A.I. becoming impossible!

[Boltrider]

I have thoroughly enjoyed Civ since its first incarnation on floppy disks, and have probably notched up collective game time measured in many months not hours. The fact that the A.I. `cheats` is now an undisputed fact, but has never been an issue with me. Since the last patch or two though, I have found it impossible to play a game even on a rather demoralisingly low `Warlord` level!!!

It seems whatever wonders/resources I secure, the A.I. does at some stage come at me with a STUPIDLY huge army. This is followed by another and another until all the other A.I. nations are joining in on the kill at some stage or another - even ones I have carefully groomed as allies!!

My question is this; are there any mods out there that `restrict` this non-sensical behaviour and unrealistic A.I. behaviour a little. Even better, that force A.I. to conform to the same rules as us lowly players?

 

[Endure]

I would guess your problem is your neglecting your army too much.

The AI's SoD are actually pretty easy to take out, even though you might lose a few units on your own in the process. Once you soak up their initial SoDs you can take a few of their cities to punish them and they're generally only too happy to make peace following that (or of course you can just crush them under your heels).

If your too weak on the military, the other AI is going to determine that even if you have pretty good relations, it's in their best interest to join in the war against you and steal a city or two. So regardless of what type of victory your going for, you can't ignore your army and to a lesser extent navy.

 

[Smidlee]

.......
My question is this; are there any mods out there that `restrict` this non-sensical behaviour and unrealistic A.I. behaviour a little. Even better, that force A.I. to conform to the same rules as us lowly players?

Unrealistic AI behavior? Also the AI plays by the same rules as the player. What you call "cheating" is really a "handicap" just like golf. If someone play golf with a handicap it's not called cheating since they're still the the game within the rules.
On the lower level like warlord the player gets more favorable handicaps while on higher levels the AI gets more of them.

P.S as Endure noted above the AI will attack you if you have a weak military which is quite human really.

 

[MrCynical]

As a matter of fact, on Warlord level the human player has substantial bonuses over the AI. At Noble (aside from a few negligible bonuses) the AI and human player are on equal footing.

It's only at Prince and above that the AI has a significant advantage over the human, and even then it's a bonus rather than following fundamentally different game rules.

Check you haven't got the AI set to "Aggressive" - it tends to go for unit spam rather anything else under that setting. If you survive the early stages though, that mode actually weakens the AI. The other possibility is that you're building no credible military of your own - in BtS the AI won't simply leave you alone if you have one warrior per city, or some similiarly pathetic defence.

 

[MadLithuanian]

I think Boltrider's complaint is more that from a role-playing perspective allies shouldn't always make a cold-hearted calculation to grab what they can just because they can (i.e. would Canada ever try to conquer Minneapolis just because it thought it could get away with it).

I found Vanilla better to play with an eye towards roleplaying. In the expansions/patches the AI plays better to win. I don't think there is a solution besides reinstalling and not taking the patches.

 

[Boltrider]

Thankyou for your kind replies.
a) It IS a fact that the AI does NOT abide by the rules, and that it `cheats`. That is a known in the computing fraternity and not disputed. Am surprised some dont know it?

b) Prince used to be my preferred level of enjoyment with Warlords but that is simply impossible after BtS and the latest patches.

c) I go for 3-4 cities by 1000 AD, (anymore and Im bankrupt), never drop below 70% research, grab a religion, and have one city building PROPHET producing wonders while (usually) my capital produces ENGINEER wonders. One of these is Pyramids.... then its POLICE STATE and Vassalage etc NON STOP to get an army that anihilates my weakest neighbour (which I have constantly repressed by doing border raids and capturing his workers - double edged sword that one) and yes Smidlee I know all about F9 and `power` rating, and ensuring I am superior to my target.

... then before you know it I am facing three or four 15-20 stack armies from a nation that also happens to be light years ahead in technology.... thats before all the others step in and... game over. Warlord difficulty!!!! Humiliating or what?

This is always Civ4 + BtS on `Continents` or `Terra` with `Huge` having 12 nations. (Yes I know you can play at Emporer with raised sea levels and increased choke points of `stringy` continents but that never appealed to me)

 

[Navarre]

3-4 cities ? No wonder you get banged. Try something between 7 and 10 as a minimum. In BTS the AI is overexpanding and gets ridiculous amounts of cities, settling them closer than an human player would. You have to fight for the land at the beginning of the game, even if your research drops to 50%. It will pay later. 3-4 cities will get you nowhere.

I also play Continents or Terra huge BTW.

 

[Trojan Sheep]

The AI actually does very little cheating in Civ, and most of it has to do with rather frivilous or minor handicaps it gets on higher difficulty levels (which become far less minor on emperor and above, but that's another matter)

I would wager what you're running into is a rather contraversial piece of Blake's AI improvements called "final war". It essentially means the AI lets his economy flat line because he fully intends to win, and win soon, or at the very least extort all the techs he's missing out on from his victims.

I've seen some truly massive stacks come out as a result of an AI ending up in this state, and frankly I found it rather unfun so I tweaked the SDK in the homebrew mod I play with to disallow that feature. In one game I had an AI conquer neighbor after neighbor all the while running on a huge deficit and surviving solely on looting cities and pillaging improvements, when they finally turned on my roommate and overran them we decided we had had enough.

I can look into making a version of Bhruic's patch that has final war removed if there's some interest. I know I'm not a fan of the feature (I also ended up changing that ******** "no thanks we'd rather win the game" message, talk about immersion breaking).

 

[Vehem]

a) It IS a fact that the AI does NOT abide by the rules, and that it `cheats`. That is a known in the computing fraternity and not disputed. Am surprised some dont know it?

b) Prince used to be my preferred level of enjoyment with Warlords but that is simply impossible after BtS and the latest patches.

Regarding (a) - I think you'll find it just was disputed. The rules are the same, the AI just gets certain advantages (starting techs, starting units, percentage increases in production/research [though it's actually percentage decreases in cost]). These are all just parts of the Handicap you sign up for when you play above Noble.

As for (b) - the AI got better, no doubt about it. All you need to do is the same. They don't "cheat" anymore than then they used to (the Handicaps are largely unchanged), but they do select a strategy and see it through rather than just reacting to what's going on. As the previous poster mentioned, they do have the potential to go for all out war at the expense of all else - but so does a human.

Have a read through the strategy posts on Civ-Fanatics - they're a gold mine of information and tips. There are posts ranging from how to expand quickly on noble to more advanced discussions of how to min-max the economy on Immortal or Deity. I'll also repeat what the earlier poster said - 3-4 cities is not enough for a Huge map. With a few more (or a smaller map), you may have more fun.

 

[Jerrymander]

Play Catherine and overexpand yourself early to gain good land.

Always maintain a military and check the Power graph to make sure you're not dead last. AIs tend to attack those who are lowest on the Power graph.

 

[Hammurbabble]

Thankyou for your kind replies.
a) It IS a fact that the AI does NOT abide by the rules, and that it `cheats`. That is a known in the computing fraternity and not disputed. Am surprised some dont know it?

The dispute here is about semantics. It has nothing to do with anyone not knowing anything. The word "cheat" could be applied to the bonuses the AI gets at higher difficulties, or it could be argued that those bonuses aren't "cheating," but the facts are unchanged either way.

In any case, whether those bonuses constitute "cheating" or not, at Warlord difficulty YOU have the bonuses, not the AI, so if it's "cheating" then you, not the AI, are the cheat.

c) I go for 3-4 cities by 1000 AD, (anymore and Im bankrupt), never drop below 70% research, grab a religion, and have one city building PROPHET producing wonders while (usually) my capital produces ENGINEER wonders. One of these is Pyramids.... then its POLICE STATE and Vassalage etc NON STOP to get an army that anihilates my weakest neighbour (which I have constantly repressed by doing border raids and capturing his workers - double edged sword that one) and yes Smidlee I know all about F9 and `power` rating, and ensuring I am superior to my target.

OK I see what your problem is.

1) 3-4 cities is too few. It's not true that you will go bankrupt if you build more. It's a question of horizontal versus vertical mobility. You can help your economy out by building lots of city improvements (especially farms and cottages, plus mines on gold/silver/gem resources), and by researching Code of Laws and building Courthouses, and researching Currency. I try to reach about 9-11 cities before I stop my peaceful expansion. If you have to drop your research slider for a while, that's not the end of the world. I've had it drop to 20% routinely at that stage of the game, but it comes back up pretty rapidly and I find it easy to catch up on research. And I play at Monarch. At Warlord it should be a cakewalk.

2) Getting a religion is good, but insisting on taking the one you found as your SR is not. If it spreads to your neighbors so they are all your religion, fine, keep it as your SR, but if something else makes better diplomatic sense, don't be a fanatic, switch faiths. You'll still get the shrine income, which is the real reason you want to found a religion (all other religious purposes are satisfied whether it's your religion or someone else's). Next to having a weenie little army, being an infidel is the best way to get DoW. With some AI leaders, it's actually the best, no exceptions.

3) You're building too many wonders IMO. You can sometimes pull that off at lower difficulty, especially if you're Industrious, but even when you can do it it's not that good an idea. I'm not saying build NO wonders, but trying to get them all is not wise. It means that you're putting a lot of hammers and time into wonder building that could instead go to developing your infrastructure and building a military. Pick and choose your wonders. In the Ancient/Classical/Medieval period, I would suggest picking no more than three, maybe four if you're Industrious. Don't even try for the others.

Of those, I'd say #2 is probably the culprit for the specific problem you described, maybe combined with lack of military units. Diplomacy is the key if you want to remain at peace, and choice of religions (plus careful use of "go to war with" bribes) is the key to diplomacy.

 

[BalbanesBeoulve]

Stop QQing and learn to play. The AI doesn't cheat, you just suck at the game. Plenty of people can win on Deity. Warlord is a joke. The AI expands so slow and your maintenance costs are so low that your 3 or 4 cities is just obscenely bad on a huge map. You should be able to get 10+ cities while still outteching the AI.

 

[Willem]

(i.e. would Canada ever try to conquer Minneapolis just because it thought it could get away with it).

Of course not, since we know we'd get our butts kicked, and very hard too. It's no different in the game. You have a weak military and you're going to get picked on.

 

[Willem]

Thankyou for your kind replies.
a) It IS a fact that the AI does NOT abide by the rules, and that it `cheats`. That is a known in the computing fraternity and not disputed. Am surprised some dont know it?

How wrong you are. The AI in this game has been run through many, many tests and it has been proven over and over again that it doesn't cheat. And playing at Warlords, you're getting far more advantages than the AI does. Don't blame the AI just because you don't know how to play the game.

b) Prince used to be my preferred level of enjoyment with Warlords but that is simply impossible after BtS and the latest patches.

Because Blake improved the AI considerably with the release of BtS. It has nothing to do with cheats, it's just smarter than it used to be.

c) I go for 3-4 cities by 1000 AD, (anymore and Im bankrupt), never drop below 70% research, grab a religion, and have one city building PROPHET producing wonders while (usually) my capital produces ENGINEER wonders.

This is just a poor way of playing. You're obviously suffering from a Wonder addiction, not to mention being too conservative with your empire building. I don't slow down my early expansion until my research starts dipping to 30-40% and by 1000 AD I'll have at least 6-7 cities up and running, with one or more of them building nothing but units to defend my empire. And this is on Noble, not Warlord. Percentage means nothing with research. 70% of nothing is still nothing. The more cities you get going early the more total gold you'll have to devote to research.

 

[MrCynical]

a) It IS a fact that the AI does NOT abide by the rules, and that it `cheats`. That is a known in the computing fraternity and not disputed. Am surprised some dont know it?

I'm sorry to be blunt here, but simply stating it is a fact does not make it true. What "computing fraternity" is this? It's easy enough to look through the game files (the handicap XML file is the relevant one if you want to look for yourself) and see that only to a negligible extent at Noble, and to a greater extent at higher levels does the AI receive bonuses. It still obeys the same game rules though. Below Noble YOU get the bonuses over the AI. If anyone is "cheating" at Warlord, it's you, not the AI.

b) Prince used to be my preferred level of enjoyment with Warlords but that is simply impossible after BtS and the latest patches.

The main AI bonuses at Prince are 5% to research and production, plus a few trivial odds and ends - not that hard to overcome, but you may need to do a little thinking about your strategy...

c) I go for 3-4 cities by 1000 AD, (anymore and Im bankrupt), never drop below 70% research, grab a religion, and have one city building PROPHET producing wonders while (usually) my capital produces ENGINEER wonders. One of these is Pyramids.... then its POLICE STATE and Vassalage etc NON STOP to get an army that anihilates my weakest neighbour (which I have constantly repressed by doing border raids and capturing his workers - double edged sword that one) and yes Smidlee I know all about F9 and `power` rating, and ensuring I am superior to my target.

Well the first line does explain rather a lot. 3-4 cities is far, far too few on a huge map. I'd be looking to have at the very least 4-5 times that number by that stage. If you never drop your science rate below 70%, you are expanding at nowhere near your full potential - and nowhere near bankruptcy. It's far from uncommon for good players to be pushing 0% before they halt expansion, giving much more land to work with. For financial trouble, Currency and Code of Laws are the techs to go for.

Police State is a civic of desperation, not choice at this stage of the game. It's expensive, preventing you from running the better Representation civic, and should be unnecessary at Warlord. You have the advantage over the AI in both research and production - build even a comparable empire, and you should have no trouble keeping up with them both technologically and militarily.

How many wonders are you building? While the AI is weak enough to allow you to build essentially all of them at Warlord level, this is generally unadvisable - stick to the important ones.

... then before you know it I am facing three or four 15-20 stack armies from a nation that also happens to be light years ahead in technology.... thats before all the others step in and... game over. Warlord difficulty!!!! Humiliating or what?

That quantity of troops is not unusual on a huge map. When an average civ hould be well into double figures on city numbers, it hardly takes that long to produce them. You simply aren't going to last well with such a tiny number of cities. 3-4 would be pretty weak even on a small map.

 

[r_rolo1]

70% of 10 is less than 20% of 50 .....

Seriously, your empire seems too small for the map size you're using.... and for your diplo skills. Even with that kind of handicap you're giving to yourself ( the size of your empire will not alow you to build Wall street or Oxford , just for a quick example ), with determined tech beeline, good tech trading and major bribing actions (A AI that is already in war will rarely ( not never... ) enter in another war... if you bribe a AI to war, you're putting 2 AI out of your back for a while ) should give you some kind of warranty.

P.S I would really like to know why there is still the idea that Civ IV AI cheats ( especially from civ I - II veterans... not the first one that appears saying that ). Previous Civ AI really cheated ( I simply hated the fact that Civ III had full map knowledge... but at least we always knew where the late resources were: if you saw a AI coming from farfaraway to plock a settler in your backyard, it surely existed a resource there ), but Civ IV doesn't..... Civ IV AI may have a nitro tank in higher dificulties ,but does not have rocket engines like previous Civ AI had.....

 

[Gumbolt]

The Ai certainly has improved in BTS. Quite scary how fast they expand and the way they consistantly bang out settlers. Even with 12-13 cities i was behind the leading Ai on cities around 1100ad. They also like you less for starting wars. Half the map just declared war on me. Ackkk

I think you most certainly do need a strategy from the start. You also need to avoid the situation where you get swallowed up by the game itself. You cant simply have a war now where you take 2 cities. The reality is the AI will rebuild the cities and probably have partisan soldiers left in them.

You need troop numbers and a defined goal of what a war will acheive.
Wars simply for land grabbing or cities your gonna raze are now pointless.
If you start a war with a nation its best to finish them off.
If you only have 5-8 units attack a nation with 8-10 cities your soon gonna be outnumbered. Number, numbers numbers.

My monarchy strategy needs a rethink. Perhaps i should of just converted my religion.

 

[Boltrider]

What a brilliant response! Thankyou very much.

As I mentioned I am actually a veteran of the ORIGINAL pre-PC days of Civ and all its versions and it is by far the most superior of all games.

I have known from personal experience about the AI cheating but like it said in a recent articel on AI strategy of all Sid Meier`s games...they are `...honest about their dishonesty` and `Does it matter if a game cheats? Not if its as convincing as it is in the Civ series`. (taken from PC Format btw) Like I said this is a superior game. (It would just be nice if this cheating could be adjusted a tad)

In the old days you just chucked out settlers like they were going out of fashion, and the nation with the largest empire won. This changed in Civ 4 and I changed my tactics as a result (Earlier attempts at repeating this strategy failing abysmally with AI winning a space race because I was obliged to fall below my usual 70% research limit). I promise though to try again with 9-11 cities!

The apparent emphasis on wonders is wrong. I DO like having a couple of prophet producing wonders in ONE city [because the money earned can fund the mother of all armies]. BUT... I have in one game had the monopoly in religion and earned a huge income, which, coupled with Police state, Vassalage, and Theocracy has given me a phenominal army, with which I simply assisted allies or defended and STILL got beaten!!! This with most cities simply producing coin to fund the beast, so there was no way the AI of the smaller nation could compete.

When you play poker you expect there to be only 4 aces in the deck. I dont mind having an indeterminate number as long as I have a say!

 

[MrCynical]

I have known from personal experience about the AI cheating but like it said in a recent articel on AI strategy of all Sid Meier`s games...they are `...honest about their dishonesty` and `Does it matter if a game cheats? Not if its as convincing as it is in the Civ series`. (taken from PC Format btw) Like I said this is a superior game. (It would just be nice if this cheating could be adjusted a tad)

In both cases they are referring to the bonuses given to the AI at high difficulty level (i.e. above Noble). At Warlord level, which is below the "normal" difficultly level of Noble, it is the human, not the AI that gets bonuses, and hence is "cheating" in your terminology.

When you play poker you expect there to be only 4 aces in the deck. I dont mind having an indeterminate number as long as I have a say!

You already do. If you want the fairest game possible, you'll have to up the difficulty level to Noble, so you are not "cheating" against the AI.

The simplest way to find out where you are going wrong would be for you to upload a save game from somewhere in the midgame. It looks like hardly expanding at all is your problem, but it will be easier to be certain with a save game to look at.

 

[Endure]

In the old days you just chucked out settlers like they were going out of fashion, and the nation with the largest empire won. This changed in Civ 4 and I changed my tactics as a result (Earlier attempts at repeating this strategy failing abysmally with AI winning a space race because I was obliged to fall below my usual 70% research limit). I promise though to try again with 9-11 cities!

As has been said many times before, having 10-12 cities producing at 50% science is better then having 3-4 cities producing at 70% science.

Yes early on, your research will probably slow down some, but you more then make up for it later when you start to build up your cities and they all start more then paying for themselves. As they start paying for themselves, you can crank back up the science slider and produce far more science then you would have with just your 3-4 cities.

The apparent emphasis on wonders is wrong. I DO like having a couple of prophet producing wonders in ONE city [because the money earned can fund the mother of all armies]. BUT... I have in one game had the monopoly in religion and earned a huge income, which, coupled with Police state, Vassalage, and Theocracy has given me a phenominal army, with which I simply assisted allies or defended and STILL got beaten!!! This with most cities simply producing coin to fund the beast, so there was no way the AI of the smaller nation could compete.

So you built a huge army and then played passively with it?

Building a huge army and then doing nothing with it isn't going to do much more then cost you money. Building a huge army takes a considerable investment in hammers and turns. The AI isn't going to sit ideal while you do so. They'll be building their own armies, or they'll be gunning for a space race victory. You need to put your armies to use and expand and conquer one of your rivals, increasing your wealth, production, etc and putting you into a better position for your eventual victory.