AI conquering the world

I was just wondering whether someone already saw an AI civilization conquering the world or at least his continent, thus killing most of the other civs on it. I noticed that, in my games (that is to say, up to Prince difficulty, without the aggressive AI option checked), the AI goes to war and makes peace after taking at most two or three cities. They never try to eradicate their opponents.

I would find it funny to discover a new continent with only one civ on it, when i would expect to meet four of them!

Did this ever happen to you?

Yes, on prince diff Asoka dominated everyone, wiping out peter and bringing Mansa Musa down to 2-3 cities, he also controlled 1/3 of the world.

Montezuma was about to wipe out Isabella, until I asked him to stop (I didn't want him to capture a holy city as he tenously shared my religion and is on my border). This was on a huge pangea on monarch difficulty.

Yeah.. I sometimes hear that a civ is eridicated. But the AI is in fact not very aggressive.

Playing Prince.

Isabella tended to eradicate most of her neighbours in my most recent game, she even launched a crusade against the barbarian cities.

It was because her culture was so strong, and always clashed with others.

I switched to christianity just to keep on her good side.

I agree with Napo. Granted, I think a domination victory is the hardest. I think the AI "knows" that too.

In my games the AI is allways on war, but most wars are not decisive... from time to time they conquer a city or two and then stop. in my last game though, one of the most peacefull [imo] civs, the egiptians wiped out napoleon in three consecutive wars...

playing a deity game, huge archipelago snaky continent map with 18 civs, using QIN, aggrissive AI. There's alot of war going on, and poor montezuma got eliminated by I don't know who, before I even had contact with him. Then isabella got owned by toku. Alexander is all over gandhi's backyard, I bailed gandhi 3 times already, asking alexander to stop his war. I do this because gandhi is the only thing stands between me and alexander, lets just say the prospect of having a mad dog alexander as my neighbor isn't very enticing. Unfortunately, comes mordern age, I lag behind in tech and has nothing to offer to stop alexanders warfare, all I can say is good luck ganhdi, hang in there. I myself was constantly been attacked since renaissance by koublai, peter, toku, huyana, washington. At one point I was at war with 3 civ and fighting enemy destroyers with frigates, I finally got a taste of fighting tech superior units.

It seems that slexander is aiming for a conquest victory right now, he got loads of units and always behind tech with other AI and is still second in score because of his conquered territory.

I have seen civs wiped out by the AI, yes.

You'll see more AI-AI wars if you increase the number of civs and include agressive ones. That way there is a lot higher chance of an AI declaring war. And when one declares war, there's a decent chance a few others will declare on one side or the other. Every once in a while, I see an AI that has been completely wiped out by another, but not very often.

I played about 25 complete games and I saw this only one time by Gengis Khan first to Montezuma and then to Tokugawa. Gengis was my allied and I don't think he planned anything before I ask him to go to war.
Usually they tend to live in their "" exact"" portion of world, maybe Firaxis should fix this factor. I always have to take down 3 civ for domination without wagering war to the stronger last one.
By the way in that game Gengis had about 48% of land on a small map.

I've yet to see this in Civ IV as well. The largest conflaguration I've witnessed is something like 2 AI vs. 1 AI. In Civ III, it wasn't too uncommon to witness world wars involving everyone in the game. It also wasn't uncommon for one AI to completely dominate his neighbors.... I remember several Civ III continent games, where I'd discover one continent is the exclusive domain of one monstrous AI -- his enemies long since ground to dust. It made for very interesting games.

Even when the AI does war, they rarely take cities from each other.

I haven't seen it quite on the order of what I saw in Civ III, but I have seen attempts at domination by the computer. In my most recent game where I was horribly outclassed, my neighbors the Mongols totally destroyed the Egyptians to the southwest of them, and have started wars twice with the English to his northwest. Kublai is first in score and controls the majority of our continent - not total domination like I've seen in previous civs, but admirable nonetheless.

I play noble usually on continents or pangea. I've yet to see what I'd consider an AI going for domination. I'm usually surprised when one AI completely takes out another AI, but it does happen. I've seen some nice sized AI empires but I've yet to see one take over an entire continent (one that starts with 3+ AIs, for ex) but they've come close.

I think part of the problem is that AIs don't take a lot of cities early - they're not that good at early warfare, and by the time they can exploit tech differences and more modern units, the game is getting to the space race point and even aggressive civs seem to love space race more than anything, so AIs abandon domination once the game gets to modern times.

I've seen some reasonable aggression and land grabbing from AIs but it's not as common as I'd expect. Every once in a great while an AI will go nuts and take a bunch of cities in one war.

Pangea maps tend to be more violent and the one time I tried the lakes map type it was very violent.

I don't know if it's a good or bad thing but all this is different from Civ3 where the AIs would often be shockingly aggressive at taking land to the point where I'd be like, "holy crap, this is scary and soon to be over." I've only come close to feeling that way once so far in Civ IV, where the AIs are more generally competent so when you DO see one getting big it's a bit troubling, but I still haven't had a "holy crap, that AI is out of control" kind of moment.

Huayna was about to completely wipe out the Persians in a noble game that I'm probably gonna have to give up on. The only thing that stopped him was that I cut off our open borders agreement. He was on one side of me and the Persians on the other, and I didn't like the looks of all that yellow on either side of me. Unfortunately I may have waited too long, but he's no longer taking over Persian cities every 3 turns.

More unfortunately, the moment my war against the Greeks--whom I'm only barely doing better than--started going well, their Malinese allies, who are totally dominating, declared war on me...it's probably hopeless. We'll see how I do.

Usually they tend to live in their "" exact"" portion of world, maybe Firaxis should fix this factor.

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Hrm...many of my games have featured AIs colonizing far-off islands and continents and lots of border aggression. I've found the Romans, Mongols, and Greeks to be the most likely to engage in the latter.

My experience has been pretty much the same as Zhahz's. I don't think the AI has EVER declared war on me before I've gotten longbowmen. And I make it so I play on a huge map with 12 (often 16) civs so we start off in close proxmity to each other. But I've just never seen it happen. This is unfortunate for some AI civs like the Inca or Romans who should be on the warpath very early.

I think this is because civs just don't hate you enough early on. It must take about 1000 years and a track record for a civ to generate enough hate to declare war on you. I can recall from Civ I, II, III that if the AI would declare war on you at first contact! "Hi, I'm Caesar, prepare to die." Putting the Aggressive AI setting on seems to crank up the hate factor, but mainly just towards me.

I've seen AI aggression rise steadily toward the end of the game. It starts in the middle ages and goes up. However the AI that is in the lead rarely starts a war, there's just no reason to.

Then, around 1950 or so, the AI starts going for the space race victory. That's the only way I've ever lost on those size maps on noble.

I think the AI determines the easiest path to victory depending on map size and number of civs. If playing on a huge map, with continents, with 10+ civs, it's just too hard to win by domination.

The problem is the AI does not know how to sit outside a city and bombard down the cultural defense bonus before sending in their stack of units. So they have serious trouble capturing cities during the longbowmen era. It's not until the late industrial into the modern era that they can capture cities quickly and easily. But I've seen plenty of crazy AI wars during those times. In my OCC noble game there were two civs that just gobbled up the entire world except for my one city. They did declare war on me when I was about 10 turns from finishing my spaceship, though. I signed Caesar in as a war ally against them and he happened to be completely blocking me off from the other AI's. So they destroyed Caesar in those 10 turns then I launched my ship.

not really in my games, usually everyone hates me because I am the one conquering the world so they have a common enemy i guess. =p

eric_ said:

Hrm...many of my games have featured AIs colonizing far-off islands and continents and lots of border aggression. I've found the Romans, Mongols, and Greeks to be the most likely to engage in the latter.

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I mean not geographical portion, but percentage portion.
why?