AI difficulty level bonuses

[bradleyfeanor]

Thank you, Pyrkaige. I think you should repost your article in the Strategy forum (or have a moderator move it there). It isn't strictly a strategy article, but it provides enough useful information that I feel it should be in the War Academy.

 

[Tearor]

the AIs will trade techs in order to work together. you must to or get them mad at each other.

 

[microbe]

When I asked Soren about the trade factor, that is not the description he gave me. He said that it only applied if the AI didn't have the cash to pay full price. In your example if the price were 130 and the AI trade partner had it they'd pay 130. If they only had 100, the deal would still go through for 100.

I believe this is the right description. There is no "auction" in CIV, so there is nothing like "AI thinks other AIs provide better deals than human players". I think AI checks one by one who can make a deal and decide whether it grants the deal solely on that deal itself.

 

[sekong]

I have a game that I forget which level I played on. I see the AI's proction need 80% shield of mine. Does it mean I was on Emperor level?

 

[Lazarus Plus]

@Lazarus - is it possible that...
1) the AI got the tech advance with goody huts and/or when your research rate was slower and then just mantained it?
2) the AI civ was scientific (1 free advance per era) ?!?

A late reply, sorry... No, no way. Neither of those things would have made the difference that gave it such a lead over me.

 

[meowsqueak]

EDIT: --- Delete Me ---

 

[vmxa]

I have a game that I forget which level I played on. I see the AI's proction need 80% shield of mine. Does it mean I was on Emperor level?

Yes that is Emperor they have a cost factor of 8.

 

[vmxa]

A late reply, sorry... No, no way. Neither of those things would have made the difference that gave it such a lead over me.

What is your proof that they were doing it faster? I guess I mean why you concluded that?

I suspect it si because you look at the trade screen and it show some techs you did not have. Later they have now got a tech or a few that you do not have, but you concluded they should have not been able to keep coming up with techs faster than you.

Understand (and maybe you do) the screen does not show you all the techs they know at that time. It will only show techs they have that you know the prereqs for. So they couldhave gotten ahead in the AA from being faster than you and getting huts.

Now it looks like they are going faster than 4 turn research, but they are not. Not sure if I made my point clearly. You would need to use a tool like Gramphos to see all the techs they knew all along. So if both of you are doing 4 turn pace and they are actually already say 8 techs up, but you cannot tell, it would look like they are going faster than 4 turns.

 

[Ondskan]

Does anyone know if the AI is smarter in any difficulty? Not just gaining an advantage. Is there any player made bots out there that alter the AI?

ty )

 

[MAS]

Does anyone know if the AI is smarter in any difficulty? Not just gaining an advantage. Is there any player made bots out there that alter the AI?

ty )

The answer to your question is no, the AI "thinks" the same at all difficulty levels. And no, again there is no custom AI for Civ3.

That said, I would have preferred if this question was asked in the quick-answer thread stickied at the top of the forum, rather than reviving a thread that is 5 years old...

 

[Ondskan]

I never understood why people don't like reviving old threads.
The topic fits my question and so I revived it.
Then you have those who complain about not using search. -Sigh-



Thanks anyway! What a pitty.

 

[MAS]

I never understood why people don't like reviving old threads.
The topic fits my question and so I revived it.
Then you have those who complain about not using search. -Sigh-

Don't take it to personally, I halfway feel like putting the blame on the forum administrator. He should make it so the forum software auto-locks-and -archives threads that didn't get a new post for more than an X amount of time...

Moderation goes both ways: if there are already 3 threads on the front page with the same or similar discussion, its bad to start a 4th.
Reviving a 5 your old discussion is bad because it very often contains both misinformation due to ignorance that we now know to be wrong but didn't back then, and information that is no longer relevant because it changed in a patch.
People scanning the forum can't be expected to always check the posting date of first page discussions, (you'd expect 1th page to be current) so they end up posting to correct the misinformation or answer questions asked long ago, by people who no longer visit the forum.

 

[Spoonwood]

AI cost factor: This determines the cost factor for AI growth, shields and research. The cost factor for players is always 10; the lowest difficulty levels give a bonus to the player, while the top three difficulty levels give a decided bonus to the AI.

I feel surprised here that (unless I've missed it) no one has point out that the cost factor also determines how quickly a city with a full food box will starve. For example, a Deity level city with full food at size 12 only needs to lose 24 food (or is it 25?) to starve, while an Emperor level city needs to lose 32 food at size 12.