I've encountered this irritating little problem trying to make the leap from Prince level play to "computers cheat with both hands" level, and oddly enough it's got absolutely nothing to do with how I play my own game.
Inevitably, a scenario will arise like my latest game. Playing as Arabia, popped up in a good spot with bad neighbors-sea to the north, Ghengis, Elizabeth and Washington to my south. Immediate war from Ghengis in warriors/archers era which continued throughout with me grinding away his army and eventually took him down to just his capital, which on king took about 30 turns to take thanks to pikemen strolling out every turn that had to be killed before they could get to my composite bowmen. At this point, Elizabeth has declared war with washington, and I had my scout on a hill near their border, just watching the war unfold for kicks. From ancient through classical into medieval eras, the war continued like two seas crashing into each other-the massive instantly spawned armies of Liz and Washington basically balanced each other out while I struggled to stay at the same tech level as everyone else while trying to take Mongolia's capital. Suddenly Elizabeth pops both her UUs and the tides of war change instantly. Washington continues his blind assault on land, but lo and behold all his units are slaughtered by medieval rocket artilleries before they get to the fight now! His navy of spammed frigates suddenly hits a wall of unforgiving frigate murdering machines! A normal human's response would be to switch to ranged units and horsemen to try and combat the longbows and privateers for the ships of the line, but the AI doesn't know that. they have set spawn paths that I generally see, and that includes a massive frigate navy once they get that tech, and a focus on melee units like swords/longswords and trebs/cannons that get wrecked by longbows.
The AI doesn't "get" Elizabeth, and it allows her to universally run away with the game on higher difficulty levels due to the simple increase in scale of everything military related. She took over Washington and two other neighboring civs in a blink of an eye and turned on me, and fighting an empire three times my size was just a losing proposition. She even managed to overtake me in tech and come at me with rifles and (somehow) norwegian ski infantry, though I'm sure that was a glitch.
Does anyone have a solution to how to deal with one of those nations that just gets a UU that the AI can't seem to process right? Other examples are the horse archer type units like arabia, egypt and mongolia that can use hit and run tactics which the AI does quite well but doesn't know how to adequately defend against. Is the appropriate response just to keep a "hit list" of AIs that if you encounter them you MUST go to war and take them down a peg before they can get their war on with the computers around them?
Keep in mind I'm not screaming OP here on any of these nations, it's a problem with the game AI not the civ itself-there are even examples of civs on the opposite end of the spectrum, where their tendency to spam their UU leaves them with a severely crippled, topheavy army and generally means they won't amount for a whole lot. Best example is the huns, who I've seen try to stroll dramatically to war with 20 battering rams and NOTHING ELSE, only to be stopped in their tracks when they realize that shockingly the enemy is not fielding an army of entirely cities.
So what's the secret? how do you cope, oh great civ gurus? And, as a side note, if anyone's done any studies of exactly which nations tend to be runaways and which tend to be fail trains when their UUs roll around, I'd find that very helpful as well.
Inevitably, a scenario will arise like my latest game. Playing as Arabia, popped up in a good spot with bad neighbors-sea to the north, Ghengis, Elizabeth and Washington to my south. Immediate war from Ghengis in warriors/archers era which continued throughout with me grinding away his army and eventually took him down to just his capital, which on king took about 30 turns to take thanks to pikemen strolling out every turn that had to be killed before they could get to my composite bowmen. At this point, Elizabeth has declared war with washington, and I had my scout on a hill near their border, just watching the war unfold for kicks. From ancient through classical into medieval eras, the war continued like two seas crashing into each other-the massive instantly spawned armies of Liz and Washington basically balanced each other out while I struggled to stay at the same tech level as everyone else while trying to take Mongolia's capital. Suddenly Elizabeth pops both her UUs and the tides of war change instantly. Washington continues his blind assault on land, but lo and behold all his units are slaughtered by medieval rocket artilleries before they get to the fight now! His navy of spammed frigates suddenly hits a wall of unforgiving frigate murdering machines! A normal human's response would be to switch to ranged units and horsemen to try and combat the longbows and privateers for the ships of the line, but the AI doesn't know that. they have set spawn paths that I generally see, and that includes a massive frigate navy once they get that tech, and a focus on melee units like swords/longswords and trebs/cannons that get wrecked by longbows.
The AI doesn't "get" Elizabeth, and it allows her to universally run away with the game on higher difficulty levels due to the simple increase in scale of everything military related. She took over Washington and two other neighboring civs in a blink of an eye and turned on me, and fighting an empire three times my size was just a losing proposition. She even managed to overtake me in tech and come at me with rifles and (somehow) norwegian ski infantry, though I'm sure that was a glitch.
Does anyone have a solution to how to deal with one of those nations that just gets a UU that the AI can't seem to process right? Other examples are the horse archer type units like arabia, egypt and mongolia that can use hit and run tactics which the AI does quite well but doesn't know how to adequately defend against. Is the appropriate response just to keep a "hit list" of AIs that if you encounter them you MUST go to war and take them down a peg before they can get their war on with the computers around them?
Keep in mind I'm not screaming OP here on any of these nations, it's a problem with the game AI not the civ itself-there are even examples of civs on the opposite end of the spectrum, where their tendency to spam their UU leaves them with a severely crippled, topheavy army and generally means they won't amount for a whole lot. Best example is the huns, who I've seen try to stroll dramatically to war with 20 battering rams and NOTHING ELSE, only to be stopped in their tracks when they realize that shockingly the enemy is not fielding an army of entirely cities.
So what's the secret? how do you cope, oh great civ gurus? And, as a side note, if anyone's done any studies of exactly which nations tend to be runaways and which tend to be fail trains when their UUs roll around, I'd find that very helpful as well.
