Getting Started

[Txurce]

Yeah, I actually find it pretty interesting. About half the time I encounter an early rush, I'm actually able to beat the AI back without losing anything, and using only city defenses plus 1-2 units, because they stupidly try to take a city with warriors only. This basically cripples them completely and gives me an easy counter-attack. I've also noticed though, that these wars are often avoidable. Most of the time, they'll attack after I found a 2nd city near their borders. Additionally, accepting every DoF that gets presented to you will usually make you safe from an early rush. I play marathon/pw3 large/emperor.

I can second every point made here.

 

[manarod]

perhaps i was only unlucky with the ai

 

[Txurce]

perhaps i was only unlucky with the ai

You probably were, but it's also a matter of personal preference. In my case it doesn't happen often enough for me to have to significantly straitjacket my starting strategy, so I like the challenge and excitement.

 

[manarod]

i'm really sorry but the early rush happened again in my two next games. 6 warriors in turn 40! and i have just finished a second jaguar...

 

[Txurce]

i'm really sorry but the early rush happened again in my two next games. 6 warriors in turn 40! and i have just finished a second jaguar...

This is certainly odd, and I'd be concerned too if I was having your results. One thing I've noticed is that you can definitely defeat 6 warriors with 2 if you're playing defense... and then your opponent is at your mercy. That's the upside of these early rushes!

 

[Gamewizard]

Agreed. Playing Vanilla Game of the Month I was rushed early by the Aztecs and found it fun having to beat them back with only 2 units and the city itself. Monty surrendered and gave me lots of gold. He tryed again some turns later and failed again. I wish he would have waited with the rush until he had catapults or atleast archers to make it more interesting. With only Jaguars it wasn't too difficult to defend. Also nice to see Great Generals on the front lines, even if he was poorly utilized...making progress I suppose!

 

[iWant921nooow]

Hmm.. Im also starting to think there's something wrong. Yesterday I played as germans. French and Egypt as neighbours. Both of them friendly towards me right from the beginning, both of them ask for a DOF. A few turns after I signed DOF with Napoleon, he attacked me. The weirdest thing was that I had a pretty big army. Turn 40 (quick speed), and he already had catas, archers and spears at my borders. Imagine if I was playing a non-military civ .
As you can see on the attached picture, he wasnt even mad about anything.

See this if you got time.

Spoiler :

Some of you have mentioned that its easy to counterattack the AI when killing their rush. So after killing his initial attack, from which I recieved lots of gold killing his units, I attacked him with catas and landknechts. I was surprised to see a huge wall of trebuchets, archers and other units. I check the demographics and he was first place on soldier list . A bit later, there was an ENDLESS wall of musketeers. So this war lasted all the way to the industrial age when I finally killed his last city with panzers!

Another thing later during the same game. The arabs was afraid of me, even though they were bigger than me. It only lasted a few turns though.


One very positive thing that happened this game however, was that the Arabs and Egypt declared war on me when I had only a few parts left to launch the spaceship. They slaughtered me badly. They had a huge amount of missiles, air units, naval units and they even dropped a nuke on my capital I barely managed to finish the spaceship a few turns before the Arabs

 

[Mortal D]

It dosnt matter if the AI will attack or not.
Whatever ur attacked by 10 units or 1000, unless AI is 2 eras ahead of u.
There is NO combat AI in this game.

If u guys want to play warlike then i suggest to build small army of crossbows + pikes, never upgrade them and w8 for the "so called AI" to build 100 + Industrial units.

Then and only then it MAY be a bit interesting...

 

[Stalker0]

A couple of general notes I'm seeing as I play:

1) Its the first game I've played in a while where I didn't get the tradition tree (at least the first choice). My god, I have forgotten how slow borders expand without it. Its a night and day difference! Not saying its a problem, but its a stark difference.

2) I'm not a conqueror by nature, but as time has gone on my early armies are geared more towards archers and less about warriors/spears.

Even with the -25% penalty against cities, archers take less damage from both the city attack and the fact that they don't get damaged against the city. Generally I'll go in with 3 archers and a warrior, and just use the warrior to block melee units and then make the final kill.

Archers are more expensive so maybe its worth the tradeoff, but right now it seems a superior way to go. What are others thoughts on this?

 

[Txurce]

A couple of general notes I'm seeing as I play:

1) Its the first game I've played in a while where I didn't get the tradition tree (at least the first choice). My god, I have forgotten how slow borders expand without it. Its a night and day difference! Not saying its a problem, but its a stark difference.

2) I'm not a conqueror by nature, but as time has gone on my early armies are geared more towards archers and less about warriors/spears.

Even with the -25% penalty against cities, archers take less damage from both the city attack and the fact that they don't get damaged against the city. Generally I'll go in with 3 archers and a warrior, and just use the warrior to block melee units and then make the final kill.

Archers are more expensive so maybe its worth the tradeoff, but right now it seems a superior way to go. What are others thoughts on this?

I love archers, and as I've mentioned elsewhere, chariots even more. If you're talking about an early rush, then the alternative would be swords, horses and cats. All of them come later and cost more. I tend to go with a bare-bones approach, and the archers are also good for later city defense, so they're my preference. Again, I haven't built a sword in a long time, and my first longsword in months, I think, came in my first India cultural game of all places.

 

[Mortal D]

Playing India atm with TBC 7.1 b7 and my 15 + city nation is geting new SP every 7 turn.

Top panel culture indicator shows 3.000.000 + culture per turn Bug ofc.
Inside SP screen shows 1.4 k culture per turn and 21 k needed for a new one. Yet i get new SP every 7 turn... Always. Do the match and u know that there is another bug.

Wierd huh?

750 turn/ 1700 AD and Manh. Project on the way.
To fast ? I play on marathon speed with i moded myself in gamespeeds xml by raising science cost from 300 to 500. On top of that, TBC reserch file is altered as well slowing medieval + eras reserch by 50 % or so...

A little suggestion to slow down the tech progress.

By the way : I have ALL the SP's bside piety by now lol
BTW 2 : I think i need to start a new game ! Russians actually sinked my destroyer !
I play warlike ( tho i dont take cities ) all the time since i love when AI surrender - say hello to + 2000 gold turn - and thats my 1st unit i lost.
Side note is the fact that i lost the ship due to a bug where "Naval counter attack" mod forces my ship to shoot back at a enemy ship inside enemy city. As a result it loose all MP's next turn and hit city not the naval unit that fires at it. So unless u capture the city the unit is lost.

Aaaaaaaand thats all ^^

Update : After closer look that was 3000 culture ( ~ 3.000,000 )... off anyway.

 

[Mentos]

Thal, can you please remove those duplicate Barbarian attributes/promotions from my former Barbarians - Units.xml file I created once and use your own?

PROMOTION_ANTI_CAVALRY_B
PROMOTION_NAVAL_SIEGE_B
PROMOTION_CAPITAL_SHIP_BONUS_B

I've discovered there is a limit to the number of promotions what makes it hard to merge or combine mods. See here for details.

 

[Mortal D]

National wonders req show twice :

"Need building X in 75 % cities"
"Need building X in ALL cities "

Only exeption is Agra fort and for all other NW's i need the req building at every city again >_>

Intended or bug ?

 

[Herex]

Having the same issue as Mortal D. National Wonders require all cities to have the buildings, instead of just 75%.

Edit: This seems to be fixed for me after installing beta 9.

Edit 2: Another bug; the Seaport has a tooltip error. It shows +1 to fish, pearls and whale. Twice. However, it still functions like normally.

 

[JJJJ]

the AI stock piles money not using it to get ahead or spending it on city states

 

[Txurce]

the AI stock piles money not using it to get ahead or spending it on city states

The AI plays by different rules in general. For example, it doesn't trade the way a human would, based on need. It can't use gold the way a human player does - otherwise it would never lose. However, AI who focus on diplomatic victories definitely use their gold to compete for CS. And the only way I can explain how the AI pumps out constant units from one city during a war is by buying them.

 

[Thalassicus]

@Stalker0
Based on your feedback I've made a few changes to benefit border expansion. The culture from capturing a cultural citystate, and the culture from capturing cities with Spoils of War, is now distributed to our cities instead of only going into the empire's culture reserve. This provides a tremendous border boost for conquerors.

@Mortal D
I haven't seen culture bugs like that, but I'll watch for possible causes. If it happens again, please start a thread for it in the Bug Reports forum.

@Mentos
Sure, done.

@JJJJ
We're unable to alter that part of the AI (without c++ access).

 

[Babri]

12 swords & horses. Hmm... Now that change put things in much finer balance.

 

[Mortal D]

The culture "bug" is still on. What shows on top sceen and what shows inside policy screen and how fast i get new SP is off.

Maybe game dosnt calculate freedom and CR wonder policy reduction ?

 

[Thalassicus]

Could you attach a copy of your mods folder and a savegame where the problem occurs?