Need advice for multiplayer custom game setup

[sahbaz]

Hello all,

First of all I want to say that my friends and me are playing this mod for a while now and we really enjoy, we tried some other mods, but this one so far is without competition!
Right now we are playing on monarch and we are doing pretty well, only setting that we turned of is barbarians, but for the new game we are considering to turn them on, since now we are more experienced and we are giving AI on monarch hard time.

So far we played with only "Conquest" victory condition and with "AI plays to win" option turned on. We added total 19 nations (including 3 of us) and biggest Pangea map. With this setup we noticed some weird stuff related to AI declaring wars and AI cant really keep up with technologies.

I would like to hear more about relation with conquest victory condition and ai plays to win option. I believe that this really affect how AI is playing.

For our next game we are evaluating different options to turn on/off. We would like to hear opinions and experiences for victory conditions.

1. What is real difference between turning off/on "AI plays to win", how that will impact AI and game generally ?
2. What if I turn off all victory conditions and tick "ai plays to win" ? Or how game will be if i turn off all victory condition ?
4. For optimal experience what would you recommend to turn on/off (we like balanced games with reasonable amount of wars, but also AI to be good with technolgoies)
5. What is purpose of barbarians ? Can they become too strong ? How they are in late game ?


I hope someone will help me to understand better these options and how they affect AI.

Thank you in advance for any answer!

 

[Snowygerry]

Hello all,
(...)

5. What is purpose of barbarians ? Can they become too strong ? How they are in late game ?

Good questions - I'll try this one.

They can form into full civs eventually, from time to time you will get "X has united the barbarians" event and barb cities nearby or even far away, have a chance to join them and potentially create new monster civs...

Early game they can make for nasty surprises, I lost my capital once to a barbarian "horde" of 4 horsemen, while my own army was out to take my nearest neighbour

They force you to guard settlers and scouts obviously.