Acid_04: The final frontier

[uberfish]

You'd swear the AI was actually intelligent based on its copying our culture bomb to trap units, then Toku taking advantage of that to backstab.

I'm willing to believe the diplomatic AI could be somewhat buggy. Toku normally opens borders at Pleased.

 

[acidsatyr]

no doubt somethings not right with "better" AI

If AI doesn't open borders on friendly because he doesnt like us, then when does he open?

 

[ThERat]

well, when you have a Vassal that is a mere hindrance, you shouldn't wonder that friendly means actually, I hate you and am going to attack you, but bluff you I am friendly, so that you suck up to me even more...

I have to say, that it's fun to play with this team for sure, but this game has been a utter disappointment for me in terms of what we can achieve in such a game on this difficutly level. First of all, we have been just lucky, that no AI decide to simply wipe us out early. We actually gained a lot of ground by playing pretty well.
Things started to turn when we decided to get a vassal. Since that concept is so crappy, it should just be abolished.
Next thing was the long war we fought. We fought brave and smart, but ridiculous WW and upgrade concepts yet again made this experience rather unfun for me.
Now we get a friendly Civ to declare war on us, because the Civ 'doesn't like us enough' In fact, this is so wrong, the fun element is long gone for me.

Let's see what we can carve out here in the end, but this SG has achieved to simply confirm my feelings about the game. It simply lacks the fun factor of the series. I will gladly wait for Civ5 or a surprise turnaround with a new expansion. As it is, the game is broken in so many way...
And as we can see, all those really admirable efforts put into 'better AI' cannot remove that something is wrong here...

(I know my post will attract some flaming...go ahead)

 

[Mutineer]

Well, that what I did mean in Btter AI tread when I sad that in Warlord all leaders feels the same.

In Vanilla Toky never was backstabber and allways keep border open in pleased. Now he backstub in Friendly. AI seems to lost it character and does what ever...

On other hand, I did point out befor his attack stack at our borders and advised to put some defence there.

 

[angeleyes]

Toku is annoyed with your vassal, that makes it possible for him to declare. Vasseling Wang surely was a wrong decision (sorry mutineer), but i don't agree this concept is crap. I've had vassals who worked fine for me.

 

[Mutineer]

How his relationship with Wang should enable him to declare on us?
We allready have -1 ou have rival as vassal, there should not be any hiden penalties to having vassal, who can not have independant from master war/peace relationships. If it si posible, then it is a bug.

Why of reason why civ is a good game is transparency.

Civ allways provided in some reason indication why sertan thin happened, like for example warning that civ going to attack some one in form we have to mach on our hands.
Indication what effect relationship is one of this thin.

By official description vassal give -1, that it. No way any civ should decide to attack as just because they do not like our vassal, or all diplomatic relationship system become meanless.

 

[Snaaty]

What I quite liked about civ 4 so far is that different leaders have different personalities.

Monty (and even sometimes Alex) are backstabbers, Ghandi will trade with you even after you have invaded him and so on...

In the games I played on vanilla so far, Toku is quite annoying as neighbour, because he will always distrust you (not open borders or tech-trade), but after he is pleased or even friendly, he becomes very (very,very,very) reliable (still won´t tech-trade, but open border, help in war, doesn´t backstab and so on). I think this behavior quite fits personality intended:

mistrust anybody up to pleased, then be "best-friend-forever"

In my opinion, it is not good if the different personalities and behaviors for the various leaders are taken away because then the game really becomes extremely one-dimensional...

 

[Blake]

The AI wont decide to go to war with anyone it is friendly with - however ONCE it's decided to go to war, becoming friendly wont prevent that war. I think that's what happened in Toku's case. It's always been like that, it might be more likely in Better AI because the AI takes longer to actually attack (The REASON for this is that it tends to wait until it has a REAL stack to attack, rather than letting any old wandering unit declare the war) - but basically Tokugawa already considered himself to be at war with us and thus wouldn't give us a damn thing.


I didn't run slavery because:
1) For most of the turnset I was running a lot of artists (and I like to leave the next turnplayer with the ability to switch).
2) Biology farms are well worth working (both grassland and plains) - given the ample (even excessive) health and happy caps you want to skim off the population ABOVE those working on biology farms / mature towns. It was only really at the end of the turnset when most cities had reached that size. Whipped granaries in the new cities would've helped a little but not that much with how much food they have...

 

[Jet]

Maybe Japan declared on Korea and Egypt got dragged in. Won't the order of war declaration log messages tell you which? However Blake's explanation would better explain the no OB, no trade.

I think vassals are balanced: sometimes worth it, sometimes not. I do think that when they made the change that your vassal can't own your tile unless the tile is closer to the vassal city (2.08 patch?) they also should have made it impossible for your cities to revolt because of vassal culture - that would have been in the same spirit. But you can work around it: either take the capital, or don't take cities next to the capital.

 

[angeleyes]

How his relationship with Wang should enable him to declare on us?
We allready have -1 ou have rival as vassal, there should not be any hiden penalties to having vassal, who can not have independant from master war/peace relationships. If it si posible, then it is a bug.

Why of reason why civ is a good game is transparency.

Civ allways provided in some reason indication why sertan thin happened, like for example warning that civ going to attack some one in form we have to mach on our hands.
Indication what effect relationship is one of this thin.

By official description vassal give -1, that it. No way any civ should decide to attack as just because they do not like our vassal, or all diplomatic relationship system become meanless.

In the last save you don't even have a -1 for having a vassal (Wang is too small?). But i went into worldbuilder, decapitulized Wang, and at once Toku wants to trade all his techs, open borders and even defensive pact!

@Jet: i 'entered' the last save, autolog tells Japan declares first on Egypt.

 

[sooooo]

It's not a "sneaky, hidden" vassal modifier at all. It's just the same as when you are teamed with the AI. AI can declare on the team even if one of the team is friendly. If AI is friendly at one of the team and furious to other, overall the team is not that high in the AI's estimations and it is not unreasonable to attack.

But I agree it's very annoying if you are not used to playing with vassals. I play my warlords games with the option disabled because they turn the game into a roulette.

 

[angeleyes]

It's not a "sneaky, hidden" vassal modifier at all.........

yes there is, you don't know anyone's attitude towards you once you have a vassal.

 

[pigswill]

Lurker comment

I guess you also have the option of not accepting capitulation. Do AI civs have the same kind of (not blatantly obvious) diplomatic penalities for vassals?

 

[sooooo]

yes there is, you don't know anyone's attitude towards you once you have a vassal.

OK you don't know the exact number, but it's somewhere in between the relations of the two team members.

EDIT: Vassals are coded in a similar way to a PA partner - which is not realistic. Another reason to play with the No Vassals option.

 

[uberfish]

Ok, I guess the vassalage feature is to blame for this. I admit I mainly like it because it creates another sticking point for AIs to fight over, and seldom take capitulations myself.

It's always been like that, it might be more likely in Better AI because the AI takes longer to actually attack (The REASON for this is that it tends to wait until it has a REAL stack to attack, rather than letting any old wandering unit declare the war)

This seems strange, as betterAI intrinsically builds a lot more units than the unmodded game, so if anything it should be quicker to attack. Surely at deity it always has a stack after 20 turns of peace? By the way, general WW calculations should probably be dropped a little because of this.

Despite its flaws civ4 is still the best game in the series by a long way IMO, the previous games were just too exploitable.

 

[LKendter]

But I agree it's very annoying if you are not used to playing with vassals. I play my warlords games with the option disabled because they turn the game into a roulette.

lurker's comment:
After reading this game I really understand why there is so much negativity toward the vassals system!

 

[Atlas]

The AI wont decide to go to war with anyone it is friendly with - however ONCE it's decided to go to war, becoming friendly wont prevent that war. I think that's what happened in Toku's case. It's always been like that, it might be more likely in Better AI because the AI takes longer to actually attack (The REASON for this is that it tends to wait until it has a REAL stack to attack, rather than letting any old wandering unit declare the war) - but basically Tokugawa already considered himself to be at war with us and thus wouldn't give us a damn thing.

Blake state the problem-the inability to change "we have too much on our hands" is terrible. When you went to "friendly" Toku should have shifted gears away from war. This is good because it puts more control and transparency into the hands of the player, while maintaining realism and requires some skill and knowledge. This Toku backstab has happened to me numerous times.

As for the vassal system... it is broken. Vassals are often useless or An opponent is being taken over by you and suddenly you are at peace , yep he/she vassalized to a neighbor- tough luck. The system just takes control out of the player's hands and that invariably makes it less fun, there is not really a way to counter these problems either- which makes it a drag. SP games with Warlords are always with played with no vassals system.

However Civ4 is the far and away the best in the series- diplomacy, micro, combat, UI, etc. are major areas of the game where things are much better than they have ever been. In fact if I could choose one thing to be changed/added it would be to add a "no war weariness" box to check and that is a pretty small thing.

 

[ThERat]

However Civ4 is the far and away the best in the series- diplomacy, micro, combat, UI, etc. are major areas of the game where things are much better than they have ever been. In fact if I could choose one thing to be changed/added it would be to add a "no war weariness" box to check and that is a pretty small thing.

I am not so sure whether I agree with this...

MM isn't necessarily easier or better. Just think of that whipping bug and how to exploit it. Whenever I played a game, there is constant MM needed as the governor has a tendency to assign specialist rather randomly and not really logical (I had so many instances where suddenly a citizen specialist was selected). The fact that cities need to be specialized does add to MM a lot. And the headache that you can only have 2 national wonders per city. Or the rather mundane taks to add specialists to get the right type of GP...it's more like accounting

The UI is bad compared to Civ3 without a doubt IMHO. I don't understand how you can prefer CIV UI. It's not very userfriendly. Well, it's of course down to personal preference here.

There should always be WW for certain civic combinations just like democracy and republic had WW. But, there must be a combination where WW is eliminated. How a game could have been designed to have an explicit AW option and then no means to eliminate WW puzzles me. It's a design error IMO. In fact, AW is plain painful in CIV...

The AI wont decide to go to war with anyone it is friendly with - however ONCE it's decided to go to war, becoming friendly wont prevent that war. I think that's what happened in Toku's case.

This can't be true, can it? I mean, how is a human player supposed to know this? I mean, the reason to suck up to the AI is to get them friendly to have some sort of ally, only to find out many turns later that that Civ decided to hate you beforehand? Makes no sense to me, it's more like playing roulette

 

[LKendter]

In fact, AW is plain painful in CIV...

Now there is the number one area I agree with you and Civ4. The lack of a NO WW goverment really ruins AW.

 

[pigswill]

Police state (-50&#37, Rushmore (-25%) and jail (-25%) reduces WW by 100%. Does that eliminate WW ( I'm not clever or experienced enough to know).