Did the Patch Improve the AI's Warfare Ability?

It's interesting reading ya'lls' posts. I am still debating whether to finally get CiV (AI competence is the main factor here) but in Civ 3 and 4, you really could never make a beeline for wonders in the beginning unless you had a capital and a second city on excellent productive terrain and you HAD to have at least a garrison of military units on two sides of your empire otherwise you were getting attacked by your neighbor or their neighbor. You just have to account for that in your production early on.. no civ in history achieved power without the ability to defend itself.

Sounds like things are getting fun

I still find it weird how I`m better off with only 2 or 3 cities if I want a happy society, but if I build more citiies,, everyone becomes miserable.

It should be each INDIVIDUAL city that might get miserable due to overcrowding, not the whole country at the same time. I mean a village with a small population is not going to be as miserable as a huge overcrowded city or capturing an enemy city should make THAT city unhappy but not really bother the rest of your nation.

If I have 5 or 6 cities and the AI captures 2 of them reducing me down to 3 or 4 cities the people actually get happier?

It don`t make sense.

Socratatus said:

Too many instant wars with no provocation whatsoever. It`s a constant surprise attack. Sometimes they`re even too far away to even get to me or I barely know them. Before you might`ve got one nation that declared war simply because it wanted to which I could put down to greed, but since the Patch I`ve unprovoked random DOWs from Napoleon, Boudicca, spain, just about everyone I`ve encountered. It doesn`t seem to matter what you do now.

Civs felt human before the Patch, now they`re just warmongering robots.

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I had korea DOW me unexpectedly but the effect was ruined by the fact that i didn't even see them for 20 turns and i was in the atomic era. Ended up nuking seoul and sending in the destroyers

the thing i don't like is AIs like hiawatha being backstabbers now. before hiawatha was trustworthy and helpful, now he's a major backstabber. i'm fine with AIs like dido who are supposed to be backstabbers being backstabbers, but when hiawatha is doing it, it needs to be scaled back.

Hiawatha was always a dirty backstabber. He will DOW even if you are Gandhi because you are wonderspamming and in his (claimed) lands.

I once made the mistake, back in my veeeeeeeeeery first game of King, to vote for best buddy, Eurasian runaway Iroquois because... we were buddies. Turns out Hiawatha doesn't think that way, and some turns after he won UN, he DOWed me.

If I pay money for this and the AI doesnt deliver I'll be so mad at every one of you who didnt warn me

*Now Ive bought g&k on the premise that the AI wont horde gold for me to abuse, and the AI will be much more aggressive. I havent played vanilla Civ5 for at least 6 months, and I stopped playing because it was far too easy. I beat Diety quite quickly after purchase on my first attempt. I'll keep you updated incase any other prospective players are thinking about coming back for g&k! First game will be tonight.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=481565 so mad

JWAT44 said:

the thing i don't like is AIs like hiawatha being backstabbers now. before hiawatha was trustworthy and helpful, now he's a major backstabber. i'm fine with AIs like dido who are supposed to be backstabbers being backstabbers, but when hiawatha is doing it, it needs to be scaled back.

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I agree. My experience was that Hiawatha was previously reliable and almost trustworthy. The post-patch Hiawatha is far more hostile and inclined to launch unprovoked wars, even just after signing a Declaration of Friendship.

I think I picked a bad time to be going for my first Deity pangaea domination win.

I was once surrounded by Russia, the Netherlands, and some other civ. Watched them all DoW me one after the other onto my single capital city. Not really improved warfare tactics, but definitely better unit composition. Way more melee units than before.

OmniPotent42 said:

I was once surrounded by Russia, the Netherlands, and some other civ. Watched them all DoW me one after the other onto my single capital city. Not really improved warfare tactics, but definitely better unit composition. Way more melee units than before.

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Same here. AIs bring better unit compositions now. They bring lots of siege units and archers mixed with a good dose of melee units. I also witnessed more aggressiveness in the sea, with more melee embarkation, something rarely seen before fall patch.

My take is that after a couple of years Firaxis finally balanced the game right for veterans. The game was too easy before fall patch. I constantly win Immortal games. Now, I still win on Emperor but I'm having a hard time (=challenge) playing Immortal. Oh, and try Immortal Epic Large, now that's a good and fun challenge!