Most Dangerous AI Leader!

Dido Queen of Backstab and her sister Isabella.

Also Sejong the tech leader.

No AI opponent has troubled me as much as Greece. In my games he's almost always a rampant settler, early warmonger, and grabs up (and holds onto) the City States for most of the early game. He is full of early game threats through eating up all the land, preventing CS allies, and forcing a stronger early army than if next to 50%+ other possible neighbors.

PhilBowles said:

Why is Oda? If I ever see him do anything I'm astonished. I did have one game where Sweden was my strongest rival, but it was definitely unusual.

Click to expand...

Yeah, to be honest after more thinking I don't know why I have put Japan, Sweden and Inca here And I cannot edit the poll

Has AI Oda gotten better since his buff? I haven't run into him in a really long time. He used to just barely make middle of the pack but it seems like he could burn through honor pretty quick now if he gets a good sea start and his UA seems like it'd benefit the AI a lot since they kamikazee a lot anyway. I never have understood why the AI fails with him so often.

I voted for Mr. Messiah (Haile), Hiawatha, and Other (being Suleimon.) In my games, Ethiopia is that guy that losses his capital 60 turns in, but still survives. In those games, he's little more than a religious demon, ruining everything. But in games where he is isolated enough, or can survive, he is usually point leader, or really close. Hiawatha has a habit of sticking a city in the middle of my land, and having a good enough army to destroy me. Finally, Suleimon, whose goal in life is to kill me.

VicRatlhead5199 said:

Has AI Oda gotten better since his buff? I haven't run into him in a really long time. He used to just barely make middle of the pack but it seems like he could burn through honor pretty quick now if he gets a good sea start and his UA seems like it'd benefit the AI a lot since they kamikazee a lot anyway. I never have understood why the AI fails with him so often.

Click to expand...

I've seen him a couple of times, but he always seems to stay small and weak just as he used to.

HanNorwood said:

I voted for Mr. Messiah (Haile), Hiawatha, and Other (being Suleimon.) In my games, Ethiopia is that guy that losses his capital 60 turns in, but still survives. In those games, he's little more than a religious demon, ruining everything. But in games where he is isolated enough, or can survive, he is usually point leader, or really close. Hiawatha has a habit of sticking a city in the middle of my land, and having a good enough army to destroy me. Finally, Suleimon, whose goal in life is to kill me.

Click to expand...

Suleiman's not often powerful enough to be a threat, but he's definitely annoyingly psychotic - when he's around I can lose games just because the effort I need to go to beat him once and for all can stall my development.

I voted for Hiawatha from this list. He always seems to be the most troublesome foe in most of my games due to his quick unending growth. He is thus more difficult to take out or wipe away and always seems to throw a monkey wrench into any expansion plans. Not to mention his eventual backstabbing...you always have to be ready...again...throws a monkey wrench into plans.

Why is there Oda/Gustavus on the list? I understand Pachacuti, he's always at least in the middle of the pack and can become a runaway, but Oda is always awful while Gustavus is just bad.
Granted, I've still had Gustavus runaway multiple times... In the Communitas mod.

I'd personally replace them with Dido and Washington, but whatever - I wouldn't vote for either of them because my votes went to:


Hiawatha - ah, the aggressive city spammer! He's good in all areas of the game.
Alex - does it even need a reasoning? He's very consistent. Likes having a lot of cities, loves city states, loves hating you and his malignant love to all CS's is always painful to deal with.
Casimir - he's the most dangerous in my opinion - either he becomes THE biggest runaway if he has no strong early game aggressors nearby or, if they're there, he feeds them into being even more dangerous. He's either the most annoying guy in the game or he makes someone else much stronger.
Shaka - he will often kill someone he started near. His complete incompetence in science and love for puppets may destroy him technologically though, making him a rather annoying runaway that will - sooner or later - become weaker and weaker.
Augustus - when this guy does something right, he does something right. He'll eat nearby weaker civs if given the opportunity, but - unlike other runaways - he doesn't forget about stuff other than conquest.
I noticed he really depends on snowballing. While it's true with all the runaways, Augustus who participated in a bad war is very unlikely to ever become a danger again.

The guy who has become the biggest problem for me as of late is William the Orange. Dude just ruins every game he's in for me. He starts off lukewarm at best, and the relationship goes straight in the can no matter what happens very shortly thereafter. He's got a great cultural potential, so even if he tolerable, he messes up your ideology alliances in a hurry, and he tends to form a pretty big war coalition against me as well.

I've taken to obliterating him as soon as I meet him because he's just a complete pain in the ass. Darius and Alexander both get nods, but man, the Dutch just ruin my game.

Ghandi lures you in to be a friend, but the second you're down on your luck he ruins you.

There's a lot of civs that can be runaway warmongers. I've seen several different ones do it successfully including:

zulu, russia, spain, germany, japan

The ones I consider most deadly are those that use combinations though like early war + good development.

Alex: has several early wars and gets big, also steals all the CS's later for diplomatic victory.

Russia,Spain,Germany: have early wars, get huge--especially if overseas. Then win by science later after knuckling down and developing.

troublmaker said:

Ghandi lures you in to be a friend, but the second you're down on your luck he ruins you.

Click to expand...

Thats why advanced everything quickly
I need to be able to convince the world he is evil
Thouh its nigh impossible
We need to do what we can to bring that down (im asian so thats okay)
Cos that gonna bust a cap on all our asses with nukes.

I have a direct access to delhi in the map im on... but its pretty grim.
Im gonna screenshot later.
First i need to end aslia and siam....
-sigh-

I voted alex. If he is your neighbor, he will forward settle multiple times then spam his unique units and overrun you. You can easily die to the huge combat strength spears and the cavalry from out of nowhere. If you stalemate the war until you tech past his unique units, he still settled most of your territory, so you can't just defend, you have to win cities back. Then, assuming you get some fraction of that territory back, he'll take all the city states, which can lead to widespread cultural, economic, and happiness problems for your civ that you don't usually have to deal with because normally the other civs don't bother with the city states so much, taking away one of the few key advantages the player has over the AI. And being forced into pre-national college wars are very costly in tech and development, so you'll again be strained at best.