Does the AI get a handicap?

[helpless_writer]

I'm slowly working my way up the ladder and was playing warlord and Alexander had a -300+ net and still had a massive army.

I have never been that low, but I do remember that military members left my army when I was in the negative. Or was this Civ4?

 

[NotSure]

Your units will disband if you lose all your gold and are running negative GPT. It doesn't happen to the AI though. I've seen others say the AI looses science when running negative GPT. So, Alex will have to wait a few more turns to learn machinery. Take that Alex.

 

[TyBoy]

The player also loses science for running negative GPT without any reserves to cover it. I think it was a 25% penalty but I can't remember for sure.

 

[headcase]

Even on Warlord, the AI will have a significant happiness advantage on you, enabling them to settle more cities in less time and build a larger army (one that doesn't disband due to gold deficit). You will have small advantages with tech and culture and some other stuff.

 

[joncnunn]

AI plays on Chieftain happiness level. It also has reduced cultural costs.

I'm not sure if AI is subject to this, but a human only gets unit disbanded if they are both out of gold and running a 10+ GPT deficit.

 

[ninim]

AI plays on Chieftain happiness level. It also has reduced cultural costs.

Really? I always thought the AI plays at Prince level.

That's what the tooltips say in any case...

 

[joncnunn]

95% of the handicaps are equal on prince, including production & science.

But happiness isn't one of them (its Chieftain). AI also has 30% cheaper culture as well.

Really? I always thought the AI plays at Prince level.

That's what the tooltips say in any case...

 

[Gort]

Really? I always thought the AI plays at Prince level.

That's what the tooltips say in any case...

Yup, great big lie. The AI doesn't play at any specific difficulty level, some of its stuff scales with difficulty and some is locked to chieftain.

I'd love it if there was a website somewhere where all the difficulty modifiers were written down in plain English.

 

[That nerdy kid]

I would be fine with ai getting infinite happiness and gold bonuses, the thing that i can't stand is the free techs that they get at the beginning. It is impossible to complete an early wonder on higher difficulties.

 

[Glassmage]

Go into the xml and remove the techs. It is not that hard....