OMG, I was attacked!

[VainoValkea]

I've actually started to encounter more AI attacks. Also more coalitions, which is nice. For example, in my current game I disposed of Askia to protect my own religion (filthy Muslims and their Evangelism + Borobudur charge on my superior Orthodox Christianity!) and was soon countered by Maria Theresa... allied with Attila, from across the sea.

However, I had clearly earned it by being a warmonger myself. The problem, as I see it, is that the enemies only care about their opponents' progress if it's militaristic or expansionist in nature. Civs pushing for tall culture victories will, in comparison, be largely ignored, even though from the gameplay point-of-view they are very dangerous to the AI as well.

 

[NameUndisclosed]

I got a shock the other night when barbarians *attacked* my city-not just pillaged my improvements. They did a lot of damage before I was able to fend them off (it was relatively early BC's). I confess I'd love to see the Barbs do this march more often, & in bigger numbers!

Aussie.

This happened to me too, in a couple of files. Gave me quite the surprise; I have literally never seen a barbarian attack a city before BNW. Perhaps now getting the achievement for having a city captured by barbs won't be so impossible.

I still haven't seen an AI declare war on me; all my BNW wars so far have been wars I myself declared.

 

[livsbrand]

In a recent Immortal game I had Theodora, Pedro, Oda and Pocatello team up on me after Gajah had already declared on me... Move up to Immortal!

 

[simonthesinner]

I play on king and have gotten attacked early in almost every game

 

[Roxlimn]

I've actually started to encounter more AI attacks. Also more coalitions, which is nice. For example, in my current game I disposed of Askia to protect my own religion (filthy Muslims and their Evangelism + Borobudur charge on my superior Orthodox Christianity!) and was soon countered by Maria Theresa... allied with Attila, from across the sea.

However, I had clearly earned it by being a warmonger myself. The problem, as I see it, is that the enemies only care about their opponents' progress if it's militaristic or expansionist in nature. Civs pushing for tall culture victories will, in comparison, be largely ignored, even though from the gameplay point-of-view they are very dangerous to the AI as well.

Not at all. Civs will totally hate you for pursuing wonders they want - especially the tourism ones. Lots of AIs hate me for snagging HG. It's a major diplomacy bump. I sometimes have to give away luxes to smooth things over.

They'll also hate you for plundering their ruins and for allying CSs.

 

[neev]

In my last fractal/standard size/normal pace Deity attempt, I ended up as Shoshone on a continent surrounded by Genghis, Shaka, and the Arabs. Genghis was busy conquering CSes, meanwhile Shaka asks me to join him in a war against him... I decline, soon after I see Shaka moving his troops... and attacks me instead. I did what I could, killing at least 15 units (turn 115), but got overrun in the end. Needless to say, that was awesome even though I got utterly crushed.

On Immortal difficulty, I almost get DOW'd all the time. Early if there's a warmonger near my starting location, or when hitting industrial era. Last night Suleiman (same ideology, friendly, best budies for 2000 years or so) backstabbed me and took me completely off-guard, launching like 15 bombers on my border city. I had badly neglected my military, so he taught me a valuable lesson. That was great and I had to consider myself beaten fair and square.

On Emperor, only Attila/Shaka/etc DOW early, and you usually can tell them to bother someone else fairly easily if you have 4-5 Composite bowmen or better. Later, absolutely nobody ever Dow'd me, ever.

My point is : if your thing is to get aggroed, play Immortal+. I really would like to see more aggression on Emperor and below, however. At least on King and Emperor difficulty levels.

 

[danieladler]

Strange. Though im playing on immortal. I think the AI is much more aggressive now. Might have something to do with the fact that BNW made me much more involved with building relationships with city states for some reason.

 

[Buccaneer]

On the higher difficulty levels I don't enjoy the extremely lopsided cheat start the AI gets. I don't enjoy playing the first 50 turns on perfect play just to catch up to the AI, I'd like an easy, fun start but I'd also like the AI to aggressively come after me the moment we meet and I show weakness.

After all, I'm playing on a difficulty described as "hard".

Few comments. First, I love the first 50-80 turns and I work hard to make those effective and efficient as possible. Each game is different and what I have to do those early turns can vary depending upon geography, neighbors, placements, city-states and barbs (i.e., it's not a cookbook).

Second, there is no way you should expect "easy, fun" except at easy levels, as well as dictating how/when your opponents should act. There has to be challenges to the game, esp. for good players, and that's what the upper difficulties has to be.

Civ5 was initially designed to be more "accessible", meaning playable and enjoyable for casual gamers. Therefore, people are playing and winning at difficulties far above Civ4. But I still remember Brian Reynolds saying that Deity Civ2 would be next to impossible. It didn't long for me and many of my friends at Poly to beat Deity basically with our eyes closed.

 

[Anarchist]

It seems wierd that you have to play on difficulty 7 out of 8 to have the AI actually attack you.
...

On the higher difficulty levels I don't enjoy the extremely lopsided cheat start the AI gets. I don't enjoy playing the first 50 turns on perfect play just to catch up to the AI, I'd like an easy, fun start but I'd also like the AI to aggressively come after me the moment we meet and I show weakness.

You bring up a very important point. It would be nice to see the AI 'benefits' spread a bit, say across different ages or something.

They have done a good job making the end-game more interesting (IMO). If each age had a new challenge that was harder for each difficulty level, I'd prefer that to the blatant 'fast start' the AI gets.

 

[SeismoGraf]

Played about 50 hours of BNW up until now. Finished one game as Maya, Large Islands, Small Map, Deity. Was pretty much a walk in the park culture victory.

Arabs were the only ones to resist my massive tourism output. I was 30 away turns from winning - still no DoW or serious threat, just Germany bragging about their nukes, but never using them. Arabs had the brilliant idea to propose International Games. Olympiad, thanks, lemme win faster with +100% tourism. Talk about shooting themselves in the foot.

If you have a coastal capital, cargo ships with food and production just make it skyrocket. These internal maritime trade routes are pretty easy to protect. With Monarchy it pretty much solves happiness and gold problems.

Most AI are very pacifist and predictable. RA are usually easy to get and let you keep pace technologically. The opportunity cost of wars seems very high.

 

[dexters]

I definitely notice my games are more peaceful, but that's only if you play diplomatic. ..r still occurs commonly (on King, at least), and be afraid as the AI are much better at it.

This is important I believe. If you're trying not to provoke the AI, you should succeed most of the time, especially in the early game. Later on ideologies and other factors may may it too difficult to resist a breakdown in relations.

This is also one of the factors in a game rarely mentioned so there's no context as to why a game is peaceful or why there were more early wars.

 

[poom3619]

Maybe I just caught him on bad day or I happen to play as China, King, Standard. Turn 100-ish Oda amass his force on border of Beijing while I finishing the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, thinking about sweet sum of money if I spawned lot of GWAM and hence reacts too slow to counter his attack and lost the capital. I quit after he reconquer Beijing after I reconquer the town he conquered from me.

So sometimes, AI could kill your game if you leave yourself wide open.

 

[dexters]

Oda is a warmonger so early wars from him is expected.

So another anecdote of an early game war

 

[redwings1340]

I've been completely conquered twice since getting BNW, once early game as the Mayans of all people (I felt like stepping back to prince to dominate, and then neglected my military before Attila killed me), and once as Brazil on Emperor. Wars are happening less frequently than before, but I feel like the AI is treating me more fairly now. If I attack a bunch of people I get labeled as a warmonger and everyone hates me, and will DoW me if I neglect an army, but if I don't and have a militaristic city state early on, I can protect myself easily without losing much science.

 

[Magean]

Yeah, it just seems odd to have to jump up TWO levels of an expansion with new mechanics to have a challenge (I played King in G&K and was prolly 60% win percentage or so).

That right there tells me that something is wrong with the AI when the game is THAT much easier to win.

Also, I don't even like the tech progress on Emperor so I'm sure Immortal will be worse. To me, it's sort of immersion-breaking when I have tanks and planes in the early/mid 1800s and Rifles and Cannon in the 1500-1600s. But everything accelerates on the upper levels. I'd rather they just 'fix' the difficulty across the board by having the AIs actually be a threat rather than having to play against massive artificial bonuses.

My exact problem.

Back in G&K I played at King and won most of the time, but not always and could still have trouble with warmongers. And the early game was often a dangerous time. I had a real pressure.

Now King has become very, very easy... so I jumped to Emperor. But I dislike the pace of tech progression. "Bismack entered the Modern Era". "But... it's 1640 AD !". It kills the immersion. Yes, it's an appreciable challenge when you're not focused on science, but I preferred the kind of challenge G&K's King gave me.

And it's completely ridiculous that nobody ever DoW'd me in my second emperor game while I basically kept only one scout, one archer, and one warrior (upgraded throughout the game) until the Industrial Era. Yes, I was as kind as possible to everybody, so that I could be friend with the entire world... But that shouldn't be so easy.

What's the point of building a defensive military when you know that, if don't start next to Genghis Khan, Shaka, Monty or the rest of the psychopathic bunch, you won't be attacked ?

 

[Uncle_Joe]

This is important I believe. If you're trying not to provoke the AI, you should succeed most of the time, especially in the early game. Later on ideologies and other factors may may it too difficult to resist a breakdown in relations.

This is also one of the factors in a game rarely mentioned so there's no context as to why a game is peaceful or why there were more early wars.

That may be true but in my games, I never go out of my way to be peaceful.

I mean, sure, I'll agree to DoFs and RAs and whatnot (benefit to me) but I don't give away resources when they ask and I don't stop spying when they catch me and I don't vote any particular way to avoid conflict. I even most of the time go with Freedom Ideology which the AIs rarely seem to choose so I would expect the late game to be tense and potentially filled with conflict....nope. Nothing.

Anyways, I just don't feel like the game is working as it should. Players should not be needing to increase the difficulty this much in order to have a challenge when clearly the AI was quite challenging before on lower levels.

And like some of the others, I don't like to give the AI massive artificial boosts to everything ELSE just to get them to play somewhat aggressively and actually be a threat. That should be possible regardless of the bonuses IF I let them by not building a military. The AI should take advantage of a weak but prosperous neighbor and either bully them or conquer them.

 

[dexters]

That may be true but in my games, I never go out of my way to be peaceful.

I mean, sure, I'll agree to DoFs and RAs and whatnot (benefit to me) but I don't give away resources when they ask and I don't stop spying when they catch me and I don't vote any particular way to avoid conflict. I even most of the time go with Freedom Ideology which the AIs rarely seem to choose so I would expect the late game to be tense and potentially filled with conflict....nope. Nothing.

Anyways, I just don't feel like the game is working as it should. Players should not be needing to increase the difficulty this much in order to have a challenge when clearly the AI was quite challenging before on lower levels.

And like some of the others, I don't like to give the AI massive artificial boosts to everything ELSE just to get them to play somewhat aggressively and actually be a threat. That should be possible regardless of the bonuses IF I let them by not building a military. The AI should take advantage of a weak but prosperous neighbor and either bully them or conquer them.

Fair point and some people do feel the aggression is down 'too much' others feel its 'just right'; but my comment was generally aimed at anecdotes where people complain about lack of aggression but don't provide context and often context is everything.

Generally if you leave AI alone and don't do anything agressive, it counts as a peaceful play as growth is slower with BNW due to gold restrictions so border conflicts are less and that removes the 'don't settle near me' disputes which often account for a majority of early game wars; from my experience. Trade routes also moderate their behavior.

Also even pre BNW, Civ5 games can be quite variable depending on Civ mix and how you start with. So painting the game with a broad brush as some have is often inaccurate. This thread alone for example have anecdotes that contradict the assertion the early game is devoid of wars and significantly easier.

Maybe some starts are really easy, but that's been the case with Civ5 if you happen to luck out. Granted I'm aware there is a debate on this issue and I'm fine with upping agression abit if it helps people who want to see more of it.

I'm just generally unconvinced when it comes to sweeping condemnation/complaints about things being broken. We should be tweaking, not moving the clock back. Ships sailed on that. And to add to my trade routes pun, the ability of players to manage agression with trade routes is/was a requested feature. So they can't fix agression by taking that out or significantly nerfing it either or another contingent will be here complaining. No, the solution has to be more clear variability, and likely insanity by some civs who will just have it out for everyone and Dow early.

 

[Jerman]

Well it's a very welcome change from the mentally challenged A.I. stupidly suicide attacking you.

 

[Roxlimn]

Uncle Joe:

Agreeing to DoFs with powerful AIs tends to have a chilling effect on the willingness of other AI to DoW you. That's an improvement. As pointed out, trade routes and RAs will also moderate AI aggression towards you. All not broken. All requested and asked for by the community.

 

[ellgieff]

It seems wierd that you have to play on difficulty 7 out of 8 to have the AI actually attack you. I play King now, which the game already describes as "hard", yet my last game of space victory went without a single enemy unit ever entering my territory (I'd been DoWed by Catherine and Bismarck because I played an isolationist diplomatic game against them) but they never sent any troops my way, just Bismarck tried to harass me with destroyers on one port.

On the higher difficulty levels I don't enjoy the extremely lopsided cheat start the AI gets. I don't enjoy playing the first 50 turns on perfect play just to catch up to the AI, I'd like an easy, fun start but I'd also like the AI to aggressively come after me the moment we meet and I show weakness.

After all, I'm playing on a difficulty described as "hard".

I play on King. I've played 4 games of BNW now - the first I abandoned early, the second Bismarck eliminated me, the 3rd I won as Poland without being attacked, the 4th I abandoned mid-game after having been DOW'd by 3 separate CiV's (in response to me eliminating Polynesia) - 2 of whom were in a position to attack, and did.

My experience is that it's not as straightforward as the "no wars" that people are suggesting, and I've found it to be vastly more interesting to play than G&W from the perspective that I cannot be sure what the AI is going to do.