If a civ is hemmed in on a pangaea, then it must be able to ramp up to a war footing and fight their way out. On the other hand, if a civ has lots of room to expand, then it should take advantage of that situation and ramp up population and research, and maybe production.
Maybe my phrasing was off, I definitely agree that AI opponent should be able to judge the situation and act accordingly. However, this can only be achieved with highly sophisticated AI that would bring present-day PCs to their knees trying to compute the calculations. You and I certainly don't want to wait hour after hour for a turn. The present 5-min wait for the modern era is atrocious enough
AI is simply the
calculator, how to move, which units to attack, worker placement. This is the tactical part that the player faces during the war, difficulty settings change the "precision" of this calculator.
AI
flavor is the
random dice element that overrides the outcomes of the above calculator. Even if expansion via total war is the most perfect, favorable outcome for the AI, the override would make the AI choose an alternative path, maybe a limited war.
E.g. Expansion flavor: Alexander (9/10), Gandhi (3/10)
So like D&D, if the calculator says total annihilation of the player is the best option, Alexander has 90% probability that he'll proceed with that option. Gandhi has 30% chance.
This is not to say Gandhi will act like a pacifist 70% of the time, it just merely means Gandhi will not be a conqueror of kings 70% of the time. Gandhi may choose to fight for 2 of your cities and stop there, holding his prizes, or maybe he'll focus on culture and research. Not so predictable now right?
If AI were to lack this flavor, or not demonstrate it enough, you'll get runaway AI all the time, random wars and decisions like we see now.
Incentives can be introduced in diplomacy to recognize this flavor, maybe if you only capture a small amount of cities, other AI would be assured that you're not a warmongerer +1, but if you capture more cities, AI will become concerned and worried -1, total annihilation? -5.
But nope, CiV prefers war, war, war!
Hope that clears it up by what I meant by flavor.
So was Civ4. 95% of the Civ4 games I played for five years were military-centric. One had to force yourself to hold back on conquests, just like in Civ5.
Maybe true, but there were other things to do too especially after BTS, spies can influence and shape your allies to allow easier requests of help from the AI. Not so in Civ 5, "Friendly denouncer". Only demanding from AI. Role-playing?? "We're sorry it has caused a great divide between us"
Addendum: What in the world does that have to do with a civilization game??? If you want Switzerland to be neutral and Mongold to be conquerers, that would be ideal for a scenario (which I play). Things like should not belong in a regular game.
I hope my above argument would validate Switzerland being more "neutral" in the game. If you really want a pure, calculation AI, perhaps you can check Random personalities?
city razing now drains happiness (again), longer time between turns, the game crashed after about 150 turns (never crashed before the patch).
I'm not sure what you're asking for? I have a save file just before the launch, that helps? But knowing how civ5 works, I suspect that once reloaded, it could place the launchpad off the coast this time.
