Is there anybody who DOESN't hate the AI?

[Lord Emsworth]

What's bad about that?

Because, I think, every one of those (outdated) units types has a more than decent chance of taking down one of the cavs, if it gets to attack: attack value of 3 or 4 against defense value of 3. A covering army would be quite desirable, so it never even comes to any defensive battles.

 

[TheOverseer714]

Taking an island civ down gets harder by the level. For some reason, the AI goes nuts building units when they are island-bound. If you play at DG, expect 50 archers to attack your landing party. At Deity, double that.

 

[TKG]

What bugs me the most is when the AI randomly declares war on you with say, the greeks or something so you fight a mostly defensive war, then about say thirty turns later the AI wants peace but demands a tech to obtain it.

My responce is never nice to this what about you guys?

 

[Spoonwood]

The AI *only* does that if you've not fought very well in the war. If you win more battles and capture more cities and units than the AI, that won't happen. The best defense usually consists of a good offense.

 

[TKG]

the AI does that even if you've defeated all his units he's sent and not lost one of yours in the process that's why I find it annoying.

 

[Aabraxan]

This may have been mentioned, but what I find even more annoying than TKG's example is this: I give the AI a tech to join an alliance against another Civ. Then the recipient of that tech makes peace just a few turns later. One of the few things that bugs me about the game is the fact that the AI does not appear to suffer any sort of reputation loss as between each other.

 

[Bowsling]

What's bad about that?

The fact that they could be going on a rampage, if the could land the troops on somebody's island. and the fact that I was trying to invade them. good thing my landing point was on a marsh, so i didn't take any cannons with me at that point

@Lord Emsworth,
I actually did have an army, but it was filled with Swiss Mercenaries, so it protected itself behind cavalry after a few attacks.

 

[TKG]

oh yeah I know what you mean Aabraxan, the only way to make that more annoying is if the AI you allied with is closer to the target enemy then you are and you know you cant get troops to the front in any good time.

 

[Loki130]

what annoys me is when you've made peace with them after a war, and they complain bitterly about any troops you have in their territory, yet immediately go to war if you mention the 20 archers they have parked next to their cities.

in another way, i hate it when they declare war on you when you have the obvious advantage

 

[Sharwood]

This may have been mentioned, but what I find even more annoying than TKG's example is this: I give the AI a tech to join an alliance against another Civ. Then the recipient of that tech makes peace just a few turns later. One of the few things that bugs me about the game is the fact that the AI does not appear to suffer any sort of reputation loss as between each other.

Oh, the lack of any reputation damage between AI civs is very annoying.

I hate it on the Conquests scenarios, when you have a locked alliance. I was playing the Napoleon scenario as France, and was on the verge of conquering several Ottoman cities, including one with dyes, when Denmark made peace with them. Ergo, I was now at peace with them. I needed to make RoPs, so I couldn't rape them, and had to leave their territory before I could destroy them.

 

[bhinso]

As I've mentioned before. The number 1 thing for me is how the AI ALWAYS takes the same route on conquests at the beginning of the industrial age - Nationalism - Communism - Fascism, because it loves the Government techs so much.

Also annoying is how once your rep is trashed the AI won't trade much with you, and lets you know about it. However, its quite OK for it to backstab you with ROP rape, peace treaties etc.

 

[TKG]

the AI not taking rep hits reminds me of something though, has anyone ever noticed how the AI always knows exactly which city has the least troops or exactly where the iron is even if you've not got embassies nor espionage nor for that matter traded maps?

 

[Sharwood]

the AI not taking rep hits reminds me of something though, has anyone ever noticed how the AI always knows exactly which city has the least troops or exactly where the iron is even if you've not got embassies nor espionage nor for that matter traded maps?

Yep. I once had the AI systematically nuke every one of my cities that had a nuke in it. Fortunately, they didn't go for my airbases, so I still had some retaliatory capability, but not much. Fortunately, I wore them down eventually.

 

[dexters]

Ugh.

The repuation feature is mainly a 'nerf' on human trading advantages, and not a rule put there for all the players. What it does is punish ROP rapes and treaty breakages. I know its not perfect but its there for that reason. The AI not taking rep hits is fine, its a balanced feature put there to narrow the gap in trading, an area where humans already have a huge advantage on. It gives gives some unpredictability to AI behavior and allows the AI to break treaties when they have to. An AI that keeps every one of its 20 turn deals is an AI that the humans will gain even more advantage over.

The reason why they are allowed to do this is the AI in Civ3 or 4 for that matter does not view trades in the same way human players do. They do not do things with a master plan, its all turn by turn calculations. They need a leg up. Granted subsequent patching has hardcoded AI to use a variety of more sophisticated trading tactics, such as the bait and switch (pay high GPT for tech then bait the human players into a War) but even then, the AI will always be at an disadvantage.

 

[Lord Emsworth]

I am not entirely sure the AI doesn't get rep hits. At least your foreign advisor recognizes whether an AI has a spoiled or a clean rep. If an AI's rep is spoiled he tells you that the civs leader is a known "liar and cheat."

 

[dexters]

A lot of this is hearsay but the observations tend to agree with what was discussed years ago here and on Poly about how AI not getting a rep hit.

The game still probably tracks whether they broke deals with other Civs, since its possible to have more than 1 human player in say a hot seat or PBEM style game so its still relevant if the AI broke a deal with another human or the other human broke a deal with the AI.

But they seem to be able to trade just fine not matter what they do, which is what is being observed

 

[Lord Emsworth]

A lot of this is hearsay but the observations tend to agree with what was discussed years ago here and on Poly about how AI not getting a rep hit.

The game still probably tracks whether they broke deals with other Civs, since its possible to have more than 1 human player in say a hot seat or PBEM style game so its still relevant if the AI broke a deal with another human or the other human broke a deal with the AI.

But they seem to be able to trade just fine not matter what they do, which is what is being observed

A rep hit is not the end of the world, and certain kind of trades or treaties can be had no matter what. There also are several types of rep hit. But after all, I am not entirely sure what to make of AI-AI trading habits.

 

[dexters]

A rep hit is not the end of the world, and certain kind of trades or treaties can be had no matter what. There also are several types of rep hit. But after all, I am not entirely sure what to make of AI-AI trading habits.

I'm aware of the multiple types of deals and the reputations associated with them.
Here's an article in the War Academy on it: http://www.civfanatics.com/civ3/strategy/trading_reputation.php

The complaint was that it wasn't fair the AI doesn't suffer from the same penalties for breaking their deals, though I disagree. My reply was essentially to say that the reputation system is there to keep human players more honest, a nerf to the many ways a human can break treaties that the AI may not necessarily grasp, so the programmers designed it so that you can only break a deal once and the AI becomes leery of doing a similar deal again. It's not a perfect system but it is better than a free for all.

 

[Lord Emsworth]

I'm aware of the multiple types of deals and the reputations associated with them.

I assumed as much. I meant rather, that even if the AIs suffered rep hits, that this would not automatically affect any kind of deal. And that just because the AI still trade and sign treaties amongst each other it does not necessarily mean that rep hits do not apply to them.

 

[Padma]

IIRC discussions with the devs years ago, the AI does take rep hits. But, in the code that checks for reputation, after the rep hit is ascertained, it then checks to see if the civ involved is human or AI. The human player gets stiffer penalties.

This is the case with virtually all of the interaction with the AI. The code does all the main calculations, checking things like rep, attitude, etc., and then checks to see if it is "talking" with a human or AI, and makes final adjustments based on that.