do you have ai in your multiplayer games?

[slo]

Hello all, I have a monthly game with three/four other players....we normally do not play with any ai however, i find that only playing with the 4 of us is getting boring and I feel we are missing out on a lot of what civ is...

Some of our players feel adding the ai will add too much of a cheat for the humans and it will unbalance the game...

I feel that it will add a lot more diplomacy issues..ie...ai is giving me something...human dow's ai...do i now get involved to protect my trade or not???issues like that not too mention more competition for wonders and good land ect ect...

anyway..just looking for some advice on if you add ai players or not, and if so, is there any special settings you use?
thanks
slo

 

[CraigMak]

I would say that most people do not play with the AI whenever possible. This is because the AI is very easy to exploit by trading luxuries and resources and other things for gold per turn, stealing workers and taking cities easily.

Diplomacy with the AI can pretty much be ignored when they don't have an entire world of other AI's to influence for or against you. Diplomacy with humans only goes to a point since they are going to do whatever they need to do to win regardless of how you treat them. If you're nice to them they might kill you last but that's about it.

I would recommend adding more humans to your games to make them more interesting. Hosting a public game with your friends would definitely be less dull since you have no idea how the other human players are going to behave. The personalities and skill levels of your friends are probably predictable already.

Finding more trustworthy people to play with who are not going to rage quit on you would be the way to go.

 

[CleverAdvisor]

If you want to breathe new life into your games try mods with your friends.

 

[Nouco]

Me and a friend do play with AI's(immortal). Which for us is quite challenging sometimes.
The biggest problem is that you have to start over a quite few times. Sometimes your friend has the Huns next to him and the game is very fast a single player game.

 

[TheGrumpyBuddha]

A buddy and I use

http://civ5.jaiiderherr.de/

to play MP. The AI is incredibly passive otherwise -- even Attila kicks back and relaxes. The main advantage is that it uses the SP AI, but you can also use the simpler mods (there are three types, I think the xml ones, which tend to be simple, are the only ones supported).

We started with us vs two 3-person Emperor teams, then against three 2-person Immortal teams, and it's a reasonable challenge but not too hard, really depends on your playing style. Because the humans are better at cooperating than the AI, going to be easier than usual (e.g., if Emperor is usually your go-to level, you can probably handle Immortal, or go up against 3-person Emperor teams.)