AIs and the Art of War

Your statement is true but we are talking about something else. From my experience it doesnt matter what options I played.
Its about AI stategy and tactics. When AI declare war there is no real threat, no real army and real attacking doom stack. Just blanket declaration of war. I have seen it too many times and I know this problem might be very complex to solve but must be done eventually or mod become boring.
PS: From all my games only greece civ attacked others civs and really conquered them. Never seen any other civs do it in long time. Maybe there is something special in their traits or leader.
Since I am a team member of C2C all my games are within 1 day of being constantly up to date. I play Emperor on a standard or large map with default # of AI, all AI are random. Game speeds used are normal, Long, and Epic, with an occasional Blitz and a rare Marathon. Anything else longer didtorts the gameplay to badly for me to use as a Test game. NO Revolution, No Inquisitors, No Corporations. Standard Traits not the new set, No Combat Mods nor Size Matters, Multiple Religion Spread, No terrain Damage, Battlefield Promotions On, No Peace among NPCs, Reckless Animals On. etc. I am using these games to continue to tweak and adjust the Civic set.

I have Greece as a neighbor in newest game and it has been a constant fight. He got Neanderthal Culture 1st so he sent waves of Neanderthal units. I happened to get Iroquois' Culture Units not long after. They have saved me from being overrun. And I had elephant in 2nd cities ring. We are the only 2 civs on our landmass and he has aggressively tried to cut me off from the main body on the "continent" we share. I have had to destroy 2 of his encroaching new cities or else. He still has more cities than I do though.

By the time we will be able to cross the strait to the next landmass the Celts are waiting. That should be interesting.

My experience with the factors I have posted give me a constant challenge.
 
Thought I'd share this here as it relates to AI but may not be considered a bug. The Nords are spamming a dog army to defeat their foes. They have had some success with it too razing one AI city and capturing another.

Edit: I do open WB to rename some of the AI cities, but did not give them any units. They trained that army of dogs on their own. Sigh.. have to turn on Quick Combat before dealing with that. Definitely no sneaking any bandits around that town..
 

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Thought I'd share this here as it relates to AI but may not be considered a bug. The Nords are spamming a dog army to defeat their foes. They have had some success with it too razing one AI city and capturing another.

Edit: I do open WB to rename some of the AI cities, but did not give them any units. They trained that army of dogs on their own. Sigh.. have to turn on Quick Combat before dealing with that. Definitely no sneaking any bandits around that town..
The current canine obsession is a known issue. It's certainly a bug in its own right yes.
 
The current canine obsession is a known issue. It's certainly a bug in its own right yes.

From your experience or anyone else does this issue lead to the AI bankrupting itself long-term or otherwise break the game? I've seen quite a few screenshots well into the mid-to early late game stages and thats what made me hopeful to try it out. In previous versions of C2C my game would become too bogged down mid-game. (2-3m+ turn times)

Currently playing on standard map, marathon. I'm 1400 turns in, mid ancient era so far so good other than the dog spamming, I haven't noticed any other potential issues, granted it still very early in the tech tree. Turns are stating to take a tad bit longer but still only around 10s avg.
 
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From your experience or anyone else does this issue lead to the AI bankrupting itself long-term or otherwise break the game? I've seen quite a few screenshots well into the mid-to early late game stages and thats what made me hopeful to try it out. In previous versions of C2C my game would become too bogged down mid-game. (2-3m+ turn times)

Currently playing on standard map, marathon. I'm 1400 turns in, mid ancient era so far so good other than the dog spamming, I haven't noticed any other potential issues, granted it still very early in the tech tree. Turns are stating to take a tad bit longer but still only around 10s avg.
Haven't heard that it has yet, but the AI, being on Noble difficulty, is usually pretty good with as much gold as it could ever want right now. I mean, I won't pretend the AI is functioning at any kind of optimal performance in any area at the moment but I don't know of it having financial collapses much.

Unit glut in general is a big part of turn time delays of course.
 
Haven't heard that it has yet, but the AI, being on Noble difficulty, is usually pretty good with as much gold as it could ever want right now. I mean, I won't pretend the AI is functioning at any kind of optimal performance in any area at the moment but I don't know of it having financial collapses much.

Good to know. The AIs are doing well as far as expansion and conquest initiative. I played with Revolutions on in the past and it ruined them. I saw you cautioned about that in your play guide, how they do not yet "know" how to work with Revolutions, so I reluctantly turned it off this time around. Maybe that will be improved some time. Love the added challenge of having to maintain national stability and how it limits the unrealistic early expansion you would otherwise have to do to stay competitive.
 
Maybe that will be improved some time. Love the added challenge of having to maintain national stability and how it limits the unrealistic early expansion you would otherwise have to do to stay competitive.
I want to address it after 40.1 is released, I will write up more details once I have a chance to investigate and come up with a plan, but it will probably mean starting with a reduced set of features that the AI can handle more easily.
 
May i ask why forced/quick march is a thing? I have never seen the ai make use of it and it being available for the player from the very beginning is, in my opinion, way too strong.
I always just quick march my initial stonethrower (and often my tribe too) to get all the goody huts nearby before any animals or barbs even spawn so there is no risk. Combine that with Size Matters and you have 3 very fast scouts from the get go which can sometimes explore entire continents before running into a predator.
I feel like it needs to get some prerequisites to get it.
 
May i ask why forced/quick march is a thing? I have never seen the ai make use of it and it being available for the player from the very beginning is, in my opinion, way too strong.
I always just quick march my initial stonethrower (and often my tribe too) to get all the goody huts nearby before any animals or barbs even spawn so there is no risk. Combine that with Size Matters and you have 3 very fast scouts from the get go which can sometimes explore entire continents before running into a predator.
I feel like it needs to get some prerequisites to get it.
OR it rather needs competitive AI to be capable of doing the same thing instead. I dislike when "exploits" are being removed, but I don't mind them being taught to AI as well. Though I admit that AI teaching is nigh useless most of the time, because exploits usually even exist to begin with merely because someone tried "experimenting" in a way that was NOT expected by the feature's creator. It applies to pretty much any game, and the more complex it is, the higher the exploits count becomes. Now, C2C...
 
I feel like it needs to get some prerequisites to get it.
That would be reasonable. Something that indicates that level of discipline to push yourself to move that hard. Any suggestions?
OR it rather needs competitive AI to be capable of doing the same thing instead
It's very hard to identify for the code what is and what is not a good time to use it. I even tend to find it difficult to determine when its a good idea to use it as a player and as a rule just generally don't because it tends to make me more defenseless. Sometimes I'm sure that's ok. But it's very hard to say when to an AI on this matter.

BTW, is there still a delay in animal spawns? I thought we had gotten rid of that a long time ago? Was it reintroduced?
 
BTW, is there still a delay in animal spawns? I thought we had gotten rid of that a long time ago? Was it reintroduced?
This delay in spawning always was here (longer on longer speeds), though animal density is much lower now.
 
This delay in spawning always was here (longer on longer speeds), though animal density is much lower now.
mm... I think it was before you were a team member that we had removed it for a time. I guess we landed back on it being delayed. Probably due to complaints of the difficulty of not having enough time to find a site to settle.
 
That would be reasonable. Something that indicates that level of discipline to push yourself to move that hard. Any suggestions?

Obviously it has to be coupled to something that indicates a need for athletics. Thinking about the way how prehistoric man probably hunted big game by chasing it around for hours and hours until the prey is too exhausted to continue my first suggestion would be some hunting related tech. Maybe even chasers.
This would still be very early so that it wouldn't affect warfare while negating the initial exploitative nature.
 
The "March" promotion becomes available at Prehistoric Dance. That might not be what you are looking for, but it could become a bit confusing - at least for new players - to have a promotion "March" and a completely separate prerequisite for marching orders.
 
The "March" promotion becomes available at Prehistoric Dance. That might not be what you are looking for, but it could become a bit confusing - at least for new players - to have a promotion "March" and a completely separate prerequisite for marching orders.
Are you saying the status promos should have this as a prereq? Would make sense.
 
I got donald trump as hero in 3000 BC and then my armies captured half of the world :) :)

trump is a merchant who gave gold for the troops to march and plunder
 

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domination victory ....finally
took exactly 1 month ;)
 

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in 3000 BC the AI attacked with with marines and rifleman and grenadiers
i had swordsman and archers
they captured one city and stopped. it will send units in 1-2 sets and i will kill them using numbers (3-5 swordsman kill a rifleman)
20 years have passed and they are not moving to capture second city.
 

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This is for those that say the Barb AI is worthless and brain dead. These screenshots are from a Lowly Monarch game. Current SVN used, and settings below.

The Babs are alive and well. 11504BC 204 turns into a Normal Gs game. The barb city to the NW is 2 pop bigger than my own Capital City. Roving bands of Barb units are all over the place around their pop 6 city of Olmec.

If you are not seeing this in your own current games then It's your Set up Options that are to blame.

EDIT: Looks like the Byzantine's have their hands full as well. I do think that barb cities should be at a minimum of 4 tiles from any AI or player city when the barbs build a city. In this case It may have been the Byzantine's that built their city 3 tiles from the barb's city. The AI does Know they can take over a barb city faster by Culture, in many cases, than by out right capturing. We shall watch how this plays out.

EDIT2: Another Barb city discovered and scout lost to barb stack attack. Gonna have my hands full of barbs and AI on this continent for awhile! :eek::assimilate::mwaha:
 

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Continuing the Play!

Barb stack just took my New 2nd city! Ouch! And now they seem to be on the move to my Capital city. We shall see how this goes! :eek::cringe::p
 

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