How Much Difficulty Does aggressive AI Add?

[obsolete]

Back in Vanilla, Ghandi was an absolute MONSTER with his industrious trait. He's been nerfed big in BtS and I suppose this was due to all the beta testers complaining how he was constantly running away on everyone and there was nothing they could do about it.

Note: I am assuming there was some small team of testers. Then again, for conquests we had like over 1200 verified applicants, but only 400 or so even logged anything.

 

[CivDude86]

You should see the much AggAIs pay on unit maintence. And the funny thing is there are usually so far behind in tech I can not spend a single and have more "soldiers". All you have to do is give into their demands and they usually leave you alone. Pointy stick research is the only research they're going to get done.

 

[ungy]

It's questionable whether it adds any difficulty at all. True the AI is almost certain to hit you with a SoD in the early stages of the game, but that's not usually too hard to defend against.

I've found the opposite. Maybe I didn't adapt my strategy well enough but I just found it very tough (playing immortal). The AI would come with a lot of units, and either I couldn't(or didn't) defend properly or I found myself really bogged down early on.

 

[illram]

I think it depends on what kind of victory condition you are pursuing, because I find agg AI makes the AI tech pace slower. So, on a space race or domination win, agg AI might be easier since you can get ahead in tech quicker than your opponents, while a cultural or pure-diplomatic victory (i.e. not brute force diplomatic victory) might be harder.

I don't generally find the increase in units to make things more difficult. I also don't really find the AI to be utilizing its supposed "aggressiveness," it still attacks predictably.

edit: ungy's post also reminds me that difficulty level is always relevant, as I have never played agg ai above monarch, so that probably has something to do with the lack of really seeing a significant change in difficulty. Different? Yes. Harder? No.

 

[DrJambo]

Having recently played 3 games using normal AI and 1 using AggAI, all at Emperor level, I would say I've found AggAI harder.

I find the AggAI option makes it a necessity to have a larger standing army. Now, AI cheat bonuses in BTS are nowhere near what they were in Warlords, however, what bonuses they still get tend to relate to very things that help maintain large armies, i.e. unit supply and upkeep, cost to upgrade and inflation. Therefore, the cost of maintaining larger armies overall will hurt my economy much more than it will the AI's. In other words, playing with AggAI on favours the cheat bonuses the AI still gets in BTS.

I've also not noticed any major reduction in tech pace, but then I do play at Emperor with No Tech Brokering ON...

 

[Il Corvo Bianco]

It's like a game against Nappy, Monty, Boudica, Shaka, Monty, Ragnar, Caesar, Stalin and Tokugawa...they dogpiled me in 7, i lost 2 cities out of three but destroyed every stack they sent to the capital (50 Oromos or so on inside of it, those things are wonderful!). So, it is feasible, but quite harder than the usual game...or at least, as it has already been said, harder if you are not an heavy warmonger