Playing specific civ vs all other AI civs

[IMACIVFAN]

I admire the Japanese endurance character and her culture, so I always play the civ.

But after watching a few videos on cultural and diplomatic victories, I am beginning to worry if I can win the AI. The ones that I have watched are playing Brazil for cultural and Greece for diplomatic victories. Each has their own merits for the required victory types.

My worry is, since Japanese is not designed for this victory type specifically, does it mean that I can never override the AI? Also because I use IGE (know I shouldn't), I accidentally found out that the AI cheats by having the Pottery researched right at the start for all AI civ @ King difficulty.

I do have confidence that at Prince difficulty, under the circumstances that the AI won't cheat on the science side, I may be able to win.

So what you reckon?

 

[wideframehoss]

I reckon you can win.

 

[Popedesu]

All civs can win every victory condition, whilst difficulty varies on which ones. Japan is a nice round civ that is more angled for warmongering, but could deffinately be repurposed for culture victory. Just do the standard wait for futurism and you should be able to win.

You could always warmonger a bit to knock civs down a notch or wipe them out in order to make it so you have more antiquity sites and less civs with culture to worry about. Though if you only knock them down a notch it will probably result in them hating you making your tourism less effective, but as long as you get open borders, trade routes, and possibly religion/ideology you should be fine.

 

[docbud]

@IMACIVFAN: You didn't find out the AI cheats accidentally. The AI gets bonuses from King level upward. Those bonuses are not cheating.

http://www.civfanatics.com/book/export/html/691

 

[IMACIVFAN]

@IMACIVFAN: You didn't find out the AI cheats accidentally. The AI gets bonuses from King level upward. Those bonuses are not cheating.

http://www.civfanatics.com/book/export/html/691

But what I am most concerned about is whether the AI responded reasonably at Prince level. No refrain from attacking...for instance.

 

[wideframehoss]

But what I am most concerned about is whether the AI responded reasonably at Prince level. No refrain from attacking...for instance.

Neither the AI nor the human gets an advantage on Prince. Sounds "reasonable" enough to me.

 

[beetle]

It is silly to characterize the advantages the AI gets at different levels as “cheating”.

The ones that I have watched are playing Brazil for cultural and Greece for diplomatic victories. Each has their own merits for the required victory types.

That is not much of a sample, and it is two civs that are strongly tuned for specific VC.

I do have confidence that at Prince difficulty, under the circumstances that the AI won't cheat on the science side, I may be able to win.

You should be able to win at Prince with very sloppy play. Get all the wonders you want. Go as wide as you want. So I reckon you will be fine playing Japan and pursuing whatever VC you like.

But what I am most concerned about is whether the AI responded reasonably at Prince level. No refrain from attacking...for instance.

No the AI will not respond reasonably until Emperor. The AI only attacks when it thinks it has decent odds. At Prince, that won't happen. So if you don't want the AI to refrain from attacking, you need to play at a higher difficulty level where it will have more units. I am pretty confident that anyone who is not totally new to the series can manage King.

 

[ShakaKhan]

Yeah, it's not cheating.... Since the programmers couldn't instruct the AI to just, "PLAY MORE SMARTERER!!!" as you increase in difficulty, the next best thing was to give them bonuses. As difficulty level increases, the AI starts with additional techs, additional units, and decreased costs of technologies, social policies, etc.

Japan can definitely win a tourism victory on king. Any civ can win any victory condition on king. Any civ can win any victory condition on any level. I've only done Japan on deity for spaceship, but have gotten all 4 victory conditions with them on Immortal (except space which I got at emperor and deity.)

Japan is usually considered one of the bottom-tier (or worst) civs in the games as per the consensus of this forum. However, this is (one of the many) assessments of the forum I don't agree with. The Samurai have a free open field promotion, which means that as long as you give rough terrain bonuses to warriors and swords, they'll have bonuses in all terrains when they upgrade to samurai. Additionally, since samurai start with shock I, they can come right off the assembly line with cover II (with an armory, which conveniently is acquired in the same tech.) The free work boats can save you some cash or hammers, particularly when repairing them after being pillaged. Zeroes provide a late-game safety net especially for peaceful games (which King-level tourism games usually are) since the lift of the oil requirement means you could have 5 in each city. The extra culture on workboats and double bonus to atolls provides a boost to social policy acquisition and border pops, albeit a small one. And later that ground culture gives additional tourism with hotels and airports which makes Japan one of the few civs that actually have some tourism bonus (again, although it's very small.) And most importantly, it's my opinion that Bushido is the single-most underrated advantage of any civilization among these forums, which is the primary reason why Japan is misplaced as a bottom tier civ. Sure they aren't Poland or Babylon, but they ain't the Iroquois or Spain w/o NW either.

 

[claudiupb]

Japan is usually considered one of the bottom-tier (or worst) civs in the games as per the consensus of this forum. However, this is (one of the many) assessments of the forum I don't agree with. The Samurai have a free open field promotion, which means that as long as you give rough terrain bonuses to warriors and swords, they'll have bonuses in all terrains when they upgrade to samurai. Additionally, since samurai start with shock I, they can come right off the assembly line with cover II (with an armory, which conveniently is acquired in the same tech.) The free work boats can save you some cash or hammers, particularly when repairing them after being pillaged. Zeroes provide a late-game safety net especially for peaceful games (which King-level tourism games usually are) since the lift of the oil requirement means you could have 5 in each city. The extra culture on workboats and double bonus to atolls provides a boost to social policy acquisition and border pops, albeit a small one. And later that ground culture gives additional tourism with hotels and airports which makes Japan one of the few civs that actually have some tourism bonus (again, although it's very small.) And most importantly, it's my opinion that Bushido is the single-most underrated advantage of any civilization among these forums, which is the primary reason why Japan is misplaced as a bottom tier civ. Sure they aren't Poland or Babylon, but they ain't the Iroquois or Spain w/o NW either.

Japan is pretty weak, the devs buffed them a little bit, but they are still weak.

The samurai are a decent melee unit but they have some major drawbacks: they are a melee unit, they come with a tech that you usually don't get very early, they cost iron but you are not guaranteed to have iron around, they upgrade to riflemen so if you spam them you can't upgrade until rifling (but they don't have an increased strength to compensate this), they come with shock I so you are obligated to take rough terrain promotions for your warriors/swordsmen otherwise you lose this bonus.

The zero is rather weak, they comes pretty late, if they were triplanes replacements they would have had a pretty cool synergy, letting you build plains without biology, but they are fighter replacements, and you are not going to build a lot of fighters anyway. It is a cool unit to spam, too bad you don't need to spam fighter units.

The fishing boats and atoll bonus is very situational, you are not guaranteed to have decent sea resources around, and atolls are pretty rare. You would want to get the sea luxuries connected fairly early but other than that you will get fishing boats too late for that +1 CPT to matter (in some games you never improve fish tiles). If you want to use samurais to build your fishing boats you are too late, at best you can keep one unit to rebuild pillaged fishing boats.

The Bushido is very situational, and it is very strong late game when you get cavalry/tank units with blitz and charge but in early/mid game is just a bonus that lets you use damaged archery units even if they are low on HP (unless you are willing to suicide your melee units).

 

[joncnunn]

Neither the AI nor the human gets an advantage on Prince. Sounds "reasonable" enough to me.

This is not quite correct, the AI now plays on the "AI Default Handicap level"

In BNW the AI its a science bonus on all difficulty levels,

A larger barb bonus than the human on all levels, On the lower two difficulty levels the AI barb bonus is increased to keep it from falling below the human.

and a happiness bonus even on Prince. (The fixed flat bonus that a human would on settler + a dynamic pop & city bonus similar to a human on Warlord.)

Note that in Vanilla and G&K the AI played on Chieftain.

Its still rather easy to beat as the human brain trumps the AI flavor driven logic.

 

[wideframehoss]

This is not quite correct, the AI now plays on the "AI Default Handicap level"

In BNW the AI its a science bonus on all difficulty levels,

A larger barb bonus than the human on all levels, On the lower two difficulty levels the AI barb bonus is increased to keep it from falling below the human.

and a happiness bonus even on Prince. (The fixed flat bonus that a human would on settler + a dynamic pop & city bonus similar to a human on Warlord.)

Note that in Vanilla and G&K the AI played on Chieftain.

Its still rather easy to beat as the human brain trumps the AI flavor driven logic.

Ahh my mistake.

The bold is the key part. AI vs. Human on an even playing field the human is going to beat AI with relative ease after a little practice.

I feel like starting a game on Prince just to see how ridiculously easy it is.

 

[reddishrecue]

Im guessing that the simulator starts removing bonuses after the prince level. For example, in prince you still get that happiness bonus but that happiness decreases as the levels increase.