No Petra

spafey

Chieftain
Joined
Aug 26, 2012
Messages
28
I just finished a game as Catherine winning with a Diplo victory. However, since I was checking around city states I noticed no one had built the Petra. After I discovered satellites I had a look at everyone's cities and saw that only Askia's capital could build it, yet he didn't. I kept myself to the west of the continent and I assume Rome was being a nuisance but surely he should have had time to build it at some point over 461 turns...

Another flaw in the AI? Or purely coincidence no one built it.

Was a standard size Pangea map on emperor.
 

Attachments

  • 2012-09-24_00001.jpg
    2012-09-24_00001.jpg
    331 KB · Views: 220
  • 2012-09-24_00002.jpg
    2012-09-24_00002.jpg
    290.1 KB · Views: 406
Coincidence. In my games, the AI builds Petra asap, so I seriously doubt that it's programmed to ignore this wonder. Askia isn't much a wonder builder and his capital wouldn't have benefited much from Petra during most of the game, so it's not a surprise that he focused on other things.
 
Although i have seen AIs build the Petra with the only desert tile being the one it's on...
 
Seems from the end game screen that Askia has been losing wars a lot. Most likely the AI simply decided that building more units would be more useful than spending 20 turns building Petra.

Probably he should have, but hey.
 
It happens sometimes with conditional wonders. I once got the Colossus in 500 AD, and in a different game I got Machu Picchu in about 1500 AD (I was building Big Ben at the same time!)

If you get people where they can build those wonders as the same people likely to ignore them, they can be available quite late.

Give Ramses a coastal desert start with a mountain 1 hex away and see how long any of those wonders last.
 
AIs will sometimes not build certain wonders, even when they can. For example, Runaway Sejong who won SV in T313 - builds everything from Petra to CN Tower... yet he never got around to SOH even 100 turns later
 
I'm just now playing a game on Immortal where i'm sweeping up wonders like Colossus, Petra, Machu Picchu and the like just after discovering Industrialism. I am the tech lead but their inability to build wonders is kinda silly at this point. Not entirely sure what made them NOT build it. Small continents, i've wiped out my competitors (Alex and Inca), got Askia, Dido and Haile Sellasie on the other side. None have bothered building much, though Dido did finish the lighthouse like 15 turns ago. Silliest immortal game so far.
 
I'm just now playing a game on Immortal where i'm sweeping up wonders like Colossus, Petra, Machu Picchu and the like just after discovering Industrialism. I am the tech lead but their inability to build wonders is kinda silly at this point. Not entirely sure what made them NOT build it. Small continents, i've wiped out my competitors (Alex and Inca), got Askia, Dido and Haile Sellasie on the other side. None have bothered building much, though Dido did finish the lighthouse like 15 turns ago. Silliest immortal game so far.

What's so silly? Either they aren't bothered with wonderspamming, or they are too busy at war.

e: You also wiped out the two dudes likeliest to have spammed wonders and turned massive.
 
I notice if I take out a neighbor early, it often allows me to go back and build lots of wonders afterwards. An early war must make some kind of shift in the AI programming where they no longer care as much about wonders.
 
I notice if I take out a neighbor early, it often allows me to go back and build lots of wonders afterwards. An early war must make some kind of shift in the AI programming where they no longer care as much about wonders.

I've noticed this too. I've had games that developed into all out brawls before anyone builds a wonder, and wonder development seems to be delayed by hundreds or thousands of years.

Askia loves a good war. I bet he was building Mandelaku instead of thinking about wonders.
 
Yeah, i just found it curious, as i'm used to the AI being way ahead and rush-bying stuff, especially Chichen Itza, Alhambra and the like. One would think at least Dido or Selassie would take interest in some wonderspamming, but turn out i got the whole playing field to myself. Brilliant.
 
It's hard to figure sometimes...I remember a game where I was alerted to Machu Picchu not having been built when a CS requested it.....

It was shortly after I had found an isolated island with a suitable mountain....I had no mountains in the main part of of my civ. I even had time to send a settler, a military unit, a worker and an engineer over to the isolated island and I rush-built Machu Picchu...all this around year 1500 or maybe a bit later....

Petra sometimes hangs around unbuilt for a long time...though usually it gets built fast. If I really want/need Petra for some city, I don't fool around...I get it built as soon as possible. In my current game, I had to let my Petra city build it all on its own....my engineer production was slow...and I also didn't want to lose Chichen Itza...but the city was able to build it, but it took quite a while....as I nervously expected to be scooped at anytime ... ;)

And getting Petra seems like it will be the "game winner" for me....the city...which is non-coastal... is very productive and has now built a lot of other wonders as well....freeing up the capital to focus on building Frigates and Sea Beggars... My plan is a naval assault on my main competitor that "arrogant" SOB, Harald....I'm currently trying to provoke him to DOW...:lol:

[Aside: Provoking the AI into a DOW seems hard sometimes...and I think I might have trouble here....maybe I'll have to send a settler as close as I can get to Copenhagen and set up a city...even if it's a crappy site..???...]
 
I'm just now playing a game on Immortal where i'm sweeping up wonders like Colossus, Petra, Machu Picchu and the like just after discovering Industrialism. I am the tech lead but their inability to build wonders is kinda silly at this point. Not entirely sure what made them NOT build it. Small continents, i've wiped out my competitors (Alex and Inca), got Askia, Dido and Haile Sellasie on the other side. None have bothered building much, though Dido did finish the lighthouse like 15 turns ago. Silliest immortal game so far.

You hadn't built that stuff either...? They're not always the right choices, especially when you're either teching very quickly (so keeping up on just buildings and key wonders is hard) or you're focusing on military.
 
Askia has one of the lowest Wonder values (3). He tends to be much more militaristic as well. Plus, in your game, he has a measly 2 cities. When you factor in the bizarre tech beelines that civs often do, it's not that surprising that he has not built Petra.
 
It's not a particularly grand location to build Petra. It looks like you have the city itself, the Copper Hill, the Iron and another hill down South that will make good tiles with Petra by the time you can build it. Desert tiles without features are not completely useless with Petra as they are without, but 2:c5food:1:c5production:1:c5gold: before Fertilizer are still not great tiles to work.
 
It's not a particularly grand location to build Petra. It looks like you have the city itself, the Copper Hill, the Iron and another hill down South that will make good tiles with Petra by the time you can build it. Desert tiles without features are not completely useless with Petra as they are without, but 2:c5food:1:c5production:1:c5gold: before Fertilizer are still not great tiles to work.

Yes...this is how I see it...any old flat desert isn't great Petra country... but Petra is, of course, going to help a bit. Where Petra really "shines" is with a good mix of hills, a few resources and a river....

And I like building a Petra city in a flood plain area..... and particularly if I'm playing as the Netherlands.... With the Polders you have just about everything you need for a fast-growing, highly productive city....

Of course, it is always situational and you do the best with the "hand you have been dealt".... Flat desert I still try to avoid, or minimize, in any of my cities...
 
I'm pretty sure that if it was on Immortal+ you would have seen Petra in his capital at SOME point in the game. On emperor, the AI gets pretty good production bonuses, but you should be able to surpass them easily, and since he was so focused on military he probably couldn't afford to build it. On Immortal+, there's more than enough production for everything the AI wants. Military, buildings, wonders, you name it. Petra is one of those wonders that ALL ai go after, so I think it's not so much about wonder preference.
 
Top Bottom