Extremely frustrating AI behavior

[piperatthegates]

The AI has made this game almost completely unenjoyable for me. I am a regular immortal player, with dips in deity when immortal became too easy in G&K.

What I've noticed is the AI's early game has become to incredibly blown out of proportion by the new gold changes that the game is just stale. On top of that, religion has become a joke to try to compete with. Computers fill piety and spam missionaries like never before. And don't get me started on wonders. My last game, an AI completed petra on turn 67. That would have been an absurdity even on diety in G&K.

This expansion looked amazing on paper, and I was so excited to play it... until I actually did.

-Tourism is binary, boring, slow, and terrible

-Classical wonders unattainable on Immortal+ unless by chance/miracle

-Religion competition impossible without filling out an entire policy tree due to the nature of religious civs like Ethiopia who will crush you without piety bonuses.

You're basically left with science, which has been slowed way down and nerfed with a city tax of 5% and a slower Human start (no gold), and domination, which has been made not more difficult but merely more frustrating with the hassle of funding even a small army.

Am I missing something?

 

[Dux1]

So the game is too hard?

 

[Civsassin]

So the game is too hard?

Excellent...

 

[RealHuhn]

If anything, Immortal feels easier than in G+K.

It's amazing how many people play 1-2 games, don't even try to learn more about the game, don't invest any time in reading the new tool tips etc ...
No, they just come here and complain although they don't even understand how the new mechanics actually work.

 

[piperatthegates]

I'm not complaining about the difficulty, but a game where you have no chance to keep a religion, classical wonders, and one of the victories has become an extremely boring, binary turn burner is boring. I'm complaining about the boring pace and mechanics of the expansion.

But, you if you guys have any tips on how to alleviate the above mentioned issues, please! Mostly what I'm seeing in this forum is people voicing concerns about the mechanics of the game, and other people saying "L34rn 2 pl4y" without any real substance. Do you have any of these tips? What makes tourism interesting? What can I do to build classical wonders such as Petra before turn 65? What can I do to keep a religion against a 5 piety ethopia sending 3 missionaries every 10 turns?

I would really like to know. I can BEAT immortal easily. As I said in my original post, the game has not become more difficult to beat, just much, much less interesting. Building wonders is fun. Having a religion is fun. Cultural victories were fun.

 

[RealHuhn]

I'm not complaining about the difficulty, but a game where you have no chance to keep a religion, classical wonders, and one of the victories has become an extremely boring, binary turn burner is boring. I'm complaining about the boring pace and mechanics of the expansion.

But, you if you guys have any tips on how to alleviate the above mentioned issues, please! Mostly what I'm seeing in this forum is people voicing concerns about the mechanics of the game, and other people saying "L34rn 2 pl4y" without any real substance. Do you have any of these tips? What makes tourism interesting? What can I do to build classical wonders such as Petra before turn 65? What can I do to keep a religion against a 5 piety ethopia sending 3 missionaries every 10 turns?

I would really like to know. I can BEAT immortal easily. As I said in my original post, the game has not become more difficult to beat, just much, much less interesting. Building wonders is fun. Having a religion is fun. Cultural victories were fun.

It sounds like you want to build everything but completely lack focus. In BNW, you have to make strategic choices.
If you see five AIs going Piety and you build 3-4 shrines and rush techs towards Petra, then what do you expect? Either focus on religion and go Piety or quick Philosophy for temples or focus on trade routes and go for Petra.

Besides, you can get a religion in every game when you take Liberty as well. More cities, more shrines, more faith.

But more importantly, play a few more games, use your own creativity and experiment with different openings. That's half the fun of a new expansion anyway.

 

[elder abuser]

Speaking of AI stupidity, is anyone else able to trade the AI 1 gpt for 30g when they are friendly? That cannot be intended and seems exploitative, in the past they traded you 22g for 1gpt which felt way more fair.

 

[huptiel]

'Not having fun' is a tricky problem - not something someone else can easily help you with - it's personal.

Best answer is IMO: that sucks man, hope you have more fun in your next game.

However, why not share! Post a playthrough of the game. Ask people to comment on key decisions you make. It's always lots of fun to see a high level game!

To be honest, peaceful victories are not my cup of tea at higher difficulties. IMO there's very little things you can do to disrupt what the AI is doing except war or bribing others to do war for you. Peacefully outmicroing the AI at deity is indeed not unlike a very complex math problem i.e. homework.

 

[piperatthegates]

'Not having fun' is a tricky problem - not something someone else can easily help you with - it's personal.

Best answer is IMO: that sucks man, hope you have more fun in your next game.

However, why not share! Post a playthrough of the game. Ask people to comment on key decisions you make. It's always lots of fun to see a high level game!

To be honest, peaceful victories are not my cup of tea at higher difficulties. IMO there's very little things you can do to disrupt what the AI is doing except war or bribing others to do war for you. Peacefully outmicroing the AI at deity is indeed not unlike a very complex math problem i.e. homework.

It's really not that tricky, though. Civ is like a game of chess, except now in BNW you can only use your pawns at Immortal+. If you're good enough, you can still win easily. But it's boring. Pawns only move one space, have no interesting dynamics. It would be much more fun if I could pull that king and queen out.

That's kind of how I feel at this point about how the AI plays: they lock you out of interesting options by all rushing different techs to achieve quick wonders and religions (for example morocco got a turn 67 petra in my last game), but in the end they're not really more difficult, just more frustrating and boring to play against.

 

[apocalypse105]

What do you expect its immortal don't built wonders on immortal or higher

and you need to beat people up or do certain things right if you want to win on immortal

 

[Civking5]

Why don't you just go and kill the civ that finished Petra at turn 67? Is that also hard?

 

[Edgehopper]

It's really not that tricky, though. Civ is like a game of chess, except now in BNW you can only use your pawns at Immortal+. If you're good enough, you can still win easily. But it's boring. Pawns only move one space, have no interesting dynamics. It would be much more fun if I could pull that king and queen out.

That's kind of how I feel at this point about how the AI plays: they lock you out of interesting options by all rushing different techs to achieve quick wonders and religions (for example morocco got a turn 67 petra in my last game), but in the end they're not really more difficult, just more frustrating and boring to play against.

This isn't really new, though--Civ AI has never been so impressive that they can make it like a chess program and have the AI play the same game anywhere from beginner to grandmaster ability. Every Civ game has made the AI more difficult on higher levels by giving the AI bonuses and head starts. I'm finding that on higher levels BNW allows more chances at wonders than G&K did, simply because there are more wonders and a number of them unlock by social policy that not every civ takes. In G&K, I don't think I ever beat an AI to Hanging Gardens at Emperor or above; in BNW, it was fairly easy as Morocco on Emperor. Yeah, you're going to have trouble getting a few of the superpower wonders like Great Library, Terracotta Army, or Petra. That's a good thing on higher difficulties, not a bad thing.

 

[Polisurgist]

I'm trying to remember when it was easy to get ancient/classical wonders on Immortal. Certainly not any time I ever played it.

 

[Polisurgist]

Actually, if anything it's easier to get wonders in BNW, since the AI has other things to build early on.

 

[adwcta]

I don't get it... I can totally get Classical wonders (even Ancient ones) on Immortal. Like, regularly. Are you still doing a NC start? You realize instead of building the NC, you could have built a world wonder.... then get the NC later, at the cost of what will eventually be the equivalent of 2 turns lost of science. NC start is still great, but don't complain about missing early wonders if you're doing that. NC IS a wonder. On higher difficulties, you get ONE early wonder, maybe two if you use your first trade route for hammers to your 2nd city.

However you feel about the new cultural victory, you think it's worse than the old one?

Religion (for a non faith-civ) is entirely possible without the Piety tree (use CSs and pick a faith-generator for your pantheon), but you won't get very far with spreading it, you can just keep it to yourself as a tall civ. Just pop an inquisitor and missionary before enhancing your religion. On the other hand, if you go opener + first policy in Piety, you are guaranteed a religion even with a non-faith pantheon. If you go one more down in Piety to get the discount, you can even spread it to a neighbor. If you combine that with Great Mosque (this HAS to be bee-lined) and go wide, you can spread it to the entire world.

Haven't tried Deity, but all of the above works up through Immortal.

 

[Timothy001]

In my current game, Brazil has been spamming Wonders. He only has 3 cities, but every time I start a new wonder, he has it 2 or 3 turns before me. Suddenly, France has started going for wonders. Current Total Brazil:14, France 5, Me: 2, Unknown: 1 (Terrecotta Army). However, this seems to be an exception, as I had Brazil in another game, and he was fairly tame, and only build 2 wonders, before being overrun by the Zulu.

 

[Iberian]

I am still having fun with Civ and I have been playing since 1991, but I can see where he is coming from. What they have done is to make it so the game isn't in mop up mode at turn 100 is add elements that many will find frustrating.

Lets face it the AI in Civ as always been terrible. This isn't a personal attack on any here in the forums or at MicroProse/Firaxis so lets not go down that road. It is incredible where they are as is and the sheer number of possibilities makes the game fun for us makes it near impossible for the computer to calculate excellent play without requiring a NSA size computer. It isn't like Quake where you can just make the AI with 100% accuracy to add challenge. So the only option is to have the AI "cheat" and humans have an amazing sense of justice when it comes to themselves.

Frustrating-
2x settlers to start
extra gold
extra hammers
extra culture
extra units

You have two options here, stop playing Deity knowing you will win nearly every game no matter what path you take or play Deity knowing you will have to play within a semi-narrow style to win.

The key though is the same as always. Win Wars. The AI sucks at wars. Otherwise go back to Immortal or Emperor. Especially Emperor, you can play it like Civ 1 and build huge empires with nearly every unit and building. I once went and played a game as Egypt to see if I could get every wonder. I think I missed 2 that I couldn't prevent.

 

[Svest]

Personally, I have not had any difficulty at all building early wonders in BNW. I've played 4 immortal games so far and am currently playing a deity game. For the immortal games I built the Great Library in 3 of them, Parthenon in 2, Colossus in 2, Petra in 2, Oracle in 2, and Hanging Gardens in 1. I didn't build any early wonders in the deity game, but I didn't try to either so it doesn't really count. Every once in a while on Immortal the AI will go crazy and build a wonder super early, this has always been the case and it sounds like what happened to Petra in your game. There really is no way for you to build Petra before turn 65, but it is very rare that the AI will build it that soon too. In both games where I picked it up in BNW my build order was scout -> monument -> granary -> Great Library -> National College -> Petra. I did this many times on Immortal in G&K and it has worked for me so far in BNW too (of course it doesn't work on deity though).

I will agree that religion is hard to compete with unless you go Piety. Though I don't really see a problem with that. If the AI put points in Piety and you didn't then they should have an advantage in spreading their religion. As for tips, I don't really have any for religion. I generally ignore it unless I can get desert folklore, in which case it tends to take care of itself.

 

[Nickel_lion]

So the game is too hard?

THIS!!

I HATE the AI taking the early wonders, so I play Prince..

 

[Mrdarklight]

It's different now, but I would avoid blanket generalizations like this. In one game I played I couldn't even keep my own cities following my religion. In another, as Sweden no less, I got a great desert start with the Desert Faith pantheon and built Petra, and I have more faith than I can spend, my whole continent is practically my religion with little effort, and Stockholm is a production powerhouse like I've literally never seen before.

The game does seem more difficult now, but that is to be welcomed.