I want my WWII moment, advice?

Hello,

Every time I play the game I feel like all most of the work get done in the 1st one or two eras, if you play those eras well it sets up for an easier upcoming era. keep this type of progression up and by the time you are in the modern era/future era the game is pretty much winding down and the civs point/strength situation is relatively how it will be at the end. The most fun I have is pre-medieval era when I still working out my system.

I have yet to have a massive, "world war 2" moment in any game and I would love to play this sort of strategic warfare situation. The most fun Ive had during this game was in the Iroquois declared war on me and they had there warriors (who have a massive +forest bonus) attacked me, and at the time I was surrounded by forests, It was sooo close and tough- IF I had not sacked my general for a citadel I would have lost for sure, it was so back and forth and I thought I had lost. I want this again in modern war when the units have more options than move/melee + archers. (like bombers, nukes, carriers, aircraft etc)



Is there a mod, what am I doing wrong? what can I do? No one has ever signed a defensive pact with me or had a possibility of accepting one. I want a powder keg war. Is there a way to set everyone to aggressive persona?



TLDNR: I want to have a WWII every fight so far has been 1v1 and relatively one sided and not too tough (especially for all post medieval wars), except once when it was amazing tough fight and I want that back and in the modern era.

yea i know how you feel. maybe try a marathon game starting in the modern era? sounds like modern warfare to me

Right but doesn't it take like 15 turns to build any unit? I have a mod that just slows the tech progression down which I like. Otherwise if you get caught with your pants down and a low army count.

yea it takes longer to produce a unit....

but on the flip side there is more time for actual battles between the techs and you will be more invested in the game?

you have to be the one who starts alliances/enemys, i usually bribe others to do this.

currently im in this terra game as polynesia and immediately settled the new continent while rome took over my entire continent. its almost modern era and hes taken out like 3 or 4 civs. needless to say he declared on me and as 14 cs as allies... i might not be able to win this one but ima play "just one more turn" until i kick his butt i dont care how long it will take. feels like ww3 to me!

This is a problem inherent to the base game. It's designed to have all of the victory conditions (domination, culture, spaceship, diplomatic) trigger at about the same point in the Modern Era. That means that there's usually a point in the late Renaissance or early Industrial where it's just OVER, where you're clearly going to win and it's all just mopping up. This generally happens because you've got an insurmountable lead in technologies, production, and so on; in one game, I was 30 techs ahead of the next closest civ, with Giant Death Robots facing off against Riflemen. It's also why so many of the buildings and units in the Modern Era are a huge jump in power over their predecessors (Tank -> Modern Armor, Bomber -> Stealth, Public School -> Research Lab, Museum -> Broadcast Tower, the GDR); they're designed to make it so that you can mop up more easily.

If you're consistently running into this, then you basically have three options:
1> Turn the handicap level up higher, so that the AI players "cheat" more, making it much harder to get that sort of insurmountable lead. These AIs don't actually improve their decision-making, they just get larger discounts on tech costs, building costs, unit costs, maintenance costs, and so on. While Prince is the "default" difficulty where the AI has no real penalties or bonuses, most experienced players can easily win several levels above that.
2> Play a variant game (One City Challenge, Always War, and so on) or scenario map, basically tying one arm behind your back.
3> Use mods.

Many of the balance mods over in the Creation & Customization forum, such as my own, are designed to make the game stay in the "interesting" phases for longer periods by reducing your ability to overwhelm the AI players without giving them artificially huge discounts on everything. Even with these you'll still want to play on King or Immortal, though.
For instance, an old favorite is the "Tech Diffusion" type of mod, restoring the Civ4 algorithm where every civ gets extra beakers when researching a technology that other civilizations already know; this allows weaker civs to keep pace with the tech leaders more easily, to where it's nearly impossible to get more than 10 techs ahead of anyone else. By using something like this, it's far more difficult to gain that insurmountable advantage over the AI players, which keeps things challenging for longer.

Ghostz said:

you have to be the one who starts alliances/enemys, i usually bribe others to do this.

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I have tried that, even with absurd "gifts" they wont take it. Can you elaborate on your conditions (ie, difficulty, any other info that might make them more likely to ally such as bigger army etc)

JimboThrasher said:

yea it takes longer to produce a unit....

but on the flip side there is more time for actual battles between the techs and you will be more invested in the game?

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Do you think start a game say on Marathon or at least epic and starting it in the Renaissance or next era would be a good start?

JimboThrasher said:

currently im in this terra game as polynesia and immediately settled the new continent while rome took over my entire continent. its almost modern era and hes taken out like 3 or 4 civs. needless to say he declared on me and as 14 cs as allies... i might not be able to win this one but ima play "just one more turn" until i kick his butt i dont care how long it will take. feels like ww3 to me!

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Sounds awesome, game settings? map type? difficulty?

LegoMaster said:

Do you think start a game say on Marathon or at least epic and starting it in the Renaissance or next era would be a good start?

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yea def just talking about it makes me want to do it next. id say epic for renaissance and marathon for a modern era game. bigger the world the better. better yet make it domination win only so that it goes until someone takes over all the capitals... yea im totally doing that next!

JimboThrasher said:

yea def just talking about it makes me want to do it next. id say epic for renaissance and marathon for a modern era game. bigger the world the better. better yet make it domination win only so that it goes until someone takes over all the capitals... yea im totally doing that next!

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If you make it domination win only does that make everyone aggressive or militaristic?? I never thought of that!

LegoMaster said:

If you make it domination win only does that make everyone aggressive or militaristic?? I never thought of that!

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i'm sure someone else would be better suited to answer that, as im not sure. but i imagine it will affect the behavior in some way because they all will try to win. to be honest im totally doing it next game i play so ill have to let you know how they act different.

I usually start playing in Industrial era, that way the phase where I'm still "building my system" is when I have artillery and infantry, and trying to quickly tech to bombers and modern armor, instead of trebuchets or longswords. But it's true that once your production becomes higher than any other civ it's over.

A way to have a ww2 moment is to declare war on all of your major neighbors at the same time. Desirably, it should be at the point when they still have 4 times more cities than you. On a standard size map (biggest I play) that resulted in some pretty fun multi-front wars with advances, retreats and stalemates, trying to figure out where to commit reinforcements etc.

as some have suggested start a game in renasance or industrial(ww1 era forget what its called).

I have exactly the same "fun" criteria as the OP, I want to play a "meaningful" game in the industrial era.

The problem with a late start is that in order to have an epic WWII confrontation, you not only need to be "close" with the AI, you also really need a mature infrastructure so's you can field WWII-scale armies.

Honestly, the only way I've been able to achieve this is...

1) Play on marathon, so units don't go obsolete quickly, and either huge/large.
2) Play the entire early eras peacefully for infrastructure only, and only go to war to keep the AI civs "equal", ie, close to each other as well as you.
3) FINALLY, when you hit industrial, pull out the stops and go whomping people!
4) Because you have to "manage" the world during the buildup period you have to be able to maintain a dominant position without conquering everyone. The only way to guarantee that is to play at a slightly lower difficulty level. Then, when you get to 3) above, go in and edit the handicaps file to give the AI "deity" advantages. With their mature infrastructure, they'll start spewing tanks & destroyers etc. like nobody's business! Wooo-hooo, total war Hitler style!

Starting on one of the later periods just doesn't give you a full, developed map of opponents.

If you start in Industrial era, you can get your production to its top capability pretty quickly, and because of reduced costs on everything your major cities will be churning out modern armor in 1-2 turns in the end. But it's true that there will be no big empires, maybe everyone will have ~5 cities.

I like the idea of giving yourself and AI time to build up and then change handicap mid-game, I'll try it in my next game

LegoMaster said:

I have yet to have a massive, "world war 2" moment in any game and I would love to play this sort of strategic warfare situation.

Is there a mod, what am I doing wrong?

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Try playing as Germany on an Industrial Era start game. You set up the starting era on the 'advanced' tab.

Play a higher difficulty! I had your exact problem ... then I realized that I had the most fun when I was the most challenged and the game felt like an uphill battle. Try working your way towards Emperor and Immortal -- those two are typically fun without having very strict game play method (particularily Emperor).

Question about higher difficulty, I highly dislike the very crazy bonuses the AI gets at high levels. It makes building wonders impossible amoung other things.

Would it be the same to have an AI equalizer, such as "rule them all- a better game for humans and machines" mod, or does the computer without huge bonuses just suck at life regardless and to have a fully competitive ww2 moment you have to let them have the bonuses?