AI aggressiveness

[Arkatakor]

Guess I gotta thank you all for making my point - in this thread it became abundantly clear that most people are resorting to Blakes BetterAI as opposed to the vanilla AI.

Firaxis are you reading this? Most people have to resort to playing mods of your game as your vanilla AI is plain boring and unrealistic. For further elaborations on my point(s), I have previously created a thread on this issue (as I am sure others have done before me):

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=205370

Perhaps a patch is in order? Are you listening firaxis? Hmmmm? Or do people have to continue to play a modded version of your game?

 

[Khamul]

Is it right to assume then that tech and overall development of the AIs is slowed down quite a bit because of the wars? They should be preoccupied instead of researching flight in 1400, right...?

It's not that simple, because not all civ are warlike. In my game Gengish started 7 of18 Ai vs. AI wars, and eventually beated Mansa. Augustus hade a tech lead all the way, but he was also quite warlike and started 4 wars. So I think wars or especially defensive wars can slow down development (usually Mansa is very advanced), but some Civs still develop fast - or even faster than before?

Speaking of flight, strange thing was that Augustus had mech infantry long before he had flight.

 

[Quagga]

My experience is that the 2.08 Warlords patch turned the game into a cottage spamming tech race with almost no conflict. It wasn't good for me.

I've been playing Better AI since soon after 2.08. With the latest build, I find Monarch with Aggressive AI option on very challenging (usually Epic/Pangea). There is a lot of warring. I often have to fend off large stacks of invaders. I don't always succeed.

The warring does distract the AIs from teching, but they are still teching faster than pre-2.08 Warlords. It could be that Aggressive AI is actually an advantage for the human, since (one would hope) humans are better at tactics and strategy. But, when a stack of 30+ Grenadiers and Cannons come waltzing into your borders (as happened to me in a recent game), it is hard to see it as an advantage for the human.

 

[KMadCandy]

Guess I gotta thank you all for making my point - in this thread it became abundantly clear that most people are resorting to Blakes BetterAI as opposed to the vanilla AI.

Firaxis are you reading this? Most people have to resort to playing mods of your game as your vanilla AI is plain boring and unrealistic.

Perhaps a patch is in order? Are you listening firaxis? Hmmmm? Or do people have to continue to play a modded version of your game?

perhaps most people on this thread. not most people on these boards. and certainly not most civ4 players in the world; i imagine there are more players that have never heard of CFC than there are posters/lurkers here by far.

you do have a point that some people like a modded version far more than they do the firaxis version. but not most. and i very very much like the fact that the modded version is available for the people that want that. huge props to Blake and Iustus, they freaking rock. but part of what i like about that is that it's an option.

this thread is certainly not conclusive evidence that firaxis should make such a fundamental, non-optional, change to the game itself.