Crappy AI

[Alex Johnson]

We all know the AI is generally pretty limited, but the descriptions of the civs' traits are completely worthless. Civilized? Yet he sneak attacks me constantly. Friendly? Yet he declares war the instant I meet him for the first time. I'm playing Prince level and just met 3 civs this turn. Two are civilized and friendly, but all three demanded all my gold and declared war the moment I met them. This is typical in my games. I'm the most advanced civ in the game, I have the second most amount of money, I have a medium sized military and the most cities/highest population in the game. Yet they ALWAYS, in every game, do this to me. It's getting un-fun. Waging war is great. Waging 3 wars at the same time sucks. Especially when you just met the guy and after your turn when he declares war, stacks of catapults appear on the coast next to several of your cities. Like he was just waiting off-shore for you to introduce yourself so he could land his armies!

Getting frustrated...

 

[trada]

Take a break. You'll soon miss civ1 and the crappy AI.

 

[Gundus]

I'd love to see your thoughts on AI and human
approach to the "diplomacy" part of the game.

I've gotten better at this, but I'm sure there's a
lot that I'm missing too.

Earlier I started wars way to often and got in trouble like
Alex having to fight three wars at once. Now I'm a lot more
careful, often giving knowledge or gold to keep the peace,
and it usually pays off .

You can always start a war later,
when the timing is completely on your side
(as long as your not in a Democracy or Republic that is).

Bad things about starting a war too soon:
Your development rate is slowed down, and
early development is important.
Often enemy units will crush your attempts to explore the
map and find huts and other civs.
Even when you beat the enemy, you get bad/destroyed cities and
bad knowledge. If you wait, you get good cities and good knowledge
(and more gold and maybe even wonders).

Of course you have to adapt your strategy according to
size of landmass, no of opponents, difficulty level and so on.

More hints
Remember to keep between 50 and 100 gold pieces in
the treasury when you know you have a talk with the
AI coming up, that way if they ask for gold they will
only ask for 50 gold in exchange for peace.
50 gold is nothing.

A lot of the time it pays off to give away knowledge
to keep the peace. If the aggressive guys like the
Russians or Zulu come knocking on your door early
looking like they mean business, you
really want to swap knowledge for peace. Even when
you know you will have to fight them later, this gives
you time to get an army going.

Don't run around on enemy ground more than necessary.
That's just asking for them to sneak attack you.

Don't break the peace if you don't have to.
AIs keep grudges for thousands of years!! "okay you puny human,
I know it's 1850 AD know, but I still remember you stabbing me
in the back in 2000 BC! Prepare for war!! (Oh and by the
way, I've got armor now)."

 

[Alex Johnson]

I went back to the save before I met the 3 civs and did something different. I met him with a diplomat. I refused to meet with him when my diplomat got next to his city and I moved right in and founded an embassy without ever talking to him. And that is how I found out that even though the 3 civs (2 are "peaceful" according to their stats) had never met me, all 3 were at war with me. There was no way to avoid it. I even went back and never talked to them at all and stayed out of their part of the world. Their forces landed in the same places in the same turns, attacked me, and declared war (they were already at war with me, I just didn't know it). I really don't like that algorithm.

 

[Gundus]

I believe everyone is by default at war with everyone
when the game starts. That way if someone sees an
undefended city they can just occupy it without having
to break any peace treaty.

I think it's a good rule. If you started with world peace
it would be easy to just leave your cities
undefended and use a bunch of cavalry units for exploring
(if you explore far from home the risk of being run over
by barbarians is pretty small when it's early in the game).

And the AIs can't talk to you unless one of their units are
one square away from one of your units, right? (meaning they
can't break the peace or make demands).

One of the fun parts with the game is meeting the
AIs for the first time and bargaining for peace and
swap technologies.


I just thought of one little thing:
if you are in a game and is getting your ass kicked
big time, what happens if you manage to make
peace with all the AIs and then Disband all your
units and stop making more? Will they ever be able
to attack you if you don't have any units? If not this
could be a great way of surviving to the end and be able
to see what happens in the game basically without
a human player.

You could even go for the Space Race 100% without
ever thinking about war at all.

The only problem would be the Barbarians. But they don't
come around very often if it's late in the game, and in
some cases maybe the AI will block the attack with
their units.

Or maybe you could collect a heap of gold and if the Barbarians
show up you could quickly buy a couple of good defensive
units and use the gold to keep the peace if there are
any AIs next to your city (or you could just let the
Barbarians capture it if you have more than one).

Or if the Barbarians appear at random you could just
save/reload to keep the game going.

Did any of you ever try this? I wonder if it works...
Gandhi would have been proud.

 

[Alex Johnson]

I don't think your peace-to-victory idea would work. I have often had my units attacked by enemies while at peace, breaking a treaty. After the attack is resolved I get a notice: "Sneak attack by XXXs." I would assume the same could go for taking over a city while at peace. They move their unit in and take over the city and you see a message about a sneak attack and find yourself at war.

I'll have to go back and try bribing the AI, but it's going to be very expensive because I've been saving up to fund some building rushes (cathedrals).

 

[Gundus]

I'm not sure the peace-to-victory method works
either, but I tried it in a simpler form today:

Scenario: Earth
Level: King
Competition: 4 civs, I play Egyptians, other guys are
Roman, German and Zulu.

First I visited everyone with militias to make peace.
Swapped some techs.

I founded Memphis in Europe in 3140 and Oryx
in Zululand in 2780. Then I disbanded every unit,
starved the cities down to size one, and made them
only use the square they were sitting on
(meaning they will never grow in size). Starting
building and selling City Walls.

Then Barbarians took Memphis (2420) and Thebes (2300),
but I did a couple of save/reloads and the Barbarians do
come randomly (but they may be more likely
to appear near undefended cities).

I carried on with the game with only Oryx left. Since this
city lied in the heart of Zululand and was surrounded
by Zulu cities and units, the Barbarians couldn't reach it!

The Zulus kept units near my city, but used the rest of
their army to take Europe and Asia:
860 Germans destroyed
800 Romans destroyed
640 French destroyed
460 Russians destroyed.

Then I just pressed enter-enter-enter until 2040 AD
when the game ended (the Zulus discovered Robotics
in 2013, but never built any spaceship). They never
took my city or even talked to me! And their units
blocked every possible Barbarian attack.

Now:
Is this method useful for anything? Well that I don't know yet...