It s a bit funny thought how an MP FAQ turned into discussing AI. Makes my knowledge kind of obsolete. I thought the reason to play mutliplayer was to not have to deal with the stupid AI but play with and against real humans. For me, personaly a MP game containing more than zero AI, then someone has quit, and thats not good...
I do understand that some people for casual games like to team up against AI. I justthink teaming up against another team of humans i more fun.
Yes, which is exactly what I said in my "People play singleplayer because they want a nice game, and the AI doesn't play nice" statement. If you want a competitive game, play with humans. If you want a casual game, play with the AI. If you just want to see how badly you can abuse the AI, then play on Deity. At that point you are no longer playing civ.
If I could, I would always play against humans. But civ is a game that takes a very long time (or at least people think it does. I have completed games in less than 2 hours on Standard) so it is hard to get people to play. And it is complicated enough that skill discrepancies are a big deal. I have few friends who play civ, maybe 15. Only about half of those are willing to multiplayer, and it is hard to get them all to sit down for a session. So we get on average 6 people. Then only 1 is anywhere near my skill level, 2 are trolls, and the other 2 are new to the game. So it goes back to being a stompfest like it is vs the AI, but AT LEAST THEY DON'T CHEAT.
ok so we established that dom win is most likely
lets discuss it further:
1. how to win dom in ffa taking into account that after you take down the first civ with classical/ medieval unit the other civs will be aware of you and may gang up. Rush to arty then keep pushing? sit back and try to out build once stalemate?
2. How to win in duel skirmish? how to tailor start if playing a top 10 player vs average league player?
3. I played east vs west 2v2 other day. i was eygpt spammed 10 city all size 9 ish. teammate was iroq had only 3 city size 15 cap size 10 and size 7. vs inca and aztec with 3 main city each. They planned pyure defence army to go sci win. We planned to attack and win dom. We hit arty a few turn before them and with my massive hammer advantage decided to spam arty and rifles / lancer to support with 4 frigate vs 2 , but they have himeji and enough arty and rifle to defend as we land so we pull back and build to nuke. We nuke and fast move to capture 1 or their 2 coastal city - built late on a junk city.
We have 10 turns of nuke before they get nukes as they go for sci techs first and we spam nuke and tank. but now we have the junk coastal city and start to save nuke for cap, we nuke cap down to size 4 but now they have nuke also, we quickly atttack cap and get to 3 hp but cannot take it as they have himeji and tank to defend, it isa very close.
but now it is a messy nuke fest and all the units i make has ruined my gold and science is stopped, we planned to win with the nukes. Now we save nukes for one more try, i have 4 in the city and tanks ready to follow up and then i am nuked and my 4 nukes are gone (((( they can defend us easily and win sci so we concede gg.
my analysis was that himeji saved them. Also iro my teammate had only 3 city and 4th in hammers, so maybe my estimate that we had significantly superior hammers to push was wrong.
any ideas?
1.) If you try to sit back and outbuild after conquering 1 or 2 civs, aren't you going for science victory? Let's say you take your continent before Astronomy. Clearly when the other civs meet you they KNOW you are a warmonger, but they don't know if you plan to win that way.
What I would do as the small civs is make an alliance against you, but still trade with you. Try to convince the others not to trade with you. This way, you are essentially allying with both sides, but they don't get benefits from each other. The dominating player will be unable to take anything else (as they are 1/2 the world and your alliance is the other 1/2).
But now they can just go defensive and win through tech right? This means you have to win through a different strategy, because you are certainly not going to out-tech the behemoth. So if you still want to tech, you need to go specialists (for GS) and RAs with all powers (but convince your alliance to not sign RAs with the dominator). Try to pull ahead of the other members of your alliance so that you can control it through diplomacy and essentially "merge" them with your empire by signing RAs, trading luxuries, and coordinating defense.
Now of course the dominating player may wish to mount an offensive rather than tech up. Some players want to do that. In that case, use your alliance. Remind the players that it is in their best interest to truly defend allied lands, because the dominating player will surely win if any of you half-ass the defense. Then you have to half-ass it as much as possible without losing (and this is the hard part). If you spend so much on units, your economy will 'fall behind' where it should've been. And so will everybody else's. But if you can waste less than everyone else, you are technically pulling ahead of them. So finding the perfect balance where you can just barely survive is key.
2.) Scout. Scout. Scout. Go wide to insure you get iron. Get Iron Working, but get as much as you can afford before that. Just like with defending just barely enough as I stated above, getting as many economy techs before Iron Working will be better for the long run. So when you get Iron Working, declare war (once you have a few more swordsmen than opponent) and keep the pressure. Blockade (not just at sea, prevent settlers and workers from roaming), pillage, and take cities if you can. Put their economy behind yours, and always keep your army ahead of his. As long as he can't BOTH defend and get ahead in economy (like in part 1), you are winning. He should start to fall behind.
If you are the defending player in this scenario, again you need to defend exactly the right amount that you don't fall behind in economy. Experience at the game is key here. Hopefully you can use terrain and your cities to defend against a slightly stronger army, but this isn't the AI here. Players should know how to move their units. You cannot hold off 3 swordsmen with a city and an archer (unless the city is huge, or only 1 swordsman can ever attack at once, that kind of thing)
3.) I never play teams and don't intend to. It changes too many rules in too many different ways for me to bother with, so I really can't help you. Also, I have never nuked anyone, so I have no advice for that either, sorry.
So then they are surprised when the AI backstabs them, and take it as "the AI is ridiculous, they declared war for no reason!"
