AI, Alexander, city states, and diplo victory

[ViterboKnight]

I've already read something similar in another thread.
I hoped this had been resolved with the 1.0.1.332, but it happened to me just today.

I'm Ramkamhaeng, and I'm playing going after city states, aiming for a diplo victory.
Alexander is one of my enemies, and he's after city states too.
After a long time stealing allies to each other, he seems to give up, and I manage to take all the existing city states as allied.
United nations are still to be built (about 30 turns at epic, for me to discover Globalization).

I begin wondering if maybe Alex has run out of gold... given his taste for city states!

While I've a gold revenue of +90 per turn, and floating between 500 and 2000 total gold, I've noticed that Alex has more than THIRTY THOUSAND gold!!!
He could have easily got the better of me.

So, if he wants a diplo victory, why not to use that much gold??? It could have been an extremely easy victory.

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or perhaps he's just waiting for United Nations to be built, in order to buy all the alliances in the world in that very turn, and win??

 

[ColinTH]

Declare war on him quickly, then he will have to fight for the City States!

 

[trigorin]

In my last game Persia, one of my rival won with Time Victory. He gained a ton of victory points. However he had more than enough allied CSs since the middle of the game. I didn't understand why he didn't build UN.
I had to play the game to 500th turn to get the result

 

[DST1348]

Hello,

I once had a similar situation where I was going for Diplo victory with my opponent Genghis having 12k Gold available. I had enough CS to win and I built the UN. The next turn, Genghis bought one CS so that I did not have enough votes. The next 9 turns were a diplo race between us: me buying a CS and he buying it back the next turn. He could have easily bought more then one CS, but I guess they programmed the AI not to do that. Maybe they do on higher difficulty.

So OP, expect Alexander to buy CS as soon as the UN are finished. Keep us informed on the outcome!

 

[ColinTH]

So OP, expect Alexander to buy CS as soon as the UN are finished. Keep us informed on the outcome!

Like I said earlier, If you declare war just before the UN is complete, all City States that are allied to you will remain that way unless captured.

 

[ViterboKnight]

Right... Alex won't be able to ally with them, if at war with them!!

 

[Camikaze]

Also, instead of wasting gold buying the CS' back and forth over multiple turns, why not just save up and buy them all out the turn before the vote?

 

[bryanw1995]

Even on very high levels I don't recall ever having the AI buy more than one CS from me per turn. It's very frustrating, at least on immortal or deity why can't they just spend all their money to go for the diplo victory? If he had 30k gold he could have allied every single CS then DOW'd you.

 

[vanjito]

I've noticed that Alex has more than THIRTY THOUSAND gold!!!

Maybe he run over integer value (32.768) and the game thinks he's in deficit

 

[SpearMan153]

maybe he is biding his time waiting for you influence to decay due to his special ability

 

[ViterboKnight]

There was a lot of war in the last part of the game, everyone against each other!!
The nuclear-powered Alex was a threat till the end; so, perhaps it's good to have allied city states in time, since if he declared on me, the CS'd stay on my side.
When the end was getting closer and closer, I noticed Alex to gain the alliance with more and more CS, one after another, and with my decreasing gold, I couldn't do anything to stop him.
Some turns after the UN (I think, about 7 or 8 turns), the elections. I disbanded ALL my units to get gold, and boughth as many alliances as possible. At that moment, the numbers were 13 votes for me and 3 for Alex (with 10 to win).

As soon as I voted, the results were 10 for me and 8 for Alex!! It seems he didnt't bought enough (although, I'm sure, he still had much much gold).
Though victory, but funny, after all!!

Did the AI behave fine?
I think that he did a lot to stop me to win, of course he could have done more. Perhaps it's depending on the difficulty level? (it was King).
On higher levels, is the AI more competitive even with his strategy?