Economic Freefall

[steveg700]

Fair enough, guys.

 

[Xiao Xiong]

The AI is not exempt from the happiness system. You are helping them to hit more frequent golden ages.

 

[Light Cleric]

The AI is not exempt from the happiness system. You are helping them to hit more frequent golden ages.

I said for all intents and purposes, and throwing 4 more happiness onto their colossal happiness really doesn't do anything especially after their first few GAs.

 

[compwiz1202]

or spam cities like this with no consequence

Geeze that's just cheating to have Coal Oil Aluminum AND Uranium in one city. I can hardly ever find any other than oil almost every game

 

[NotSure]

I always assumed the AI got 5 or more happiness for each lux you sell them (because they're playing on Chieftain... with bonuses). I've never understood the complaint about selling luxuries to the AI. Quicker/more golden ages and 25% growth bonuses from WLTK days make luxury trades valuable, even to the AI. And yeah, the city-spamming, happiness-ignoring AI even justify the sell/DoW routine in my eyes. I'm probably in the minority there though.

Those Shuffle maps are pretty strange. I've had maps with only 4 iron in the whole world and then another with deposits of 9 and 12 iron everywhere. It's kind of a fun change. It would be interesting to see what you could do with that capital.

 

[steveg700]

The common wisdom I hear espoused here at Civfan time and again is that, optimally, players should strive to have happiness as close to 0 as possible. So apparently, the benefits of golden ages just don't compare to the benefits growing your civ as wide and/or tall as you can get away with.

Or so I'm told by folks who look at Emperor as an easy setting, and tout Immortal and Deity as the only real challenges. Apparently, all the cheats in the world can't beat their sure-fire strategy for out-teching all the AI civ's. I just have to shrug and take their word for it. I would only describe myself as an intermediate-level player. playing civ more like an ant farm than a ruthless race to victory. Exploration and experimentation are the fun part of the game for me.

And yeah, the shuffle maps are pretty insane, sometimes in a way good way, and at other times not so much. More folks looking for a challenge should play'em.

But I ain't playing that map.

 

[smallfish]

You be having a starting save for that map?

 

[steveg700]

Hmm. Maybe not turn zero, but maybe after a couple goodie huts. Certainly at pantheon selection. I'll check when I get home.

 

[Mesix]

I can understand the argument against selling luxuries. I have seen a lot of the "good" players sell luxuries for a lump sum of gold and then DOW to take the luxury back effectively stealing gold from the AI. I have also seen a lot of write ups about how to game the research agreement game mechanic at higher levels. To me, handicapping the AI at higher levels is supposed to help the AI to succeed, not create a way for the player to exploit that handicap for their advantage. At Prince and below, you can't take advantage of trading luxuries for gold because the AI often doesn't have any spare gold to trade. The AI seems broken in that they have this surplus happiness and gold at higher difficulty settings, but don't seem to know what to do with it. Ideally, a Deity level AI would have about 0 gold, 0 happiness, several cities which have purchased every infrastructure upgrade, and an army which the player couldn't possibly imagine building up that quickly in the game because they have effectively used their handicap bonuses. Instead we have an AI which starts with extra units and gets free buildings when settling, but sits on a surplus gold which they are happy to give away to the player.

/rant

 

[smallfish]

They play on Chieftain that's why. It'll be a different story if their base level was at... Prince.

e: that problem with that is they are... unable to cash rush crucial buildings to maintain their empire. It's why Hiawatha got steamrolled by Biz in this game of mine - and even Biz wasn't expanding much at all due to happiness constraints :/

 

[iconocast]

actualy they did adress this issue in teh last patch. u will find the ai spending that excess gold nowdays. but still, tradeing lux and then dow to regain the lux is just plain cheesey

 

[Light Cleric]

I can understand the argument against selling luxuries. I have seen a lot of the "good" players sell luxuries for a lump sum of gold and then DOW to take the luxury back effectively stealing gold from the AI. I have also seen a lot of write ups about how to game the research agreement game mechanic at higher levels. To me, handicapping the AI at higher levels is supposed to help the AI to succeed, not create a way for the player to exploit that handicap for their advantage. At Prince and below, you can't take advantage of trading luxuries for gold because the AI often doesn't have any spare gold to trade. The AI seems broken in that they have this surplus happiness and gold at higher difficulty settings, but don't seem to know what to do with it. Ideally, a Deity level AI would have about 0 gold, 0 happiness, several cities which have purchased every infrastructure upgrade, and an army which the player couldn't possibly imagine building up that quickly in the game because they have effectively used their handicap bonuses. Instead we have an AI which starts with extra units and gets free buildings when settling, but sits on a surplus gold which they are happy to give away to the player.

/rant

So...you want a Deity AI that will never buy anything important because it won't save gold at all?

This is already part of why you see the AI not upgrading units until well after they've researched the tech. City-states do so ASAP because they don't have anything else to do, but major civs will spend the gold on dumb stuff instead of upgrading their Muskets to Rifles or something. They don't know what to do with their gold, but not in the way you think.

 

[joncnunn]

On promoting the AI to Prince:

If this is NOT a water based map, this can be coupled with increasing the minimum city range from the current 3 to 4. (The AI does a much better job in city locations if it's "forced" to spread out.)

The large island script though would require script changes; there's too many situations on this script where a range of 4 combined with the city states [which can not be razed] kills city sites so it doesn't work well. (Even if you cut city states down from 2X to 1X you find yourself hoping that there will NOT be a city state on your starting land mass and that they will instead be on smaller islands nearby.)

(A better solution to the AI founds in bad spots though would be to look into that xml defining what the AI thinks is a good city site and see if it can be changed to stop thinking that a good tile that's already within its borders [or worse yet is within someone else's borders] is a good tile for purposes of settling a new city.)

Additional side effects of promoting the AI:

The AI would clearly get some benefit if you sold them a luxury; and most definitely a win-win to trade luxury for a luxury.

The AI though will eventually expand (its just ranges from slower than normal to much slower); around mid game I saw a bunch of cities founded. This is when they've have traded luxuries around and have had time to build some basic happiness structures.

Difficulty level effects
Any human on Prince or King could promote themselves to Emperor.
Any human on Emperor can promote themselves to Immortal.
Any human wishing for a difficulty level between Immortal & Deity can promote themselves to Deity.

Additional comment:
I think the AI would play a bit on Prince happiness better if luxuries reverted to 5 happiness. The vanilla change that moved luxuries from 5 each down to 4 that at the same time moved Colosseums from 3 down to 2 [& Theaters from 4 down to 3] may have been a bit too much off the top. (It appears the AI that chose CB is doing far better than the others.)

 

[Mesix]

So...you want a Deity AI that will never buy anything important because it won't save gold at all?

This is already part of why you see the AI not upgrading units until well after they've researched the tech. City-states do so ASAP because they don't have anything else to do, but major civs will spend the gold on dumb stuff instead of upgrading their Muskets to Rifles or something. They don't know what to do with their gold, but not in the way you think.

On higher levels, I always see the AI sitting on a huge pile of cash and not spending it (whether it be on buildings, unit upgrades, or more units). I'm not saying that the AI should not trade on higher levels, I'm saying that the game could be better if the AI effectively spent the extra cash they get and could evaluate whether buying an extra luxury (when they already have very high happiness) is better than upgrading 3 units and DOW the player to take the luxury instead! Progress should be more difficult for the player at higher levels, but I find that being able to game the extra gold away from the AI makes it easier than it probably should be.

 

[Light Cleric]

On higher levels, I always see the AI sitting on a huge pile of cash and not spending it (whether it be on buildings, unit upgrades, or more units). I'm not saying that the AI should not trade on higher levels, I'm saying that the game could be better if the AI effectively spent the extra cash they get and could evaluate whether buying an extra luxury (when they already have very high happiness) is better than upgrading 3 units and DOW the player to take the luxury instead! Progress should be more difficult for the player at higher levels, but I find that being able to game the extra gold away from the AI makes it easier than it probably should be.

I don't see that too often anymore post-patch. If an AI is a huge runaway, I do notice they're somewhat more likely to carry more gold, but usually Deity AIs have less than 1-2 gpt's worth of gold on hand. The days of Vanilla where you got insane peace deals like this(from Snarzberry, I learned so much from him when I was new!).

And again, "evaluating" comes down to improving the AI fundamentally. I have long been a proponent of taking away some AI cheats and just making it smarter, but it is something that is very difficult to do.

 

[Moriarte]

You're selling the luxury because you don't need it. Why is it reasonable that the AI, who almost certainly has more happiness than you already, will pay enough for a few points of happiness to halfway finance your next settler?

By buying luxuries from you AI is effectively paying for more frequent golden ages.

 

[The Pilgrim]

The common wisdom I hear espoused here at Civfan time and again is that, optimally, players should strive to have happiness as close to 0 as possible. So apparently, the benefits of golden ages just don't compare to the benefits growing your civ as wide and/or tall as you can get away with.

For human player, because extra happiness means you could settle additional cities but for some (not good) reason haven't. Since AI has no happiness limit, it expands anyways. GA or nor GA.

Or so I'm told by folks who look at Emperor as an easy setting, and tout Immortal and Deity as the only real challenges. Apparently, all the cheats in the world can't beat their sure-fire strategy for out-teching all the AI civ's. I just have to shrug and take their word for it. I would only describe myself as an intermediate-level player. playing civ more like an ant farm than a ruthless race to victory. Exploration and experimentation are the fun part of the game for me.

It's not a secret that milking AI doesn't work on lower levels, unless you're constantly trading and DoWing. You get pennies every time but they add up eventually. However, this tactic, although seems like is gaining more popularity, is not that common. At least from the impression I get, there are more people that find it cheesy and try to avoid it than those who use it regularly. Those who do use it, mostly compete in GotM's/HoF trying to achieve the earliest finish possible. If you don't trade and DoW, you'll end up hard building almost everything before you get markets and trade routes online. 4 cities Tradition + 6 CB's on turn 60 at Prince - good luck with that.

Personally, I don't think that lump sum deals should exist. Lux for lux and strategic for strategic is fine. Funding settlers so the opponent can settle more luxes and let you fund more of his settlers is not. That being said, you don't really need lump sum deals up to immortal. On deity, though, it's a necessary evil, at least for me. And yes, on deity AI starts with such a huge advantage, I can live with taking some of its cash. Not only to help me buy more stuff but also to prevent it from buying more stuff that can be used against me. Although, I won't cry if the devs finally decide to take these deals out of the equation. I'll struggle even more on deity, for sure, but that's my problem. I'll have to adjust.

They don't know what to do with their gold, but not in the way you think.

They buy more outdated units and then can't upgrade anything.

 

[The Pilgrim]

The days of Vanilla where you got insane peace deals like this.

Lol. Yeah, thankfully, we've come a long way since then.

 

[ense7en]

Wow, this is a map where you do NOT settle in place. (I'd have rerolled in a hurry; why are there no luxs? Custom settings?)

Moving your settler for a turn or few is not a bad thing to do.

In this case, you move your warrior up to the hill east, which would have revealed that you have a river to the east.


Now the drawback is moving away from the Wheat, but i would have settled either on the hill (by the mountain and still one Wheat in first ring), or more likely would have moved all the way east to the river/hill/adjacent mountain spot.

Coastal cities with no resources are crap.
Yes, it sucks if it's an islands map, but assuming there's space for a second city, i will gladly give up the coast to get a better capital and worry about a coastal city when i have scouted and found a better spot.

 

[The Pilgrim]

A lot of you guys are speaking as if I should have settled my capital elsewhere. Is it regular practice for you guys to actually not settle on turn 1? Seems like every turn is precious at that stage.

Yes. In fact, the times I settle on turn 0 is probably less than 10%. Usually it's turn 1, sometimes 2-3, and occasionally even 4 if there is absolutely amazing location I can't pass by. This map... well, I have nothing to say...

Wow, this is a map where you do NOT settle in place. (I'd have rerolled in a hurry; why are there no luxs? Custom settings?)

This is a map you throw your computer away if you roll it. Apparently, it's shuffle. Now I know to keep the distance from it.


LC, here is the idea for your next LP's. And before you say no, remember that my ideas are great and you really like them!