to complete the wonder in X-1 turns.

So, if you have 1 more turn on a wonder and check your spy in the AI's capital and see the AI also have 1 more turn to go, you've lost the wonder -- when you click Next Turn, the AI will finish that wonder on its "turn".
 
Thanks, those are insightful comments. Do AI rush wonder at the end of the wonder race? If he has 4 turns left and pop a GE, does the ai use it?
 
In another thread one of the posters stated when he was beaten to a wonder he went back to a save and adjusted his production upwards so that he managed to get it. This was evidence that the AI had no cheating capability.

Yet, on a game the other day I burned a GE and was beaten to a Wonder by the AI. (It was one where a few turns remained after using the GE). Anyway, I went back to the most recent save, started the Wonder one turn earlier and used my GE. I still got beaten by the one turn.
 
In another thread one of the posters stated when he was beaten to a wonder he went back to a save and adjusted his production upwards so that he managed to get it. This was evidence that the AI had no cheating capability.
Yep, I'm one of those who chime in with this. There have been a few posts about this lately, and as I say in those threads, I've never once experienced the AI changing its build time in response to production adjustment on my part.

I'll go through my spiel again: I occasionally indulge myself with a Prince or King game in which my primary objective is to build all the Wonders, and in which I pull out all the stops to achieve this, including ruthless & calculated manipulation via saving/loading games. I've enjoyed these kinds of games ever since Civ III, and not once across all games/expansions/patches/etc. have I seen the AI's build time change. Whenever another civ builds a Wonder, I'll go back and adjust things so that I beat the AI by a single turn (if possible). This has been, and continues to be, successful each and every time.

Note that I've experimented with this both with and without Embassies established, and with and without the Random Seed option activated. Though it is worth noting that all such instances occur in the earlier portions of the game, when Wonders are plentiful and I have to work in order to get them all; by the middle of such games, little or no Wonder competition remains.
 
Lochlann, it was probably your post I was referring to (I was too lazy to search) and thanks for doing the heavy lifting.

Have you ever tried to go back where you use a GE and get beaten by one turn (as I did in the previous post). It could have been a sheer coincidence in my case that I got beaten again, or it may be the AI has a nefarious hatred of people using a GE to thwart their plans :)
 
Yet, on a game the other day I burned a GE and was beaten to a Wonder by the AI. (It was one where a few turns remained after using the GE). Anyway, I went back to the most recent save, started the Wonder one turn earlier and used my GE. I still got beaten by the one turn.

Without viewing the AI city screen, it's hard to say the exact reason for this. There are so many variables involved.

Imagine something with a random element like a border pop for the AI that city selected grassland tile in the first game, but a hill tile in the second game. That hill would mean an extra two hammers for the AI to work, which might just have been enough to get the job done a turn faster.

What if Barbarians had destroyed AI mines, or just spent a few turns roaming in the borders, meaning the AI couldn't work tiles with higher hammer output. That could have slowed things down in the first save and made the build a turn longer. Maybe the AI didn't have barb problems in the second save.

Small things can often make all the difference in this game.
 
Happened to me once (China took Machu Picchu from me one turn after I used GE!!!:/).

I just took my army, and after long and bloody siege captured Beijing + Wonder which was RIGHTFULLY MINE.

In your face AI:)
 
Without viewing the AI city screen, it's hard to say the exact reason for this. There are so many variables involved.

Imagine something with a random element like a border pop for the AI that city selected grassland tile in the first game, but a hill tile in the second game. That hill would mean an extra two hammers for the AI to work, which might just have been enough to get the job done a turn faster.

What if Barbarians had destroyed AI mines, or just spent a few turns roaming in the borders, meaning the AI couldn't work tiles with higher hammer output. That could have slowed things down in the first save and made the build a turn longer. Maybe the AI didn't have barb problems in the second save.

Small things can often make all the difference in this game.

That's why I suggested it could be coincidental.
 
You're beaten on the same turn. You always go first and when you hit next turn its the AI's turn.

@Cicerosaurus: perhaps that particular AI civ had a spy in your city that was building the wonder so it could match it's building strategy to yours, like not expending a GE before you reloaded, and expending it when you reloaded because it saw you had.
 
Exactly phillipwylie. I gave up the GE for lost and stayed calm and carried on. (I actually tied the cat out in the rain in my anger).

And I'll be in Edinburgh in 10 days. I'll bring my laptop and we can have a challenge :)
 
Have you ever tried to go back where you use a GE and get beaten by one turn (as I did in the previous post). It could have been a sheer coincidence in my case that I got beaten again, or it may be the AI has a nefarious hatred of people using a GE to thwart their plans :)
I know some might call shenanigans on this, but I've never been beaten to a Wonder after I have burned a GE on it. (...or, well, that's true for Civ V, at least (vanilla, G&K, and BNW); I can't claim to remember back to Civs IV and III.) So I have no data on post-GE burning changes.

(To shenanigan-callers, let me repeat what I said earlier: when I play these kinds of games, it is only in the early part of the game that I have any competition for Wonders...and most/all of the early Wonders can be built in 1 turn by a GE. So I've had very few instances of using a GE and then having to wait additional turns while under threat of Wonder competition.)

However, if I'm reading you right, this isn't quite relevant to what you experienced. You burned a GE during both attempts to build the Wonder, and the post-loading adjustments you made were to other things. So, whatever the AI did differently the second time could not have been in response to you using a GE, because that factor was present in both situations.

Small things can often make all the difference in this game.
Definitely true, but unless I'm mistaken about how the RNG works, those small things will only be changed if the player introduces a new roll into the loaded game. The things you mentioned--selection of tiles for border expansion, barb razing/movement, etc.--are determined by the RNG, and since the RNG is determined well ahead of time, simply reloading a game will not change the outcome of these things. Border expansion will grab the exact same tile, barbs will do the exact same things, etc., each and every time. Unless a new RNG roll is introduced via player action.

So, if a player reloads a game and then changes nothing except working a few different tiles, or burning a GE, then the AI behavior should remain completely identical. These actions do not involve an RNG roll, and so the pre-determined order of RNG results will be the same across reloads. It is only when the player does something else that is new, something involving a roll, that AI turns could possibly proceed differently across reloads.

Of course, all this goes out the window if "New Random Seed" is selected as a game option. Obviously. If a game is played with this option, then definitely these minor things could produce something different. Although again, I must add that even with a new random seed, I still have never ever experienced what is being described here. My last such "world pwnage" game, in fact, was with a new random seed: Prince level, Huge/Marathon, with New Random Seed activated. I found competition for Wonders to be particularly strong early on--this was my first post-BNW game of this type, and the linking between SPs and Wonders presented a challenge--and I was forced to engage in quite a bit of backtracking in order to round up all the Wonders. Even with the New Random Seed, tons of close calls, and lots of reloading, I never experienced as much as a single turn's difference in AI build times. Which is consistent with all my other experiences with such games, over a decade-plus of time.
 
I probably didn't explain it clearly.

I had a wonder available to build and my major city had one more turn to go before building whatever it was doing. I let that run and used the GE. I think there was still 3 turns before the Wonder. Bingo- the AI beat me by one turn.

I reloaded and instead of finishing the project, I had the major city start immediately building the wonder and burnt the GE. So, all things being equal I should have finished ahead of the AI. I didn't- it still beat me by one turn.

I'm not assigning any conspiracy theories to this: I'm just a bit dubious.

As has been stated above something may have happened to give the AI more hammers.

It is possible.
 
The WORST example of this happening for me was when I had been going for one of those wonders (I think Chichen Itza or Notre Dame?) and my capital said I was 1 turn away from finishing. Well, that 1 turn passed, and it didn't finish. I thought it was strange, but didn't think too much of it until hit "Next Turn" again only to find that the AI finished it in some far off land!

I was really annoyed, so I loaded an autosave to investigate why it didn't finish on the turn that it was supposed to. After loading and reloading a few times, I figured out that it was because my Golden Age ended, and the expected completion time was counting on the +20% :c5production:, but apparently the Golden Age ends before the city adds the hammers into your production. Without that extra +20%, I fell 3 hammers short. Had I known that the hammers would get added in this way, I could've manually added 3 hammers for that turn. But the city screen told me it was 1 turn away, and I believed it.
 
I probably didn't explain it clearly.

I had a wonder available to build and my major city had one more turn to go before building whatever it was doing. I let that run and used the GE. I think there was still 3 turns before the Wonder. Bingo- the AI beat me by one turn.

I reloaded and instead of finishing the project, I had the major city start immediately building the wonder and burnt the GE. So, all things being equal I should have finished ahead of the AI. I didn't- it still beat me by one turn.

I'm not assigning any conspiracy theories to this: I'm just a bit dubious.
Nah, you were clear; I was just addressing the "what-if" idea that maybe use of a GE somehow triggered different behavior by the AI. Since you used a GE in each instance, clearly that wasn't a point of difference. (Though perhaps it was I who manufactured the very what-if suggestion I'm addressing; looking back, I'm not sure where I got that from. Meh.)

As has been stated above something may have happened to give the AI more hammers.

It is possible.
Well, something is going on, certainly. Just to eliminate the most obvious Occam's Razor application, are you playing with New Random Seed turned on? If so, that may be enough to explain it, via minor coincidental changes such as those pointed out by Scott Jegg. I personally still find that hard to swallow, given all of my experience to the contrary, but as you said, it IS possible.

If you're not playing with New Random Seed, can you confirm that you made no changes upon loading the game other than beginning the Wonder construction earlier? No new combat initiated, Ancient Ruins explored, units/cities bombarded, Great Prophet faith threshold reached, etc.? No (different) unit movement that might have prompted the AI to initiate a (different) action that would have introduced a new RNG roll? Anything?

If you did nothing else different, and if New Random Seed was inactive, then...I dunno. I'm at a total loss. My experiences are totally and consistently opposite to this. :confused:
 
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