Monarch difficulty = computer gets 17 turn headstart?

[SnowlyWhite]

yeah, and on immortal they get 2/3rd production time and so on(diety doesn't count, as I won only a couple of times, and with very good starts)... so what? The difference between you and computer is that you know you have to beeline to alphabet and the trade to everyone for a good backtracking, the difference is you don't keep like an idiot 3 longbowmen/city who do nothing, the difference is that you know to build only axes while he bothers with swordsmen, which many times he uses in defence too, the difference is you know you have to beeline to grenadiers because you know they all beeline to rifling, thus all his nice 2-3 riflemen/city are totally screwed, the difference is you know to build a stack with many catapults and suicide in a not very stilish, but extremely effective way... Need to go on?

I don't know, I certainly have found the computer to be stupid in warfare, but if they have twice the number of units to throw at you you're still going to take losses

it's war! ppl are supposed to die!

 

[obsolete]

The human also knows to upgrade suicide cats to Barrage. NOT stupid level 2 city raider cats like the dumb AI. I always get a laugh seeing those march towards my cities.

 

[IronCrown]

Raising difficulty does NOT make the AI smarter - it gives it starting adv's.

Hopefully in BTS, there will be a smarter ai instead of an unbalanced one.

I disagree. We're still far off the point where any AI can really compete with human players on even ground. Intentionally making an AI dumber then it could be would be an enormous waste.

If you don't already use it, by all means switch to the BetterAI. More human-like, so if the normal Prince difficulty becomes boring, with BetterAI you can experience a challenging game again without the AI having a free worker.

 

[sylvanllewelyn]

Mutineer: even the extra settlers, workers and tech aren't the killers in deity. You can worker steal, park archers outside his cities, and axe their cities out. But it's unit, civic and city upkeep, which doesn't allow you to build an army or keep any cities anyway. While the AI pays about 1/20 of what you pay in all those 3 things (perhaps even more, but 1/20 feels about right).

DarkSchneider: I'm not sure what the disparity on Monarch is, but I have little respect for their military anyway. Plus, their 17 turn advantage is cancelled out by that pyramids city right next to your border defended by 4 archers.

 

[Mutineer]

Mutineer: even the extra settlers, workers and tech aren't the killers in deity. You can worker steal, park archers outside his cities, and axe their cities out. But it's unit, civic and city upkeep, which doesn't allow you to build an army or keep any cities anyway. While the AI pays about 1/20 of what you pay in all those 3 things (perhaps even more, but 1/20 feels about right).

I know, thougth ability to connect cooper fast make axe rush problematic, and worker steal? I never do this on level > then monarch/emperor.
But I do play on normal speed and with barbarians. and NOt INcass.

 

[kivanc]

If worker first is, indeed the correct starting build, that means that on Monarch and above the computer gets something like a 17 turn headstart on you, since you are building a worker for 17 turns without growing your city, and the computer gets a worker from the start for free! Aside from stealing a computer's worker, how do you compete with this?! The computer effectively gets a 17 turn headstart and the 10% production bonuses as well.

what to do is, changing strategy when you move up levels

as barbarians are not a big threat in lower levels, you can do without great wall but in higher ones, you need it
when you have to build that great wall wonder (and remember that it is a very early wonder) it slows you about REXing in the beginning

in higher levels reaching military techs earlier is also more important

 

[JujuLautre]

camarilla, did you notice most of the thread you answer to these days are quite old? Specifically, this one is more than 1 year old, and speak of something which is not true anymore in BTS...

 

[kivanc]

Easy to compete with that, the computer is rather stupid, especially with warfare, also in his teching strategies. Human players can focus/beeline on/to specific goals. The computer just researches randomly without any specific goal in mind. The comp gets more bonuses than just the free worker on monarch btw, there's also a discount on research,production and growth time and it gets huge discounts on upgrading units. I don't know how much this discount is on monarch btw. Noble is the level where you fight an equal game.

yes you can compete it although it's still a disadvantage

but i don't agree that AI is stupid. You can say that each leader favours somethings and has some definite tendencies. AI cannot adopt itself to different conditions like a human can do. each one has a playstyle. if the map type and conditions doesn't suit his style he looses.

but as a human if you do what you want to do in the right time, you can succeed. most of the time, let's say AI completed a wonder 4-5 turns before than you, and then you reload, you chop down a forest and beat him, right? This proves you have a chance most of the time. you had that chance but you didn't know he was ahead of you. if you knew it, you would do that anyway. but there also some exceptions

for example: if you play as darius, persia starts with agriculture and hunting. so as you have 10 AI rivals in huge map normally, it is very hard to found buddhism or hinduism. you may have a chance in monothesim maybe. similarly it is hard but not impossible for darius to be the one building the great wall.

if you play as pacal starting with mysticism and mining, you have a disadvantage for great lighthouse but you still have a chance. but by doing this you can loose another wonder "great wall". you should select one of them according to your requirements.

 

[Bleys]

Its not that the AI is stupid, the problem is that it cannot "think" like a human. Gary Kasparov once said of computers playing chess that the main problem is that a computer MUST compute worthless moves and lines of play, while the human can get to the "heart" of the position almost immediately. Sheer computing speed has allowed machines to "out think" humans, but its not really thinking, its computing deeper and deeper into specific moves and lines of play.

Personally, I am impressed with the AI in this game. It still has blind spots, it still makes blunders, but its a solid opponent and I thoroughly enjoy the challenge of this game, especially at levels above Prince where the AI gets starting bonuses and force the human to be more creative about how it capitalizes on its blind spots.

 

[schwartz]

Jun 24, 2007, 10:02 AM -> Jul 10, 2008, 08:12 AM
thread necro

 

[kivanc]

Jun 24, 2007, 10:02 AM -> Jul 10, 2008, 08:12 AM
thread necro

sorry for bothering
but i'm quite aware that message is old. but still while i'm investigating a new case, posting messages in multi- but related threads helps more.

 

[Indiansmoke]

i have yet to find a situation where it ever is correct to grow to size 3(!!!) before building the first worker. I can see growing to size 2 in MP where you start with hunting or size 2 if you plan to whip the first worker by starting with mining and researching BW first. Otherwise it is almost allways correct to start with a worker. Of course you sometimes goes for religion without any worker techs(spain comes to mind) and here might be some of the few possiblities you go without a worker at the start(though i wouldnt recomend it as growing your epire is so vital to the velocity of your development).

The situation is propably seafood start, where you build work boats instead of workers and whip those later....

Actually if you start with mining, growing to size 2 and whipping the worker works exactly the same if you have 3food tile (or even better as you have some hammers in warrior) .

 

[Indiansmoke]

Its not that the AI is stupid, the problem is that it cannot "think" like a human. Gary Kasparov once said of computers playing chess that the main problem is that a computer MUST compute worthless moves and lines of play, while the human can get to the "heart" of the position almost immediately. Sheer computing speed has allowed machines to "out think" humans, but its not really thinking, its computing deeper and deeper into specific moves and lines of play.

Personally, I am impressed with the AI in this game. It still has blind spots, it still makes blunders, but its a solid opponent and I thoroughly enjoy the challenge of this game, especially at levels above Prince where the AI gets starting bonuses and force the human to be more creative about how it capitalizes on its blind spots.

Actually computer chess programs are way better than humans these days not just because of computing power but because better chess players program them.....and as a result have added calculating lines into the computer thinking that only top players could think of.

I believe it is the same with any game including civilization. Considering all other equal...The better the programmer plays the game, the better the ai will be.

 

[SharpMango]

Actually computer chess programs are way better than humans these days not just because of computing power but because better chess players program them.....and as a result have added calculating lines into the computer thinking that only top players could think of.

I believe it is the same with any game including civilization. Considering all other equal...The better the programmer plays the game, the better the ai will be.

true, balanced with the fact that top chess computers have the exact moves stored from every single grandmaster game stored in their memory,so they know what works and what does not.
There are certain phases of the chess game, when it is actually possible to make 'the perfect move'. to me chess seems to be defined by moments other than that, by ideosyncratic play as the players personalities come out (me, i like my pawns!). a computer can just use its vast database to 'know' what the counter is. if any human player sat down with a chess book in their laps, it would be considered cheating, but we allow the computers to do it...

civ on the other hand, i really dont think there is a 'perfect' game, because there is no objective other than what the player desires out of the game.

 

[Abegweit]

Actually computer chess programs are way better than humans these days not just because of computing power but because better chess players program them.....and as a result have added calculating lines into the computer thinking that only top players could think of.

This simply is not true. The only reason that computer chess programs are better today than they were is because of increased horsepower. Of course, there are different kinds of horsepower and things like opening books and endgame get added to programs.

Computer chess players are not better than the top humans. They are roughly the same.

Furthermore, when top players get added to computer chess teams, it's not to program. That is left to the programmers. They are added for the same reason as they are added to human chess teams - to find ways to exploit the opponent's weaknesses.

I believe it is the same with any game including civilization. Considering all other equal...The better the programmer plays the game, the better the ai will be.

All other things are not equal and I doubt that the proposition is always true even if they were.

 

[Calder]

There's quite an interesting analogy here between a computers 17-turn headstart in Civ, and the advantages a chess programme has with its heavily stored database. In both cases, their endgame is very weak!

 

[JujuLautre]

endgame? Weak? The endgame in computer games is typically the part of the game for which the computer has the most facility; it's just a question of computing numbers, what computers do best.

 

[Calder]

There's a lot of tricky strategies involved in chess endgames and is typically the weakest part of a chess computer, especially when there's less 'numbers to compute' as you say, levelling the playing field a little for the experienced human player. In Civilization, the computer gets advantages on higher levels in the beginning, which are usually wittled down by the human player as the game goes on.

 

[JujuLautre]

I wont continue this discussion because it's completely off-topic. But I'm afraid we don't speak of the same "endgames".

 

[Krazy]

Programming for chess is completely different to Civ for one reason - chess is a closed game. Meaning that the positions of all pieces, and possible moves are known to all players. There's no 'randomness' as there is with Civ.

As for endgames, yes computers pwn at that part of the game. Few pieces means they can easily calculate the perfect strategy to draw/win if either is possible.