How is the AI after 2 Expansions?
- Thread starter calmon
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Greizer85
Emperor
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If you mean the combat AI, then no. Shuffling is still in vogue, as well as the water dance. 
Just buy your Comp Bows and go to town (literally enough)...
If you mean the diplomatic AI, it is improved although there are some annoyances and exploits left (warmonger for helping your allies; selling and buying cities).
And the overall AI still cannot compete in the later eras (a runaway Korea or Babylon might on Deity), much less try and actively stop the player from winning (a diplomatic victory is currently ridiculously easy). Until the Renaissance the AI gives good competition though, and it's certainly better than in Vanilla.
EDIT: Even with the bad AI, BNW is certainly worth playing imo, especially if you skipped G&K. The difference between BNW and Vanilla is like that between bland, stale toast without butter and a layered princess cake with 20 different jams in it... Too much for some tastes (for me it's just the right amount), but certainly sweet and varied enough.
Just buy your Comp Bows and go to town (literally enough)...If you mean the diplomatic AI, it is improved although there are some annoyances and exploits left (warmonger for helping your allies; selling and buying cities).
And the overall AI still cannot compete in the later eras (a runaway Korea or Babylon might on Deity), much less try and actively stop the player from winning (a diplomatic victory is currently ridiculously easy). Until the Renaissance the AI gives good competition though, and it's certainly better than in Vanilla.
EDIT: Even with the bad AI, BNW is certainly worth playing imo, especially if you skipped G&K. The difference between BNW and Vanilla is like that between bland, stale toast without butter and a layered princess cake with 20 different jams in it... Too much for some tastes (for me it's just the right amount), but certainly sweet and varied enough.
This really sums it up.
At first, you'll be inclined to dislike new complex changes, but once you get used to it it's much better.
The AI I believe is better, but mostly because you can do more with them. However, the main thing the expansions do is not improve the AI but improve the ways you can interact. In vanilla, the 3 general strategies were to expand, tech up, and either buy everyone out or build spaceship parts, camp and culture hoard or kill everyone. BNW and GnK enable a different dimension in religion and an increase in diplomacy effectiveness via world congress.
Abraxis
☮
Really? I would have likened it to a nice, feathery soft Angel Food Cake, light and elegant.
That princess cake sounds kind of gross tbh, like someone gave their kids an over-sized easy bake oven, a credit card, and a day to make the biggest offense to taste possible.
Edit: as for OP, what does the AI matter? If you're a hardcore strategy player, the challenge is with people, in multi-player, not against brain-dead predictable, or suicidally unpredictable AIs. Playing against whom, is pretty binary, either you don't know their weaknesses yet, and they'll probably destroy you with their cheating, or you've identified their faults, and even Deity becomes easy. If that's the only potential selling point, I'd suggest you stay away. But, if you find AIs a challenge in any other game, maybe this won't even be a problem.
That being said, there is a *lot* to love about BNW outside of a strategic battle of minds. Arguably, the expansions have been moving away from that focus since vanilla.
You should probably inquire more into the state of multi-player if you want that kind of challenge, which may exist there, I wouldn't know.
illusiondrmr
Chieftain
Combat wise, terribly bad.
Tactic wise, bad.
Diplomacy wise, bad.
Gold-managing wise, terribly bad.
You will have to play Diety in order to get some challenge and follow specific ways, in order to beat it.
Abraxis
☮
So far as single player Strategy goes, in terms of difficulty, complexity, and generally well implemented AI, your best bet is probably AI WAR + expansions. If you can stomach the learning curve, it's an awesome and trying experience. Only game I know of that doesn't have an AI pretending to be human, this allows it to actually play to its strengths, rather than trying to awkwardly shamble around with prosthetic limbs affixed with duct-tape.
danieladler
Warlord
- Joined
- Nov 24, 2005
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- 272
The AI has improved a lot, especially in naval battles. The reason why it is still stupid bordeline insane may be that its simply not possible with todays know-how and technology to make it as smart as we want it to be. On the other hand, look at our world today and you might perhaps come to the conclusion that the AI is not that far off from real life; allies becoming enemies over night, one nation can denounce another nation for being evil without any reason, the most aggressive and warmongering country on earth are calling other nations aggressive and evil etc etc.
Xiao Xiong
Prince
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- 480
It is no doubt not easy to make a smart AI, but it should be possible to make a less dumb one.
A simple local tactical analyzer, that works like a chess game reading one or two moves ahead in a battle to see what might happen would be 80's technology and would stop the AI from being blindingly stupid.
Like, realizing, if I move my swordsman into the water by the enemy city. He most likely dies. So let's not do that.
Even a 1 move lookahead would solve that.
A simple local tactical analyzer, that works like a chess game reading one or two moves ahead in a battle to see what might happen would be 80's technology and would stop the AI from being blindingly stupid.
Like, realizing, if I move my swordsman into the water by the enemy city. He most likely dies. So let's not do that.
Even a 1 move lookahead would solve that.
Peng Qi
Emperor
If you think this is "annoying" then try living in the real-life United States! Everyone hates us every time we help our ally, Israel.
Olleus
Deity
That sounds contradictory. You could simply play on a lower difficulty, and not play in those specific ways.
Its one of the reasons I moved back from Immortal to Emperor. I could beat immortal if I used the right map/civ combo and used a tried and tested strategy that maximized efficiency. But that was boring, so I play emperor now where I have more wiggle room to try interesting variants and fun but sub-optimal plays.
Green_Power
Chieftain
Like others have said, combat AI sucks bad. Diplomatic AI is ok.
If you want a challenge, my advice would be to play Immortal in Epic speed. In Epic, things take more time, sure, but one thing that I like about it is how mistakes can cost you much more.
In my last game I was so full of myself that I bullied Boudica into a war, just because so. She declared on me and brought a swarm of archers and her strong gallic troops and steamrolled me. And, as I was playing on Epic there was simply not enough time to recover because building things take a long time.
So, that's my current challenge. Beat Immortal in Epic speed. Before, I was bored because I was winning most of my games on Emperor in standard speed.
If you want a challenge, my advice would be to play Immortal in Epic speed. In Epic, things take more time, sure, but one thing that I like about it is how mistakes can cost you much more.
In my last game I was so full of myself that I bullied Boudica into a war, just because so. She declared on me and brought a swarm of archers and her strong gallic troops and steamrolled me. And, as I was playing on Epic there was simply not enough time to recover because building things take a long time.
So, that's my current challenge. Beat Immortal in Epic speed. Before, I was bored because I was winning most of my games on Emperor in standard speed.
Peng Qi
Emperor
The general consensus among, well, everyone is that playing on Epic is like playing DOWN one or two difficulty levels.
Green_Power
Chieftain
Oh, may I ask why?
Peng Qi
Emperor
Because the AI has a lot more difficulty planning that far in advance than a human player typically does.
Green_Power
Chieftain
True, but when/if you lose a significant portion of your army it's harder to recover. It can go both ways though, the AI also has a harder time recovering. But, since you're playing Immortal, the AI has the advantage because it cheats heavily on production.
I was convinced that the game would be harder on Epic, to what combat is concerned. I guess I'll have to try it more to see if that's true.
To answer the question of whether combat AI is better, the answer is an emphatic yes. This does not mean it is at a human-level, or that it doesn't 'suck'. But it does mean that significant improvements have been made with patches and expansions.
Greizer85
Emperor
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- Mar 7, 2009
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The strategy for Epic speed is as follows:
1. Declare war
2. Wait for AI units to come and decimate them with archery units
3. Enter AIs now-empty lands and pillage, burn and capture to your fat black heart's content
4. Profit (cruise to your preferred victory).
This is how you do it on Standard too, but the thing is that on Epic the AI has no time to reinforce its forces before and during phase #3. On Marathon it's even more easy to wage war in this regard. There's also the thing that your units are usable for a much longer period of time, since unit movement rate is unaltered while the tech pace is severely slowed. So if you tech for example Keshiks, you will have ample time to sweep the world clear with them before opponents can react.
EDIT: If you know what you're doing, you should lose very few units in wars. Mostly melee meat shields that will take the heat while marching towards the city. Always withdraw your archers before they're in danger of dying. If a cap has too much defense (~15 more than your units' ranged strength), wait for better units; if it's a mountain chokehold, be a good sport and sit tight until Artillery.
Imo it's clear from a few test sessions that the game was balanced for Standard size, Standard speed Continent or Pangaea maps with 8 opponents, Emperor difficulty or thereabouts. Anything that deviates from this pattern causes imbalances in one or more areas. Not to say you can't have fun with varied settings; on the contrary. But the 'test bed' of strategies should be close to these settings. Perhaps Immortal diff instead of Emperor; but I find Emperor too easy and Immortal a bit too restrictive already. The game needs a difficulty in between them imo.
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