Aggressive AI = The Real Civ?

[Alsn]

Agressive AI should be the standard setting in my opinion it makes games so much more realistic.Actually about difficulty i find that Noble with Aggressive AI is harder than Prince without aggressive AI.
In my last game with AGG AI on I was really astonished noticing how much AI has improved, Justinian desembarked around 50-60 troops on 3 different landing sites, fortunately i was more advanced than him so i kicked him ass without no problem but in a different game these landings could have been really deadly.The only negative point is that AI now uses planes to bombard but doesn't use them effectively in support of an invasion.
IMO if you should choose between scaling down of a level with Aggressive AI on or playing at an higher level of difficulty, from a gameplay perspective it's really better the first case to enjoy civ4 because warfare and nation building are both present, and AIs seems just smarter.

Actually, i find its the other way around, i have been playing on prince ever since i got the game and was only able to win *once*(out of about 15 tries, although im sure i couldve won some of the games if i had tried harder but i usually quit when it starts looking bad).

Today after reading this thread i thought id try aggressive AI and decided to set it to noble instead of prince and managed to win the very first game i played. Played it on a big & small as justinian(picked random) and didnt have access to iron until i had conquered my neighbour.

In short, it was a hell of a lot harder(or should i say time consuming) than usual to conquer stuff but it didnt really matter as all i had to do was bring enough trebs and at the end of the wars i found that i hadnt lagged behind in tech as much as i usually do during war time.

It may just be that my playstyle is better suited for playing against aggressive AI(i find it too annoying to manage large empires which usually means that by the end of the game at least one AI has managed to grow ridiculously large and eliminated any chance i had of winning) because i just conquered and vassalized everyone without risking the AI getting a tech lead.

I think ill keep playing on default AI as i actually found it more challenging (but again, i believe this is due to me being lazy when it comes to managing larger empires).

 

[DrJambo]

Having just played a game on Aggressive AI, I can only agree with Blake 100%. I think the real problem with people's perception of Aggressive AI, is the fact the option itself is as bit of a misnomer. It isn't necessarily more 'Aggressive' per sé.

In fact, playing as Napolean (standard map, Big_and_Small, Monarch level) I haven't been DoW on yet and I've just researched Medicine! There have been quite a few AI to AI wars and there's now some rather scarily sized AI civs about, with vassals, but as of yet I've not been the target...

Normally, when playing under standard AI, I get to the stage where I build up a fleet (if relatively isolated) and load up with troops and look at my nearest opponents for a opportunistic attack. This can be as early as axemen or as late as galleons. The standard AI setting will generally have 3 or so defenders in a city, which to be honest is nowhere near satisfactory against an opportunistic human with a whipped SoD. As a result, once the stack is built there's generally no stopping me from conquering one or more cities before I sign peace and regroup.

Now, under Aggressive AI, the AI will make it much harder for you to get away with that chop rush SoD or at the very least will make taking that first couple of cities mush more costly. I've noticed defences of usually 4-5 defenders and 1-3 siege, and that's a completely different ball game! As my stack got bigger at the border, so did theres. I've actually had numerous failures in Aggressive AI where I thought my stack was sufficient to take a city or two only to have it humbled on route by a combination of siege and then melee or mounted units. Stranded and wounded behind enemy lines, the SoD went down in humiliating fashion.

People are used to Aggressive AI and what it meant under Warlords, which was essentially just to make the AI gang up on the human and make diplomacy almost redundant. I think with the emergence of BtS and the new style of 'Aggressive AI', that the option should have been renamed to give a more accurate representation of its purpose and, more importantly, to distinguish itself from the inferior Warlords option...

 

[AccipiterQ]

I don't know about you guys saying it's unfair to play WITHOUT the aggressive AI. Playing on Monarch with normal AI there's still a ton of wars...

 

[SickCycle]

I tried playing Aggressive AI before Beyond the Sword and I didn't like it at all, but now that I have the expansion it's very different. I can go the entire game and still not ever have to fight a war but it takes more diplomacy and planning.

It doesn't allow me to dictate the flow of the game, the AI's are in more control and you have to leverage your position a lot more.

I find it takes more planning around the different AI's and there personalities, as the Aggressive ones don't just sit around demanding things and declare war once every 2,000 years, if you show a weakness and the AI notices it if he is an aggressive AI like Shaka or Alexander they will go for the throat.

However, a peaceful AI will still ignore war the entire game and tech away. I have gone entire games on Aggressive AI on Monarch without having a single war till well into 1800AD. It just means you have to be on your guard and you have to realize the personalities of the AI make a "huge" difference in how you can deal with them and not just deal with them but you have to anticipate there thinking more, if you have a lightly defended border with Shaka even if he's slightly weaker, when you show the opportunity he will take it "because he's aggressive and well should".

Even though they tech slower on Aggressive AI, so do you, so it balances out. If you just try to keep up/out tech the AI on Aggressive, you very may well succeed but you wont make it to the end of the game if you have an aggressive personality next to you.

 

[Zhahz]

I'm sorry. I don't think Aggressive AI = the real Civ, and I despise the term "sandbox" AI. It's not the first time that someone has implied some sort of an ego problem on the part of players like me, that we only play to win. The fact is, I win maybe 50% of my games now, even though I play with the "sandbox-oh-so-generously-dumb" AI. I just picked a difficulty level that will still pose a challenge to me.

I'd agree.

It's a freaking game. The only common idea should be to have fun, not you should play this way, or of you don't play this way you're a wuss, or whatever. Why would anyone play Civ if all they want is a wargame? There are way better pure wargames available.

 

[Lurking Liu]

Then I suggest you do an Immortal game showing that you can spank the AI by 'manipulating' the game, otherwise this is just a lot of hot air. And what the heck is "an even playing field" exactly?

Well, I know that if I play with Aggressive AI on Noble up to probably Monarch, I'd still spank the AI. Not everyone wins just because they overpower the AI with pure brute force. What happened to economic management? And on the higher levels, the normal AI's bonuses more than make up for whatever stupidity it has in BTS. Like I said to deaf ears, not everyone likes to play a games that are war, war, war.

You, sir, don't sound like you know the game well enough to be saying the things that you did.

I haven't read past this post, so I apologize if I say something that's already been said, but I while I tend to agree with you, I think you're overlooking something important in the original post. I can't recheck, but it said something to the effect of "If you're playing peacfully, it's easier to win with Aggressive AI because you'll out-tech them." I think it may even have been a parenthetical statement... But, regardless, the point is that if you play peacefully, as you and I do, then playing with the "sandbox" AI is harder.

I also think his tone was over-bearing and arrogant. Furthermore, I personally think that he seems to be suffering from the fallacy that everyone plays this as they would an RTS. I despise RTS gaming, and get very aggrivated when people assume Civ4 is supposed to be a turn-based-real-time-game. I specifically bought Civ4 because it isn't real-time.

 

[gaiko]

I find it takes more planning around the different AI's and there personalities, as the Aggressive ones don't just sit around demanding things and declare war once every 2,000 years, if you show a weakness and the AI notices it if he is an aggressive AI like Shaka or Alexander they will go for the throat.

I find the same on the default setting. If I leave a weak point I find I am _always_ sword/axe rushed with a 4 to 8 unit, 2,3 lvl promo stacks by whomever is playing the Shaka/Monty/Alex role, in the BCs.

Even though they tech slower on Aggressive AI, so do you, so it balances out. If you just try to keep up/out tech the AI on Aggressive, you very may well succeed but you wont make it to the end of the game if you have an aggressive personality next to you.

Ah, the first poster to mention the issue of slower tech, finally. I suspect that the slower the AI tech pace, the greater the relative advantage of the human player, as they are inherently better able to balance and optimize unit build phases with teching phases. This would be especially true when running a SE, naturally suited for just such an optimization.

I wonder if this has been tested: AggAI, Monarch or above, SE ?

 

[gaiko]

I looked again at the OP's Blake quote on this:

"Note that Aggressive AI, due to spending more on units, techs significantly slower (my emphasis) than the default AI, if you can somehow stay out of the crosshairs it's actually easier to win peacefully - the default AI can be a speed demon when it comes to research."

Otherwise I think Blakes language is unfortunate in certain respects, in that it has only encouraged various aggressive girlymen to categorically adopt some phrases casually tossed out by Blake. In reality there is no "sandbox" mode above Prince that correlates with the default/agressive settings. And one does not "wuss" in terror before a towering stack of units (especially as this is but another in a forest of such stacks, but hey look Boudicca, my stack's bigger than yours - but I only have stack for Civ babes) - one simply exits the game because there is simply not the time to endure the tedium of hacking through yet another stack.

While aggressive early game rushing is always an optimal strategy (it is one of the long running defects - yes, non-wussie machomen, a defect - of Civ, since an early axe or whatever rush of the neighboring capital is always better than anything else you could do in the early game ), there are others very much present on these forums that believe the optimal game strategy over the duration of the entire game is to race down the tech tree ahead of the AI.

I don't care how many well-promoted medieval units Boudicca or Shaka throws at me, I'm going to crush them all, every last tedious one of them, with my tanks and bombers. And that's the moment I'll realize that I really AM a wuss for getting my ego boost with howitzers on rails Civ2 style.

It may come as a surprise to learn that the "typical" Civ player may not be simply looking for a sandbox to play in, but might be someone with not a whole lot of free time on their hands, who for that very reason seeks a maximum of intellectually stimulating challenge - because the "real world" can be so truly mind-numbing - gotten from a sort of super-chess game with a historical patina. And if that ain't found then that is where I start "whining" or better yet, just start reading a book on philosophy or Japanese linguistics.

I haven't read past this post, so I apologize if I say something that's already been said, but I while I tend to agree with you, I think you're overlooking something important in the original post. I can't recheck, but it said something to the effect of "If you're playing peacefully, it's easier to win with Aggressive AI because you'll out-tech them." I think it may even have been a parenthetical statement... But, regardless, the point is that if you play peacefully, as you and I do, then playing with the "sandbox" AI is harder.

I also think his tone was over-bearing and arrogant. Furthermore, I personally think that he seems to be suffering from the fallacy that everyone plays this as they would an RTS. I despise RTS gaming, and get very aggrivated when people assume Civ4 is supposed to be a turn-based-real-time-game. I specifically bought Civ4 because it isn't real-time.

 

[p dandy]

That is an interesting write up by Blake. I've never played Aggressive AI before. I should try it. One thing that held me back from doing this earlier was because I assumed that the all the AI, even those with peaceful personalities, would be converted to miltaristic. This saminess, as Blake puts it, was what I was trying to avoid. The write up clears things up.

 

[Underdawg]

I tried playing Aggressive AI before Beyond the Sword and I didn't like it at all, but now that I have the expansion it's very different. I can go the entire game and still not ever have to fight a war but it takes more diplomacy and planning.

It doesn't allow me to dictate the flow of the game, the AI's are in more control and you have to leverage your position a lot more.

I find it takes more planning around the different AI's and there personalities, as the Aggressive ones don't just sit around demanding things and declare war once every 2,000 years, if you show a weakness and the AI notices it if he is an aggressive AI like Shaka or Alexander they will go for the throat.

However, a peaceful AI will still ignore war the entire game and tech away. I have gone entire games on Aggressive AI on Monarch without having a single war till well into 1800AD. It just means you have to be on your guard and you have to realize the personalities of the AI make a "huge" difference in how you can deal with them and not just deal with them but you have to anticipate there thinking more, if you have a lightly defended border with Shaka even if he's slightly weaker, when you show the opportunity he will take it "because he's aggressive and well should".

Even though they tech slower on Aggressive AI, so do you, so it balances out. If you just try to keep up/out tech the AI on Aggressive, you very may well succeed but you wont make it to the end of the game if you have an aggressive personality next to you.

Bold for emphasis.

war, war, war.

Did you even play Aggressive AI? Like many have stated, It's not even as you say... not close... unless you are in the lower half in the power graph or only put 4 defenders in a city bordering Napoleon/Shaka/Staling/etc. Sometimes there are less wars for the Human when he has one of the largest armies.

 

[Sephlock]

I gotta say, I agree with the guys that hate sandbox. I also hate sandbox. Unfortunately, all my BTS games seem to be sandbox regardless of whether or not I play with aggressive AI BECAUSE OF ALL THE DAMN DESERT TILES.

No seriously, whats up with all the desert tiles? Is this Civilization or Dune?

(Oh, and on topic: regular AI FTW!)

 

[IronCrown]

I find that I actually play more peaceful when Agg AI is on. It is now so hard to conquer my neighbors that I usually try to avoid war, unless I really need more land. If I have a decent army I'll also not be attacked. So far the games with Agg AI have seen fewer wars declared by or against me than normal AI games.

 

[Breunor]

I find that I actually play more peaceful when Agg AI is on. It is now so hard to conquer my neighbors that I usually try to avoid war, unless I really need more land. If I have a decent army I'll also not be attacked. So far the games with Agg AI have seen fewer wars declared by or against me than normal AI games.

I think was Blake's point .....

Breunor

 

[Thalatta]

I'm a big fan of the aggressive AI option. I got bored with normal single player vanilla Civ before Warlords came out and started playing multiplayer; aggressive AI didn't do the trick for me then because I was either still able to pull the CS slingshot which meant the game was effectively over due to early AD maces or I went into early aggro mode and spammed swords/axes/cats all over the place pre-AD. When CS got modified to require mathematics and I got Warlords I started playing aggressive AI because it made sense to; I was forced to stay aggressive but it made it more interesting, actually, to play less aggressively because it was more, well, dangerous.

One of the things about aggressive AI is that it doesn't just affect you, it affects the whole game. One particular game I played involved a three-way religious split on a crowded huge map with some leaders that had pre-religion conflicts; it was an absolutely delightful fireworks show. Two AIs actually got killed off by someone other than me and a third got weakened enough that I had mercy and finished him off. Also, between having to wardec Mansa Musa three times to kill him off, razing cities, having a different religion, refusing to help him with tech/war, etc. I think I ended up with over -30 relations from him.

You don't really get random wardecs that you're utterly unprepared for like Toku showing up at 900 BC because you don't have copper any more than you would otherwise, and you don't actually get that many more if you keep a respectable military, but the AI does do a reasonable job of wardecs against each other instead of just being surly and snarky but not really doing anything. IMHO, it's actually a much more strategic game, and you can still play your own style and control the game (or at least your own territory) if you do things right. For example, if you want to go into wonder-builder mode while everyone else is racing to military techs, you can as long as you keep your power level around average and plan your cities from the start so that you have a small border that can be easily protected by massing visible force in a few cities. (I think it's a lot easier to keep pace on power level on BtS, too, as the AI supply/upgrade costs are higher.)

I haven't tried aggressive AI on BtS yet as I've only had it for a week and am still getting used to it. I'm probably going to try it soon, though, as my first game only involved 10 wardecs (7 of which were mine and an 8th mandated by me via the Apostolic Palace, and the first not until 680 AD) and my second (current) game just had its first wardec (not by me - or, surprisingly, against me, either) in 760 AD.

 

[SickCycle]

I think everyone should just play the game how they want but understand the players that play with the "Real" AI are much better players, even if you can win on Immortal+, they can't do it on aggressive because they would die, they are afraid to hurt there egos, losing to an artificial intell.. Pathetic!



Muahaha

 

[Bad Brett]

I think this is a pretty biased and crappy point of view. I'm tired of following this logic that somehow the best game is a multiplayer game, and that the perfect AI must play like a human. While we're about it, why not get rid of diplomacy too? Why should the AI do stupid things like care about religion? All it should care about is trying to win in any way it could. It should also gang up on the most powerful civ. Welcome to the nostalgic world of Civ2!

Personally, I hate having to fight wars the whole game. It makes the game draggy and more tiring to play, especially when I'm busy with real life. If I find that I'm steamrolling the AI most of the time on a difficulty level, my reaction would be to move up a level. So what if I can still rush a neighbour relatively easily? The AI's bonuses on a higher level means it will still be a challenge to keep up with the rest. And who says the AI now are helpless? It loves to spam units as much as it can and whip units like crazy when attacked, which partly accounts for the slower teching.

I'm sorry. I don't think Aggressive AI = the real Civ, and I despise the term "sandbox" AI. It's not the first time that someone has implied some sort of an ego problem on the part of players like me, that we only play to win. The fact is, I win maybe 50% of my games now, even though I play with the "sandbox-oh-so-generously-dumb" AI. I just picked a difficulty level that will still pose a challenge to me.

I totally agree. The thing is, Civ IS and WILL ALWAYS BE mainly be a single player game, since it's so time consuming.

If I have a good tech trading partner that isn't too powerful, wouldn't it be kind of dumb to kill him off? What's the point of dimplomacy and religion?

A human doesn't attack just because the opponent is weak. He thinks first:

1. What would I gain?
2. Is there any way I can get those resources without declaring war?
3. Can I afford a war right now?
4. Am I ready to expand?
5. Will the war affect other opponents attitude towards me?

On my last game, I was alone with Hannibal on a continent. So I rushed him to prevent him from expanding. Afterwards, I know that I didn't make the right decision. Since the rest of the world were trading techs like hell and researching while we were trapped at the island, the best thing we could have done was to trade techs and resources as hell until we met the rest of the world, since that would keep us from falling behind to much.

When did Civ turn into a complete war game? I always thought of it as a combination of Sim City and Walter Bright's Empire.

 

[joey703]

okay my only thing against playing a game against aggressive ai's is the hall of fame thing. i remember in vanilla custom games arent recorded. is this still true?

 

[PieceOfMind]

I will continue to call the normal AI "sandbox" AI not because I am an "aggressive girlyman" but because 1) it helps to less abmiguously distinguish from Agg. AI, and 2) it describes the type of AI well - it is an AI that allows the human player to play the way they want to. No one is saying that sandbox AI is easier if you play with an appropriate handicap (read difficulty level). I chuckle to think someone playing "non-aggressive" AI on a computer game is macho in any sense of the word. Get out and do some boxing or weight lifting instead.

@gaiko, if you want to remain politcally correct about avoiding the term "sandbox" then please refrain from using words like girly in a derogatory manner - there are women who play Civ you know and they would probably not appreciate even a mildly sexist tone.

It is unfortunate that Blake makes some fairly arrogant comments but I can forgive him because he's providing us with such a challenging AI - something I've been waiting for for more than ten years! Also, players with experience like his are almost justified in having that degree of arrogance. They must be very competive to be able to make professional decisions about AI modifications.

When did Civ turn into a complete war game? I always thought of it as a combination of Sim City and Walter Bright's Empire.

It never has been a complete war game, to answer your question.


I would ask when did civ become a peace game? I'm not sure whether you played Civ1 but it was not just a peaceful simcity game. Unless you played Cheiftain, rival civs did declare war, and even ganged up, on the human player.

The military part of the game always has been and always should be the guts of the game. It is what the majority of players find most interesting.

 

[SickCycle]

I think what needs to happen is all the real talented players that use the Aggressive AI function (The Real AI) and can still win on all victory conditions should just go around telling the rest they are halfway players and are really no good, that they play with handicaps and in the real game if they let the AI play as it wants.. well frankly.. they would be playing on settler

This is the reulgar AI

This is the real (aggressive) AI:

 

[Lars_Domus]

I like the Aggressive AI. I think it's cute. I love to let my Drill IV Riflemen eat their hordes of Longbowmen for breakfast.

The default AI, on the other hand, will actually challenge me in the areas of the game I find interesting.