Just beaten Rising tide on Apollo(Hardest Dif no MODS)) - Final thoughts

[ruo]

Sponsor: Kavithan Protectorate
Score: 6558
Plant size: Standard (8)
Victory type: Domination
Game pace: Standard
Time: 302 Turns

All strategy and no cheats or tricky/cheap tactics.

Capital:

Map(capital in red):

Additional info:
https://i.imgur.com/FMRvTX3.jpg - Virtues

https://i.imgur.com/ky6ZVBO.jpg - Military

https://i.imgur.com/TGAMnK4.jpg - Economic

https://i.imgur.com/9yqjAfn.jpg - Resources&Health

https://i.imgur.com/DiCdmjz.jpg - Diplomacy

https://i.imgur.com/DDHqKd0.jpg - Artifacts

Final summary

I started the game with a lot of space, and not much aliens/miasma. I used this to my advantage to expand rapidly with a Supremacy approach. ALL the other AI were weyyyyy ahead of me due to their buffs, but I survived wars with most of them with the help of AL PALAH my ally and a newer less trusted one, polyaustralia, and found peace and prospered.

Near the end was focused to end to of the other major AIs in the game: the ARC and Brasilia. By doing that, I eliminated all other threats and was focused on the emancipation, but a surprise backstab attack of my two ally's forced me to wake my army, and take their capitals, thus initiating a DOMINATION victory.

Thoughts on Rising tide

After finishing the game on the highest diff and several others I feel as if I experienced all it has to offer, and that sadly is not much. To put it simply, except for the excellent artifacts system, all other features DEMAND more. I hope they will improve in the FUTURE. I enjoyed my time in RT, but it came to a point it has nothing more to challenge me, and that never happened in BNW. I hope that will change

 

[Lightjolly]

Well seeing how BNW is the second expansion of CIV 5, I guess you could just wait for the second expansion of BE, if it ever comes, and give us another report then?


But anways the main question I had for you is, is apollo challenging?

 

[ruo]

Well seeing how BNW is the second expansion of CIV 5, I guess you could just wait for the second expansion of BE, if it ever comes, and give us another report then?


But anways the main question I had for you is, is apollo challenging?

Yes, but not as much as deity. once you refined you playstayle to its max potential you can beat it.

 

[Lightjolly]

Yes, but not as much as deity. once you refined you playstayle to its max potential you can beat it.

Oh ok. I Just hear so many people say apollo is still piss easy.

 

[Dargov]

I'm really enjoying playing on Apollo.

The is a big difference between Diety and Apollo- Apollo has more akin to Immortal than Deity.

But I'm fairly certain this is because play style is a lot less rigid in BE than Civ. This means the AI just can't keep up with advanced player strategy. It has the same "borderline overwhelming" start as deity, but once the player starts rolling and picking research with purpose, be this for Affinity, Units or development synergy, the brute strength advantages of the AI just can't compete.

I think to increase the difficulty further, the AI needs to have a much better "Grand Strategy"- not more power. Specific tech paths, city placement priorities (and numbers), and unit builds.

Their propensity to declare war so often at higher difficulties also holds it back significantly.

 

[ruo]

I'm really enjoying playing on Apollo.

The is a big difference between Diety and Apollo- Apollo has more akin to Immortal than Deity.

But I'm fairly certain this is because play style is a lot less rigid in BE than Civ. This means the AI just can't keep up with advanced player strategy. It has the same "borderline overwhelming" start as deity, but once the player starts rolling and picking research with purpose, be this for Affinity, Units or development synergy, the brute strength advantages of the AI just can't compete.

I think to increase the difficulty further, the AI needs to have a much better "Grand Strategy"- not more power. Specific tech paths, city placement priorities (and numbers), and unit builds.

Their propensity to declare war so often at higher difficulties also holds it back significantly.

Completely agree. as i said to the guy before: once you refined your playstayle to its max potential the AI simply cannot handle that.

 

[Ryika]

Is "refined your playstayle to its max potential" an euphemism for "once you've gotten somewhat decent at playing the game and lost interest in becoming better"?

But I do agree of course, the AI is one of the big problem this game has, especially given that many systems just work against the AI capabilities.

 

[ruo]

Is "refined your playstayle to its max potential" an euphemism for "once you've gotten somewhat decent at playing the game and lost interest in becoming better"?

But I do agree of course, the AI is one of the big problem this game has, especially given that many systems just work against the AI capabilities.

lol i wasn't men't to say I've became ULTIMATE PRO is just men't that verses AI with time you can crate a playstayle that they simply cannot beat.

 

[Ryika]

Oh, I wasn't implying that you meant that, I just liked the ambiguity of the statement because it can mean a lot of things. ^^

I found myself in a similar spot with Rising Tide, without any goals to shoot for, no real challenge other than arbitrary finishing times I quickly got bored of trying to further improve my personal playstyle, so that was literally the point of me having refined my playstyle to its max potential - not because I ran out of things to improve, but simply because I couldn't potentially stand trying to improve it any further.

 

[Skulbow]

I haven't played since I set myself a challenge to use each of the AI civs and win on Apollo which I did but like the opening poster I used a definite strategy which I gradually attained in playing over 300 hours of RT and BERT. All my victories I had to stomp on several AI's just to knock them back and I also played on water maps and I think from memory all capitals had to be on the sea. This did make the game easier I know and to be honest I don't think I could win on Pangea without access to water which makes accessing the map and taking armies so much easier. On land there is just too much terrain which can make getting around too difficult.

And a quick question for Civ V experts and BERT experts (because I know I am not!!) How possible is it to win these games on the highest setting without resorting to war to either stop a runaway leader or get ahead to stop someone beating you. Every game of Civ or BERT at sometime I will need to go to war just to keep in the game.

 

[Sauron 3]

Yesterday I've beaten the game on Apollo for the first time in 91 turns and I was very happy. Especially to say that previous day I was second to win the game on Apollo on the massive map. So, during winning game, the speed was the fastest, duel map, I played for ARC against Soviet Union(random) and it was very easy, because I used diplomatic capital to increase time for secret operations and I also picked the political posibility for spies to increase their chances to do their job and survive in the end. I don't know if it is needed the opponent to launch orbital units to hack them, but every covert operation, rising by intrigue level, was successful in the rival's capital and in the end I've made coup d'etat with 35% chance to do it and 10% my agent to survive. Soviets started the war immediately as same time the game said the I won by domination victory.

That's all, kids(c)

 

[Sauron 3]

By the way, I did all the spy operations with the same agent.

 

[HughFran]

To be fair, winning Apollo when you only have one AI to play against is hardly that big of a victory!!

 

[Sauron 3]

To be fair, winning Apollo when you only have one AI to play against is hardly that big of a victory!!

Big journey starts with a small step.

Before that party been won on Apollo, I had been second to win on Apollo on the map with the maximum AI players on it.

 

[Acken]

And a quick question for Civ V experts and BERT experts (because I know I am not!!) How possible is it to win these games on the highest setting without resorting to war to either stop a runaway leader or get ahead to stop someone beating you. Every game of Civ or BERT at sometime I will need to go to war just to keep in the game.

By having a better economy.
I don't really have the time to explain how but yes you can beat the AI in both Apollo and Deity with pure peaceful development (assuming the AI doesn't attack you).

 

[DWilson]

I wonder if the game could be made more challenging if the a.i. could get more boosts later on in the game- given that once you've caught upon any difficulty, it's not difficult to hold onto the lead or runaway for the rest of the game.

Maybe something like:

* start of game : same bonuses
* 50 turns later : personality traits automatically maxed out, even when change. +15 dpt in capital
* 50 turns later : unit and building production boosted. +15 cpt, ept, and production per turn in the capital
* 50 turns later : suitable science boost, -1 intrigue in the capital one time and intrigue rates slow in every city
* 50 turns later : extra unit per city every 5 turns, -1 intrigue in every city one time, and intrigue rates slow further

Just enough to keep the a.i. highly competitive versus the human, even after the human has had time to build up.

 

[Acken]

Scalable bonuses is something that CBP uses for its Civ5 mod. Not something I'm a huge fan of, there is a limit as to how much I wish my games to compensate for AI inaptitude.

My own philosophy is to work on the balance first to reduce exploits/abuses and too powerful strategies. And then work on the AI itself to have a good economic strategy. The later requires good game knowledge so that you can program an AI to make "good" decisions. Considering AIs in video game don't learn, you have to patch it once the metagame develops.

 

[Ryika]

I think most people don't really care about that though. From what I can tell there's the camp that will dislike the fact that you have to give some sort of number bonuses to the AI to make them competitive and there's the camp that will not care how you make the AI competitive as long as it happens in the background and doesn't feel like the AI suddenly gained an unfair bonus (like spawning a ton of defensive units when you declare war).

So I think scaling up bonuses during the game is a bit of an "idealism vs. reality"-debate.

 

[Acken]

Well most people don't play these difficulties to begin with

But my opinion is simply that I'm more open to the idea of an AI getting a flat bonus and then grow from there rather than getting more and more free stuff as game goes by. I mean... it gets double production on civ5 deity for example. That should be enough.

Well obviously, scaling bonuses are better than nothing so I'm not going to argue against that But I maintain that balancing first is a win win thing. You'll get both a better player experience and a more challenging game. What I mean is that more bonuses should be a last recourse. There are plenty of things, especially in CivBE, to try first.

So far doing that works for me too. Give a try at beating levels 7 and 8 of my mod, Ryika, you'll be surprised how changing game balance to match AI behavior can have a pretty big effect on difficulty.

 

[LORD ORION]

Well... look how the game is balanced.

Can't exactly expect the developers to make a useful AI when 1/2 the strategy options available are utter crap.

BTW
ARC + Pioneers + Electromagnetic Sensor + Cryotome is probably my favorite Apollo setup.
Getting Soul Discerning from Artifacts + ARC's primary trait and that leaves political traits open to whatever you want, as you've already reached the cap for spy mission speed.