I've been playing civ II between calls at work, and I've been having trouble with the AI past warlord difficulty. Constant threats from all sides, a complete inability to trade techs and the unending drain of my personal funds to every idiot ai with a chariot threatening to raze my towns and pillage my irrigations is making it very hard to play this without giving up in frustration. I know that hostile AI was a "feature" of multiplayer gold, but I don't have access to classic atm, so switching is not really an option. Is there a way to roll back to classic civ II AI? If not, does anyone have a good suggestion for taking care of the threat that the AI poses?
Dealing with the hostile AI
- Thread starter Belmarduk
- Start date
LordValuna
High Lord
Im sure others will have better advice but here goes.
Science: go for Monarchy ASAP {edit} then go for trade to make building wonders easiear, then go for Monotheism(for crusaders), you may want to go for Philosophy before Monothesiesm for the free science advance {/edit}
Build lots of settlers to make new cities, minimul military units or diplomats expand upto about 12 cities then build military units and push the AI around and see how he likes it.
{edit} oh yah and spend your money to below 50g so that the AI cant extort it from you{/edit}
Science: go for Monarchy ASAP {edit} then go for trade to make building wonders easiear, then go for Monotheism(for crusaders), you may want to go for Philosophy before Monothesiesm for the free science advance {/edit}
Build lots of settlers to make new cities, minimul military units or diplomats expand upto about 12 cities then build military units and push the AI around and see how he likes it.
{edit} oh yah and spend your money to below 50g so that the AI cant extort it from you{/edit}
LordValuna
High Lord
To be in republic you need some hapiness wonders like Micheals, or Hanging Gardens on lower levels. monarchy works better early while your destroying your neighbors, so you dont have to worry about unhappiness from military units outside your city It also easiear to expand as you only require 1 food for settlers
At king level and below, early republic is the way to go, because the first few citizens will be content automatically.
Your question is interesting. I've never really been in a position where going to war would seriously threaten me, but I play large maps. Most of my recent experience has been at deity plus three using classic, where the standard procedure is giving nations techs to appease them, especially in the early game, untill I'm big enough that I don't need their techs. I seldom pay gold in tribute in a regular game, so I am usually at war with someone, even though it really means very little because the AI can't very well project its power far from home.
My advice would be to build diplomats to steal the techs you need from the nations you are at war with instead of trading for them. In addition, become so big that you can outstrip the other nations with your own science. This means expanding your own empire as much as possible, as early as possible. When you build a city, unless it is on a border with (or directly threatened by) another civ, build at least one or 2 settlers with it right away to found new cities with. Forget city improvements. Do this at least until explosives and perhaps later. Finally, TRADE. When not building settlers with a city, make it build caravans, and send those to other cities. As a matter of fact, caravan deliveries often improve the attitude of the receiving civ at least for that turn. If you can't find a city that demands your goods, dump them into the biggest foreign city you can find (or rather, the one with the most trade).
For defence, diplomats and a decent treasury serve as the best garrisons for cities not under immediate threat, because you can just bribe the odd unit that comes allong instead of paying the support for massive garrisons which will likely never be used.
So, try a very expansionist game and see where you go. Then ask for more advice.
PS, Caravan bonuses give science equal to the gold bonus.
Your question is interesting. I've never really been in a position where going to war would seriously threaten me, but I play large maps. Most of my recent experience has been at deity plus three using classic, where the standard procedure is giving nations techs to appease them, especially in the early game, untill I'm big enough that I don't need their techs. I seldom pay gold in tribute in a regular game, so I am usually at war with someone, even though it really means very little because the AI can't very well project its power far from home.
My advice would be to build diplomats to steal the techs you need from the nations you are at war with instead of trading for them. In addition, become so big that you can outstrip the other nations with your own science. This means expanding your own empire as much as possible, as early as possible. When you build a city, unless it is on a border with (or directly threatened by) another civ, build at least one or 2 settlers with it right away to found new cities with. Forget city improvements. Do this at least until explosives and perhaps later. Finally, TRADE. When not building settlers with a city, make it build caravans, and send those to other cities. As a matter of fact, caravan deliveries often improve the attitude of the receiving civ at least for that turn. If you can't find a city that demands your goods, dump them into the biggest foreign city you can find (or rather, the one with the most trade).
For defence, diplomats and a decent treasury serve as the best garrisons for cities not under immediate threat, because you can just bribe the odd unit that comes allong instead of paying the support for massive garrisons which will likely never be used.
So, try a very expansionist game and see where you go. Then ask for more advice.
PS, Caravan bonuses give science equal to the gold bonus.
going to war isn't a real serious threat, so much as it is simply annoying; having enemy units rampaging through my cities, ripping up my irrigation and roads and mines usually causes me to lose production, pop, or at least a few valuable turns building up the pillaged stuff. Which in turn makes it a long term threat, because all those lost turns means less techs and less time building military units for either space or conquest. In the case where they don't pillage, instead they just fortify on my valuable resource tiles (by accident I'm sure ; I can't imagine the AI is that smart) and I'm stuck with them there until I can stand to go out and either bribe or kill the unit.
When expansionist, should I be using the freeciv/smallpox strategy of minimum spacing or try maximum / semi-far spacing but with a large city quantity? I'm going to mess with it on my lunch break and see how I do.
When expansionist, should I be using the freeciv/smallpox strategy of minimum spacing or try maximum / semi-far spacing but with a large city quantity? I'm going to mess with it on my lunch break and see how I do.
I usually leave enough room between my cities so that they have the option of growing into large cities. Also, this reduces the threat of invasion because the distances are so large through my empire. The way I play, I make very few improvements to the land. In fact, in my current game, it is past 1600 and I don't have a single mine. Republic and Democracy celebration greatly reduces the need for irrigation (at least if you are on the ocean or have a fair amount of grassland), so I don't do much irrigation, reducing the pillage threat. The enemy civs don't usually pillage roads, but before engineers they take too long to be worth building in quantity anyway; if you want quick transportation build a ship.
Essentially (until the late game), I fight wars with settlers and gold. Constant expansion and bribary. Constant expansion is good even if you don't go to war, and bribary costs you nothing more than the building of the diplomat if you don't actually have to use it (not to mention that you don't have to be at war to bribe units, making it easier to get rid of them). If you lose a city, it will be small and easy to bribe back, and might even come with a unit or two. Furthermore, you can usually get a cease-fire or peace after taking or losing a city. Moreover, defence is rather ineffective in civ 2, because attack values are so much greater than defence values in most cases. An effective defence of a city requires city walls to give your units fighting chances, but walls cost the production of 2 settlers, which give more cities, reducing vulnerability. I usually only employ permanent defensive units in locations close to enemy civs, where expansion in that direction is impossible and preferably on good terrain (likely with fort) instead of inside cities.
Basically, don't build many defensive units except near other civs where bribing becomes cost prohibitive. If you can expand in a direction, don't worry about defence, because it will cost less to buy a diplomat or two if the need actually arises and then to use them for bribary, etc. As a matter of fact, if you want to expand in the direction of a civ, build one or two cities close to them, build their defences, and let them be the targets of the enemy cives while you fill in the space in between.
I think I've gone on long enough for now...
Essentially (until the late game), I fight wars with settlers and gold. Constant expansion and bribary. Constant expansion is good even if you don't go to war, and bribary costs you nothing more than the building of the diplomat if you don't actually have to use it (not to mention that you don't have to be at war to bribe units, making it easier to get rid of them). If you lose a city, it will be small and easy to bribe back, and might even come with a unit or two. Furthermore, you can usually get a cease-fire or peace after taking or losing a city. Moreover, defence is rather ineffective in civ 2, because attack values are so much greater than defence values in most cases. An effective defence of a city requires city walls to give your units fighting chances, but walls cost the production of 2 settlers, which give more cities, reducing vulnerability. I usually only employ permanent defensive units in locations close to enemy civs, where expansion in that direction is impossible and preferably on good terrain (likely with fort) instead of inside cities.
Basically, don't build many defensive units except near other civs where bribing becomes cost prohibitive. If you can expand in a direction, don't worry about defence, because it will cost less to buy a diplomat or two if the need actually arises and then to use them for bribary, etc. As a matter of fact, if you want to expand in the direction of a civ, build one or two cities close to them, build their defences, and let them be the targets of the enemy cives while you fill in the space in between.
I think I've gone on long enough for now...
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