Is Alexander OP?

[pilot00]

The double speed increase will only come into play when you're below your resting point, so it won't be a factor once you're allied. It also won't matter if enough time passes after you protect or pick up the patronage policy and before you start gaining influence actively. Even then, that part is just a smallish lump sum unless you're constantly doing things to make the CS mad.

Though you'll get a bonus for all your allies, the AI won't compete with you for all of them. Even without Greece's UA, once you're allied with a city state you'll get enough freebie influence from quests to stay allied. Since 250/60 allied is the same as 80/60 allied, the UA only matters for the CSs that the AI is competing for.

Bonuses to your gold/influence ratio from reformation or patronage actually make the Greek UA worse. By decreasing the gold cost of a point of influence, they decrease the value of a free point of influence. Interestingly, a civ with a gold generation bonus is going to have the upper hand on getting the bonus from those first few city states sooner compared to Greece. So if you're concerned about any multiplying effects of getting some nice happiness or food or whatever bonuses early that's another mark against Greece.

It's harder to say anything about the effect of larger map sizes where there could be 20 CS. Obviously it increases the max potential value if you're allying every city state on the map. Some of the money-friendly civs have bonuses that scale up with map size and some don't.

That is not exactly right. You see an 80/60 influence can be overturned with a reasonable gold investment and a spy. A 200+/60 is nearly impossible to shift and demands a huge amount of spy effort and treasury dipping. Also you forget that your influence falls down every turn even with religious and policy fail-safes. If Alexander gets the same fail safes his own will stop degrading completely. So in effect the only loser out of this situation is the one who is trying to take the CS from Alex.
As to quests, you cant be everywhere at once. Not all will be readily easy for you to complete and everything else will require 30+- turns to complete due to the inherent nature of them. Not factoring in the impossibility to complete certain ones if you dont have a lead (culture for example).

So all in all what I am saying is this: Since Alex prioritizes city states, most of the time he will beat you to them. A smart human player will have them in his grasp by mid game. Considering all of us go rationalism as soon as possible he has a big head start on influence by virtue of not degrading. When Patronage (which IMHO is not even remotely necessary for him) and Ideologies hit the table he simply seals the deal. You need extreme expenses to compensate with a top notch Greek empire in the CS war. In fact most of the time a conventional war is the only answer.

 

[njmfff]

PS: I find Siam to be more deadly because they are more diplomatic and hold of on war until later once they have fooled the world into loving them.

Yes, for same reason I am always more on alert when Siam is around. If he's not deal with soon, he will easily become powerhouse (his UA is probably among the strongest).

Alex will cause many wars, so he will either get reduced to minimum, or he will become huge, but in both cases he will be hated by pretty much everyone. (same as Shaka)

Siam on the other hand, will be "friendly" with everyone, go into hardcore patronage, sign bunch of RA, and attack mostly in mid Industrial era. At least that's how Siam always played in my games, I've rarely ever seen him DOW early in the game.

 

[pilot00]

Siam on the other hand, will be "friendly" with everyone, go into hardcore patronage, sign bunch of RA, and attack mostly in mid Industrial era. At least that's how Siam always played in my games, I've rarely ever seen him DOW early in the game.

In G&Ks I had Siam self destruct on my borders many times in the early game. Alexander on the other hand seemed never to go into 'passive' mode. In BNW neither of them attacks me early any more.

 

[njmfff]

Really? Because I've seen Alex (still) attacking early on, either me or other AIs, usually around turn 70, even in BNW. but yeah, I wish other AIs were more like him, he's probably the best AI.

 

[Wulf38]

So far, every time I've encountered Alexander in BNW, he's the most effective expander, the most effective warmonger, the tech leader, builds half the wonders and generates the most culture and tourism, and allies with every city state on the map. Wait, what's the point of the other AIs again?

 

[Arachnofiend]

Really? Because I've seen Alex (still) attacking early on, either me or other AIs, usually around turn 70, even in BNW. but yeah, I wish other AIs were more like him, he's probably the best AI.

I think Hiawatha is probably better because he's a strong peacemonger in addition to his war game. If you don't go to space the Iroquois will. Can't really say the same about Alex.

 

[njmfff]

Yeah, but I've often seen Hiawatha gets "stuck in time". Like he does not now for sure which victory type he wants. He builds Apollo project, but parts will never come. Too little culture to go cultural victory even if he spams lot of cultural wonders. Not enough allied CS to go for diplo.

The only time he's good is when he's going for domination, but only if other more aggressive warmongers are not on the map (Zulu-Mongolia-France-Huns-Japan-fanclub)

Dunno, maybe he was designed as "all around" AI, so when other AIs with flavors show up on the map, he gets stuck. I mean, with Rome, you can always count that he will be into early wars, but go for the tech victory later on, but with Hiawatha? He's all over the place and not focused.

and what's up with Bismark? He always goes for defensive\cultural victory in BWN? I've never seen him go for any other victory type in my games?