Aggressive AI = The Real Civ?

[Arlborn]

I didnt say in your city - I said per city.

If you have 10 cities and your entire army consists of 10-15 troops, then yes, I would like to see that save because even on standard setting your power would be at the bottom of the graph.

Here something for you, although not as extreme as you said, I guess.
Look the year in the power graph! I guess somebody has knight already
And I can't see the power graph of the Ethiopians because I got 0 EP invested there.. They are friendly anyway hehe.

And no, no war for me yet, only the one I declared, and even then I didnt get attacked because the attacker has to pass through Hathy and Ethiopian territory first, which are friendly/pleased with me, while they are annoyed with the other 2!

 

[Sparrowmint]

I'm pretty sure I'll stick with regular AI for the foreseeable future. I always play on Noble and despite usually keeping up (or ahead, depending on the game) on tech and always building a lot of troops in every city (my husband regularly mocks me for how many troops I build since I just usually just keep them for defense, I don't like to go to war unless absolutely necessary), I'm always getting attacked. Furthermore, it's often by AI leaders who are pleased with me, and I often have better luck remaining friendly with the traditionally aggressive leaders (Alexander, Montezuma, etc...) than some of the others.

Because I build a fair number of troops, I rarely have much difficulty in fighting attacks, but it does slow me down tech-wise and my ability to build, of course. Since this is pretty much always my experience, I balk at anything that makes the AI more aggressive.

 

[CivScientist]

I have tested several games with otherwise equal settings, and here are my findings:

"Normal AI": AIs tech faster but it's quite easy to avoid being attack even with minimal defense. Fun setting if you intend to play peacefully.

"Aggressive AI": AIs tech slower, but so do you as you NEED defense. The Ancient and Classical eras are especially hard as you cannot afford too many troops. Overall quite a bit more difficult.

So why is aggressive AI quite a bit more difficult in your opinion?

 

[DrewBledsoe]

Per city. . . I'd probably expect a minimum of 5 troops every game. Three decent defenders, two decent attackers. If only to go out and harrass enemy troop movements when the AI is dumb enough to declare war, or to bust the barbarians before they trample your improvements.

Of course if the AI is feilding multiple stacks of 80+ troops, as reported previously in this thread, then your going to need a LOT more defenders IN each city.

Even if I'm defending with 3 rifles against stacks of 80 swordsmen eventually the city WILL fall. My big questions when I see reports of this kind of unit spam are:

(1) How is the AI supporting that size of an army to begin with?

(2) How is the AI surviving the war weariness and extra support costs of that many troops outside borders and at war?

(3) Why would the AI programmer (Blake), seeing this was possible, consider allowing this unit spam to be an improvement to the AI, rather than a BUG in both gameplay and game balance?

I have only read about stacks of 80+ units, and I'd love to see a save showing such a stack, but if they do exist, and are somehow supportable by a civ with 6-8 cities . . . then I'd have to consider that to be a BUG. Something to be fixed, not exploited. Of course that's only my opinion and others are free to disagree.

I'm the one who's seen them many times. BUT I play huge maps, and the civs fielding an army that large (if in middle ages) generally have around 20 cities. The 80+ I mentioned recently, was followed up by another 50+ not long after. They support them by having very low tech rates.

And here's another problem. When (like in that game) Augustus has 23 cities, but is way behing in tech, and falling like a stone BECAUSE of all his troops he needs to be programmed to do something about it. And that ISN'T to go and attack yet again, when the defender has far superior units.

With 23 cities (I had 15 at that point) with all his emp lvl bonuses, he could and should win. But WON'T because his one strategy was to keep attacking. I appreciate that this may be almost impossible hard to code (i.e. when do I have ENOUGH land, that I don't need anymore)...his conquest victory just isn't going to happen period. Not when me and Gilgamesh have Rifles (if far fewer than Augustus has Knights etc.)

So Augustus is this case, needs to stop being such a beligerent so and so, settle down, build his economy up, repair all the diplomatic relations he's fractured, and then way in the future, when his economy is re-afloat, and his wartech matches others, then consider fighting again. Now that WOULD be a "better ai"....

 

[Arlborn]

So Augustus is this case, needs to stop being such a beligerent so and so, settle down, build his economy up, repair all the diplomatic relations he's fractured, and then way in the future, when his economy is re-afloat, and his wartech matches others, then consider fighting again.

Now that is something that I agree I would love to see.

 

[sveint]

So why is aggressive AI quite a bit more difficult in your opinion?

Because it is very hard (on Emperor at least) to balance a decent army/defense with economic develoment. Furthermore, diplomacy becomes much more important. A "cautious" neighbour may well decide you are a juicy target.

Please note that Aggressive may or may not be more fun depending on tastes. You do need to move/build a lot more units.

 

[sveint]

Also, on Aggressive AI some AIs tend to fall behind in tech with/because of their large army.

In my opinion this does not make the game easier, rather those AIs tend to become vassals/conquests in the late game, meaning: you will be facing one or two very large and powerful enemies in the endgame (unlike 4 or 5 more moderate ones).

 

[sveint]

For a real challenge (I have yet to beat Emperor with these settings), try:

No tech trading (you lose your trading advantage)
No vassal states (some AIs will grow very large absorbing others)
Aggressive AI
Ragnar must be an opponent, as well as some other financial civs must be around - you cannot be financial

If anyone beats that, please advice

 

[Underdawg]

Also, on Aggressive AI some AIs tend to fall behind in tech with/because of their large army.

In my opinion this does not make the game easier, rather those AIs tend to become vassals/conquests in the late game, meaning: you will be facing one or two very large and powerful enemies in the endgame (unlike 4 or 5 more moderate ones).

Yes... in almost every other game, there ends up an AI in the late game (industrial age) that has maybe 3-5 vassals and is behind in tech quite a bit (maybe 5-8 techs behind the leaders) but has a huge army and lots of land. Heck, they are even usually dangerously (dangerous for me) close to domination limit sometimes.

 

[Spearthrower]

No tech trading makes it easier for the player in BtS, not harder.... especially with AGG:AI on.

 

[FrancisMarion]

No tech trading makes it easier for the player in BtS, not harder.... especially with AGG:AI on.

It makes the tech race easier, but the diplomacy game much harder. No tech bribing AIs into wars or to prevent them from attacking you.

 

[PericlesOfAthen]

I play on Monarch usually standard or large maps sometimes with 1 or 2 more AI opponents just to liven things up. I don't know if it is my game style or what but I've found Aggressive AI to be easier than regular AI. Usually I have to build more units than I normally do ( which is kind of annoying ) but no where near the unit spam that other people mentioned (someone said 4 units in each city; I NEVER had to do that). I keep usually two defenders and then a couple of stacks. I just watch my power rating more closely to make sure I don't fall very far behind and I also watch the diplomacy more carefully and keep on my neighbors good sides. Usually I'll take out one opponent early and then be selective about my next target so I don't get too many negatives in diplomacy and then from there with that extra land and cities I can easily tech ahead and use superior units to stomp on anyone else or go for Space victory. With regular AI, the AI keeps up much better in tech or at least some of them do so it's more difficult to get that unit superiority. Also there are a wider variety of civs going for a wider variety of victories. Frankly I haven't noticed any difference in the number of wars between the Aggressive AI and the normal AI. What seems more of a factor in the number of wars is religious diversity.

 

[Spearthrower]

The person that said that probably meant "4 units per city" rather than in each city. That would allow a garrison and a stack or two.

Personally, on AGG:AI, I look at my troop cost more than the troop numbers and push it as far as I can. By mid game I am usually spending 30g per turn on military upkeep costs with non-military supporting civics.

I agree with you though - I find AGG:AI easier to win because the AI digs its own grave for you.

 

[Thalatta]

For a real challenge (I have yet to beat Emperor with these settings), try:

No tech trading (you lose your trading advantage)
No vassal states (some AIs will grow very large absorbing others)
Aggressive AI
Ragnar must be an opponent, as well as some other financial civs must be around - you cannot be financial

If anyone beats that, please advice

Not too hard, really. Play Cathy to plan to get lots of cities and keep your borders solvent early, and then hit regenerate map until you get a double gems or double gold start to fund the early expansion... As long as you can fund the extra cities early, that translates into an easy tech lead midgame, especially against no tech trading, and you'll outproduce the AI the whole game.

 

[Spearthrower]

For a real challenge (I have yet to beat Emperor with these settings), try:

No tech trading (you lose your trading advantage)
No vassal states (some AIs will grow very large absorbing others)
Aggressive AI
Ragnar must be an opponent, as well as some other financial civs must be around - you cannot be financial

If anyone beats that, please advice

For me, that is the opposite of what you claim it to be!

No tech trading hurts the AI so much more than the diplomatic loss to you - in BtS the AI techs so painfully slowly!

No Vassal States - Again, I normally see 1 or 2 AI's go on a vassalage rampage, while the player often prefers to take the whole lot. Leaving this in helps the AI's terrible economy and gives him credible allies to confront you with.

Aggressive AI - double this up with the no tech trading and you probably get to be at least half an epoch ahead of your competitors (except 1 - there's always 1!!) Yes you have hordes of opposing enemies.... but they're all stone age troops.

Ragnar - I accept this one... although all too often in BtS I see him throw all his money into Espionage and get left horribly behind.


I assume you are using normal game speed and normal size map.... and I play Marathon and Huge map.... try these exact settings with these options and see the difference!

 

[Indiansmoke]

I haven't played Agg AI yet, ut I will do so in my next BTS game.

When the person who developed the AI says that the Agg AI is more of a challenge, I think I will take his word for it.

Regarding the talk about notech trading and vassals, I think turning them off helps the human player and not the AI.
In most of my games, Monarch level normal settings, I get vassals myself and I sure trade less with the AI than they do with each other. It might just be me though.

 

[Spearthrower]

When the person who developed the AI says that the Agg AI is more of a challenge, I think I will take his word for it.

He clearly states that the AI will tech better on normal AI setting, but the Aggressive AI is for people who intend to rush their neighbour to get ahead.

The way I play, I tech quickly and so AGG AI ends up falling far behind. The only way I can compensate this is by moving up a difficulty level or 2..... if I need to move up a difficulty or 2, does that make it more or less challenging?

Don't worry, I accept that this is a deadhorse.... but at least people are starting to realise the truth of both sides to it.... it's predominantly game speed and map size setting that affects the veracity of Agg:AI being more challenging - on "normal" settings, AGG:AI is correspondingly more challenging.

 

[Bhruic]

When the person who developed the AI says that the Agg AI is more of a challenge, I think I will take his word for it.

Why would you do that? His word is the most biased on the whole issue. When you've developed something, you lose dispassionate critical thinking. That's not a knock on him, the same thing would be true of anyone in the same situation.

All I know is that if I play on Monarch with Agg AI off, I usually have AIs that are challenging. If I play on Monarch with Agg AI on, I usually have a cakewalk. I'm sure I could move up to Emperor and get back to a challenging game, but I don't see why I'd want to do that.

Oh, and from personal experience, I haven't found the AI any better against early rushes with Agg AI. They are still extremely easy to pull off. Even the early-mid game, I don't find the AI any more militarily challenging. It's only when mid-late game comes around that they can pull off their enormous stacks - which is only useful if they have a tech parity.

Bh

 

[Indiansmoke]

He clearly states that the AI will tech better on normal AI setting, but the Aggressive AI is for people who intend to rush their neighbour to get ahead.

Yes but you will tech better on normal settings as well, as with Agg AI you are forced to built more units.

He also states that even peacefull AI's will keep larger military so it will be harder to attack early.

We all know that that is the most common way humans win. Axe or sword rush take some cities early expand easier. If that is stoped or you pay a heavy price for it it will obviously be more difficult for humans.

My first thought is that these settings make Imperialistic a better trait, as early land grab is more important.

 

[Indiansmoke]

Oh, and from personal experience, I haven't found the AI any better against early rushes with Agg AI. They are still extremely easy to pull off. Even the early-mid game, I don't find the AI any more militarily challenging. It's only when mid-late game comes around that they can pull off their enormous stacks - which is only useful if they have a tech parity.
Bh

If this is the case then it is opposite from what Blake says.