Do you deviate from tech advise often?

s0nny80y

Emperor
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Or are the adviser's recommendations logically spot on for what the current situation calls for?
 
I do deviate from it, but I'd be hard pressed to give a percentage of how often it happens. City placement suggestion seems to be heavily influenced by resources, which as a general rule isn't a bad thing, but there are forced that the AI can't figure in. For example, wanting to box out a neighbor, going to a resource that I don't have access to but is technically not as rich of an area, or sometimes just because the find the wierdest places to find cities sometimes. I find it especially negligent when on a islands or small continents, the AI doesn't take into consideration the optimal placement to get the most out of the whole island, versus just the one city you are currently placing.
 
I rarely even notice what the advisors are telling me really. I just block it off :)
 
I ignore tech advice. The only advisors I listen to are my military advisor so I know how big my army is relative to other ppl so I can anticipate a DoW and my foreign advisor so she can point-out when I'm near losing a CS friend or a civ lacks a resource I can trade to them. The other two are pretty useless.
 
Guide to playing at King or above:

1. Ignore advice about city placement.
2. Ignore advice about tile improvement.
3. Ignore advice about tech research order.
4. Ignore all advisor advice in general.
5. Never put workers on auto-improve.
6. Never auto-explore with scouts (maybe can do this if you disable barbs, but they sometimes still run a bad pattern).

Of course, sometimes the AI advice does coincide with your own better judgment. But you know what they say about monkeys writing Shakespeare if given a typewriter and enough time...

And please don't ask "What's a typewriter?"
 
Yeah, I got lazy with workers and put them on auto-improve last game (king)... All of my puppets only got trading posts and nothing else, so they had no production at all with which to build up the city or food to grow. Ridiculous.

I still won, but could've done so much quicker.
 
After having seen no reason for the advice of the AI several times (E.g. why should I research a military tech, when I am in desperate need to build 5-6 plantages on my resources?) I do what I please usually.

I am guilty of putting workers on automode...
 
You should disable the advisors, they're the demon and only wants to see you fail miserably.
 
Never have I once consulted them. I actually didn't know they were in the game until I discovered them by accidentally pressing the "v" key. They're worthless in my opinion-- you can make much better decisions on your own. Why? Because you're a sentient human being.
 
Yeah, I got lazy with workers and put them on auto-improve last game (king)... All of my puppets only got trading posts and nothing else, so they had no production at all with which to build up the city or food to grow. Ridiculous.

I still won, but could've done so much quicker.

Puppets is set to GOLD. Building anything but trade posts make the puppet ignore the tile. If your going to badmouth something at least learn how the game works first.

Whatever manual or automatic the ONLY choice around a puppet is trade posts.
 
Puppets is set to GOLD. Building anything but trade posts make the puppet ignore the tile. If your going to badmouth something at least learn how the game works first.

Whatever manual or automatic the ONLY choice around a puppet is trade posts.

Gah... Calm down man.

I know they are set to GOLD... When you a city is set to gold it prioritizes trading posts, it does not use them exclusively and then execute any additional population. Whatever population won't fit into the trading posts will go into specialist slots, and then after that it will use the other tiles on the board normally.
 
Puppets is set to GOLD. Building anything but trade posts make the puppet ignore the tile. If your going to badmouth something at least learn how the game works first.

Whatever manual or automatic the ONLY choice around a puppet is trade posts.

And if there's no trade posts? Oh yeah, they use other improvements.
 
I don't actually go into the advisors screen, but the little symbol tips can occasionally be helpful. For example, the on-map recommendations for workers can occasionally tip you off to an undeveloped tile that you missed, or in particular, one that you thought you developed but was unfinished (which often happens when a worker wakes up do to enemy presence and the in-construction tile graphic isn't different enough so that you notice that the worker didn't finish).
 
On tech, the advisors often agree with me and occasionally if there are two techs that I want but don't have a strong preference between I'll go with the one they like.

On city placement, I almost always ignore them *except* to see where they are suggesting as a likely spot the AI will try to build on, which can figure in my priorities on my own placements and/or blocking troops.

On improvements, they are wrong a lot of the time and I mostly ignore them.
 
Yeah, I got lazy with workers and put them on auto-improve last game (king)... All of my puppets only got trading posts and nothing else, so they had no production at all with which to build up the city or food to grow. Ridiculous.

I still won, but could've done so much quicker.

I find it nice to have puppets with lots of cash, last game I played I had a load of puppets and was making around 1000+ gold/turn. I ended up buying most of the buildings in my core cites out of pocket and just building wonders.
 
Be easier to say how often I actually follow the advice, which is seldom. Usually I plan tech based on surroundings and what I need (if I start with few improvable areas without a tech, I'll shoot for that tech, if my economy is weak I'll work towards unlocking markets/trading posts/banks, if my happiness is hurting I go for the next happiness structure, etc) and the advisors tend to follow a pre-planned course - the military/foreign especially they tend to emphasis units/defenses - and wonders figure in to that course heavily. Occassionally the economic advisor might be on board with my decisions, but not always.

The only times I give any weight to what the advisors recommend is when I'm not sure which tech I want next... maybe I'm debating sailing (cause I could put a city on the coast) or bronze-working (might be some choice land nearby in the jungle too) and to help decide I see what the advisors are recommending and if more recommend one over the other, I'll take that. Otherwise WHICH advisor becomes the deciding factor (Foreign often implies nearby AI already have that tech - not always but often).
 
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