Extremely frustrating AI behavior

[BTA51]

I'm playing Brazil on Immortal right now. I've gotten Royal Library, Hanging Gardens and serveral other early wonders the AI tries to rush. On top of that I've built one of the largest armies on My continent and lead sience up until around renaissance. I still have a big cutural and tourism lead. How? Micro management. Place your citizens right. Check if new ways to place them is better every time you get a new one or build an improvement. Don't be afraid to focus produktion and lag behind on food to finish a wonder, you can compensate this by focusing on food or building a lot of food buildnings afterwards. Befriend city states that give good bonusens. Etc.

 

[pthieu1986]

the concept for DEITY is CLEAR man: ONLY THE BEST PLAYERS CAN WIN

 

[elijahfire]

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?

Yep the AI is totally stupid especially on Immortal+, Deity is just a joke because it doesn't make the AI harder it just throws unlimited resources at it and makes all the AI hostile to you. Instead of having intelligence levels like AI games 20+ years ago had down Fraxis things smart AI means a pool of starving Parana and you are the meat.

So instead of a civilized strategy game you have a gang rape in which you have to bottleneck and slaughter the mindless masses. Garbage.

 

[elijahfire]

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.

Yeah the noobs posting L2P are still playing the game on settler and have no idea what you are talking about.

I play on Deity so can't weigh in on claims that Immortal is easy but as you have stated, every game has come down to throwing everything out the window and going on a murderous rampage. No strategy involved.

 

[dexters]

Back to Emperor.

I'm an Emperor player and IMHO everything above that is for expert players. If you're frustrated because you can found religion or feel the AI is too OP, then you bump down one level.

Chances are after a few play troughs and getting comfortable with the expansion you can play Immortal again.

 

[elijahfire]

I have the same problem of the original poster except for me it's Emperor.

And many here don't seem to understand the problem. The game didn't actually become more "difficult" it has just become harder to build wonders and compete against missionary spammers.

You can tell him to try Emperor, but the result would just be that yes he'd be able to build wonders again and then he'd have a pretty boring game because he's used to a way stronger AI.

That's what happened to me when I moved from Emperor to King.

You nailed it. It's not harder at harder levels it's just more stupid.

 

[Timally]

Did anyone mention inquisitor? They are fairly cheap and you can stop missionary spam in its tracks by just leaving them in your cities. Also you sometimes want to be converted to get other civ's religious buildings.

Here is the civilipedia entry for inquisitors

Can be purchased with peace Faith in any city with a majority Religion that has been enhanced. They can remove other religions from your cities (expending the Inquisitor) or be placed inside a city to protect it from Missionaries and Prophets trying to spread other religions into that city.

 

[dexters]

Weird that missionary spam is mentioned as a problem. One of the biggest changes is that the AI now respects borders if you have your own religion when it comes to conversion in BNW; There's no longer the need to play hide and seek with respect to blocking their Prophet. My biggest wars over religion in BNW is converting a neutral third party back and forth between my religion and theirs. That's to be expected and you can't play on immortal and expect to get off easy on it.


perhaps if they are spamming missionaries in your direction it shows an underlying lack of respect either due to the massive bonuses at Immortal or what not.

I can't imagine it being an issue in emperor for an immortal player stepping down.

Did anyone mention inquisitor? They are fairly cheap and you can stop missionary spam in its tracks by just leaving them in your cities.

G&K strat that may still be useful, but in my 3 full games on BNW, I've never ever had to deal with this. If you have your own religion, the AI will usually not try to convert your cities. That is the new status quo. The G&K solution of playing hide and seek with their prophets/missionaries was a game mechanic to address an AI that didn't respect borders with respect to religion.

Now they do.

 

[Matthew.]

Just my personal opinion, but the game sucks if you are looking for engaging challenge. The appeal behind Civ for me has always been about customization and seeing all the different ways the game can play out.

You could try lowering the difficulty and putting restrictions on yourself, like can't use great scientists or must research all techs in an era before moving on, etc. Or mods.

 

[Emperor Giulio]

I find that even if I don't get to start a religion, it's still a useful tool, as you can use the religion pts you earn to buy great people of all kinds.

If you want a religion of your own, you will more than likely need piety as a pre-requisite to achieve that.

 

[Teholb]

A really cool mod that I'm sure many posting in this thread would appreciate, is Really Advanced Setup. It's in the Steam Workshop, not sure if it's on CivFanatics. Anyway, it allows you to change all sorts of variables, down to the distance you can see from your starting city (all the way up to 10[!] tiles if you just hate exploration, haha). I havem't fiddled with it yet, but you can theoretically give yourself the exact same start as the AIs get. Free tech, free units, etc.

Of course, whenever one has to use a mod to change settings, it never feels quite as satisfying/"pure" when you win. Resist the urge to cheat, you'll only cheat yourself out of challenge/fun.

 

[Strategist83]

Oh yeah, that's like saying, "Would you like some crack to go with your meth?"

Why? I was about to make the same suggestion. I'm well aware that MP comes with all sorts of problems of its own, but it seems it's ultimately the only real solution to OP's problems: AI isn't fun playing against due to its cheating (the cheating being necessary to pose a challenge), hence: avoid playing AI, play humans.

Might be a good options for you, OP, if you can find a decent group to play with. I'm sick and tired of the AI and its absurd diplomacy as well so I'm definitely with you with your frustration over the AI.

Otherwise, just turn down the difficulty and don't play as hard to win, ie. don't take advantage of the AI's obvious flaws too much.

*

Weird that missionary spam is mentioned as a problem. One of the biggest changes is that the AI now respects borders if you have your own religion when it comes to conversion in BNW; There's no longer the need to play hide and seek with respect to blocking their Prophet.

Not in my experience - I still get the idiotic thing with an unprotected great prophet running into my empire and converting all my cities. Of course, unlike the AI, I have no way of asking them to stop so the only solution is to dance around with a inquisitor for x turns while waiting for open borders to run out like you describe or declare war and get hated by the entire world for the rest of the game. Civ 5 diplomacy fail.

Why is the great prophet 9000x stronger than a missionary, anyway? I know he's great and all, but it's ridiculous this single unit can subvert your entire religion and convert everyone to its own.

 

[pilot00]

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

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

GnK - people crying AI is abusable and stupid

BNW - people crying AI owns them and is actually competent

After 1-2 games I felt like this too but after playing more games I have started to like the AI.

Playing Emperor/Immortal btw

It is like this actually:

GnK - people crying AI is abusable and stupid
BNW- people cry because the AI is unable to own them and it is totally incompetent, its only recourse (war) has been hit not by a nerf bat but by a nerf the size of a frait train. Also it cannot work the new mechanics at all.

That said the Op was complaining about loosing wonders not getting owned to this I say: Dear friend, unfortunately the devs of the Civ games in general but more so in V decided that they couldn't be bothered with more programming and gave the AI bonuses instead so there is no actual possibility to build most early wonders in the highest difficulties.

Early on you can't really beat Ethiopia at religion, unless you're the Celts. If you start next to Ethiopia you might consider just letting them get a religion and spread it to you - they'll like you for sharing their religion.

And you really only need one or two policies from Piety to be competetive in the religion game. (Organized Religion is the obvious one, and Mandate of Heaven doesn't hurt either.)

ACtually with the help of a couple of ruins and piety opener you can

The difficulty has increased, and that's described as intentional by the designers - they've said that they consider they're doing something right if players are forced to go down a level (as I have been, to Emperor). I agree with that approach.

What happens when its the opposite though? We all started on our first game on an easier difficulty because we didnt knew the mechanics. Once things became obvious as it is evident by this very forum most of us have gone at least one level up in difficulty. I am playing Diety right now and I would not even consider it GNKs.