My New Laidback AI

[insight]

After getting AI sandwiched by playing a few Prince games with the aggressive AI.... I decided enough of this crap, I must stink on Prince, I'll just play a Prince game, Pangea, Normal, 7 leaders, with the regular AI and see if I still take it in the shorts.

So I take Hannibal and off we go. Caesar is right next to me (East) so I decide I’ll harass him and slow his growth down. I steal 3 workers from him and then I make peace because I can't crack his capital with axmen.

Time goes by and I have Isabella to the South. France (Duke what's his butt) West and Germany has one city to my South. I research CoL and get Confucianism.

I'm a builder/conqueror type and I am leading the pack. Isabella has her own religion and everyone else is a Buddhist. I have not declared a religion so far in the game.

France and Caesar do not like me and are building up. I'm not worried about Caesar because I stifled him early and he is rated in last place. I don't know if he has, or can get to iron, however I don't care because I have macemen and prets stink against macemen. Caesar must have gotten Confucianism from me by osmosis because he declares it as his state religion.

Isabella is pressing me from the South and I decide to go after her. I also decide it's time to go after the AP palace as I don't want the Buddhist faction uniting together.

I take a city from Isabella, I choose Confucianism as my state religion, and I pop the AP palace.

So I get the usual blah-blah and I pick myself as the leader of Confucianism over Caesar. Then France declares on me and crosses my boarder.

France declaring wasn't a big surprise and I had positioned enough troops in my boarder city to handle their stack. Next thing I know I get a pop-up asking if the AP participants want to stop the war against Hannibal (Me).

Holy crap! How can this be happening??? So I vote yes. Get that opportune mother off my back. So the vote comes back and of course I won the vote as I had more Confucist cities than everyone else. What is amazing is somehow in a couple turns France and a few of the outlying civs got infected with Confucianism. So next turn France is forced to make peace. I'm laughing as I've rarely had anything good come out of the AP palace. I always try to get it to keep it away from the AI, but I have never benefited from it before. I also have never spread a religion before, but now I see what a weapon it is.

Next another AP vote comes up, "Let's stop trading with Cyrus (an outlying civ)." He hates me, let's vote yes. Vote passes. Another vote comes up," Let's all go kick Isabella's butt!" I laugh and vote yes! Vote passes. Of course, no one is fighting but me, but at least it puts some unhappiness pressure on the other civs.

I defeat Isabella. Next I think it's time to get rid of Caesar. So I declare on Caesar. Vote comes up ... Let's stop the war with brother Caesar. Hmmm .... No I don't think so. Vote fails. Ah ... so sad.

I grab 2 of Caesar’s 4 cities (one is his capital) and I decide it's time to make him capitulate if he has something to give me. He has no techs or money. So I ask for one of his cities (this has never worked before). Bam .. he takes it and he's my vassal. Say what???

Now I'm well on my way to winning the game with about 15 cities, I lead the tech race, and Caesar is my one city vassal. I decide to see what techs my very dear "pleased" friends the outlying Japanese might have worth trading for. Well they don't have any techs but they are willing to start some wars. So I give him a couple of techs to fight with Cyrus who still hates me, and of he goes.

I decide to check in with France who is "cautious" towards me. He has no techs, but lo and behold he would be willing to fight Germany. Say what?? I can't ever recall a "cautious" leader willing to go to war. Why is it in all my other games you can't get anyone to go to war no matter what??? And this dude is cautious???? So I find out what he wants, and for the price of 2 religious techs the "cautious" dude goes to war with Germany. Alrighty then...

So let's see. The four remaining civs are all at war with each other, I'm leading tech, score, population, etc. and the crazy AP palace is doing my bidding. Somebody pinch me because this is unlike any other civ game I have played.

 

[Divaythsarmour]

Sometimes the Apostolic Palace can be a huge and beneficial factor, just as it can be awful. It all depends on the extent to which you share and have developed the religion of the one who builds it.

I had a game where I built it during a wonder building binge. I wasn't paying attention to diplomacy. I also wasn't paying attention to spreading my state religion around my own empire. It wasn't long before I started coming up on the losing end of every election. And there it was, the Apostolic Palace in my own capitol.

I've never played with aggressive AI. The AI in the game has always seemed to be more aggressive than my own taste would dictate, especially when it comes to strategies for winning.

There are times when I just don't feel like being in a war, but I still want to be challenged by every aspect of the game, including the question of security. For instance, I like the fact that you have to consider your security and maintain peace through strength.

But I have played games when I've maintained peace with a neighbor up until the industrial era, through attention to diplomacy, religion and keeping my own military sufficient. And then suddenly hear the war horn go off, the drum roll and then have stacks consisting of dozens of cavalry, trebuchets and the kitchen sink come spilling over the border in a blitzkrieg. It doesn't make any sense.

Here's another thought. For a player like myself who really struggles with a peaceful style game sometimes just surviving to the end of the game with the land that I settled feels like a major victory. And given some of the manuevering, intensity and yes bravery displayed in simply maintaining that land against a crazed and murderous AI, one might expect a better rating than Warren Harding or Neville Chamberlain.

If however, I start out aggressive, and attack with full force at every opportunity from the very beginning, I can win a conquest or a domination victory somewhere in the middle ages and be considered ceasar.

Personally, I consider the peaceful game to be mucn more challenging.

 

[insight]

I admire anyone that has the skill and patience to play this game peacefully. I wouldn't know where to start.

I hardly understand how to tech peacefully. I'm usually so busy fighting, I don't consider other tech trees, nor do I have any idea which tech is leading where (except for the military techs) unless I keep my eye on the tech tree.

Aggressive AI is not for you as the AIs go to war much faster. However it is all very situational in this game. Depending on your start, your civ, your play style, other civs in the game, and numerous other factors, you just never know what will happen.

 

[pangu]

I remember the best game I have used the AP was when both Mao and Geghis both declared on me and marched their big SoD onto my capital. I was going to quit game coz there was no way I could possibly avoid losing my capital. Then AP pops up, "Declare war on Geghis!" Hell yes! Mao somehow got a couple of cities with the AP religion. He voted no but the vote still got through. Then I found that Mao's SoD and Geghis's SoD literally wiped themselves out RIGHT in front of my capital! Wow! And my SoD hiding in the capital remained intact! I won the game.

After that, I always try to have control over the AP or at least a blocking vote.

 

[Divaythsarmour]

Aggressive AI is not for you as the AIs go to war much faster. However it is all very situational in this game. Depending on your start, your civ, your play style, other civs in the game, and numerous other factors, you just never know what will happen.

Yes, you're absolutely right. There are so many factors in a game.

Every now and then I'll get a map and scenario that I need to explore for awhile, just to test some of the parameters of the situation. My latest is playing as Gilgamesh on a tiny map, quick speed, monarch. Unfortunately, I didn't do a save until 640 BC, as I'm about to complete the Oracle. One reason why I'm haunted by this map is because of the unusual capitol location. It's coastal with 3 crabs, and 3 plains hills one of which contains silver. By 640 BC I have 4 other cities, one is all flood plain (with 11 triple food tiles tiles and stone) and it's up river from the capitol. It's pretty cool.

One of the reasons why I picked Gilgamesh was because I was thinking of a peaceful strategy with his protective trait. I also like the idea of the ziggurat for really inexpensive courthouses with just priesthood. The opponents in this scenario are Sitting Bull and Charlemagne. In every game, Charlemagne goes to war with Sitting Bull and kicks butt and is practically twice my size by the end.

My strategy has been to build the Oracle, take metal casting, build the colussus, and try to settle everything coastal that I can in pretty much of a clockwise direction around the continent that the 3 of us share. My Capitol is at the bottom (south). Typicall I can take everything up to about the 10:00 position before I'm blocked off by Charle.

I try to run sort of Hybrid Economy. I have 2 really good commerce cities, the one with the stone being the best of the two. I pop a lot of Great Merchants which I settle in the better commerce city, where I eventually build a market, bank, grocery and then Wall Street. Oh and that city is also the place where confucianism is founded. I built the holy shrine there and at one point managed to spread confu to a dozen cities. So I noticed at one point that the stone city was bringing in 140 commerce per turn by industrial era (quick speed). That's not bad.

My capitol is a production power house with all of those hills, crabs and the farms that I build around the snaking river. I'm a builder at heart, so when I'm not pumping out military units, I'm building wonders. I think that Taj Mahal was only 17 turns (quick speed, but still pretty good).

In these games I've been running hereditary rule, beuraucracy, eventually emancipation, free market and free religion. In every game I never pick a religion as it immediately draws me into the fight.

What I've noticed, in all games, is that the one that holds the most land, eventually out techs, or out produces the others to the point of being able to crush the others. I've been on both sides of that equation. So for a typical win, according to the game, you have to take the most land. It's impossible to do that with a peaceful strategy.

 

[Winston Hughes]

What I've noticed, in all games, is that the one that holds the most land, eventually out techs, or out produces the others to the point of being able to crush the others. I've been on both sides of that equation. So for a typical win, according to the game, you have to take the most land. It's impossible to do that with a peaceful strategy.

It's true that a large empire will out-tech a small empire if the game goes on long enough, and that building a monster empire through war is often the easiest path to victory. But a small empire can sometimes leverage faster early teching to reach a winning position before the bigger civs become unassailable.

Obviously, domination isn't an option, while both conquest and time would take some doing. But diplomatic, space race, and cultural are all possibilities.

By staying small and teching fast through the first half of the tech tree, you can easily beat the AI civs to the UN. You'll have to get used to giving your friends everything they ask for, and be prepared to adopt their religions and/or favoured civics, but having techs to trade makes building strong relations much easier. In many games, you'll have to take part in a few wars to build friendly relations. Often, though, you won't have to do any fighting - just join a war being fought half a world away (or start one yourself and bribe others to join you) for the diplomatic bonuses.

The space race is definitely a lot easier with a large empire, but a combination of smart diplomacy, careful empire management and highly focused teching and trading can put a smaller empire in a winning position. The following thread shows two of our best players (obsolete and DaveMcW) taking quite different paths to space using small (8 city) empires:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=269572

(There's an awful lot of quite tedious argument in the thread, so you may want to skip to the posts by obsolete and DaveMcW).

Last, but not least, is cultural victory. Actually getting three cities to legendary isn't all that hard once you know how. There are several different ways, but my favourite method is to use Great Scientists to lightbulb my way to Liberalism, whilst building cathedrals (at least 2) in each of my culture cities (the three with the most food). Thereafter, the culture cities run as many Artist specialists as possible, while the other cities pump out military. The tricky bit is surviving long enough to get the win.

In each case, the keys to achieving victory with a small empire are planning, efficiency and diplomacy. You need to start planning your victory from early in the game. You then need to ensure that every decision you make feeds into that plan (you can't afford much waste with a small empire). And you need to carefully manipulate the AI civs so as to compensate for your own lack of power/population. Of course, a larger empire will benefit from these things too. But they are that much more important if you want to win whilst staying small.

On a side note, health and happiness will often start to become a problem when you stay small, thanks to a lack of resources. Regardless of which victory you go for, it is crucial that you grab as many different resources as possible in your early, expansion phase. You should also bear this in mind when developing your plan - make sure it includes the techs and buildings you'll need to grow your cities large.