Do the AI change behavior depending on victory conditions used?

[Djungelbear]

Hi,
I’m not a big fan of religious victories and would like to disable that victory condition. However, I don’t want to win on Deity by not winning fair and square. So, will the AI change behavior if I disable certain victory conditions or will it go on spamming e.g. tons of missionaries without no true upside (given religious victory is not possible)? Anyone that knows if AI is adapting well to a domination only game? An Official statement would be awesome! Thanks!

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

If you have the right belief, there are benefits to spreading your religion (Tithe, for example).

I'm quite confident disabling religious victories won't change the AI's preferences vis a vis whether to go for a religion and spread that religion.

The AI will at some point pick a victory condition to pursue, which influences it's subsequent decisions in some ways. I don't know, though, whether disabling a victory condition removes that condition from the list of strategies the AI will pursue. One of the AI modders has likely figured this out, and may be able to comment.

In terms of "adapting well to a domination only game", definitely not. They'll dislike you and avoid favourable trade deals with you, but they don't discerningly adapt their strategy beyond that. There's a recent mod, though, adaptive-something I think, that tries to get the AI to base their military strength off the size of the player's military. That's an interesting idea that if successful could make the AI directly tougher at whatever you're trying to do (putting resources into military if you're doing so, putting resources into peaceful growth if you're doing so).

As long as upgrades remain significantly cheaper than building modern units, though, I don't think anything can save the AI militarily, short of larger military production boosts. If you build an ancient army, you can upgrade it each era for a fraction of the cost to the AI of trying to build modern units to match you, letting you build your economy while the AI bankrupts itself trying to keep up and replace the units you pick off.

 

[ZubieMaster]

Hi,
I’m not a big fan of religious victories and would like to disable that victory condition. However, I don’t want to win on Deity by not winning fair and square. So, will the AI change behavior if I disable certain victory conditions or will it go on spamming e.g. tons of missionaries without no true upside (given religious victory is not possible)? Anyone that knows if AI is adapting well to a domination only game? An Official statement would be awesome! Thanks!

Sorry but I can only give you my unofficial experience that the AI will not adapt to a domination-only game. If you turn off all other victory conditions (including turn limit), you are almost guaranteed to win due to the inability of the AI to conduct competent warfare. It is only possible to lose in the first few turns to an early rush if your initial build order is light on military (and even then it's only possible). After that, no matter how far behind you fall in tech, you cannot lose unless you pretty much try to, and you will inevitably win. You will find your bombards/knights can freely take city after city while the AI drives its scared mech inf back and forth between its cities, the only impediment to finishing out a domination-only victory is it becomes pretty tedious clicking so much.