TL;DR: can the AI handle gigantic enternity? Which other settings can help and hinder it? (asked from a strong monarch player).
Hi!
First thing first, this mod is awesome.
I'd like an epic and challenging game. I am thus wondering what settings I could choose to sit my taste for epic but do not cripple the AI. Especially how wise is it to use "start as a minor civ" when AI seems mostly inept with early warfare (it can foster decent attacks, but will unecessarilly suicide units on defense, so much that its percveption of battle odds seems rigged/bugged).
Below are my ideal settings and the issues I've found or speculate about them :
Hi!
First thing first, this mod is awesome.
I'd like an epic and challenging game. I am thus wondering what settings I could choose to sit my taste for epic but do not cripple the AI. Especially how wise is it to use "start as a minor civ" when AI seems mostly inept with early warfare (it can foster decent attacks, but will unecessarilly suicide units on defense, so much that its percveption of battle odds seems rigged/bugged).
Below are my ideal settings and the issues I've found or speculate about them :
- Difficulty level. I first tried monarch, my favorite difficulty in the standard game, hard enough to be challenging but fair (non cheating) enough that the game still feels symetric and that the variety of viable strategies is still wide.
Free archery while understandable, is bugging me in standard BTS. It seems monarch AND AI also gets it for free, which sounds much more problematic as it is now a much more advanced tech relative to the start of the game (or maybe I don't remember correctly and it's just slinger?). Thats why I restarted and played a game in Prince (I'm 2200BC). Combined with "start as a minor civ", and them using their extra unit aggresively, I might be screwed right from the start.
On my current Prince playthrough I'm comfortable first with a lot of bad plays from not knowing the mod that I reckon in hindsight.
- Eternity speed and gigantic map. It sounds so epic and I feel like game speed and map size should be correlated for good experience, but I am worried the AI might handle them both very poorly. It will callously take bad fight right from the beginning, like attacking my woodsman warrior for no reason and leave his city barely defended as a consequence. Also experience and choosing the right promotion looks a lot more crucial and I would expect AI to be bad at it, but havn't seen it in action (I've seen nonsensical amphibious promotions, but they might be free seafaring promotions). I've captured a city with myth of the Hero so at least AI is half competent in hunting.
- Map: Perfectworld 2 (Terra). I like Earth like map. Regular BTS AI is completely inept at colonising the New World. In my only ever Terra game (which disgusted me), I got the whole new continent minus 2 cities all for myself (ok, on Prince where I was maybe already ready for monarch). Stability issues and some barbarians options should make it much harder to seize the whole world all by myself, but still, I'd like to hear whether old world nations and new world raising barbarian civs are worthy opponents, or if I'm better off with the option "start anywhere" (kind of like vanillia continent map).
Related notes : (how) should I tweak the number of civs with start anywhere? Can barb civs raise into fully fledge civs no matter what, or do they have to wait for a civ to die to take their "slot"? - Start as a minor civ. It sounds fun on the surface. On Monarch and above there is the issue of super close AI killing your starting warriors with ease. On Prince and below, there is the issue of AI suiciding its fresh warriors against your woodman II Warrior fortified on a hill forest. I'm barely exagerating, and it's really bugging me how unconservative the AI is. It's not like normal speed emperor+ where aggressive AI can just take bad fights for the odd chance of screwing you and recover anyway.
Without start as a minor civ, I could just make war to everyone in the hope that they reproduce their really poor play, but at least AI would know what to expect and could also concentrate their effort on me if I choose to go that way. - Ruthless AI. I haven't tested enough to know for sure what difference it makes, but the descriptions I've founhd here and there are really enticing, making the AI less of a simulated leader and more of a competitor.
- No rubberbanding. Tech diffusion and revolution should be enough.
- tech trading, no tech brokering.
- Surround and destroy. The AI seems completely helpless and clueless about that one, which is sad, but much understandable. I rolfstomped 3 cities very early (around the same time as my 1st and 2nd settlers, given that I build 3-4 warriors before) with a single javelineers and a couple warriors by just exploiting the mechanics. So i'll disable it.
- Ranged attacks. I didn't intend to use it anyway but out of curiosity, does AI handle it properly?
- Balanced resources. I don't remember if that's an option and if it impacts the food resource around the capital. I most likely won't used because I crave imbalance, but the AI seems to always settle in place. While sometimes suboptimal in regular BTS, it is always safe. OTOH, in AND, the starts are a lot less shiny, but there also are a lot of capitals with really crappy start if you settle in place. Especially considering that it takes a while to push your borders around your whole BFC.
- Advanced espionnage. No clue about it, sounds fun, does the AI handle it? can I toogle it in game? (so I can start a game and deactivate it before it matters if you anwser me AI is bad with it)
- high to low. I don't mind leaving an empire at its height, but getting used to a civ build crappily by someone else is very tedious, but I guess it might be a solution. It kind of both adds and takes away from the epic (takes away from the progression and adds to the world immersion). Problem I foresee is that you might get high scores by simply over expanding and never have to face the consequences. But at least it will act like a late start, mitigating the effects of "start as a minor", and like an start with odds, feeling better or at least different than just raising difficulty for AI to cheat.
Question, is there any other possibility to switch civs? Like in RFC where you can change once, or like in Cursader King 2 where you can restart with anyone from any save? Just to get to see most of the world more freely, and to make interesting play.
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