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[TheMeInTeam]

And how many of those games are lost because you rush through too quickly? Do you reload big mistakes or just count it as a loss and start a new game?

When I play at Immortal now I have to take quite some time to make sure I do the right thing every turn. Unfortuantly this gets tiresome after 150 turns, hehe.

How oten do you win at Deity?

I'd say maybe 1 in 10 or maybe 1 in 5 at deity. It's rough. I do a lot better if I either 1) AP cheese or 2) 6 city culture whore though. The former case is build AP = win and the latter case I will win culture before the AI but a DoW is death. Both give me better win% than playing normally, ironically.

As for immortal, the vast majority of my L's are probably from making decisions too rapidly w/o analyzing the situation...that's probably why most people lose at a difficulty they can win actually.

I will reload, but generally not for big mistakes (I just count those as a loss). The times I reload are "worker on a route-to command does not interrupt and actually uses up movement next to a barb archer", "game pretends I'm pressing alt when not so I DoW on an ally", "you thought you just selected one city but you actually selected all of them before you whipped", and other such bull.

 

[AveiMil]

Ah, I see.

Do you think it is satisfying to win against the AI? Personally I just use the AI to practice early starts for multiplayer games and see if I can get my self into a “winning position”. I rarely actually follow through on a game once I see that I’ve probably won it or even that winning is possible (but perhaps tedious).

The challenge is fun I suppose to a point but ultimately winning (beating the victory conditions) don’t provide me with much motivation to play.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I like MP now and then but it is SO SLOW . I go into RTS mode but nothing reminds me that this is TBS like waiting for other people for half the time I'm sitting there.

 

[AveiMil]

Blazing with simutaneous turns ain't that bad, at least not the first 100 turns. Starts to go slow though, yep. Generally in our LAN's we use about 5 hours to play 250 turns :O

Experienced players will play faster though. The more you automate and the better you are with hotkeys and que's the faster you become.

 

[yanner39]

Hey TMIT, quick question. When you were expanding in the Sully game, you mentioned that because of the neighbors you have (Ghandi/Liz), you didn't have to worry about them DOWing on you.

How would you have handled it differently if you have neighbors more likely to declare on you?

Using your tips from the sufficient expansion thread, I was doing well as Julius. I managed to block off Peter from Russia, which gave me access to alot of land and he would have been left with only 4 cities. All of a sudden, he DOWs on me. Now I assume he was boxed in and couldn't expand on the other side but I wouldn't know that.

Focusing on expanding, I probably didn't have enough military in my border cities but would that have deterred Peter anyways? In a situation like this, do you slow down expanding and focus a bit more on military? Depends on the neighbors?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Survival is the #1 priority. If you can't secure yourself diplomatically you have no choice but to build enough units to survive.

If you have open borders, you can see approximately what military forces they have and therefore what you'd need to defend against it. Fortunately that's pretty easy on most levels as an AI DoW is more like 4-8 units than say 15-20. It's very frustrating when I kill AI units 5:1 but it can keep that up so quickly that it can replace them before I can even heal.

 

[yanner39]

Thanks for this. 95% of the time I open borders with the AI. This time I believe I didn't with Peter. Maybe openning my borders to him would have delayed his DoW? This is what you mean by securing myself diplomatically?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

There is no securing yourself diplomatically unless you have them at the required disposition. Every AI is less likely to declared at pleased than lower dispositions, but many will still do it. Open borders means absolutely nothing to DoW except the +2 relations it gives over time (you really should read the "is there any logic to an AI dow thread" as anything you could possibly want to know about DoW mechanics is covered there).

With AIs that declare at pleased the only way to be safe diplomatically is to have them pick another target over you or get them to friendly. Failing that, get ready for war.

 

[yanner39]

Thanks TMIT. Actually, Diplo is one of the stronger points in my game (yeah, I know it doesn't show ). This time however was the first time an AI has DoWed on me so early in the game.

It kinda f's up your strategy going forward. Thinking back, I may have neglected my military a little for the sake of settlers and workers - I was doing well in that aspect. The DoW just caught me off guard a little, especially since Mansa was Peter's worst enemy, not me.

Thanks for the reference thread.