Is the AI better? yay or nay.

[drsafety]

I've only played one game so far, one AI opponent I crushed, the other one launched a sneak attack on me and took one of my weakly defended cities, and is currently destroying my fishing boats mad: ). SO, I don't have enough experience yet to comment, but it has def shown potential.

anyone have thoughts on AI effectiveness and comments on it's strategies.

 

[Dragoul]

yay, as short as you asked

 

[southafrica]

yay (wouldn't let me just post "yay" too short...)

 

[Nildo22]

It's certainly more opportunistic.

 

[Eyemaze]

absolutely yea

 

[APushkin]

yay (wouldn't let me just post "yay" too short...)

 

[mrjepson]

yay ... filler ...

 

[RIT Beast]

hell yay...

 

[EridanMan]

Yay...
Even seems to know when it made a mistake (Isabel declared war on me, took a weakly defended city, I sent in a flood of horse archers, and she immediately started sueing for peace).

Razed her larger cities, pillaged all of her improvements, then contacted her back and demanded tribute for me to stop (tech + cash)... she poutingly accepted.

It was quite satisfying.

 

[oxonian2001]

Definitely yay.

I had had founded Hinduism and Judaism, and was rapidly expanding to fill up my continent before the English got a chance (CivIII habits die hard). As I proceeded to drop my economy into the tank, I brushed up against the cultural borders of Germany, who was on a different continent just across a narrow channel. Germany got infected with Judaism, England with Hinduism. Being a builder, I figured, "Well, the English are on my continent, so they're obviously the bigger threat. Might as well suck up to them and annoy the Germans." So I switched to Hinduism.

After a while, Bismarck started sending me threatening messages. Obviously, I ignored him; no one's even discovered Feudalism yet! Little did I know, he lauched a surprise naval invasion of archers, horse archers, and axemen, taking a lightly-defended city. After I retook the city and lauched a counter-invasion, he was even smarter. Rather than attacking my beachfront (which was on a hill defended by an archer with Guerilla I), he surrounded my force with good defenders and started churning out galleys and caravels to interdict my sealift capability.

 

[phoulishwan]

I'm playing an emperor game at the moment. I'm in 400AD and I only just managed to found my 3rd city! No contacts, but the Barbarians certainly are a ruthless non stop threat (raging barbs). Not sure how I even overcame them when they started throwing Axemen my way with only archers as defense, mind you Hillsmen 2 Archers defending a forested hill are a considerable defensive force to be reconed with. The game is likely lost but I still have a shot at cultural victory, but time is running out.

Fear the barbarians they're no easy push over anymore. My first games I played on Noble and didn't play far enough in to get a handle on actual CIv AI's however.

 

[spa]

Yay. In my game last night, I had to scramble and I only just made it. I was preparing for war with my neighbours but distant Greece (the #2 Civ) decided he just had to declare war. I didn't think much of it since he's so far away until the turn that Greek units came spilling over my land border with the Incans, land landed on both my far Western Cape and my far Eastern cape. It was tough as suddenely I had three fronts in my own backyard and not a big enough army to deal with them all right away. It took some doing but I pulled through. I'm quite impressed with the move.

EDIT: Also Alexander only attacked when I pulled ahead of him for the score victory (I usually only allow it and diplomatic victory as I like to play the longest game I can). It's like he knows he only has 40 turns to knock me off of first place.

 

[Lord Sankra]

yay.......

 

[Dagoth Ur]

The AI is great at landing attacks from the sea. I've seen it land 10 units at a time on several transports, which pretty much own my cities since I don't build a lot of units except on my land borders. It's very good at flanking and going around my fortifications.

 

[suspendinlight]

Well maybe I just suck but I keep ending up a mediocre civ with 4 or 5 cities (need 6 to do many national wonders) by the industrial era. I've been playing 18 civs on a standard map but I dropped down to 14 civs for my last game. I did a little better but still ended up with a pretty mediocre civ.

I just can't seem to find the right balance between military production, infrastructure, growth, tech, and great people/wonders. I usually end up having just a few units in each city who promptly get owned when one of my neighbors attacks with a stack of 10 technologically superior units. I think I need to consider diplomacy more strategically. I ended up allying with Kublai Khan last game but he turned out to be one of the weakest civs around so I should probably have considered my diplomatic choices more carefully. Oh well...next time I suppose.

 

[SeaDog98520]

way yea !!!

 

[White Elk]

yay .........

 

[EridanMan]

I just can't seem to find the right balance between military production, infrastructure, growth, tech, and great people/wonders.

Therin lies the 'strategy' in 'strategy game'...

and the nice thing, so far at least, is there does not appear to be one, over-arching 'right' way to do things in Civ-IV... so many answers on here start with 'depends on the situation'...

My only suggest is - if you ever find yourself just hitting next turn over and over again for more than 2 or 3 turns at once, you're probably doing something wrong... even early in the game. Get your guys out, get active - the more your doing per turn, the more your 'playing the game' and building up your advantages...

Note - The above is a SEVERE generalization... obvoisly just moving units around for the sake of moving them, or waging costant war (always long turns) is going to bite you in the rear - but just in general, always ask yourself if there's something else you can do every time you see the <Press 'enter' for next turn> indicator.

 

[Mujadaddy]

Is the AI better? No, it's the same ...

What I mean is, this is a NEW GAME. The AI knows how to play it -- it was programmed to know ... WE mere humans, on the other hand, need to LEARN how to play it.




That being said, yeah, the AI can kick your 4$$ ... and it rarely makes mistakes...

 

[Masquerouge]

Oh yay, the AI is much better than in Civ3 ! Then don't do stupid things when they attack, they pillage a lot, but more importantly when an AI is your friend they will not betray you ! That's pretty cool